Chapter No. 99. New Arrivals.

Life is complex in the extreme.

We dropped out of spin drive near a small galaxy with a supermassive black hole that was too large for the galaxy's size.

"I think this black hole has eaten most of its galaxy," Molly said. "Or, there's something else going on here."

"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's near a gravitational anomaly," Margaret said. "This so-called Attractor appears to be a supercluster of immense size, possibly the largest supercluster in the universe. It's composed of lot of older galaxies that are colliding, which could account for why this particular galaxy has a larger than normal supermassive black hole."

"I suppose it doesn't matter," I said. "Park us where Molly can use her virtual mirror to hunt for possible habitable planets."

"Not to change the subject," Alexa said. "But I've found two names in the data stack that you might be interested in."

We all turned to her.

"One is Bernard Wilson and the other is Valarie Star."

Both of my eyebrows shot up. "My sister?"

"Yes."

I shook my head. "She was killed on an expedition to Enceladus. The last I heard was that her body was not recovered."

"Apparently, she was considered important enough to have her data recorded."

"Yes, that's obvious." I smiled. "I remember Bernard. We called him Barney at Space Academy. He's a funny guy."

"Do you want them resurrected?" she asked.

"Sure. May as well. If this keeps up, we'll have recovered a good deal of our friends and family."

The next day, Molly had found some candidate habitable systems. The first one was a large Earth-like planet in a M2 dwarf star system. The star was ten billion years old and had settled down in respect to flare activity.

"This planet is mostly water," Molly reported. "There are some large islands, mostly in the northern hemisphere."

"Spectral scans indicate chlorophyll," Margaret said. "The atmosphere is thicker than that of Earth and it does have appreciable amounts of oxygen."

"Put us in orbit, Judy, but keep us in stealth mode."

"I'm not detecting anything that looks like intelligent life," Alexa said. "There is no evidence of structures or even domiciles."

"The gravity on this planet is approximately 1.5 times that of Earth," Molly said. "There are numerous storms over the oceans and one of the islands."

"This doesn't sound very habitable," I said. "Are there any other habitable candidates in this galaxy?"

"Yeah," Molly said. "There's a system about 3000 light years from here that might have a habitable planet."

"Take us there, Judy."

A few minutes later, we were near a K3 class dwarf star with three rocky planets in its inner solar system.

"The second planet is just barely in the habitable zone," Molly said. "It has a lot of ice though."

"Put us in orbit, Judy, but keep us in stealth mode."

The planet was definitely Earth-like. It had an atmosphere that had appreciable amounts of oxygen, but not quite as much as Earth.

"There is vegetation on the continents," Molly said. "But I don't see anything that suggests intelligent life."

I slumped in my chair. "We seem to be batting zero so far."

"I'm surprised that these planets appear to be primitive," Margaret said. "Most of the stars in this galaxy are older. I would estimate that they're at least 9 billion years old, which is plenty enough time to evolve life."

"Maybe the originator didn't like this galaxy," I said.

"Or, some idiot robotic species destroyed all life in this galaxy," Molly said.

She was probably right. I didn't feel like debating the subject at the time.

Several days later, after we had explored two more dud systems, Barney and my sister, Valery, appeared on the command deck after waking up from stasis.

I stood up. "Welcome to Explorer-2. I'm Jason the Engineer. That's Molly, the astrophysicist, Alexa, the exo-biologist, Marie, the chief astronaut, Margaret, the planetary astronomer, Alex and Alicia, technical support, and over there is Judy, the helmsperson, and Madison, the chief weapons officer."

Barney smiled. "You look a lot better than I remember you, Jason."

"Yeah, we're in android bodies now. Every one of us died or were murdered."

"What the hell is going on here, brother?" Valery asked, her face twisted with confusion.

"We'll discuss all of this at 1700 in my quarters after you've found your quarters and have been cleaned up."

After they departed, Molly turned to me. "We have a lot of explainin' to do."

I laughed.

As expected, the new crew members showed up at my quarters just in time for a supper of spaghetti and meatballs with a beer to wash it down.

Barney held his glass of beer up. "I didn't know that they served beer on a Space Command ship."

"We're not in Space Command," I replied. "We're part of an android collective that was the Phoenix Project, an insane attempt to take over Earth and eventually, the entire galaxy."

"I didn't know how that project came out, old buddy. I was killed in a training accident."

"Do you know anything about a proto-human by the name of Tyco?"

"Yeah, he was the brains behind the Phoenix Project. The last I heard was that he went on a military expedition to attack the reptilian aliens' planet."

That statement hit me like a hot knife to the gut. All of a sudden, the reality of what has happened became much clearer. I decided not to rock the boat just yet, but I knew then and there that I was in for a really rough time. It was quite obvious that there was no Tyco android coalition. Our android coalition was to be his. I was just a pawn, a place marker for the actual take over. It was now my task to stop it from happening.