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  CONTENTS

  The Fourth Guardian

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Author bio

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  The Fourth Guardian

  By Geoff Geauterre

  Twilight Times Books

  Kingsport Tennessee

  The Fourth Guardian

  This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Geoff Geauterre

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without written permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Twilight Times Books

  P O Box 3340

  Kingsport TN

  twilighttimesbooks.com/

  Credits

  Cover artwork—Ardy M. Scott

  Managing Editor—Ardy M. Scott

  Publisher: Lida E. Quillen

  Electronically published in the United States of America.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Introduction

  In the twelve thousand years spanning the Galactic realm known as the Greater Arcturate, a congregation of higher order beings called the Galactics took upon themselves the task of overseeing and dispensing those lesser endowed with knowledge or wisdom. Under their guidance, enlightenment became a keyword. Those who challenged this concept did not survive for long.

  However, around the year 80992, news came from the edge of the far-flung reaches of a race of several branches called Mankind on the cusp of reaching out to the stars.

  At first, eager to look upon these people with the same benign attitude as others, the Galactics took a closer look and were disappointment. These people were not only lesser endowed, but they were obnoxious and ignorant.

  Bad enough, they believed their destiny was to leap into the cosmos and conquer all its secrets, but worse, they warred incessantly upon one another for little purpose. The Galactics reasoned that these creatures had to be insane. So they did nothing.

  They knew that Nature had a way of dealing with such dross, and this would mark the tale of Man. However, Mankind proved obstinate and refused to accept oblivion. Moreover, they extended their reach into space, the asteroid belts, the inner planets, and then—no matter how frustrated this made them—they ran up against the barrier of light. Nothing they had, whether it was composed of nuclear fuel, plasma or ion drives, could push past it.

  That was when they hypothesized they had to approach the problem in a different manner. If they could change matter into energy, then an entire universe of possibilities would open to them. Once achieving light speed, the critical breakthrough, other speeds might be possible.

  The initial attempts were unfortunate ... if not horrible. The setbacks seemed insurmountable. Changing organic material into energy and back again required a technology far beyond their knowledge. However, they had an alternate plan. Terraforming the inner planets, building space stations, and using the asteroid belts for raw energy could offer them the necessary time it would take to develop it.

  However, after endless calculations, they realized the expense put such notions beyond their wildest dreams. There were seven billion people on the planet, and despite the single birth laws, the leap in medical technology added years to an aging population, and the number of people climbed regardless.

  The predicted forecasts made them panic and they launched a resurgence of faster than light speed programs.

  A bright young man by the name of Enoch McCall thought of merging all their technological advancements together. What they needed, he told them, was to create a bubble of energy around a vehicle, and like the pip of an orange, squeeze the sandwiched product together and send the entire package into an energy stream.

  That was when another problem arose. Their computations showed that sending an “object” through the barrier of light caused a ripple effect. Enoch McCall thought the ripple was best expressed in time, because he couldn't see how it affected anything else. Space was so vast.

  His theory was that time was not a linear progression, but a wave-effect. So what would happen, he asked, if they could avoid the time wave by swinging around it altogether before it could arrive? They would still go faster than light, so all they had to do was swing, avoid the ripple effect, and let it dissipate.

  They tried it in their cyclotron. It worked even though the building housing the machine came apart. They tried it in the super cyclotron that scaled the entire planet and found even more of a success. The earthquake was probably a coincidence.

  Enoch McCall felt it was time to test their theories constructively. They needed a space run. There were no volunteers. Shrugging, he stepped forward, saying that as most of the work was his, he would take the responsibility.

  He bet his life that he could successfully warp around a shift in the time-wave. They made preparations, and the space station they would launch from was evacuated. There was, of course, a possibility that they would lose it, but what was that in light of the greater need?

  When everything was ready, Enoch suited up, was strapped tightly into the vehicle, which oddly enough did look like the pip from an orange, and squinting through his visor, he checked his instruments.

  "Everything,” he reported tersely, “is clear in here.” Then he glanced around uneasily, suddenly feeling that this might not have been such a good idea.

  "Wait a moment,” he mumbled, fingering the straps of the harness. “I'm not too sure about this."

  The whine of the power output for the electromagnetic ramp started up. The gauges began to climb. He stared at them, feeling a growing lump in his throat. The last calibration towards the fifth planet's outer moon was now set.

  A voice echoed through his helmet. “Are you ready?"

