Free Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance) by Doug Hoffman

Bear dropped back to a four legged stance and turned to the two smaller bears. “Hello, Isbjørn, how have you been?” he said to his one time mate. “You’re still looking good, babe.”
     
    Station House, Parker’s Station
    The assembled group of scientists and ship’s officers were just finishing an evening’s repast, highlighted by local beef, salad with avocados and fresh cantaloupe with vanilla ice cream for desert. As coffee and brandy were being served the Captain stood at the head of the table and waited quietly for the group’s attention. The crowd, highly animated during the course of the meal, quickly fell silent.
    “Once again, I would like to say how pleased we are that all of you could come tonight,” Jack began. “First, I would like to thank Maria for preparing this wonderful meal for us and Lt. McKennitt for thoughtfully fetching the fresh fruit from Adelaide.” There was a murmur of agreement from the seated diners. “Earlier, I introduced the founder of this project and the driving force behind the construction of the Peggy Sue, Mr. TK Parker. TK, is there anything you would like to say before I begin?”
    “Naw son, you go ahead,” the old man said, seated in his electric wheelchair at the far end of the table. “I’d only confuse everyone if I tried to explain the situation.”
    “As you wish, Sir,” Jack replied. After a brief pause to collect his thoughts he continued. “I’m going to start with the genesis of this project. It starts in the wastelands of eastern Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980s. A young Texan, prospecting for petrochemical deposits in the rocky desert of the empty quarter came across a man, half crazed by Sun and thirst, crawling along a wadi. After getting the man under cover and giving him some water, he proceeded to tell the strangest story.”
    “It seems that the man was an archaeologist, who had been investigating a dig somewhere in the surrounding mountains. According to the young scientist, he and his colleague had discovered a strange, ancient artifact in a mountain side cave. A huge structure with holographic writing etched into its metallic surface. Having devised a way to open the structure, the two archaeologists were accosted by Bedouins before they could unlock their find. The senior investigator was shot and presumably killed, but the younger man managed to elude the bandits by entering the structure at the last second.
    “After spending an indeterminate amount of time inside the alien structure, the surviving archaeologist was expelled miles from the site of the dig. He proceeded to tell his rescuer a tale of strange visions concerning an interstellar war more than four million years ago, aliens landing on Earth and a desperate gamble by the original inhabitants of the structure, which was actually a starship.”
    This last statement caused a ripple of low conversation among the diners. Jack paused to take a sip of water, then continued.
    “It would be logical to pass off the man’s story as the Sun addled ravings of someone lucky to escape death in the desert. However, he had with him physical evidence that his story was not fantasy. Wrapped in the tatters of his jacket was a sizable object, a clump of amber-like material that he claimed was the memory of the ship’s computer. This clump of translucent golden stuff supposedly contained the story of why aliens landed on our planet and why they took the actions they did.”
    “As the story was told, the ship’s computer—an Artificial Intelligence, an actual sentient being—was the only one left of the ship’s crew. It had been left by its organic companions with a mission to accomplish. The ship and its crew were involved in a great conflict, an interstellar war involving many different lifeforms. Evidently there were two sides in this conflict, a loose alliance of creatures from nearby star systems and an opposing force commanded by creatures referred to only as the ‘dark ones’.” With