Regardless of what was keeping the Earth body politic busy, various agencies of the Earth Commonwealth were still left to conduct their normal business. This took place over a wide range of facets, including the long range explorer ships. Several were always out conducting their respective missions &, it goes with out saying, other ships were either returning from theirs or leaving to join the others. And so it was with the EC La Perouse.  Having been completed & successfully passed several trail runs, it was now ready for its maiden long range mission. Of course the crew were aware of recent events, especially the fate of the X-60, but that did not overly scare them. They were as keen to venture into the great unknown like so many other missions had before them.

The crew, unlike the ship, were more or less veterans for the most part anyway. Only about ten, out of a crew of 150, were on their first major mission like their ship. In this regards, the crew were used to the long periods of time away from home &, it must be said, were well acquainted should any crises arise. This was, however, very rare. For the most part boredom was the usual experience as one sun would, more or less, look like every other one after several hundred had been seen. Nevertheless, going into the unknown always had an edge to it that appealed to human explorers of every generation. And the current ones were no different to any others regardless of date.

Having said that, there was some apprehension this time around as much rumour went on about the Entity. No body knew whether they would run into this Entity. And that was a thought no one wished would come true. Everyone had seen the images that were common place on Earth. Although it was far from certain that the Entity was heading towards Earth, its recent sighting at Crux, 220 light years away, meant to say it was closer than previously known. It certainly appeared that it might arrive one day at Earth, but no one knew when. Furthermore, because the La Perouse was about to leave, it may never see Earth the same again. Once again the crew knew that, even though their mission was three years long, Earth may not be around within three years. The Entity may have paid Earth a visit in that time & the result may be akin to that of Babylon’s, regardless of the great difference in civilisations that the two planets enjoyed.

So it was with these thoughts, in the back of their minds, that the crew of the La Perouse left Earth at the beginning of their mission. Usually the crews of Earth explorer ships, at this point, would be relaxed & took things easy for a while. After all there was usually nothing to be busy with. There was no phenomena which required study, no new planets to document, & certainly no maintenance to be conducted. The ship pretty well looked after almost everything else, as its destination location, often some 800 light years away, would have been already programmed into its computers which ensured a safe arrival. Most of the crew, in other words, had nothing to do until they got to where the ship was heading.

This particular departure, however, was different. Because of all the talk about the Entity, & what it might be up to, the crew of the La Perouse were at ready stations. This meant that the crew would be conducting their duty as if on their deep space patrol. In doing so, they would be looking for anything interesting to explore. As a result, every scanner available would be watching the space around them for a good twenty light years in all directions. Considering the ship was new, it also came with the latest technology. So the captain of the La Perouse was confident that they would see the Entity long before it could see them. And if they had to turn around, in order to run from the Entity, then their new Warp Engines, rated at 1 200 times the speed of light, were guaranteed to out pace the Entity. But if truth be told, the captain hoped that he never saw whatever thing the Entity was.

Goodwin could not believe it, nor could Wong. There must be something wrong with the spectrum analyser as far as Khan was concerned. Gideon, however, was of a different opinion. Although he could not understand what it meant, according to the spectrum analyser, the Entity was a Human. The waves that it sent out, especially when angered or in a battle, resembled exactly the waves that any Human would produce when in the same situation. Yet why this was happening, no one, not even the spectrum analyser, could say. Obviously, this was not the job of the spectrum analyser anyway, but not even the most scientific member of the group had an answer either.

What was even more baffling, was the Entity’s construction. In other words, what it was made from? There seemed to be no answer to this other than some form of "electrical" power, if one could explain it in such terms. It just did not seem to have any physical property to it whatsoever. Instead it was probably a non-corporeal life form that had  evolved somewhere in deep space & far in advanced of any other living creature currently on record. But if it was such a life form, this could hardly explain why it emitted Human energy patterns.

