CHAPTER 27
GROUND ZERO
What they are yet I know not, - but they shall be The terrors of the earth.
- Shakespeare
Renson approached ground zero slowly and cautiously from the South. He would protect against the worst case scenario by waiting for the humans at the Dannos impact point. He would also confirm that the prime target was actually where it was predicted to be, based on research carried out by the previous Ca'Ra who supported Earth missions.
No Ca'Ra had been in this region of Earth in decades, and certainly no non-Ca'Ra member of the Ra race had ever been permitted within 300 km of the predicted target position. Due to the remote nature of the site and self-protection abilities of the target, it was not likely to have been visited by humans either. But if the humans he was concerned about managed against all odds to both survive and put the puzzle together, they might well attempt to visit the target, so that's where he had to wait for them.
Ren'Ca would be going much closer to the target than any Ca'Ra had attempted in the past. Still, though he was going where no Ra had gone before, he had the utmost confidence in his ability to do so successfully. Decades of training, and in particular mental training, had prepared him well for this mission.
Worried that the saucer itself could alert the target, Ren'Ca was walking the last 20 km. It was incredibly rough terrain, choked in tropical jungle. Of course with a single thought the saucer could be at his location in seconds, but he hoped that would prove unnecessary. He carried strapped to his back among other equipment a powerful laser cannon with an auxiliary power unit. It was the most powerful portable weapon in the Ra arsenal, even more powerful than his internal cyborg weaponry. With the laser he hoped to quickly destroy the humans with as little psychic disturbance as possible.
That was the key. Disturbance to the target, physical or psychic, could not be allowed. The target had to stay where it was, where in fact it had been sleeping for four Earth centuries or longer, until Friday, 1:15 AM, Eastern 'Standard' Time. This assassination had taken many decades to set up. If it failed, what the Dark Master would do to him could not even be imagined by the naive creatures in this particularly mundane universe, including even the ruthless Ra.
The humans would never even get close enough to the impact point to be blasted by the laser cannon, thanks to another weapon that he carried with him into the jungle. To protect the impact point Ren'Ca would soon unleash the deadliest, highest-tech weapon in the Ra arsenal; a set of deadly robotic nanite-based devises that would rapidly grow, multiply, surround, and guard the impact site. Other than Ra, no ground-traveling intruder would be able to get past the relentless nanobots.
Nanite weapons were highly illegal from a Galactic League standpoint, but the 'trust approach' was used to 'enforce' most Galactic League rules. Most Galactic League members didn't even understand the concept of lying, and were incapable of comprehending Ra motives and behavior. It was easy for the Ra to continue to clandestinely develop, manufacture and use illegal weapons. Since this area of Earth would soon be completely obliterated by Dannos, this was a perfect opportunity to use advanced nanite weaponry.
As he walked towards the target, vague feelings of foreboding began to assail him. Snakes and jaguars and insects meant nothing to the Ca'Ra. This section of jungle looked no different from thousands of square miles of other jungle, but it felt different. On a psychic level it felt dangerous and foreboding. It was part of the defense of the target. However Renson's Ca'Ra training allowed him to easily overcome the empathic assault. So far.
A dozen kilometers from the impact point it was time for him to release the nanobots. He retrieved the cigarette-pack sized metallic canister from his backpack and cautiously twisted off the cap. Inside were a couple of dozen pea-sized metallic spheres. He poured them into his hand and using his cyborg abilities accessed their status and their instructions. Satisfied, he unceremoniously dropped them to the ground, where they immediately appeared to dissolve and sink into the loamy jungle soil.
Each sphere was a cohesive colony of millions of nanites. They would consume minerals and energy while they rapidly multiplied and moved into position around the impact point. Depending on the threat, each colony could attack as a single large unit, as multiple macroscopic units, or as swarms of smaller units. Given a few years they could wipe out all the humans, but that would be detectable by the Galactic League. For now they would form an impenetrable ring around the impact point such that the target would not be approached by land. But if needed Ren'Ca could reprogram their mission.
Ren'Ca continued on through the thick jungle. When he was only ten kilometers from his objective he was seriously attacked psy-wise. Despite the strong mental shields he had erected since beginning this quest, images and emotions of fantastic strength bombarded his mind. Creatures living and dying, distant suns, violent battles, hate, rapture, fear, pain, came crashing into his mind like great dark waves!
Following Ra instincts, he would have slashed back empathically, had it not been for his training. It would be like an ant attacking an elephant, but it could possibly waken the Great One from his slumbers. Instead, Ren'Ca dropped to his knees and focused fully on shoring up his collapsing mental shields. Gradually he was able to attenuate the signals to barely bearable levels, but it was taking every bit of his skill to do so.
Then, as abruptly as it began, the mental bombardment subsided to almost nothing. But Ren'Ca had found out what he wanted to know. Visual conformation of the target would not be necessary. There was no doubt at all now that the target remained at the Dannos impact point. But he still had to get closer anyway, to better stand watch against the humans.
He stood up and started walking again, towards the target. He was not yet fully recovered from the attack. Instead of being smooth and sure, his movements were jerky and mechanical. For the first time, he experienced doubt that his skills would be equal to the task ahead. The strength of incoherent psychic thoughts from The Great One, such as those that he had just witnessed, invariably followed an inverse square law with respect to distance from the source. How strong would such thoughts be at the actual target site? Could he cope?
How frequent did the target dream? For that certainly is what the attack had been, a dream. His Dark Master, the Black One, had said that this had occurred on many other worlds where a Great One slept. The dreams were by creatures of almost unimaginable power. The Great Ones dreamed so powerfully that evolution and behavior for entire planets was profoundly affected. Fortunately, it also made the Great Ones detectable, and hence vulnerable. The Ra discovered that a Great One slept here more than a century ago, and reported it to their Dark Master. The Dark Master already knew this, but hadn't known that sentient beings called humans now on Earth, and might wake the sleeper. That would be unacceptable. This Great One would therefore soon die, as had all the others. Merely as a bonus, the humans would all die also.