The Death of the Son

By Doug Brooks

Benjamin Chriton has been traveling to other worlds in secret, on his own, for years, through a wormhole technology that he created called the 'space-stream'. Through the aid of an 'exo-suit', an advanced piece of armor technology that he has upgraded with alien technology, Benjamin is able to travel, and adaptively survive regardless of the alien environment on the other side.
Now, for the first time, his son, Derek Chriton will aid him in his travels, after years of training, and go on his own solo mission. His father warns him not to fight anybody else's war, but when Derek is confronted by a powerful enemy, his promise, training, and survival are put to the test.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514450505

Doug Brooks

Author Doug Brooks was born and graduated from Pauls Valley, Oklahoma after which he attended the University of Oklahoma and went on to incorporate many years of Information Technology into his career. He is an avid science fiction fan and put his years of knowledge from science and technology that he had accumulated over the years into the scientific accuracy of his book, "The Death of the Son". "The Death of the Son" series is a trilogy in which the author seeks to deliver a truly enjoyable experience for any fan of sci-fi as well as promote other enjoyable projects that he has in the making.

Book preview

THE DEATH OF THE SON

DOUG BROOKS

Copyright © 2016 by Doug Brooks.

Copyedited by Chris Anthony Ferrer

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016903421

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-5052-9

                Softcover       978-1-5144-5051-2

                eBook            978-1-5144-5050-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/29/2016

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Media Byte

Gear Up

Destination

Contact

The Price of Freedom

The Caverns of Time

The Ritual of Tribes

Detection

Slave to the Shell

Confrontation

Distress Call

The Loss

The Good-Bye

Endgame

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

In the control chamber, everything appears to be chaos. The rippling tide of the naturally occurring electromagnetic field is growing stronger. The beast doesn’t seem to be affected by the pulse at all, but every time it hits the stranger, he seems to almost lose his balance.

The beast is only doing what is natural, protecting its territory. And it is well equipped to do just that. Its tough dark-yellowish scales don’t seem to be affected by the bright-red pulse from the laser the stranger is striking it with. It will simply adjust its stance and swipe a long appendage with five lengthy claws at him.

The stranger doesn’t look like a stranger at all but some sort of armored machine. In actuality, it is a man in a mechanized suit, and with his mechanical advantage, he has advanced reflexes. With his advanced reflexes, he has enough speed to dodge the beast’s swipes with ease.

The stranger is on this alien planet for one reason, to acquire new alien technology. That technology lies on a path the beast now guards. And in the process of acquiring this technology, the stranger does not consider killing the beast as an option. But while he performs these moral actions, he also has to stay alive.

It is a difficult and complex problem, but one he is sure he can solve. After all, that is why he is here, to solve the most difficult of problems.

This alien planet, for the time being, has a naturally occurring phenomenon called an EM apex. It is similar to the volcanoes on Earth, except it emits a strong electromagnetic pulse, or EM pulse for short, in a brilliant wave of light about every two minutes. And it is growing stronger because the alien moon is above the planet in a high orbit. The high orbit has an almost tidal effect on the EM apex.

The beast takes another swipe at the stranger, and he dodges the strike almost with lightning speed and lands a few meters to the right of the beast. The stranger gets his bearings and realizes he is just in time for another EM pulse. It is heading his way. And this one is stronger than the last one—by 2.02 percent, to be exact—according to his sensors.

Inside the suit, the man has a VR visor placed over his eyes. The VR visor gives him detailed information about every energy reading in the vicinity. A lot of the information is on graphs, and the data will have to be interpreted visually. In the background, the attack of the beast can easily be seen. It is a lot of information to take in at one time, but with the proper training, it is easy.

Audio is sometimes used to complement the visual information. Sometimes, the almost feminine voice will give alerts if the emergency is too sudden. Just then, the man hears an audio communication inside his armored headpiece: Compensating.

The suit’s computer doesn’t say what it is compensating for, but the man operating the suit already knows, by studying the detailed graphs, it is protecting itself from the incoming EM pulse.

The electrical systems operating within the suit are equipped with variable shielding. The suit is so advanced that not even the high levels of EM energy coming from the EM apex can affect it.

The stranger studies the physiology of the beast one more time. He looks at the readings of the almost iguana-like creature, although much larger than your average domesticated lizard. Its span from nose to tail is almost twenty feet.

