Zombie Road by Simpson, A. (best ereader manga .TXT) 📗

fool hardy. He'd said he'd rather die in three months having lived an interesting life rather than die of boredom two years from now. She couldn't stop him. Logic didn't work, he simply ignored it. Sometimes she didn't understand how the species had survived, they didn't do what was safe and accepted. They were risk takers and too curious for their own good. In the end, her only option was forcible restraint or escort him and try to keep him out of trouble.

He learned quickly and was better in the suit after a few hours than most were with years of practice. She knew it was because of the serum running through his veins, but she still marveled at how well he adapted. The Humans from earth had been evolved differently. Every system had different requirements to thrive and succeed and the humans that colonized the planets at the end of the galaxy had changed subtly over the eons. They had adapted to their environment and after thousands of years looked like a different race. They were tougher in some ways, much more resilient and cavalier. They were foolhardy in others. Jessie had a bad habit of not thinking things though. He didn’t assess situations completely and therefore frequently made decisions contrary to what she suggested.

She placed her hand on a panel, sent bits of herself through the tens of thousands of miles of optic wires and rerouted power through a roundabout way down an undamaged cable. The doors slid open, gravity was initiated and he flipped on the lights as they entered a bay. She calculated how much power it cost. How many minutes of his life would be exchanged for having a look around.

"Whoa," he said, as the shadows fled away and a pair of space ships stood before them. "Did you know this was here?"

Her eyes stared into nothing for a moment before she answered.

"I must have at one time but I have no recollection of them being on board. They are used to get down to a planet's surface as an alternative to digital transport when pomp and circumstance are required. The larger is an escort gunship, the smaller is the captain’s ceremonial vessel."

"Can't carry many troops on it." Jessie said and went closer to stand by the folding legs supporting the boxy vessel that sprouted gun turrets.

"Troops were dispersed electronically." She said. "What you would call "beamed down." Ten thousand men could surround a target, eliminate it and a moment later be sent halfway around the world to take out the next. The battlefields were very fluid and the skirmishes lightning quick."

"That's crazy." Jessie said. "How did anybody win?"

"In the end, no one did." She said. "My knowledge of the events is limited and mostly conjecture from intercepts many thousands of years after the war. From what I understand, what most of the peoples believe, the Anunnaki race harnessed God like powers and unleashed them on everyone. Most believe they traveled to the future and came back with them. That is how they knew when and where to strike. They met with no resistance. I never fired a shot, I was destroyed almost the instant I realized they were there. The same with the rest of the ships and worlds. Some believe it was only a small handful of the Anunnaki that time jumped to everywhere at seemingly the same time."

"So I guess they rule the universe now?" Jessie asked and fiddled with some buttons on one of the legs. He was trying to get a ramp to come down so he could get in. If it had big guns on the outside, maybe there was an arms locker on the inside. He’d love to play around with a laser blaster.

"No one really knows what happened, much knowledge was lost, but most believe only a small faction of the Anunnaki people started the wars. When the rest of them saw what had been done in their name, a civil war erupted and they battled among themselves until there was no one left to fight. If their home system still exists, no one knows where it is. Their jump gate was destroyed because all known portals have been mapped again. There are small colonies of Anunnaki that still exist, those who had been out of the home system, but they are still shunned from what I understand. If they were spoken about in any of the transmissions, it was always in an insulting or derogatory way.”

She pushed his hands aside, entered a code and the gangway started to lower.

"I thought you didn't remember anything about these ships." Jessie said.

“I remember the master override codes; they are the same for all secure equipment under my authority.”

“So, you can fly this?” Jessie asked. “We can get off this ship, get to a planet somewhere?”

“Perhaps.” she said as they waited for the entrance ramp to slowly inch its way down. “I don’t have any memories of them, that data has been purged.”

“Will I be able to fly it?” he asked.

“Possibly, with modifications.” She said.

They spent the next half hour going over the ships, examining the manual controls and checking the ion engines. She couldn’t electronically interface with either of them. They weren’t designed for AI to operate them since they may be landed on hostile planets. Computers could be corrupted, hacked and hijacked. The planet side vessels were mostly analog and required human pilots.

“Okay.” Jessie said as he sat in an oversized captain’s chair. “What do you think? Will it fly?”

“They are basic machines. Operations manuals are stored in the onboard systems. I can familiarize myself with them and then teach you. It is a military ship, so many aspects are universal across all platforms and they are built so anyone can be taught to operate them safely.” She said.

“Do they have enough fuel to get somewhere?” Jessie asked.

“They operate on fusion generators. They never run out.” She replied. “I’m unsure why they weren’t targeted, all of the