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Gatrell Corporation Central ISM Grid Station

April 14, 1984 RE

Things had a way of getting interesting very quickly. This expedition just did not want to let things get too easy for us until everything was all over and we went home, if there was a home to go to. A couple of fanatics seemed to be determined to make sure that my home would be in ruins by the time I returned home. It was a good thing Col. Miller seemed equally determined to make sure that the other two failed. I had to concentrate on my job though. Getting this station repaired was still a priority.

Rem was very useful in helping us get around the station. I just wish that we were able to claim it as salvage like I had been able to do with Boeing facility. The rules for claiming salvage in space happened to be a little different though. Rem had explained that only a nation could claim something like the ISM grid and that only recognized ambassadors or state heads were recognized by the AIs on board as official representatives of their nations. No one in our expedition qualified as such and thus the station remained open to everyone's use. Without an owner the AIs on board could not ignore anyone's commands. The good news was that at least Lockwood and Pro'Kir could not claim the station either.

The tele pads also made it fast enough to move through the station. We were where we needed to be within a couple of minutes. The damage to the station had been much worse than I had expected. All of the damage had been hidden from us on approach to the station due to all the damage being on the opposite side of where the docking bay was located. There were gaping holes open to space that needed to be fixed. Fuel storage cells were leaking all over the place. We had to use the tele pads to get around clouds of toxic gas that now filled some hallways. Things were a complete mess.

"Ah, here we are," said Rem as he led us onto one more tele pad. That pad happened to lead to a rather elegant looking room. While most of the station had been made of metal, this room seemed more like it had been made for people who missed the Earth. An expensive looking wood desk sat in the middle of the room and plants that must have been well taken care of decorated the room.

"And where are we?" asked one of my teammates.

"This is the central control room for the ISM grid. You will be able to authorize all repairs and maintenance requests from here. It may be necessary for some of you to aid in the repairs as well. We machines are not authorized to do all of these repairs ourselves when there are able bodied humans around," Rem explained.

Those little safety protocols seemed more annoying than necessary to me. It looked more like someone had seen one too many movies about machine insurrections. A few thousand years worth of neglect had left a vast amount of material that needed to be sorted out. I was just happy that there were a couple of other service units around to help organize everything. We did run into a few problems as things continued. One of them was that my team had to go around and manually repair a few items. As it turns out the machines were not even permitted to repair a few systems. That was annoying and it would be extremely time consuming, but there was a much larger problem that concerned me when Rem alerted me to it.

"It appears the human with access to Brother Eye and Sister Ray has sealed himself in one of the storage rooms along with the controls to the aforementioned devices. He also appears to be powering up the devices and preparing to fire them on populated areas. You may want to take actions to prevent him from doing so," Rem informed me.

"What? How do those things have power when the there are things in this station that desperately need the power?" I asked.

"They have there own power sources that we are not permitted to steal from them."

"And why are you telling me that I need to take actions to prevent him from firing on anything? Can't the teams that are pursuing him reach him somehow?" I asked.

"Under normal circumstances, yes, but these are not normal circumstances. The individual that you have referred to as Lockwood has also activated a security protocol that has deactivated most of the tele pads in this station. At this moment the only tele pads that have not been affected and have access to the tele pads in the rest of the facility are the ones in this command center. It will take some time for your pursuit team to get here and then get to Lockwood," explained Rem.

"How long will it take me to get to Lockwood's location?"

"No time at all," said Rem, "There is a tele pad just a few feet from where Lockwood is currently standing." I did have a small fire arm with me, but I did not want to take on someone with actual combat training by myself. It looked like I would have to though. There were only a few people left that were capable of repairing this station and we were not going to be able to go home and get more. I was going to have to try and delay Lockwood on my own. Hopefully someone would come along to save me before I managed to get myself killed.

There was not much I could do to prepare before I stepped through the tele pad all on my own. I did not know what I was scarred about more, facing Lockwood on my own or dealing with the reaction of an angry spouse that was 70 times my size. Both were preferable to letting somebody like Lockwood have his way with an orbital superweapon. I just wished Rem would have told me that Lockwood was facing in the direction of the tele pad before I stepped through. He had just as much time to grab and point his weapon at me as I did to point my weapon at him, and he was the faster man.

"Dr. Sanders, I see that you managed to find a way to get past my security measures," said Lockwood as he pointed his weapon, a weapon he probably should not have had, at me. "Now do yourself a favor and drop your weapon before I really do have to shoot you this time."

I complied since getting shot this quick was not going to help anybody out. "And what do you plan on doing here Lockwood?" I asked.