The stranger takes one last analysis of the beast’s scales and issues a command, Realign the laser emitter to 682.086 nanometers. Fire!

Suddenly, a blue flame shoots from the stranger’s suit and hits the beast on its tough scales. Again nothing happens. The beast becomes more agitated and takes another swipe. Again the stranger dodges the attack with lightning speed.

Time is running out, as are options. The planet is mostly composed of what looks like light-purplish granite. The surface is mainly smooth, but is nowhere close to being level. The large orange moon, probably three times the size of Earth’s moon, hangs in the dark sky overhead with all its many craters.

It is day here, and the sky has no color. You can see the distant planetary star through the thin haze of the atmosphere.

The creature is immune to the EM pulses coming from the nearby EM apex since its species is indigenous to the planet. It is becoming clearer to the stranger why it has chosen the entrance to this cave to stay. The beast is here to hatch its young!

The stranger can see something the sensors have not picked up before. It is an egg just inside the mouth of the cave. The stranger now notices, through the use of his sensors, the beast is throwing an electromagnetic field around the egg. That is probably why his suit’s sensors did not pick it up at first. With all the surrounding EM interference, it will be hard to single out the egg.

The stranger surmises that most life on this planet uses some kind of EM field for detection, and the beast appears to be trying to stealth its egg. This is going to make the task of getting by the beast even harder.

Just then, the EM pulse hits. Inside the suit, the stranger feels the servos in the suit go haywire for just an instant, and he and the suit teeter-totters. He hears himself say Whoa as he tries to stabilize the suit.

In that instance, the beast uses a tactic the stranger has not yet seen. It turns ninety degrees and hits the stranger with a solid blow from its tail. The beast instinctively takes advantage of the stranger’s temporary immobility, and he goes flying in the air as a result. Debris of every size goes flying everywhere as the stranger’s suit collides with a nearby column of solid rock.

He falls to the ground and moans, Ohhh. I almost felt that. If it weren’t for the structural integrity of his suit, the stranger would have easily been killed from a blow like that. That strike would have killed any man.

From inside the observation room to the control chamber, a man inside an armored suit walks up to the dozens of scientists manning sophisticated equipment. The suit this man is wearing is very similar to the one the stranger is wearing in the control chamber. The main difference is the man in the observation room is wearing a suit that lacks a headpiece. It is as if the armored suit is designed for casual wear.

The suited man in the observation room walks over to a one-way glass and looks down into the control chamber. From there he can see the stranger fighting the beast, but the stranger can’t see the man is there observing him. The one-way glass doesn’t allow the stranger to see the man looking at him through it.

From the stranger’s point of view, the one-way glass is not visible. The holographic field projected by the control chamber conceals it, and it appears to blend in with the environment.

The man in the control chamber appears to be an older man, probably around forty-five years of age. His sideburns are graying, but he still appears to be physically fit. His face is slender and strong-looking for his age.

The older man turns to a nearby scientist monitoring one of the machines that helps to operate the control chamber. How is he doing?

The scientist is a younger-looking man with glasses, and he is wearing a white lab coat. He turns to the older man. His psychokinetics are above average, but he is still having problems solving the scenario.

With the information from the scientist, the older man walks over to a mechanism in the center of the observation room. The mechanism has a compartment in the ceiling and a circular imaging device, about three feet wide, on the floor. There is about four feet of empty space between the imaging device on the floor and the compartment on the ceiling. The older man walks up to the mechanism and says, Initiate holographic uplink to player 1.

Above the open space of the imaging device, the image of the stranger flickers into view. He is still regaining his footing from the tail strike as the older man communicates with him through the use of the imaging device. You haven’t analyzed all of your readings yet.

Inside the control chamber, the stranger regains his footing and faces the beast when the image of the older man flickers into sight and begins to walk around him. He follows the holographic image with his gaze. The beast is breeding and is making it doubly difficult to pass.

The hologram of the older man is stopped in front of him for a moment. Of course. The survival of the egg is its ultimate directive. Yours is to pass the entrance of the cave without killing the beast. You must come up with a solution to both problems.

The stranger replies with a controlled irritation in his voice, I’ve analyzed and reanalyzed the creature’s readings, and none of the projected stun solutions are working.

The older man replies, Stunning the beast might not be the correct solution. Did you also analyze the beast’s natural predator? Suddenly, the hologram of the older man flickers out of sight in an instant.

