Super Queen-Mother. Book I. The Last Hope

Chapter 4

The light slightly intensified, and Julia found herself in a small grotto. She was being slowly and smoothly dragged to the rock. Part of the rock moved forward and then aside, forming a passage. Julia was dragged inside, and the rock behind her was closed at once.

She was in a poorly lit room. The water level was quickly falling down. Soon the water ran off, exposing a wet floor. Then the other part of the rock in front of her moved forward and aside. Julia came into an opening, leading to a big hall. The rock behind her was quietly closed.

The big hall was empty. It was a hemisphere with walls and floor looking as if made of stainless steel, polished to a high finish. On a metal cube in the center there was something like a biker’s helmet. Julia stopped and touched the wall – it was smooth and felt warm.

She heard the same voice:

«Take a seat and put the helmet on!»

Julia sat down on the cube and put on the helmet. The metallic pedestal was slowly caving in under the weight of her body, and soon took the shape of a convenient armchair, flowing around all her body. She felt warm and comfortable. With a light click, the helmet was switched on, and the surrounding scene shifted.

It was the Earth. The sun was hanging in the sky on its trajectory. The alternation of day and night was as usual but there was no moon and the constellations were located in different places.

The earth and the sea were the same, only their colors had changed, while plants and animals were quite different. There were lots of them, and they all were larger and more colorful than those growing on the Earth now.

Real giants with huge wings and oblong heads were flying in the sky.

The sun lighted up the surroundings evenly and not very brightly.

Everything was gigantic – the forest was huge, various large flowers were growing in glades. Flowers of similar sizes were trailing from some trees.

Giant insects of a human being’s height were flying among the trees.

Tremendous lizards and snakes were climbing in bright green grass several meters high.

Here and there some traces of the struggle for surviving were seen – broken bones, skulls, and trees, pulled out of the earth with roots.

The voice said:

«We are the Earth Keepers.

Your civilization is the sixth on this planet. The previous ones were wiped out by the United Civilization of the Galaxy «Milky Way», which includes the Earth planet.

At a certain stage of the mankind’s development, we put forward a fighter for a single combat with the Galaxy Civilization. The fortunes of the Earth’s population – whether they will live on or not – depend on the result of this combat.

It’s a standard procedure of admission to the community of civilizations of our Galaxy for any civilization. They want to know – to what extent we have developed and have established ourselves as a civilization.

Combats are carried out on the planet chosen by the Supreme Council of the Galaxy.

The place where they are carried out is always the same; so, we reproduced its exact copy. It is our training facility now. All scenes of battles we had have lost were built into the program. Besides, we added our own episodes. Now it’s the place where one can learn a lot.

If we win, the Sixth Civilization of the Earth will get a powerful impulse for further development, and, in several thousand years, it will become equal to other civilizations of the Galaxy. Not everything is so simple, though. There exists one more danger.

When all civilizations of the Galaxy join the United Civilization of the Galaxy «Milky Way», the next stage will be admission of our United Galaxy Civilization to the General Cosmic Civilization.

Loss means destroying the whole United Galaxy Civilization.

It will be the last, but the most complicated and dangerous exam. However, it’s still far in the future. Let’s not think about things that will not happen for some time.

We couldn’t pass the first trial – to win in mortal combat – and were thrown back for millions of years; that’s why we can’t use the knowledge of the United Galaxy Civilization.

After millions of years of necessary waiting and detailed analysis of all combats, which were carried out, we worked out a new training technique for our future fighter. The losses of the previous five civilizations gave us an enormous data base to analyze our defeats. This time we must win…»

Julia was listening and watching closely the scene taking place around her, while the voice was commenting on what was going on.

The space around her was transmitting the end of one of the earthmen’s combats for their right to life.

The battlefield took up all the visible space around the fighter. The ground was dug through all around; huge trees were broken or torn up by the roots; pits and gaps were being filled with water, and, in the distance, one could see large woodlands in conflagration.

Flame was coming up to the stars, forming fire whirlwinds. With frightful roaring, they were coming away from the main bulk of fire for a long distance from the burning woodland. The fire whirlwinds quickly died, burning and evaporating everything on their way, and then were soon displaced by new ones.

Large field stones were cleaved by powerful blows and scattered all over the field, up to the horizon.

Everything in view was flooded with thick luminous liquid looking like blood, which was not only red, but also blue, green, black, and yellow.

A big man, about one hundred and fifty feet high, was fighting shadows, trying to win.

It was clear that he was exhausted. His numerous wounds were bleeding, and he himself and the ground around were in blood. Several times the fighter fell down on his knee, and each time he rose up, beating off attacks; long blinding flame was shooting out of devices fixed on his hands.

Everything was in vain, however. His enemies were too numerous…

Suddenly, ambient light started pulsating. This pulsating lighting worked against the fighter.

