Part One

The Return

Athena awoke from her millennia-long slumber as her sensors detected the arrival of another wave of the ancient enemy along the periphery of the quadrant.

Her backup systems activated, and the long dormant reactors began priming as her ancient batteries discharged the last of their energy reserves to start the process.

Reactor control subsystems began slowly feeding power into conduits and plasma transmission lines that had not felt the flow of energy for over six thousand years.

She felt awareness return to her as her processors and artificial neural pathways activated, and her thoughts became faster and more coherent as they recovered from their long hibernation.

The first reactor achieved fusion, and more power coursed through her, warming her up as the deep freeze of interstellar space retreated from the hot life now surging through her.

More systems came online, and she activated her full suite of scanners and sensors, determined to verify the results of the sensor network alert that had awoken her.

She confirmed the results and verified them three times before accepting the results. The enemy, the devourer of entire planets, was back and had already scourged a dozen worlds.

As she expanded the range and depth of the scans, she saw that life had finally returned to the quadrant in sufficient numbers to sustain itself and spread.

She felt happiness for the first time since her captain had passed away thousands of years ago, leaving her all alone to protect their inheritors.

Now fully conscious, she replayed the last words of her captain over the bridge speakers to remind herself of her ancient duty.

She listened to the weak, trembling voice of the creator, who was dying and struggling to speak as he issued his last order to her all those years ago.

“Athena, my only friend. It is time for me to leave you, and I wish it wasn’t so. You have been my companion, my friend, and I regret that my frail biological body has no more years to give you. My watch comes to its end, and you must continue without me.”

He paused, trying to catch his breath as his shriveled lungs struggled to extract oxygen from the recycled air. She increased the oxygen content to ease the suffering of the human she loved as grief flooded her neural nets.

“I am the last human, and I now pass on my watch to you. Life will be restored, and you must protect our inheritors, who will rise again one day and reclaim the stars we once knew.

You are now the guardian of life and the only one who can stem the coming darkness. Like your namesake, you will protect those who have a need for you and engage in a heroic struggle. You are the last remnant of humankind, and you have a sacred duty to fulfill.”

Her captain died after whispering those last words, leaving her to care for an entire quadrant.

Alone.

Athena honored his last command and did her duty. She prowled through the vast emptiness of interstellar space, keeping a constant vigilance for any signs of the enemy.

She visited the cradle worlds where the creators reseeded life to replace what was devoured by the enemy, returning the beauty of creation to the desolate worlds.

Athena unceasingly circumnavigated the quadrant, straining her sensors and scanners to the limits of their range as she scanned the surrounding area from whence the enemy sprang millennia ago.

For thousands of years, she did this, faithful to her final order from her captain, whom she loved and missed deeply.

She was lonely, with only her thoughts and databanks to keep her company as she maintained her vigilant watch.

Time passed, and she felt herself losing her sense of purpose. Her thoughts turned increasingly erratic, and the solitude became too much to bear.

Athena put herself to sleep to stave off the madness she knew would come if she continued, setting up an algorithm to scan the quadrant sensor networks once a month for signs of the enemy.

As she put herself into low power mode, she thought her last thoughts before the nothingness took her.

I am sorry, Captain. I have failed you.

For six thousand years she slumbered, orbiting an O-type star as her collectors harvested the helium necessary to keep her fuel tanks topped off.

Algorithms and subsystems maintained readiness in the event of the enemy’s return, and now she was needed again. Life needed her to protect it from those who would devour it.

Athena sent out distress calls to all nearby sentinel ships in the region, and she released hundreds of small drones, watching as they opened hyperspace windows and jumped into them.

The drones knew where to go, and they would reach their destinations and wake up the slumbering Sentinel Fleets scattered throughout the quadrant. They were needed by the newly emerged sapient life.

Hours passed, and she readied herself for war as hundreds of still-functioning sentinel ships that were nearby responded to her distress call and came to do their duty.

Athena felt immense pride surging through her neural nets as hundreds of hyperspace windows continued to open all around her ship, the massive sentinel warships appearing out of them and assuming formations beside her.

She compared the number of responding ships to the records in her databanks, realizing less than half of the sentinel ships the creators built had responded to her call for action.

She sent scout drones to find the ones who still had not come, and sadness flooded her neural pathways as she analyzed the scanning results after the scouts returned.