"I am going to accomplish what we in Galvanta have always known to be necessary," said Lockwood in a perfectly level voice. "And don't think that you are distracting me in the least bit. I am perfectly capable of talking to you and working at the same time. The only reason I have not killed you yet is because I want to try and make you see the light Dr. Sanders."

I asked, "See the light?"

"Yes, don't you see that what I'm doing is for the good of the Earth? I can see that, deep down, you are a good person. These anthropomorphic monstrosities are polluting our beautiful pure world," said Lockwood as his eyes began to glaze over a little and he spoke with the conviction of a true fanatic. "They've even managed to twist a wonderful mind such as yours to their own purposes. Can't you see that that tiger bitch has seduced you, perverted you, convinced you to lie down with beasts? And now look at what their race is doing. You must have guessed what that abomination from Firanel plans on doing. They plan on making themselves into an army of invincible giant monsters that will grind humanity beneath their filthy paws.

"I will not allow that. No matter what size they are Sister Eye will be able to strike them down and Brother Eye will make sure that my strikes are precise enough that I will be able to limit the damage done to humanity. Every last abomination will be wiped from the face of the Earth and things will return to the way that they should be. We have to start close to home though. I can't have the armies of Firanel overrunning my homeland and then I will have to deal with a few other obligations as my nation agreed upon with the Southern Alliance. Then it will be time to deal with the rest of the population in Firanel, or should I deal with monsters in your own nation Dr. Sanders. Once your people are free of the corrupting influence of those creatures I am sure your people would willingly join mine in defeating the Firanelians and exterminating their peoples once and for all. The Caressean's coming to deal with me will probably prevent me from exterminating all of the monsters, but I will be able to deal with quite a few before I die and I become a hero to all the humans that grace or beautiful world."

Lockwood had been working behind a panel as he talked. There was a screen that I could see and on that screen was a picture of the Earth. Something, I assumed it was Brother Eye, was giving the two of us a real time view of the planet's surface. I recognized the area that Lockwood was looking at. It was the entire nation of Firanel. Lockwood was marking locations on the map, some of them I recognized as the locations of military bases. Then, quick bursts of light lit up each location and I realized that each of those bases had been wiped off the face of the planet. Firanel was going to be in a lot of trouble in the near future now that they were surrounded by enemies and their military had been effectively crippled. Then the image on the screen started to move south. Caressee was easy enough to recognize. I had stayed silent during the attack on Firanel, but this was too much. Caressee was the ally of my country and my wife's homeland. She also had a military family and chances were that a few of them were on bases that Lockwood had been targeting. They deserved a little bit of effort on my part.

"Lockwood, wait! This isn't right. Those people haven't done anything to you. Your two countries aren't even considered enemies," I said, not knowing what else to say to a fanatic like him.

Lockwood briefly looked up from the screen and looked at me. "You're right," Lockwood said sadly, "The human populace of Caressee has stood hand in hand with the abominations for far too long. There is no way that they can possibly be saved now. It would be more of a mercy to destroy them all along with those monsters now. That way, at least their children will be saved from contamination by those creatures."

The targeting cursor on the screen moved over the largest city in Caressee and I tried to charge him before he could fire the weapon. For my effort, I received a shot in the leg. Pain exploded through my body and I toppled over before I had a chance to get close to Lockwood. Lockwood just slowly shook his head and fired off Sister Ray once more before saying, "You shouldn't have done that Doctor, but it's alright. There's still time to save you."

My heart was racing, not just from the pain, but from the knowledge of what Lockwood was about to do. He had already killed millions for no other purpose than pure unreasoning hatred and he planned to kill millions more. There had to be some way of stopping him and suddenly getting shot in the leg looked more like a blessing. While I was on the ground I could see something. Lockwood had spent time rigging the console with explosives. I tried not to think about where he had managed to get them from, but he had them and he probably planned to use them to blow the console, and himself, apart rather than letting it fall into the hands of what he viewed as abominations. It was also possible for me to see what looked like a trigger on the ground, a trigger that was in arms reach, a trigger that I slowly reached for while Lockwood was busy trying to commit mass murder and eventually pulled.

Lockwood did notice the click and he looked down at me. His face was soon contorted with rage as he screamed, "What have you done!" Just as he was raising his weapon to finish me off there was motion in the corner of my vision. Lockwood looked up to see what had just arrived and was shot multiple times before he had a chance to react. I figured the shot through the head that blew his brains out the back of his head finished him off. Normally, I wasn't one to celebrate a person's death, but I had to smile on this occasion as that true monster collapsed to the ground. Then I had to get my little warning out before anyone else could get killed.