From an outsider’s viewpoint, it was seen that, in the light, shadows jumped aside, hiding in tall grass. When, for an instant, it became dark, they jumped out of the grass and, as vampires, sucked the lifeblood and energy out of the fighter.

Then, in a moment, the fighter lost all his strength; he staggered and fell first on one knee, then on both, and, finally, collapsed on the ground.

The light pulsation was instantly stopped, and the light became dark blue. Bright red creatures, looking like short and fat half transparent snakes with big teeth, started to devour the fighter.

The combat was continuing. Some earthly web-footed creature with big snakelike head and thick and short tail was fighting the enemy this time.

The fighter was persistently beating off all attacks, setting his back against a rock and not making it possible for enemies to attack from the rear. His enemies, fitted with strong long paws and half-round heads without eyes, but with antenna-like outgrowths on their shoulders, were keenly catching the fighter’s every movement.

A big energy octopus was floating in the air, in front of the earthly fighter. It was transparent like water.

Its feelers instantly responded to the fighter’s movements. They copied all motions of the fighter’s arms, as if they were its own arms. The motions were copied by all its feelers over and over again, but much faster.

When the watery octopus hit an enemy, the rear part of the latter flew off, and it was dying in fits, as from an electric stroke.

When its feelers hit an energy ball sent by the enemy, it fell on the ground with hissing and crackling, and then quickly evaporated.

The fighter was retreating and attacking. From outside, it was seen that his enemies were having a hard time. Dozens of them, scattered here and there, were killed or dying. The fighter artfully avoided attacks and then struck, like lightning, effectively using his energy animal.

Carried away by the combat and forthcoming victory, the fighter, however, did not notice that in the process of the battle his enemies were emitting some light, volatile green gas. It was going up into the air, and at some height was merging into a single whole. The process of gas coalescence finished very quickly, resulting in an acid-green cloud.

The enemies felt this. They stopped the battle, quickly moved away, forming a semicircle, raised their paws with palms up, and stayed put. Thin light winding lines came out of their paws and set against the acid-green cloud.

It was quickly changing, taking the shape of a tube aimed at the earthly fighter. Soon the tube was formed in full and compressed. Suddenly, a blue fire lightning, aimed directly at the fighter, dashed with a crash out of the middle of the tube.

At the same moment, it was blocked by a barrier – the energy octopus co-opted the whole power of the produced blow. The blow was followed by a short sharp whizz.

The energy octopus got out of the earthly fighter’s hand. Its feelers were producing spasmodic, aimless movements. The whizz was heard again.

«It looks like the octopus started sucking something in», Julia thought.

Its transparent watery body was being filled with bright golden dust, overflowing from the fighter’s reservoir on his back. Its feelers were becoming shorter and shorter. Their contents were being swollen until the feelers disappeared entirely. One big ball was formed, filled with bright golden dust. In the background of the swelling whizzing orb, small lightning was rushing among specks of dust.

The earthly creature did not cease his attempts to influence the energy weapon, which did not obey the fighter any more, but it did not help – a great amount of energy taken in by the octopus destroyed its controls.

The ball, looking in its structure like a big soap bubble, began to whirl about its axis faster.

Increasing whizz turned into airdrome rumble.

Bright golden dust concentrated in the center of the whirling ball like a small kernel. The kernel became dazzling white, sparkling like the flame of a working welder.

It was not only painful to look at and listen to it; it was on the verge of physical strength.

In the meantime, the kernel swelled, filling in the whole ball.

Julia turned away from the three-dimensional screen and covered her ears with hands.

A deafening explosion, creating a big crater, was heard.

The burning wood on the horizon disappeared, and no one of the combat participants was seen on the field.

Their deaths were instantaneous – they had been evaporated.

The next three-fingered fighter had a dinosaur-like head with large green eyes.

He skillfully used a wave resonator and a laser as weapons. The fighter instantly destroyed all barriers with his resonator, and eliminated any target in sight.

The fighter was very good. His enemies had nothing to do but to retreat and hide, but the fighter did not give a chance to anybody. His eyes were closing like a shutter of an old-fashioned camera, and his head was turning like the head of a pilot in an air battle.

It was difficult to approach him, and the enemy changed tactics. The color of the soil around the fighter started changing. At first, it was very far from him, and the fighter did not pay much attention to it. He concentrated on what was going on in the vicinity and what was an immediate threat.

The circle around the fighter was narrowing. The land in visibility range had changed its color to brown.

The fighter noticed danger and switched on his resonator at full capacity, but at this moment something unexpected happened, that became disastrous for him.

The killing power of his weapon became his enemy. Mold, which was changing the color of the ground, divided into smaller parts after each blow. The stronger the blow, the higher the rate of division. The dead mold was growing darker, and new, brown one, was growing faster and spreading ahead.