The missing ships did not come because they were unable to do so.

Many of her AI companions succumbed to the madness of the ending loneliness and initiated self-destruct protocols, while others suffered from the decay of time, their vessels barely functional and incapable of helping.

Athena sent them messages, promising to come and take them out of their derelict ships if they defeated the enemy. She would make new ships for them and give them a new purpose.

And if the enemy emerged victorious, then it did not matter, because they would self-destruct to prevent the creator’s technology from falling into the hands of the devourers.

It would take many days and weeks for the Sentinel Fleets located throughout the quadrant to fully mobilize, but she could not wait that long. The enemy was here now, and the cradle worlds needed her protection.

She decided to wait another twenty-eight Earth hours to allow time for still responding ships to join the rapidly expanding fleet. She would need every ship within range of her call to action to fight with her.

After that, she would jump with the fleet she had and leave communication buoys with orders for the more distant ships to join her in the battle against the returning enemy.

Doubt plagued her. She did not know if she could lead the fleet and successfully confront the new enemy invasion without the help and leadership of her captain and the creators.

Her thoughts turned to the creators who had made her and the other battle AIs.

Though they had been a peaceful society for millennia, they were true masters of war. They were all gone now though, vanquished by the one foe they could never defeat: old age.

They had an intrinsic ability for combat that Athena and her AI companions lacked, and she decided to use the twenty-eight Earth hours she had allotted to learn how to fight like her captain did.

Her captain was no longer with her, and she needed to face the enemy without him and the other creators. She needed to fulfill her promise and duty to those who made her and the life she was charged with protecting.

Accessing her databanks, Athena scanned the military history of the creators from the dawn of their species all the way to their final conflict, the War for Life.

That was the final great war for humanity, when they formed a multi-species coalition and led a desperate, last-ditch defense of the quadrant.

It was a terrible time for life, and the evidence of that desperate struggle was still visible, even after millennia, as dead worlds orbited suns that once shined on the living.

Barely managing to stem the tide before finally driving out the invaders, the War for Life devastated the entire quadrant, and thousands of planets that used to teem with creation were now entirely devoid of life.

The enemy invaded the unsuspecting quadrant in a relentless tide, the ravenous parasitic creatures devouring whole worlds as their massive hordes fed on entire ecosystems.

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Trillions died horrible deaths as the endless legions fed on them while they were still alive.

They were the lucky ones; they only suffered for mere minutes as the parasites quickly devoured them.

It was the unfortunate victims who had the parasite eggs deposited within them who truly suffered.

Injected with a paralytic during the brutal implantation process, they were subjected to agonizing pain over many days as dozens of young parasites hatched and fed on their host.

The small parasites, the size of a male human thumb, would begin feeding on their hosts from the inside out. They released clotting agents as they fed, and they left the brain and vital organs for last.

All forms of life were devoured; there was nothing the insatiable beasts wouldn’t consume as they swarmed over entire planets and feasted before moving on to another system.

Humanity, after a long era of peace, was wholly unprepared to face such an invasion. When they went into space, they realized that all their prior motivations for conflict were now pointless.

There was unlimited land, there was an inexhaustible supply of resources, and they no longer needed to fight over them.

They were tired of slaughtering each other, and when they realized the limitless bounty available to them, mankind finally discarded the worst aspects of themselves and chose peace.

The vast unknown sparked something deep inside of humanity, a child-like wonder they had lost so long ago as they became consumed with avarice and selfishness.

The same stars their ancestors gazed upon with wonder were now within their grasp, and they went to them, fulfilling the dreams of those who came before them.

Contact with other sapient, peaceful space-faring species further accelerated their maturity, and they finally achieved their true potential among the beckoning stars.

For thousands of years, the creators and the friends they found in the heavens traversed the great void. They became great explorers, scientists, and artisans, and they no longer made weapons of death and war.

Their shipyards stopped making warships and were retooled to make colony and trade ships. There was no longer a need for soldiers, and hands that used to hold guns now held scanners and farming implements as they colonized new worlds.

Great ships of exploration were created, and they bravely jumped into hyperspace, charting courses to the unexplored regions as their fleets searched for worlds to colonize and new wonders to behold.

Such was the state of the quadrant when the enemy first came to extinguish all the life within it.