The stranger begins to think. Aha. While he was deriving the location of the cave as the scenario started, he ran across an indigenous lifeform. It was a type of land worm that was eating some sort of egg.

The stranger’s initial analysis proved that almost every form of life on this planet emits a particularly strong EM frequency. He surmises if he uses his suit to synthesize the frequency of the land worm and intensify it, the beast might think a large group of them are on their way to eat its egg.

Another element the stranger analyzed was the beast does have some form of intelligence. Not as unintelligent as the average earth lizard, this beast’s IQ is on the level of subhuman intelligence. It is the only way to explain how the beast knew when to strike him in a moment of instability from the EM pulse.

Perhaps if the beast senses a natural predator surrounding it, its only logical course of action might be to take its egg to safety.

Inside the suit, the stranger says, Open the indigenous life-form database.

The suit’s main computer is equipped with a form of high artificial intelligence and knows the command is directed at this planet’s life-forms.

The databanks of the indigenous life-forms begins to flash in the stranger’s VR visor. The image of the land worm flashes by in the file Worm Life 011.dat.

The stranger says, "Stop. Open Worm Life 011.dat." He has been trained to input large amounts of data visually and has no problem recalling the file name as the computer flashes through the records quickly.

The computer stops browsing and immediately displays the data on the land worm. The natural frequency the land worm emits is right there in the analysis.

The stranger commands, Reset the suit’s frequency emitters to 579.634 gigahertz. Power the emitters at ninety-seven watts. Emit!

A low hum can be heard from the suit, but the power consumption is well within tolerance. Suddenly, the action of the beast turns to that of being startled. It quickly looks in every direction. It quickly flips here and turns its head in all directions, and then quickly flips there and turns its head in all directions. It is certainly aware of something.

The beast still doesn’t move from its general location. The stranger commands, Increase power by ten watts.

Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the beast grabs the egg with two small arms located on its rear section and whisks it away in a flash. The entrance to the cave is now open.

Inside the suit, the stranger grins. He commands, Stop emissions. The low hum from inside the suit can’t be heard anymore. The stranger enters the mouth of the cave and starts to venture inside. He is monitoring the sensors at every turn.

Inside the cave, it is completely dark, but the VR visor automatically compensates with an advanced form of night vision. The interior of the cave can easily be made out. Up ahead, the path of the cave makes a sharp right turn.

The stranger notices that as he approaches the turn, spikes of type 4 radiations begin to peak on his sensors.

Type 4 radiations do not occur in nature and can only exist with the presence of an advanced technology. He thinks he must be close to his target.

The stranger rounds the corner, and the sensor goes off the scale! Type 4 radiations are being emitted at a saturated level.

Most scientists’ minds would have imploded at the concept, but he was taught, from almost the time he was a young teeenager, to comprehend the incomprehensible. He begins to theorize if there is any danger to him or his equipment.

Type 4 radiations have never been detrimental to life or equipment. It is only the shadow of a hidden power source. Its effects are only to highlight the level of energy that is being displaced somewhere else—maybe even in a different dimension.

Since there are no detrimental power detections, the stranger surmises he will be safe for the moment.

He continues around the corner and begins to walk deeper into the interior of the cave. The inside of the cave is now beginning to glow in a slight greenish haze. The advanced night vision of the VR visor allows the stranger to study the greenish haze in detail.

As the stranger goes deeper into the cave, he notices the green haze is getting brighter. Suddenly, he realizes, by the structure of the rock, he is coming upon a huge chamber and the source of the green light.

He looks at the sensors one last time. Radiation levels are still off the scale, but there are no lifeforms detected. The luminance of the green haze is quite bright now as he rounds the corner. There, in the center of the chambered cavern is a half-buried alien ship!

The hull is a dark, almost black in color, with green streaks all over the exterior. The lights in the cave are emanating from the green streaks on the ship’s hull. The stranger walks up to the ship and touches its hull. Microactuators inside the metallic hand synthesize what the hull feels like to the touch. It is a very weird feeling. The stranger has never felt anything like it.

The stranger analyzes the exterior structure of the ship and can find no opening. How can you get inside? he ponders.

From studying the suit’s sensor readings, he notices a pattern. The green streaks on the hull are emanating green light at a particular frequency. It is emitting the bright green light with respect to pi!

