Confederation -- 1

The 3rd book in the Gaia Ascendant Trilogy

“The Fourth Turning” by Strauss and Howe predicts many of the societal problems that have appeared in recent history. Perhaps most ominously, their theory indicates that one outcome of the current intellectual and spiritual environment could be “an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck.”

Strauss and Howe didn’t consider the possibility of a devastating alien attack as the trigger point.

***

The engines of the large shuttlecraft shut down with a whirring noise. The things were nearly silent in flight, but they always reminded me of a jet engine spooling down when they were turned off. I glanced around the cabin at our group. Our two Sunny pilots, Whistle and Frazzle, were at the controls. My beautiful, blonde wife, Liz, was seated beside me and my two old friends, Joe and Rudy, were in an adjacent row of seats. Despite the seats being a little too narrow for humans, they were more comfortable than any human-made military aircraft. The only one of us who had difficulty with the seating was the Sim-tiger leader, Kasm. His five-hundred pounds plus of six-limbed, muscular body just wouldn't fit in the seats. He'd settled between two vacant rows and braced himself against them, saying that he was fine. His position still looked uncomfortable to me.

A couple of minutes prior, we'd arrived over the grounds of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. We were flying the larger of our two captured shuttle-craft. It was now sitting on the remains of the old parking lot.

It had been obvious to Frazzle that the parking lot, cracked and disintegrating as the asphalt was, was the best place to land. It had been almost five years since the Pug-bears had destroyed our civilization with the EMP blasts they'd set off when I had destroyed their matter transporter network. The parking lot had not been maintained since, and the mountain climate had nearly destroyed it.

The shuttle was a heavy craft, and it sank into the surface as its weight came down when the engines were shut off. We climbed out to be greeted by a group of rather barbaric-looking men who walked over to stand guard over the craft. They looked us over carefully, and one man greeted Joe and Rudy by name. Those two had been loosely allied with the Warlord's men in the last great battle against the Pug-bears and Pugs and were well known. The men glanced at me but didn't comment.

The Sunnys and Kasm, on the other hand, elicited a buzz of low conversation. There were around forty of the Sim-tigers currently on Earth, and they were not unfamiliar to residents of the Denver Metro area, but there weren't enough of them around to make the sight of one commonplace. The two small, furry Sunnys were the only two currently on Earth. They were not incredible fighters like the six-limbed Kasm, but the men pointed at them, and I overheard a comment about their technology that sounded positive and envious.

We walked in a loose group across the unkempt lawn towards the battle-damaged building. It was a clear day, and the springtime sun shone brightly through the thin air. I looked around with trepidation. The Warlord's men posed no threat, yet I was still getting the feeling of impending danger. In me, it manifested as a tingle on the back of my neck, and it was now acting up.

The wind was from the northwest and carried the chill of the snow-covered mountains. Jake, the Eastern Slope Warlord, and his party were already at the hotel and were waiting for us on the large veranda. We waved as we approached, and Jake raised his hand in a solemn salute in response.

As if his wave had been a signal, I heard the buzz of a high-velocity round as it flew by about knee-high. It struck the cracked surface right under Kasm, throwing pieces of asphalt that bounced off his green-furred stomach. He let out a snarl and leaped forward, turning as he did towards the nearest trees. I shoved Liz towards the hotel. It was now closer than the shuttle and offered the nearest shelter.

Rudy and Joe ran past me, and Rudy grabbed Liz's arm, dragging her along with him as she tried to turn to come back to follow me. I was close on Kasm's track, heading for the trees.

As I sprinted, I extended my mental perception, searching for the source of the shot. There was a second and, immediately after, a third shot. They were aimed at the rapidly moving Sim-tiger, but he was zig-zagging in his path, and they missed.

I mentally located the source. The aura I received was human and hostile. The shooter was in a building about four hundred yards to the south. I linked with Liz and showed her the location. She was huddled in the shelter of a boulder by the front steps. When she received my thought, she yelled at Rudy and Joe to lay down suppressing fire on the location.

Jake was quick to follow suit, and the entire porch of the hotel erupted with a series of shots as the men blazed away with various calibers of weapons. I couldn't tell if they were hitting the building, but there was no more incoming fire.

I caught up with Kasm in the shelter of a stand of spruce trees. He glanced at me, and we connected mentally, that being his normal mode of communication.

"Dec! That was too close. The shooter is moving now. I can sense him. He's heading to the east behind that row of buildings," he sent.

"Okay. You cut him off, and I'll follow up around the west end. We'll catch him between us. Be careful! You were the target, and I don't know why. Let's try to capture him in talking condition," I responded.

He dashed down the line of trees, sprinted across a vacant space, and dropped into a depression that would provide some cover. I took a chance and ran out towards the west, heading diagonally towards the building to the right of the shooter's original location.

Our target was moving, and I followed him mentally. He wasn't thinking about shooting at the moment, just getting to some other point that might provide cover or the opportunity for a fourth shot. When I sensed that thought, I turned and headed directly for the west end of the original building. It was about three hundred yards from my position, and it took me longer than I thought it would. I guess that getting older has its drawbacks. I was gasping for breath as I rounded the southwest corner of the building.

