"Mother's going to hurt you for this."

The creature that held Kyle calmly sat him down and stepped back, holstering his weapon. The alien pulled out a long, wicked knife from the folds of its tattered uniform.

Kyle became silent.

"Good thing our translators work with you, kid. You know, you're the first humans we've come across.

Alive, that is."

"What're you going to do with us?" Becky stared defiantly back at the alien leader as Jaric was dropped on the ground beside her.

The children faced five of the creatures while six others continued to search the tall gra.s.s. The creaturewith the long knife leaned closer until his dark goggles were inches from Becky's face.

"We're going to eat you, little one. That's what life is, 'Eat or be eaten.'"

The others joined in with laughter while the children drew back in terror.

"Now, now. We'll do it quick like. See, it's not that we hate you, or dislike you. It's just the way things are. Understand?"

Becky began whimpering as lightning lit the entire sky above them. Almost immediately, the blinding flash was followed by the powerful rumbling of thunder. The children felt the oppressive closeness of the storm as they shuddered under the blank gaze of the strange aliens. Overhead, through a small opening in the dark clouds, the lone sun suddenly spotlighted the unfolding tragedy in a stark beam of light.

The deep rumbling sound began to fade as the first alien brought his knife closer.

Mother had timed the thunder and a.n.a.lyzed its audio signature. She quickly reconfigured the twin engines and transferred power.

She had a plan of action.

Now, amazingly, almost one hundred percent of her processing was focused on this one, single task.

Her main guns silently slid out of her steel body as well as the small blaster cannons under her armored belly. In fact, she even loaded her torpedoes, though she was not really sure what logic initiated that action. All she knew was that every weapon system she possessed was now armed, and every ounce of power she contained was ready. And she was prepared to use every one of them.

She now only had to wait. But the microseconds seemed to last an eternity. She listened and hoped her children could stay alive just a little while longer.

"Mother's going to be real mad if you don't stop now," Kyle snarled.

"Yeah, better not mess with Mother," Jaric added.

"Who's this mother, kid? We've already scanned your ship and there's no life forms inside. So, who's this mother?"

"Maybe she's something we can eat?" Suggested a second alien.

The alien next to Kyle pulled out his own curved blade.

"This one's getting on my nerves. I think I'll slit his throat first."

With a rush of movement, he grabbed Kyle and pulled him up level with his black goggles.

Mother recognized the audio signature of the blade being pulled from its sheath.

Each and every part of her electronic being screamed to move, but her sensors told her that in just a few more milliseconds....

Becky screamed. The aliens instinctively put their hands up to cover the large ears protruding from under their helmets.

"Enough! Do it!" Screamed the leader as a flash of lightning illuminated the entire sky.

Becky screamed again.

The alien holding Kyle jerked the boy's head back as he brought his blade up to his soft throat.

The alien didn't notice that the rolling sound of thunder was not fading like the first one. He smiled with an evil leer down at the frightened child, but just as he moved to give the fatal stroke, his hand became deathly still. A large shadow darkened him. The dark shadow suddenly covered everyone on the small hillside as it blotted out the sun peeping between the growing thunderheads.

Slowly, with fearful hesitation, they all looked up to see what it was that had covered the bright sunshine.

Mother gunned them down, quickly and efficiently, in a volley of blaster fire. She cut the three aliens nearest her children completely in half. Kyle fell against the severed body of his captor and rolled away screaming.

Mother had decided to overkill these particular aliens that had physical contact with her children-to kill them as quickly as possible, before they could react.

The rest she simply killed.

Within seconds, it was over.

Mother studied these new creatures intensely. She discovered their ship before the next sunrise and disabled it. Then she instructed Fixer7 to connect himself into the ship's main computer so she could learn who these beings were, and more importantly, where they had come from and how they had escaped the T'kaan.

The stored data showed that the race Casarn, as they called themselves, originated closer to the galactic center. The relentless onslaught of the T'kaan had destroyed their civilization long ago.

The remnants of the race Casarn had stagnated and become scavengers. They lurked at the edge of each new conquest as the T'kaan continued their Eternal War.

For weeks afterward, Mother was haunted by an odd buzzing in her near-term memories. First, by the fact that she was not the biological mother of these human children even though they now looked to her as such, but even more so by the fact she had almost failed in her self-sworn duty to protect the children.

She was afraid to fail.

She pondered this disturbing feeling for a long time, a.n.a.lyzing it from every angle with her processing powers. It made her feel weak and helpless inside. She calculated the innumerable ways she could have improved her actions and prevented the danger the children had just experienced.

But in the end, the question for which she sought an answer boiled down to one that eluded her no matter how intensely she worked for the solution-she simply wondered what areal mother would have done. Months pa.s.sed.

Chapter Seven.

Kyle and Jaricsneaked past the last optic and made their way toward the rear of the empty storage bay.

As the two figures settled into the shadowy darkness of this long unused section of the ship, quietness filled the air between them. Not a word was spoken for many long minutes. The two young boys enjoyed this private peace away from the constant vigilance of Mother.

"What's the deal, Big K?" Jaric finally whispered, breaking the quietness.