  He felt as though his heart was in his mouth, and he was about to say something more when someone, probably the finance manager of the Faster than Light Speed Project, who hated Enoch McCall with a passion, reached over the shoulder of a technician and punched the start button, hoping the expensive bastards—both project and genius—would just die!

  The shockwave punched Enoch into his seat. He gripped every molecule in his body, and only hoped that when they recovered him—if they ever recovered him—that they did not mention, he peed in his pants.

  It happened so quickly ground control was not sure that anything happened at all. One moment the vehicle was on the ramp, the next it just hung there, floating outside the station. He only seemed to have moved a mile or two.

  Then a tech clutched herself and screamed, pointing at a register. He had
moved further and faster than anyone anticipated. Shuttles recovered the vehicle, and wonder of wonders, when they opened the hatch, Enoch McCall was alive and embarrassed. He told them they would need to buffet the acceleration curve.

  He was surprised to see the finance manager in tears. People hugged him ... shouted, ranted, and raved. He looked back and was surprised to see the vehicle pitted and scarred. They rushed the recorded discs into the computers, and ten minutes later, they were all staring in disbelief. Their control gauges were wrong. They hadn't skirted the outer rim of the solar system as they first thought. In fact, it looked like ... another star system.

  In a frenzy, the public relations people sent word. They had broken through the light barrier! The universe was theirs for the taking!

  The next day they were in for a shock. Hanging in the sky above their heads was a ship, twenty miles in diameter. It moved slowly over the face of the entire planet, and those in its shadow huddled in fear.

  Fighter aircraft tried to confront the thing, but as soon as they got near it, power systems shut down, and it was everything the pilots could do just to eject before crashing.

  At that point, someone panicked. A button that shouldn't have been pressed was pressed, and a dozen ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads launched.

  The world held its breath, but just before the missiles struck ... they turned ... and descended back to their origin points.

  Horrified technicians scrambled out of their bunkers, but it was too late. As hammer blows from a mad god, the missiles struck. However, wonder of wonders, the mushroom clouds that should have erupted didn't. From the enormous craters, people scurried forth, unscathed, without the slightest sign of radiation. That was when the spacecraft froze in position.

  World leaders spoke to one another, and arriving in their fastest shuttles, they landed beneath the great craft and awaited their fate. An alien face took shape in the skies above, and the whole world watching, were stunned, cowed.

  Said being was a Galactic, and he was pissed. Their little experiment had caused problems. For one, fooling around with matter transfers was not something children were allowed to do. Second, the rippling effect they caused didn't dissipate. What did they think the galaxy was made of—garbage?

  They had caused a space-time distortion. He had to fix that. Aside from time-consuming, it caused difficulties like blowing up stars. Did they know he had to mollify ten billion angry, frightened people who wanted to declare a state of war? The being frowned down on them, and they didn't know what to say.

  Playing with hazardous stuff, he scolded, was a no-no! Was that clearly understood?

  Staring at the world ship, every man, woman and child, no matter their education, their philosophy or their religion, now knew their place in the scheme of things. They were on a low rung of the ladder.

  Officious and multi-tentacled, the complainant waved appendages angrily about, and like children their eyes opened wide. The Galactic's audience listened and learned. Rules were laid down, and the procedures began for their admittance into the Greater Arcturate. Status: Level *M. The asterisk was for troublesome. The “M” was for moron class.

  They were told to behave themselves, and if they were good, a Galactic representative would arrive to process their application. He didn't have the time to do it now, but until then, no more nonsense!

  The image of the terrible being faded, and the ship left ... by opening a raw hole in space, slipping into it, and closing it neatly behind. If they felt puny before, now they were insignificant, microscopic ... nothing.

  Enoch McCall was given severance pay and told to disappear. A countless number of people wanted his head on a platter.

  * * * *

  A hundred years passed, and a world filled with humans thought they would go mad waiting longer. A good number convinced themselves it never happened. It had been a gigantic fraud. A hoax. Many believed the perpetrators were enemy nations. Some thought it was their own government. Crackpots hinted it was the work of God, others that it was plotters from another dimension—and only they knew how to contact them (send one dollar and they could show you how to contact them also).

  Zealots took political power. The world destabilized. Little wars turned into bigger wars. Supernaturalism was born afresh. Those in control grew fat off the labors of the poor and the middle classes. Those befriending them never had empty bellies. The world teetered on the edge of chaos.

  When another smaller ship, only a mile wide, appeared, a representative for the Galactics arrived. He asked who was in charge; the place looked like a mess. Ten trustworthy individuals were chosen to represent the planet. As they arrived beneath the ship, a pool of light grew, swallowed them whole, and whisked them aboard. Matter transmission. One of the reps sourly asked how much was spent on efforts to emulate this? Ten billion? A hundred?