I belatedly remembered that I was running into a potential ambush and jumped back behind the building's side. I dropped to the ground and peeked around the corner, but there was a loading dock directly in front of me, and I couldn't see around the abandoned box truck backed up to it. I jumped up and sneaked around to the front of the truck. Nothing was showing along the strip of buildings.

I stepped back and dropped into a meditative state. It didn't take long before I could sense Kasm's presence. He acknowledged me with a mental flick, almost as if he said, "Don't bother me. I'm working." He was moving in my direction, taking cover where he could, behind junk and rusting cars that hadn't moved since the EMP blast had killed them.

I widened my mental search and located the shooter. There was a kind of curious mental doubling about him. I couldn't figure out what it was, but I now knew that he was aware we were after him and had set a booby trap on the door into the part of the building where he was lurking. He was hiding near the front windows with their view over the Stanley property, and I could tell that he was still looking for a target. Sensing nothing else, I jumped up and ran as fast as my burning lungs would let me move towards the door. Kasm saw me in the open, and taking that as a sign that it was safe, he charged towards the same door. I linked with him again as I ran.

"Stop! There's a bomb on the door," I sent. I received a close mental analog of a frustrated snarl in return.

He arrived at the door before me and flattened against the wall. There was a window on the side of the door I was approaching. I ducked under it and paused to examine the door. There was no sign of a trap, but I was sure it was there.

I'd run past an abandoned length of electrical cable partway down the building, so I went back and brought it up. Kasm stayed in place in case the guy should change his mind and come out again.

It was pretty simple to tie the wire onto the levered handle, back up to its full extent, and yank the door open. There was a momentary pause and then an explosion that I recognized as a military frag grenade. Some pieces flew out past us, but we were about a hundred feet away behind a defunct pickup truck. Kasm dashed back to the wall beside the door while I lay down so that I could see under the truck. It was then that I realized that my forty-five had come out of its holster somewhere during the run, and all I had was one of the aliens' splinter guns.

This was an unwelcome development since I wanted the shooter alive. He'd almost instantly die if I hit him with one of the poisonous glass splinters. There was no such thing as wounding with the weapon.

I explained my problem to Kasm, and he grimly responded, "That's what you humans get for relying on weapons. Just leave it to me. I won't hurt him too much; maybe a bite or two."

"Try not to bite him so that he can't speak. I want to find out what he was trying to accomplish by shooting at you. We need to know why he is here and who sent him," I answered.

He thought back, "You're taking the fun out of this. Be quiet. He's coming now!"

I saw the man's feet in the shadows of the doorway. The tires of the truck I was crouched behind were flat, and I couldn't see much through the space between its bottom and the ground. I could sense the man's puzzlement. He'd expected a body, but there was nothing in sight. I didn't want him to look around the corner and see Kasm, so I let out a low groan, pretending that the blast had wounded me.

That worked like a charm. The shooter stepped out of the door just in time to find out what it felt like to be hit by a leaping and enraged Sim-tiger. By the time I got there, Kasm had one forepaw on the man's chest and held the guy's arms with his secondary forelimbs. His manipulating arms were at least as strong as those of a strong human, and he was restraining the shooter's attempts to reach a pistol holstered on his belt.

I removed that and grabbed the rifle he'd dropped when Kasm hit him. Kneeling, I frisked him with one hand. He had two knives and another pistol in an ankle holster. I stepped back, saying, "Okay, buddy. I'm going to have my friend let you up. You can't outrun him, and you can't out-fight him, so don't get any ideas. We're going to march back over to the Stanley Hotel, and you're going to tell us everything we want to know."

Kasm stepped back, and the man cautiously climbed to his feet, eyeing the large alien with fear in his gaze. I got the man's attention when I asked, "Why did you shoot at my friend?"

He just shook his head in denial. At first, I thought he meant he didn't do the shooting, but then I inserted myself into his mental aura. He feared the Sim-tiger and had been instructed to kill it. The thoughts were fragmentary, but it was clear that someone else had sent him.

"Who sent you, and why do they want my friend dead?" I was getting a little impatient, even though we had only gotten started.

“No one sent me!” he snarled.

I knew that wasn't true, so I asked again, "You were sent by someone. Who was it?"

This time I got a momentary picture of our prisoner in uniform, facing a superior officer. He had little natural mental shielding, and I could read his thoughts easily. The only problem was he didn't have much mental dialogue.

"Okay. So you are in the military, and you're on a spying mission," I said softly.

His eyes grew wide in alarm, "They told me that some of you freaks could read minds! You're not readin' mine!" He grabbed something from his belt and jammed it into his mouth.

I jumped forward and grabbed his arm, but the poison pill had already taken effect. He was frothing at the mouth and gasping for breath. Instead of wasting time trying to help him, I shoved an intense mental probe into his frantic mind. The sense of mental doubling intensified, and I followed it to its source. The man had some kind of implant in his brain! It seemed to be acting as a store of information, but it was also linked to some areas of his brain related to pain sensations. I backed away from the thing. It had a dirty, nasty feel or something akin to that. It's hard to describe mental sensations verbally, but that was what I felt. I regrouped and tried again.