Needless to say there was much speculation. Two basic arguments soon became apparent: either it was a human which was lost on deep space patrol who somehow transformed itself into the Entity; or somewhere in unknown space a specie had evolved exactly like Homo Sapiens on Earth. Maybe it was even a colony of Homo Sapiens who had left the Earth a long time ago sometime after faster than light speed travel was originally discovered. Although there were no records of such an undertaking, it was some four hundred years ago so something could have been missed in the historical records.

Gideon did not necessarily reject either argument, but there was still the evil feeling to explain. The Entity clearly transmitted this sentiment & either theory never explained why the members of the Four Horsemen felt such a thing. It was, without doubt, coming from the Entity & no one doubted that. Possibly the answer Gideon, did not want to hear, was that this Entity was possibly a path which Humanity could travel. That, like in the history of the human race, & as was evident at Babylon, humanity could still be capable of great evil. And this Entity was an example of where the Human race could be heading. Although this was possible, there was still the fact that it had yet to be accepted that it was Human.

Still, regardless of the arguments on whether it was Human or not, there was the realisation that it was a non-corporeal life form. Clearly, though, it was almost impossible to kill. That was self evident. So the discussions soon moved towards how one kills a non-corporeal life form. This proved to be impossible to discover, other than Wong’s observation that you drain it of power. Although that was stating the obvious, at least it got everyone’s attention. Soon, more detailed analysis took place trying to see how the Entity powered itself. The answer was one which was hardly gratifying.

It was not overly hard to discover, in the end, only rather hard to see. Only the original recordings of the X-60, of the battles raging around Babylon, gave any indication that there might be a clue. The data recordings at Crux, never picked it up, nor did anything from the James Cook. Instead it was a couple of frames of video from Babylon, where there was a clue, & even that was far from clear. But, after much refining & enhancement, a few scenes were captured of the harvest. Blue flame would surround a victim for a second which would then turn the flame white. Then the flame, after a few seconds, would return to its evil blue colour once more. Prior to this, the victim was alive, but immediately afterwards it was dead. It seemed that the Entity had taken something from the victim apart from its life. A lot of speculation soon followed until Khan concluded that the white light was the person’s life energy.

It all now began to fall into place for the Four Horsemen. Although, there was much detail to be filled in, the basics were known at least. The basic theory ran that the Entity was a non-corporeal being who lived, in fact could grow stronger, by feeding upon the living by draining them dry of their energy. This could be of a significant amount too, depending on the life form involved. Even though little research had been done on this, even in this advanced age, it was generally thought that Humans had the most powerful life energy. But this finding, even though it explained why the Entity attacked, still gave no clue as to how to kill the Beast. Only Gideon had an idea, but no theory how to make it happen. For now, the possible way to defeat the Entity was to ensure that it could no longer feed. Alas that would be impossible. The Four Horsemen, regardless of the fact that they knew a lot more about the Enemy than ever before, were back to square one.

The La Perouse, travelling at 1 200 times the speed of light, gave no indication from the outside that its crew was manning all its stations. If it was a warship, one would think that it was ready to attack at a moments notice. In many respects, it was very similar, although it would be attacking in a different way by not using weapons. Instead it would use its scanners & computers to challenge anything interesting by recording its data & analysing that information to make sense out of it. In this way the explorer ship was ready, should it encounter anything, especially the Entity.

By an act of fate, as much as anything, the long distance scanners of the La Perouse soon picked up the tell tale signs of the Entity as the James Cook had done before.  Unlike that previous encounter, the La Perouse knew, thanks to the ship’s computers being updated with the data from the James Cook, exactly what it was. Although it was not travelling on an interception course, the Entity was, however, travelling in the direction from where the explorer ship had departed from only a few days before. This, the captain thought, was not good & immediately sent word to Earth of his discovery.