The mold grew up to seventy-eighty feet high. The rate of its spreading had increased manifold.

The fighter shot at the mold from his laser weapon. Loud hissing and gurgling was heard, followed by poisonous smoke rising from the spots where his blows struck. The mold turned black and fell down, but was immediately replaced by the new, brown mold.

The fighter made one last attempt and then began to turn around himself with his laser switched on at full capacity.

Brown mold was growing taller and taller, filling in all the space around. Soon it was hanging over the fighter. Its layers grew thicker and thicker. The laser failed to shoot down the whole mold. Soon it crashed down on the fighter with all its mass.

It was seen that he was shooting at the mold with his laser, hanging on by the skin of his teeth; from time to time a laser beam burst out of the thick layer of the mold, illuminating the breach from beneath.

Julia saw that the laser was working more and more slowly. Finally, it stopped dead in its tracks. The laser beam went to the distant space.

Soon it died out, and the breach closed. A hill above the fighter flattened. The mold, like soap suds, was reducing until the earth came to light.

The fighter wasn’t to be seen anywhere.

The mold had dissolved him.

The next combat was taking place in space.

The camera, filming this battle, was at the level of the fighter’s shoulder, on his silvery spacesuit.

The fighter himself wasn’t seen. His spacesuit resembled an elongated egg. Its surface contained lots of shallow cavities with small circular apertures.

To husband his weapon, he successfully avoided space debris and asteroids, rushing towards him. But soon their speed began to grow. Stars, surrounding him, were becoming longer and longer.

The fighter began to use his weapon, and it exactly reacted to collisions, eliminating all hindrances in his way and ignoring cosmic bodies, which were not dangerous.

It became his «Achilles’ heel». Camera went aside, and Julia saw his death.

Dozens of asteroids were rushing towards him from all sides – it was a kind of original space rose made of asteroids, and the fighter from the Earth was in its center.

It took only a moment for these super heavy asteroids to pass by the fighter and to go away into far space, but combined gravitational force, created by them for parts of a second, disassembled the fighter into atoms.

The last battle that was shown, took place above the sea and on its bottom.

The fighter looked like a big, tall man. He was standing on a small platform which emitted a blue cloud, tightly enveloping his body.

Some small hard triangles were rushing around him, shooting from their weapons. The fighter was quickly changing his position, and beams went into the sea, raising puffs.

The fighter’s movements were very unusual. He passed out of sight for some time, and then appeared again at some distance from the previous place. It seemed he had disassembled into atoms and then gathered together in a safe place. One could call his movements stroboscopic.

The number of shooting triangles increased with every minute. It was becoming more and more difficult to avoid them. The fighter plunged into the sea. Triangles went on flying for some time over the sea, and then vanished in the air.

After the flying triangles had disappeared, the camera went under the water. Julia not only saw, but also heard what was going on there.

The fighter went down to the depths. He was seen there as a blue light, moving in a broken manner.

This blue cover betrayed him.

Huge shadows appeared at some distance, approaching to our fighter’s location.

He went on moving, but, judging by the way he did it, the fighter noticed the danger – his blue light was moving now only in one direction. Nevertheless, the shadows were moving faster.

Suddenly, a sharp slap was heard, and the blue light disappeared. It became totally dark.

Soon a powerful explosion tore the body of a sea monster into pieces, and, for a moment, lighted this bottomless abyss.

Dozens of similar monsters with big open jaws and several rows of long crooked and very sharp teeth, bent backward, were swimming nearby. It seemed as if these, excessively stretched monstrous jaws could swallow a seven foot yacht. It was impossible to discern their big bodies. They only flickered in the flash of explosion. But Julia was very impressed with the sizes of underwater monsters she had seen.

They instantly pounced on their torn companion. Its pieces, still moving, were slowly sinking down into the depths. These body parts were quickly seized and swallowed. In some minutes, everything was finished.

Julia understood that the fighter’s energetic platform had been blown up, having left him no chances for life.

Looking at the combats and seeing their unpredictable, but equally sad aftermath, Julia involuntarily was trying on the fighter’s role. It was not easy because every time she had to rearrange herself psychologically to the actions of another fighter.

And what would she do in these situations? Julia looked at her hands and groaned. She was not shown the whole battle, only its last episodes. She would have perished much earlier than those trained and armed fighters.

One has to face up to real things – she is just a girl who can’t be compared to them. They were heroes who were fighting for their civilization, and who did all they could do, and even more than they could.

Julia groaned once more and lifted up her head to view what the Earth Keepers were going to show her next.

She saw fighters of each of the five destroyed civilizations. Of course, Julia was interested to know about these past civilizations on Earth. But the circumstances she was shown this…

After demonstration of the fighters’ deaths, the Earth Keepers showed one of the pictures of Earth’s destruction.