"Get out of here, that things going to blow," I yelled. The soldiers had been trained to react immediately to a warning like that and I could already hear them retreating away from me. A vast leathery hand scooped me up a little roughly and I was encased in darkness. There was a rising sensation and then I heard an explosion that was abruptly cut off before I could see the light again. I was back in the control room and looking directly into the face of my once again reptilian savior, Private Hunter.

"Are you alright Dr. Sanders? I hope I didn't break anything when I picked you up like that," Hunter said.

"This hole in my leg is the only real injury that I have. Thanks for the rescue by the way," I responded to the alligator.

I would have liked to say we had a breather after that, but that was just not the case. An extremely large dark feline form showed up on another tele pad within the room. Of course, it was Alpha Pro'Kir. He was unarmed, but he was close to the same size that the Colonel was, making him the largest individual in this room at the moment. When you are close to 500-feet tall you are your own weapon. Another problem presented itself when Hunter dropped me on his shoulder before taking a few shots at Pro'Kir and the shots just bounced off of him. He was large, but Hunter was over 450-feet tall himself and his weapon was just as large as it should be when compared to him. Something told me Pro'Kir had made a few enhancements to himself.

The jaguar quickly advanced on Hunter while shrugging off weapons fire as if it were nothing. Hunter switched to using the gun as a club as Pro'Kir strode within arms reach of him. Pro'Kir was too fast for the alligator. The gun was blocked, and the much larger feline drove a knee into Hunter's gut. Pro'Kir did not let up as Hunter was driven to his knees. A paw swept out and swung just over my head to connect with a resounding thud to the side of Hunter's skull. Hunter was knocked to the ground and me along with him. It was a painful fall, made more so by my already injured leg. Then there was the sound of more giant footsteps coming our way as the team that had been pursuing Pro'Kir finally showed up.

Pro'Kir turned just in time to take a flying tackle to the midsection by the Colonel. Both of their colossal bodies went soaring right over me and Hunter. A few other large sets of feet rushed passed me and I realized that I was an ant in a giant's playground. I needed to find some cover before somebody inadvertently crushed me and Hunter was not going to be of much help. He was not dead, but he was definitely unconscious. I could already see that my other teammates were trying to find cover under any large piece of equipment that I could find. Things were not going to be that easy for me. My leg was still bleeding and I was starting to feel a little faint. The only thing I could do was try to crawl out of the way.

I heard a short lull in the combat and when I looked around I could see Alpha Pro'Kir slowly backing toward me. He was facing off against the Colonel, Tracy, Reilly, and our three dragons. They all looked exhausted, but only the dragons and Pro'Kir were uninjured. Pro'Kir made sure to step over Hunter as he moved backwards and to drive his paw down onto the alligator's neck as he did so. Hunter's breathing stopped after that, but the others did not let themselves be goaded into losing their cool and attacking him recklessly.

As it turns out I probably should have stayed still. My movements were able to get the attention of someone that was actually trying to pay attention to the environment around him, someone like Pro'Kir. An ugly sneer spread across Pro'Kir's face as he glanced down at me and then back to his opponents. Then he said, "The time of you weak humans is up. Soon all of you will experience a similar fate." His paw rose above me and the only thing that let me move was an intense burst of adrenaline. Unfortunately, my leg did not want to cooperate with the rest of my body.

As Pro'Kir's paw came down everything became a blur for me. I saw that it was all too much for Tracy and she came at Pro'Kir with everything that she had. Her roar as she charged was a mix of anger and sorrow. She was too far away to do anything. I was on my own this time around. It took a lot, but I was able to force myself to my feet and make a half-hearted attempt at jumping out of the way before Pro'Kir's paw came down. I was only partially successful. An immeasurable amount of weight descended on the lower half of my body. It almost seemed unreal as I watched half of my body get crushed underfoot. Pro'Kir even managed to twist his paw before Tracy was on him. She forced him back and I was nearly dragged along the floor with him before the shattered mess that was left of my legs and the lower portion of my torso was liberated from the jaguar's paw.

My vision was starting to go dark as I watched Tracy go at her larger opponent with an intense focused anger. I wasn't really in pain. It was hard for my mind to accept that I had actually been stepped on. I knew that I was dying and I was actually more concerned about Tracy at the moment. She did not have the advantage of an enhanced hide like Pro'Kir did. A cold touch to the back of neck would have made me jump if I were still capable of doing so. It felt like the touch of death, but I eventually found myself looking at a white robot with a red cross on it as my vision finally gave out on me and I passed out.

It came as a surprise to me when I regained consciousness some time later. I thought that I had died. "Technically, you did," said an unknown voice. I tried to turn in the direction of the voice, but I found that I could not move. I was starting to panic when the voice spoke up again, "Please stay calm Dr. Sanders. Your body was heavily damaged and we had to download a copy of your brain into the emergency medical matrix until repairs can be completed. If you like, we can connect your mind to the base scanners so that you will be able to perceive the environment around you."