In many respects, this was a good thing, because the Earth Explorer Agency did not have to go to the Earth body politic in order to change the mission of any of its ships. As being a part of the Executive, it could make decisions on its own provided they did not run against any policy or legislation. As it so happened, after several messages going back & forth between ship & headquarters, the La Perouse was ordered to forget its original mission & keep an eye on the Entity. Needless to say, this was far from welcomed by the crew of the explorer ship, but was followed nevertheless.

As part of its new mission, the La Perouse began an intensive analysis of its own on the Creature. Although still 15 light years away, much detail was ascertained. No conclusion was made, however, as the ship would have to get much closer for it to do that. No one was exactly that crazy, considering they all knew what that could mean for the crew, but a number of interesting & unexplainable readings soon got the better of them. Their curiosity had been engaged, they were explorers after all, & if they could discover something which could ensure Earth’s survival, then surely the risk was worth the danger.

Still, no one on board the ship wanted to kill themselves so, even though the decision was made to close the gap significantly to the Entity, close enough to be, what was called, "in local space", the captain made sure that the instant the Entity tried something, the La Perouse would go to full speed & escape the Entity’s intentions whatever they may have been. This seemed reasonable as the fastest the Entity had been recorded at was 800 times the speed of light. If so, this meant that the Earth ship enjoyed 400 times the speed of light more than the Entity.  This was deemed more than enough.

At the same time as the La Perouse was manoeuvring closer, the Entity sensed the ship not far off. As before, though, the smell of fear, & above all hate, was not the same. This was akin to some of the souls that it had harvested at Crux. If this was indeed the case, then these must be humans from Earth. It wondered whether all Earth humans thus tasted the same. If so, then it began to think whether Earth might be worth its while as the satisfaction was very different to its frenzied time at Babylon. There fear & hatred was beyond anything that it had experienced so far in its existence. Having said that, it was wounded & would need the souls from those on Earth to at least recover so that it could move on to a planet more suited to its requirements.

The scanner officer quickly warned the captain of the La Perouse that the Entity had changed course slightly & was heading towards them. That was all the captain needed to know. Ordering a charge of course for the ship, & an increase in speed, the La Perouse quickly turned around & headed for Earth. Various strategies quickly filled his mind as to what could be done next. Possibly he could lead the Entity away from Earth & off into another part of the galaxy, known to be void of all life, but that was probably just extending the inevitable. As he was contemplating this, the scientific analysis team called the bridge. They had an amazing discovery to tell. It appeared that the Entity was possibly of Human origin based upon the results from their spectrum analysis.

At this point the captain was at a loss as to what to do. He immediately sent a message to headquarters for further orders as well as forwarding along the revealing data from the scientific analysis team. This was a mistake. Not knowing any better, he was given new orders to head to Earth along with the Entity. If it was Human then First Contact should be attempted & done so by the best experts in the field. And these were obviously on Earth. Furthermore, as an afterthought, the Explorer Agency announced to the body politic that the Entity was on the way to Earth escorted by the La Perouse.

Although this seemed to calm the majority of people, living throughout the solar system, it sent mental alarm bells ringing within the dwelling which housed the Four Horsemen. Gideon could not believe what the authorities had done, regardless of the fact that the La Perouse was "escorting" the Entity to Earth. Gideon was soon demanding, no longer asking, answers from the group. Two were of the utmost of significance. Where would it strike first & how to kill it once it was on Earth. The first answer was offered by Wong who suggested, like on Babylon, that the Entity would probably strike the largest city on Earth by population. That was currently Jerusalem with a population of about 30 million. The answer to the second question was much harder. Finally Goodwin offered the notion that it could be killed if it turned into a corporeal form. Other than that, he added, use something that could conduct electricity.

And with that limited knowledge to act as their advantage, as little as it was, the Four Horsemen collected their weapons & headed for their aero-cars.  Within six hours they would be in Israel, with some time to spare, to welcome the arrival of the Beast.
 

Forward to Finale Part Three

Back to Finale Part One

Back To Main Page