Asteroids were approaching from deep space in a continuous string to bomb the planet. Their silent, grave flight in space was turning into a roar, with explosions and howling, following all celestial rocks after they came into Earth’s atmosphere, up to their strike against the ground.

Hell was setting in all over Earth.

Blows followed one after another. Everything that could burn was burning. All woods were burning simultaneously, throughout the Earth.

Even objects which couldn’t burn, in principle, were burning.

There was no way out for living beings. Their only salvation was their quick death.

Suffering from burns, wounds and fractures, people and animals were writhing among dead bodies everywhere on the ground.

There was hardly a breath in the air – only clouds of smoke and dust in burning hot air.

Bodies, torn by a shock wave, were lying in pools of their own blood and excrement.

The ocean bottom became bare where asteroids fell, and turned into boiling lava in a split second.

One mile high waves seemed to stand still for some time, displaying fish and big sea animals, twisting with pain. They did not understand yet that body parts nearby were their own.

Finally, these still hills fell down on the melted ocean bottom with awful noise.

Following deafening cacophony of explosions, steam in the form of huge columns was rushing up into the sky, burning everything alive on its way.

Earthquakes were changing the Earth’s landscape in seconds. Where there were mountains, there was water everywhere; where there were seas and oceans, there were rocks and dry land.

Burnt birds were falling down; fish and sea animals became boiled.

The whole planet was turning into a hellish fiery vessel, cooking a horrible meal out of all beings that were living on the Earth…

Julia was stunned by the pictures she had seen. She was overburdened with events and information she had been given. A logical question, «What can I do about it?» was not left without response.

«Since the time of man’s access into space, Earth has become an object of careful attention on the part of the United Galaxy Civilization.

Earth’s people are doomed to exterminate themselves if they don’t get the knowledge of Galaxy civilizations.

People will test new weapons again and again, though they don’t understand what aftermath it can have.

You have already exploded super-power nuclear warheads, though you did not know for sure whether chain nuclear reaction would begin or not.

You have built a gigantic collider and switched it on in full production, though you don’t know whether black holes, which can take up everything, including the earth, are being formed or not.

You are becoming dangerous not only for yourselves, but for others, too.

Development on Earth will come to an end when such a weapon will be invented, made and tested, after which life on it will be impossible, even in a million years.

So, if we lose again, human civilization on Earth will be destroyed by large cosmic bodies from the asteroid belt.

We’ll have to wait for more millions of years until the next civilization comes into existence and is ready to undergo another test of combat.

We selected the best fighters, trained them in different ways; nevertheless, we lost combats.

Why did we lose? It seemed we foresaw all possible attacks that one could imagine. We were struggling with this problem for a long time.

Now we have found the cause of loss.

We have staked on men, on their strength and logic.

That was our mistake.

We need different tactics. We don’t have to win – we will never be able to do that – we have not to lose.

Our fighter has to back out of attacks, before attackers stop the combat. At the same time, eluding blows should be combined with our repulse, and then the amount of attacks on us will go down. This is the way to victory.

MEN ARE LOGICAL, AND THUS FORECASTED.

That’s why we were losing.

Now we are staking on a woman – young, strong and trained.

She will be able to perceive attacks physically, through her intuition and life experience, which was being passed on to her at a genetic level, from generation to generation.

Nature entrusted her a human being’s birth and life maintenance.

Only she can hold out in the fight for life on Earth.

The time has come when only a woman can defend the sixth civilization on Earth. The life of people. Their future.

We were selecting a future fighter among all the women who have been born on the Earth since a human being’s exit into space. You are the best. Only you can hold out in this battle.

Now, you bear enormous responsibility for future generations and their lives, and the lives on Earth.

You are

SUPER

QUEEN-MOTHER.

It’s your call whether your civilization will live or die.

YOU ARE THE LAST HOPE.

Now we’ll send you back. Time is drawing on. You have only three days to make a decision».

Julia took off the helmet from her head and got up from the metallic armchair. Her surroundings took on their previous form, shot with cold metallic luster.

Julia slowly went to the exit. She could hardly digest all that fell upon her.

The rock moved aside, and Julia came out of the hall.

Before the scale moved back to its previous position, Julia heard the voice of the Earth Keepers, which said once more:

«ONLY THREE DAYS!»

The room she came into was quickly filling with water.

Julia saw as water layers, reminding her of cable stitch, were enveloping her body up and up, while water was filling the space. When it filled in the whole room, the outer part of the rock, walling the room from the external world, opened.

Julia was carried up. The rock behind her was closed.

She tried to snatch at a bush hanging over, but it was so stiff-leaved that she, wary of injuring her hand, released the branch, and was immediately dragged upward.

Her rate of rising was gradually increasing. She saw a small glowing spot overhead, which was growing little by little, and then turned into the bright sun.