  Once inside the ship, floating cylinders approached, scanned them for weapons, and then ushered them along curving passageways, glowing with a soft oyster-like luster. The Galactic representative wasn't taking chances. Finally, in what looked curiously like an office, they stood before him. The desk he sat behind looked like a huge form of liver. There were buttons across it, flickering pads that bespoke of ominous energies, and in the center an amiable, placid individual introduced himself.

  "How do you do?” said a mechanical voice. “I take it you are here to discuss an application for entry into the Greater Arcturate?"

  One delegate couldn't restrain himself and demanded to know why in hell it had taken so long?

  "What are you talking about?” The bulging-eyed, tentacled official huffed. “I was only told about you last week."

  "But it's been over a hundred years!"

  The representative's tegument heaved with amusement. “I've had dealings with this Galactic before. He forgets minor matters, preferring to put them aside while he tends to important issues. Have we given offense?"

  A woman with striking gray hair sighed, shook her head, and stepped up. “No offense. We have to get used to your customs."

  "That is an intelligent attitude. Felicitations offered."

  "Kind of you."

  "You're welcome."

  The representative muttered, looked over his desk, touched a pad here, a pad there, and forms appeared. Bubbling crystals emerged from the floor, then solidified into oval screens.

  They were told to sign the metal foil documents by placing fingertips on the bottom. Each set merged into the material and created an imprint of their DNA. By agreement and acceptance, as delegates of the entire planet, they were bound to the rules and responsibilities of the Greater Arcturate.

  Each looked at their hands and realized what they'd done. Of their own free will, they stepped into a dark room and didn't know where the light switches were.

  As if he could read their thoughts, he told them not to worry. Others would be coming after him. They would guide them. His job was to get the process going.

  They blinked. This all-powerful being was a ... clerk. He bid them all a good morning, the floating cylinders escorted them back to the transmission chamber, and then they were gone.

  A day later, the world's computer banks were inundated with information, diagrams, descriptions ... of medical, physical, and social sciences they could only have dreamed of ... and it changed their planet overnight.

  A month later another much smaller ship about the size of a skyscraper arrived. Portals opened and aliens marched forth, waving copies of the agreement. They were, they informed the multitude, the specialist-contractees sent to smooth their transition from primitivism. At that, jaws clenched. The “light switches” had arrived.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter One

  The pilot's eyes jerked from navigation to helm to plotting, but no matter how hard she stabbed sensor relays and controls, the screens showed a huge magnetic cloud rushing upon them.

  A roiling miasma with its own charged life seemed bent on swallowing them whole. Sh
e glanced over her shoulder and cursed softly. The commander was aware of everything happening on the ship, but her cup never even shook.

  Shar-Mei, group commander of the Battle Maiden squadron, glanced into the chair's built-ins and wondered if she should call the ominous sight forming and moving in on their flanks, an emergency. One would call attention to problems when there's a way to deal with them. But what do you do when there's not?

  "Lieutenant Ri-Nell."

  The pilot sighed. “Yes ma'am."

  "I don't wish to intrude, but I believe we're headed into a difficulty here. Wouldn't you agree?"

  Ri-Nell took a deep breath. “Yes, ma'am."

  "I know I gave orders to cut corners getting home, but look where that put us. How many corners were we cutting?"

  "Ma'am, it looked like a short-cut. Nothing on the charts showed this existed. I ran it through the computers, and they suggested it was a negotiable anomaly, but not something to worry about."

  "Not something to worry about?"

  Ri-Nell's lips trembled. “I'm sorry, ma'am."

  "Well, don't take it so hard. We shouldn't have been out this far anyway.” Shar-Mei scowled. “What idiot drummed up these orders? How in a star's comet-shit can you track space pirates in their own domain without knowing where you were going, or how you would get back?"

  "I don't know, ma'am."

  "Neither did the idiot who sent us here."

  Bridge staff looked at one another worriedly. It didn't look good. The plotting tech wanted to smash the screen she worked over. Damn monitor kept telling them they were lost. How in hell could they be lost if one moment they knew where they were, and the next they disappeared off the screen, followed by something that didn't register except as a pair of contrasting numbers?

  "Ma'am?"

  The commander looked over her shoulder and nodded to her best plotter. “Yes, Nubis. What is it?"

  "I know where we are. Remember the legend of the sea of ships?"

  "Wasn't that an old wives’ tale?"