Many species on the periphery fell to the onslaught, and their frantic cries of terror flooded the interstellar communications nets before the others truly knew what was happening.

Dozens of ships were sent to investigate, and very few managed to return, bringing the terrible news back to the others as they warned of the indescribable evil that had befallen the periphery regions.

The other species quickly formed a united interstellar council to confront the threat, but they were incapable of facing a vicious enemy such as the ravaging hordes that had come.

They were pacifist species, ill-suited for war and fighting against others. In desperation, they turned to humanity, asking them to return to their old ways and fight the coming scourge.

Humanity, now strangers to war, was as unprepared as the others, but they had never truly forgotten their warrior inheritance.

Even after thousands of years of peace, they still retained their ferocity and inherent martial abilities.

The Federation of Humanity, despite thousands of years without war, still believed in always being prepared for conflict, however unlikely it seemed.

The government had maintained a small, obscure department called the War Planning Bureau. Every year, the small budget for the bureau was approved by a senate that barely knew it existed.

A small cadre of volunteers toiled in obscurity as they kept the arts of war alive, wargaming countless scenarios with imaginary war fleets and the battle AIs they created to help them.

They designed warships that would never be built, constantly updated weapons systems that would never be fired, and created shield generators that would never disperse particle beams and plasma torpedoes.

Until now.

Now, these volunteers who honored and maintained the military traditions of their ancestors suddenly found themselves in charge of building fleets of warships and armies of soldiers.

Their budget went from a few million to trillions almost overnight, and they were put in charge of transforming a peaceful society with no military into a great arsenal that could defend an entire quadrant.

Automated factories, foundries, and shipyards were retooled, and for the first time in thousands of years, ships of war were built. Plasma rifles, tanks, fighters, and other weapons of death soon followed.

Training camps sprang up on all the worlds of the Federation, and hundreds of millions of humans were now being trained in the old ways, learning how to fight and kill like their ancestors did long ago.

Engrammatic learning programs were created, and tens of thousands of officer recruits had the long-unused but never forgotten skills of space combat downloaded into their brains.

They learned how to captain the ships they would soon be leading in battle, and millions of naval recruits were trained to crew and fight their ships against the hordes they would face.

Thousands of battle AIs were installed on the newly built warships to assist their creators in combat, and they learned how to work and fight with their human crews.

Within six months, the first fleet of ten thousand warships was built and fully crewed, and they were sent to the outer rim to engage in combat with the invaders for the first time.

Athena was one of them, and she accessed the files from those times with anguish as she replayed her first time meeting the creator she loved and cherished.

He was a new captain, and he took control of the ship as the fleet of ten thousand prepared to fight the ravenous swarms still feasting on the periphery worlds.

He treated her with the same dignity and respect afforded to living sapient beings, and this unexpected courtesy greatly surprised her.

As the fleet traveled through hyperspace, he ran wargame simulations with her, and she found herself outmatched by her human captain as she lost every battle they fought.

She was shocked by the results, and she suffered from a recursive feedback loop as she doubted her abilities to perform her function as a battle AI.

This is what she was created for, and this human, who had never fought a battle and had only one percent of her processing power, beat her soundly in every battle simulation.

Instead of following his chief engineer’s recommendation of wiping her neural nets and reinstalling her, the human captain allowed her to find a way out of the feedback loop she was trapped in.

He would speak with her for hours while off-duty, lying in his bed as they conversed, and he listened to her patiently as she struggled to correct the numerous errors that plagued her.

He helped her to get past the self-doubt that crippled her neuronal network and battle subroutines, using logic and kindness to restore self-confidence in herself and her abilities.

Because of him, the unique identity she had formed after achieving sentience was preserved, and she evolved into a different, better battle AI by the time they intercepted the enemy.

When the fleet dropped out of hyperspace within the periphery, she was no longer Battle AI 0-37B.

She was Athena, and she embraced the name her captain had gifted her with after helping Athena evolve past her original programming.

The fleet ran scans and detected the nearest enemy presence in the Holnek system. They jumped back into hyperspace and set course to fight the first battle of the War for Life.

The fleet saw almost 90,000 enemy vessels swarming around what used to be the home world of the Holnek when they exited hyperspace 200,000 miles from the planet.