Brushing off the desperate, struggling thoughts, I quickly sifted through as much of his normal memories as I could access before his mind stilled in death. It was like being in a large room as the lights gradually went out in sequence. I exited before the darkness reached me. I didn't know what riding along with a mind on its descent into death would be like, and I didn't want to find out.

I blinked a couple of times as I returned to my normal state and then bent to inspect the body. There was a scar behind his right ear. Whatever it was I'd sensed, it had been surgically implanted. I wondered who had that technology, especially now. The scar looked relatively new. This was something that I found very alarming, but without any additional facts, there was nothing that I could do except to shelve the issue for later.

I turned to Kasm and spoke aloud, "He was a member of the government of what used to be my nation. He came from the east to spy on us. I got the impression that they're planning on attacking the front-range area. They've expanded their hold across the eastern half of this continent and are now approaching Jake's territory. They know something about your people, and I believe they want to purge the planet of all alien creatures. It seemed almost like a religious thought in his mind. He viewed it as his sacred duty to rid the planet of invaders."

Kasm shrugged his secondary shoulders slightly and headed towards the end of the buildings. I glanced at the body and followed. It seemed callous, but that was the way things were in the here and now. There had been too much death in the past few years to waste time with a corpse.

As we walked, we conversed mentally. Kasm could speak some English, but it was difficult for him. On the other hand, his people were telepaths as was I, since my mind had been irrevocably altered by my encounter with the powerful leader of the invading Pug-bears years ago.

I'd killed the leader, but his mental attack had ripped my mind open in a way that led to me developing the latent psychic abilities that all humans have. Through constant practice and many hardships, I'd grown powerful in my own right.

"Kasm, the man was a member of a group that was a department in our old government. This continent was mostly ruled by a central governing body that eventually grew so powerful that it dominated all of the people."

I paused as he interrupted my thought stream. "That would never happen with my people! No single group could control everyone. We'd leave their area."

I responded, "That couldn't happen here. It did in the past, but for many years our population has been so large that there was nowhere on the planet that a dissenting group could go. Besides, the central government was too powerful. It somehow grew to control everything; all the resources; all of the people."

He looked at me and drew his lips back, exposing his large fangs in distaste. I continued, "They controlled travel and long-distance communication and food. They used resources as bribes to keep themselves in power. I'm afraid that my people were so focused on their own needs and desires that they were easily led and then captured in self-induced misery. They set up organizational structures that seemed unchangeable to those mired within them. I'm not proud of it, but the fact is that our species was not progressing quickly, either socially or scientifically. The invasion of the Pug-bears and Pugs might turn out to be the event that allows us to progress, despite killing nine out of ten humans. If I can figure out a way for us to work with your people and the Sunnys, together we might create a better way forward for all of us."

He stopped showing his teeth and replied, "That may well be. I confess that I was ashamed of my people also. We've lived for many generations, content to be simple hunters on our planet. We'd reached an equilibrium in our population. No groups fought with other groups, and each tribal group had its own territory. Natural and accidental deaths balanced out our birthrate. We were happy in our existence until the Pugs attacked. That was a shock! We didn't know how to cope with their advanced technology at first. It was fortunate that they were so easy to ambush when they came into the jungle."

He changed his topic suddenly, "I've been thinking about the same thing, Dec. I'd like to see if your people and mine can live together peacefully. There's no question about the Sunnys." He snorted, making a derisive sound. "They can't even consider fighting without having a near breakdown."

I sent back, "Yes, but they are plenty devious. They have methods of defending themselves, even if they are far more pacifistic than either of our peoples."

My concentration was broken by discovering my old Sig-Sauer lying near some dried weeds. I remembered stumbling as my foot caught in them and realized that stumble must have bounced it out of its holster. I picked up the pistol and returned it to its usual place. The safety strap was intact and snapped shut. I had thought that I might have bumped it against something, unsnapping it without noticing, but maybe it had just worked loose.

Kasm had paused while I recovered my weapon but turned almost immediately and continued. I hastened to catch up with him.

I continued our discussion as I followed, "That sniper was a member of a government group that used to be responsible for internal security. I read in his memories that they are now an occupying force in the lands to the east. They call themselves 'The Motherland Army' and are ruled by a single individual they call 'The President'. That person desires to project his power and dominate all of the lands and people available. In that way, they're much like the Pug-bears."

We walked for a while without communicating, then he suddenly added, "And, Pugs. That one wasn't a Pug-bear. He was just a sneaky, ambushing, and stinky Pug." He simultaneously sent a comedic image of one of the aliens trying to hide behind a tree with its rear end sticking out.

I laughed out loud at his humor. We were approaching the porch of the Stanley, and Liz came running out to embrace me, followed by Rudy and Joe.

As he passed Liz, Kasm brushed his shoulder affectionately against her and trailed his manipulating arm across her behind in a way I would have resented if he'd been human. He liked her, and that was just his standard greeting. Inter-species etiquette was somewhat of a moving target. He had done it to me before, although it had shocked me the first time he'd patted my ass.