"I don't know, man." Kyle shrugged. "I just felt like getting away from everybody. To be alone with my thoughts."

Jaric smiled and leaned back against the hard metal bulkhead. "This has always been our little place, eh?"

Kyle chuckled. "Yeah. Not many places where Mother isn't. Or Becky. Or one of the robots."

"That's right," Jaric yawned sleepily. Settling himself back more comfortably, it looked as though he might actually go to sleep. He spoke with his eyes still closed. "Ain't nothing bothering you, is there?"

"No." Kyle sat down and he made himself comfortable in the opposite corner from Jaric. "I just wanted to get away from everything for a few minutes."

The silence grew again, filling the large empty room. But it was not a silence of peace.

"You're lyin'." Jaric said.

Kyle chuckled, a low, amused laughter at first. It quickly grew until his laughter reverberated throughout the emptiness.

The sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. But the laughter died away slowly, echoing eerily in a circle around their heads until it was a whisper-and then no more.

"Yeah, I'm lying." Kyle said.

"Go on, talk to me. That's what I'm here for." Jaric opened his eyes and watched Kyle carefully. Kyle's glanced up. "I'm tired of it, Jaric. I'm just tired of it."

"What?"

Kyle shrugged. "I don't know. Tired of life. Tired of this life anyway."

Jaric sat up. "I know. We don't have much of a life, do we. Always on our never-ending search. Always fighting this never-ending war." He looked up at the blank metal ceiling. "This ain't no normal life."

"Nope. I just want off sometime, you know. I just want off." Kyle looked down.

"Becky feels like that, too, sometimes. She just handles it differently," Jaric said.

"She leans on Mother," Kyle agreed.

"Yeah, she talks to her. Pours her heart out. I'm glad she can do that." Jaric closed his eyes again.

"I used to be able to do that with Mother," Kyle said.

Jaric shook his head slowly from side to side. "I still do it from time to time. Mother, well, Mother knows a lot. She's good."

"Mother is an advanced warship," Kyle began. "She's a head-knockin', take-no-prisoners warship.

And she's AI." He looked down again at the floor. "She's alright."

"Hey, man. Mother is more than that. She's alive. She might be a machine, but she's learning what it's like to be a real, living, thinking being." Jaric stared at the forlorn figure across the darkened room. "You can still talk to her, Kyle. Do it. It'll help."

"I don't want to anymore. We're sixteen now, Jaric. We're men. Becky's fourteen, she's almost grown, too."

"You're right." But Jaric nodded his head hesitantly.

Silence answered once again for long minutes, and now Kyle's somber mood began to infect Jaric's normally optimistic nature.

"Do you remember yourreal mother, Kyle?" Jaric did not bother to look up.

Kyle shifted uncomfortably. He screwed his face into a mixture of fleeting emotions as his thoughts wandered. "Yeah, a little bit. But I don't remember my dad, or when I try to picture him in my head, its just an out of focus picture. He was always gone." Kyle began inspecting his hands as if they suddenly needed washing. "Then he died."

"Everybody lost someone in that stupid war," Jaric sighed. He took both hands and rubbed his eyes as if something were irritating them.

"Even Mother." Kyle said quickly, trying to ignore his friend's tears. "Her sister ship was destroyed at the battle of Hurricane Nebula." Kyle smiled into his hands. "Yeah, I heard the 'A' ship took out three whole T'kaan squadrons, a couple of frigates and even a cruiser there. Before it went down." The two boys nodded appreciatively.

"I remember my dad was happy that day. And Rita. That was one of the few human victories the last year of the war," Jaric smiled. But the smile evaporated with a shake of his head. "They were sad, too.

They said if Admiral Jung hadn't pushed so hard-that things might've been different. For everybody."

Kyle cleared his throat as he clenched his eyes shut a moment.

Jaric waited.

"The final victory," Kyle said in a low whisper.

"Till us, buddy. And Mother. We've been beatin' them right and left since Earth got whacked," Jaric said proudly.

Kyle chuckled weakly. "Do you remember your real mom?"

"No, I don't. It makes me sad sometimes. She died at one of the early battles. But I do remember Dad.

I'll never forget him." Jaric watched Kyle.

"It's a tough life," Kyle said. His inner melancholy washed over his face anew.

"C'mon, Kyle. Tell me what's really bothering you."

With bowed head, Kyle spoke. "Sometimes I think we're not going to find anybody."

Now the silence became a thick, suffocating blanket. Jaric's breathing became quick and shallow as his mind raced with the unthinkable. He felt the empty room begin to spin slowly.

But Kyle remained motionless, unchanged.

It seemed an eternity before Jaric could find his voice, could get his breathing almost normal. He started to speak, coughed, but finally his words came. "That's not right, man. We're going to find somebody.

We've got to find them."

Kyle raised his head and stared at him. He saw the fear in his friend's eyes, the raw panic. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just being stupid. Don't listen to me, I'm just stupid."

"There were over seventy planets, man. Somebody, somewhere, had to escape." Jaric took a deep breath. "We did."

"Sure." But Kyle's tone belied his answer.

This time the silence was unbearable as the seconds dragged on.