The Red Queen by Gibson Morales Read Free Book Online

destination. He just couldn’t shake the notion of the Red Queen.
    Finally, it dawned on him that the Oras Union was in the same situation as Alice in the race with the Red Queen. No matter the extent they developed their weapons and technology, they were, at most, barely keeping up with the Crawlers.
    On his living room couch, he pulled up his MobileScreen. While it loaded, he wondered why Agliese had even bothered visiting the Sky Barge Tavern. In terms of his search for the truth, he’d already hit a dead end at the Maester Citadel, hadn’t he? He didn’t need a Fleet Services rep to tell him to give it up. They must’ve been afraid he’d discover another way to solve the mystery.
    He scrolled through the MobileScreen programs to a digital history book. He knew all about the specific battles of the past five hundred years, in which humanity valiantly endured onslaught after onslaught of Crawlers, fighting them back enough to survive. But never to win. Many scientists believed that the previous civilizations, the ones that came before the history books, may have suffered the same fate, based on various ruins, like the ones his wife excavated.
    A sinister thought crept into his mind. On the surface, history showed that time and time again heroic generals made last stands that allowed humanity to live. Given the advanced technology the Crawlers had demonstrated with the Haze, however, Zubren realized: it wasn’t that humanity had fought back the Crawlers. The Crawlers never pursued total elimination of humanity. Like they were choosing not to finish off Oras.
    A sweeping cold washed over him as he fidgeted with the lining of a pillow. Everything about the Crawler War was too artificial. Too perfectly tit for tat. Like a game. It bore all the telltale signs of being orchestrated. Zubren grimaced. Orchestrating an entire war for hundreds of years though? He tried to open to the possibility, but it was outright ludicrous.
    Breathing in deeply, he stood up, made motions with his arm to get the blood flowing to his head, and paced around the living room. Calm down and reconsider, he told himself. The pressure and his overthinking had deluded him. The last few months had doubtless exacted their toll on him and he was probably just trying to find meaning among meaningless details. As a resolution to Sector 20’s destruction, the failed Haze assault, Gilm’s death. Really, being delusional wasn’t uncommon. As an unconscious defense mechanism, many people tended to believe there was a genuine hope to win the Crawler War. It was just that he’d rejected the natural, logical defense mechanism, so his mind had created this new one.
    Either that or he really had stumbled onto a dark truth, a truth so terrible he was subconsciously convincing himself it was a delusion as a defense mechanism. Zubren stared blankly at his TV. Thinking something was a defense mechanism as a defense mechanism. Wrapping his brain around that hurt. It boiled down to what he chose. Was there really a reason behind why they could never defeat the Crawlers or was he losing it?
    Throwing into the equation the fact that the Maesters were conscious of a sacred truth in the Book of Makori didn’t help settle him. If he was coming to the final door in this mystery, it must’ve dealt with the truth only Elite Maesters knew.
    Zubren's gaze fell to the MobileScreen. There was one unifying thread connecting all of this. Fleet Services. No one knew when the Crawler War started, but for as long as it existed, so did Fleet Services. A coincidence?
    Zubren shut off the MobileScreen and walked towards his bedroom. Only he didn’t intend to sleep.
    * * *
    His watch beeped to two a.m., but the city hummed with the engines of patrol vehicles and field operators. Dark as it was, Zubren stayed behind every fence or wall he could find. He had little doubt the field operators owned night-vision goggles. They would as good as imprison him, pilot or not, for breaking the