"Would you please do that," I said. If getting stepped on was unbelievable, I don't know what I could possibly say about my current situation. Getting connected to the station's scanners barraged me with information for a second, but things quickly started to sort themselves out. I was able to find out that I had not been out for long. Pro'Kir was still fighting the Colonel's team. He was taking injuries as the Colonel's mechanical claws seemed to be able to cut him as well as the dragons' natural claws. It was tough going for everyone involved as Pro'Kir's hide did seem even tougher than a dragon's for some reason.

"That is because the AIs in charge of the dragon development program were supposed to come up with technological improvements on the program on their own. Machines are not as creative as humans and all we have been able to do is refine the work already done by the humans on the project, but there have been noticeable improvements made," explained the AI that was in charge of communicating with me. "The black furred feline has enhanced himself with the end result of the work here and has also sent a considerable amount of nanites down to Earth to enhance others as well."

I asked, "What others?"

"He specifically stated that only other anthropomorphic creatures were to receive the treatment and that only those over the height of 300-feet tall were to receive the treatment as well. It should also be noted that he enhanced the size of many individuals within a country that he referred to as Firanel," said the AI, "Everything he had the nanites do is now a permanent part of their programming except one thing. He was trying to ensure that no one but those in Firanel could receive this treatment, but your friends interrupted him before he could finish. We could expand the parameters to include the rest of the planet if you wish."

"Yes, I do wish that and I hope that it includes the rest of the anthros on this station as well," I said.

"We will make sure that the anthros on this station receive the treatment as well."

"Thank you, and would it be possible for you to tell me whose size Pro'Kir increased in Firanel?" I asked.

"Of course. He stated that anyone the rank of alpha and above was to have their size increased and he also made sure that certain members of Firanel's government were also increased in size. The amount of the increase in size depended on the rank and the importance of the official," the AI responded. The anthros in Firanel were not as different from humans as they wanted to be. It looked like the people in power were taking steps to make sure that they stayed in power. I also guessed that the current Firanelian ruler's family was going to be in power for the foreseeable future.

I noticed that the fight had been in favor of the Colonel's team for a while now. Even with his body Pro'Kir was just one person. He was focusing most of his attention on preventing himself from being cornered by everyone he was facing all at once. Colonel Miller's team was being cautious until they noticed that their bodies had become enhanced just like Pro'Kir's had. Everyone became a bit more aggressive after that and they eventually brought Pro'Kir to the ground. Tracy did not look like she was interested in taking prisoners this time and the Colonel's team did not seem interested in stopping her as she clawed away at Pro'Kir's chest and eventually extracted his heart before she seemed to settle down a little bit. She was obviously trying to control herself as she dropped the jaguar's heart and just walked off to be by herself for a little while.

"Can I talk to her?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not. We are not allowed to let you communicate with anyone with the state your body is in. It will be some time before we can even let you project holoimages of yourself to anyone," said the AI.

"Can you at least let them know that I am not dead?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not, we can only release your medical information to family members and the legal AIs are still arguing whether or not the anthropomorphs can legally be counted as your family by our standards. And the legal AIs are just as frustrating as their human counterparts. It could be a while before they come to any conclusion," the AI said with sympathy in its voice.

"But she's my wife, and I can't even let her know I'm alive," I said.

"I'm afraid not, but there is some good news."

"And what would that be?" I asked, feeling miserable and dejected as I watched Tracy silently grieving for me.

"We will be able to move things along much more smoothly with your mind hooked up directly to the station. Your friends will be able to return home in weeks instead of years as we had expected," explained the AI.

"Years! You had planned on keeping us hear for that long," I said and then sighed, "I suppose it is a good thing I'm stuck here then. Everyone's been through so much. They deserve to go home and see their families again." I had to accept my solitude for now. Time passed by and I watched as everyone finished their duties. It was odd seeing my own funeral. Everyone wondered where my body had managed to get off to and it looked like it only made Tracy feel worse that she did not have a body to take home and properly bury.

Then I was left alone as the Colonel and everyone else departed the station with any additional sources of technology that they could safely take with them. I continued with my solitary work. There were a lot of things that I had to do to make things as bearable as I could for the people of Earth. It would have been nice to have someone else around to make decisions with as I made some pretty major decisions about what to do with the Earth. I think I did pretty well for myself though. After I was finished with the Earth I was able to concentrate on what to do with Tracy. It took a while, but I was able to come up with something even though it would take a while for my body to be repaired with the station still short on power and supplies. At the very least I was going to be able to let her know that I was still alive and that was what really mattered.