The suit’s computer extrapolates a section of pi from the variable frequency at which the ship emanates the green light. The ship appears to be resetting the point of pi back to the beginning on a loop. The stranger’s computer just happened to catch the sequence early enough before it became too complex. Otherwise it would have taken a great deal of time to decipher the sequence.

The ship emits the strobing light on a time frame that is consistent with the digits in the series. If the number 2 is the next digit in the sequence, then the timing and the intensity of the light are the same. If it is two seconds before the next flash, it is two units brighter. The random, emanating green strobing light is eerie and fascinating to watch.

He concludes, if he can break the random cycle of light and make it even, it might have an effect on the ship. He commands, Calculate the average time and intensity of the ship’s luminescent emissions.

In the VR visor, a window pops up and maximizes to where the stranger can view it with greater ease. Calculations and graphs are being done at a tremendous speed in the window.

The suit’s computer finishes with the calculations as it says Analysis complete.

He commands, Input the results and adjust the photostrobes to match. He pauses as, on the main window, the suit’s computer quickly goes through the instrumental adjustments. When he sees they are finished, he gives the internal command, Emit!

Suddenly, part of the suit’s material turns green and begins to strobe the same color matching the ship’s luminescent emissions. Now, in the cave, it is noticeable the light is strobing in even strokes.

Suddenly, a low-sounding whine can be heard throughout the cavern. The ship’s hull begins to strobe in unison now. The stranger commands, Stop emissions.

The suit stops emitting the green light, and the ship continues on its own with uniform emissions. Suddenly, a hole opens in the side of the ship! It is as if the hull just morphs with an open hole large enough for a man to go through.

The stranger says to himself, Awesome.

Inside the observation room, the scientist monitoring the stranger’s progress looks up at the older man as his jaw drops. He says in an amazed voice, He’s done it.

The older man in the armored suit looks through the one-way glass and crosses his arms. He smiles with a deep, proud grin. He says to himself, As I knew he would.

Back in the control chamber, the stranger finds his way to the opening in the alien ship and enters it. Once inside, he walks down an alien corridor toward the interior of the ship. The green streaks become more uniform inside and actually form some kind of alien design.

There are perfect circles on the ceiling of the corridor, and they are emitting green light in one direction. The direction is toward the center of the ship.

The stranger follows the indicated direction and comes to a central part of the ship. He determines this is the only way into or out of what he considers the core of the ship.

In the core, there is a device placed in the center. The device is attached to an alien mechanism coming from the ceiling and a base coming from the floor. The device can be carried in one hand since it is about ten inches long. It is also about six inches in diameter and has a see-through material around the perimeter. But what really catches his eye is what is inside the see-through material.

The stranger gazes with wide eyes at the center of the device. He has never seen anything like it in his life. A brilliant blue object that resembles a tiny galaxy swirls in the center. It pulses with life, and you can feel its presence when the light hits your eyes, even through the VR visor. This is definitely the alien artifact he is sent to retrieve in this scenario.

The stranger notices there is a space about one foot long between the top of the device and the mechanism on the ceiling. A thin blue light pulses between the top of the device and the ceiling mechanism. It is undoubtedly the power source to this ship. But he can’t quite figure out what kind of power it is using. He starts to study every aspect of the sensor analysis to determine what type of energy it is.

Inside the observation room, the older man in the metallic suit is still looking through the one-way glass down into the control chamber. He says to the computer, Initiate random factor 4. A quick beacon sounds Dun! Dun!

Inside the control chamber, the stranger is theorizing what kind of energy the device is using when the automated voice says, Warning! Geological fissure occurring.

The floor of the ship begins to shake violently beneath the stranger’s feet. He is startled and orders, Initiate a full-spread sensor sweep!

The suit’s voice responds, Error. Cannot penetrate through the vessel’s hull.

The stranger yells to himself, Damn! He will have to go outside the ship to scan the surrounding area and see how big the problem is. He turns to the artifact and curses beneath his breath. He will have to leave it here for now. There is no time to figure out how to detach it from the mechanism. All well, he thinks. First things first.

The stranger quickly runs outside the ship as he struggles to maintain his balance. His suit is compensating for the violent shaking to some degree. He can detect the surrounding area now. A geological fissure is occurring, and this area is within the epicenter. Destruction is imminent. Damn! he yells. How is he going to get out of this one?