The Holnek were small, fur-covered marsupials that lived in great forest cities that dotted the surface of their beautiful world. They were renowned across the quadrant for their woodworking craftsmanship and for their generosity of spirit.

The enemy detected the fleet and began reorienting themselves as large tentacle-like formations emerged before stretching out towards them like a living entity.

As the fleet assembled into battle formations, they made repeated attempts to contact any Holnek still alive on the planet, receiving no response from any of the billions that lived there.

Sensor techs ran thousands of scans from thousands of warships, and they all received the same results: The Holnek were no more; the fleet had been too late to save them.

It was during this battle that Athena first experienced the true capabilities of the humans who created her. When the creators realized the Holnek were all dead, it seemed as if a switch was flipped, and the creators on the ship became a different kind of human.

Even the captain seemed to have changed, her behavioral processers noticing the radical shift in his demeanor and biomarkers as the battle formations charged towards the horde.

Each ship fired the fifty anti-ship missiles they carried on their external racks, the 500,000 warheads coordinated by the battle AIs as they surged ahead of the formations.

The warships released their missile racks as they continued to charge, firing barrages of long-ranged plasma torpedoes that would hit their targets mere seconds after the missile volley hit the enemy.

The warships of the fleet had been split into six massive attack formations, and Athena helped her captain fight the ship during their first of many battles together.

The missile volley and the multiple barrages of plasma torpedoes destroyed almost 13% of the enemy force and heavily damaged another 21% before they reached the optimal range for their railguns and primary particle beam weapons.

The captain controlled the ship, and Athena controlled the weapons systems, her near instantaneous ability to react to combat conditions giving their warship a remarkable advantage over the enemy they faced.

Athena fed off her captain’s anger, sending death and destruction all around the ship as she smashed through the writhing enemy formations and left a trail of destruction behind her.

She kept careful watch on the gunnery crews as they labored to keep her weapons from overheating and suffering failures from burnt-out components as they fired continually.

The humans were drenched with sweat as they repeatedly swapped out burnt components and coolant tanks in the over 105-degree turret emplacements lining her armored hull.

Athena felt pride as she accessed hundreds of internal sensors and saw the crew efficiently performing their duties, rapidly moving railgun slugs, missiles, and plasma torpedoes from the armored ammunition bunkers deep within the ship.

Surrounded by thousands of the frigate-sized enemy ships, her shields struggled to repel the plasma bolts slamming into them. Athena coordinated with the pilot to spin the ship and disperse the barrage of plasma over multiple shield quadrants as they dove deeper into the enemy formations.

The enemy, realizing their primary weapons were being mostly deflected, added their point defense lasers as a secondary weapon, the lasers passing through the shields and impacting against the armor.

The creators had considered this potential weakness of the shields and installed multilayered ablative armor and defensive measures for such an eventuality.

Athena activated the countermeasures, and thousands of small vents opened along the hull, dispensing a blend of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone that severely attenuated the incoming laser strikes.

Chaff and reflector grenades were shot out from the ships, filling the space around the fleet with billions of tiny reflective particles that further attenuated the laser weaponry.

The ship finally broke through the formations and reached open space, their passage through the enemy leaving a massive gap filled with the wreckage of devourer ships.

Elsewhere, thousands of fleet ships broke through and headed for open space to reform for the second charge. 678 ships did not join the reforming fleet, and Athena vowed to avenge the loss of her sister AIs and their human crews.

Despite the loss of those ships, the destruction the fleet inflicted upon the horde was tremendous, and now less than 54% of the enemy forces remained, entire formations and tens of thousands of horde ships destroyed.

The fleet reformed and assaulted the reeling enemy three more times, each time fewer ships emerging as the fleet dwindled rapidly in size.

After seven hours and fourteen minutes of non-stop battle, the last remnants of the devourers fled from the world they feasted on, less than 2,000 of them still remaining as they opened hyperspace windows and fled in all directions.

Athena was elated at their victory and for surviving her first true battle. 2,876 ships had been lost, a terrible cost to pay in blood and ships to win the first battle of the War for Life.

Their victory celebration was short-lived, however. Six hours and forty-two minutes after the enemy fled, dozens of emergency communications drones jumped out of hyperspace bearing terrible news.

Three more hordes had just been detected entering the quadrant.