“When this is over, maybe I’ll have you teach a course on New Physics at Annapolis. I’m sure they’ll think you’re a hoot.”
“Not bloody likely, Christopher Robin. Some things I cannot teach your kind. You are no less than three paradigm shifts from fully understanding what I know. Two, rather, now that you have glimpsed the truth about the relationship between the Mind and the Starless Path.”
“That’s not very helpful, Pooh.”
“Your kind will get there. If you survive the current crisis.”
Lisbeth sighed. It was up to the techies, and some trial-and-error, to see if their current force fields could be rejigged to keep out Warplings. If they couldn’t, it was going to be a short fight. All American ships would have a handful of tachyon-rated personnel aboard, and those might be enough to fight off an evil spirit boarding party, but the Gimps would get hosed in short order, unless Miranda and his army of brainiacs could come up with an engineering solution in the time available.
If they don’t, we’ll have to think of a way to take out an army of NSSs before they drop by our universe. As in, me and my four Death Heads, with a little help from two alien ghosts.
Funny thing was, those weren’t the worst odds she’d beat. Didn’t mean she’d come out on top this time, of course. All winning streaks came to an end.
* * *
The Black Fleet arrived at their final destination. It didn’t come alone.
From twelve light-hours out, the heart of the Galactic Imperium looked like any other planetary system. It amused Kerensky to realize how frail and invisible the work of mortals was, when viewed from a distance. Six thousand years of Starfarer labors couldn’t be spotted with the naked eye at this remove. And six thousand years after his Black Ships finished their terrible work, nothing would remain to be detectable even at close range. Once they were rendered lifeless, cities would crumble into dust, orbital facilities would plummet back to the ground, and asteroid bases would be battered into shapeless lumps of matter, indistinguishable from other space debris.
So ephemeral. Pointless, and little better than the Stone Age primitives that comprise most intelligent species of the galaxy.
The depths of his own contempt, not only for his enemies but for his own people, surprised him a little. The part of him that still could analyze information dispassionately understood those feelings weren’t his own. His human side was shrinking steadily. Soon it would be gone.
While his tactical officers analyzed a long-rage sensor scan of the system, Kerensky examined the disposition of his fleet. Fifty-nine vessels – only ten of them warships – barely deserved to be called a ‘fleet.’ The Odin remained a formidable vessel in its own right, and the rest of his formation was, pound by pound, as deadly as anything else in the universe, but even with their ability to ghost those ships didn’t have the firepower to defeat any major space formation. Luckily, they didn’t have to. They had been joined on emergence by seven vast shapes. Manifested Warplings, each more powerful than a dreadnought even if one only counted their physical capabilities, which formed only the tip of the iceberg.
The nebulous forms held station at a noticeable remove from his ships. They might be allies, but nobody wanted them nearby. Even the normal separation between FTL ships felt a little too close for comfort. Even the altered humans among his crew did not enjoy looking at them. Best to just see them as blank icons on tactical maps. That made it easier to pretend they were something that belonged in this universe.
Kerensky forced himself to take a good look. The things floating near the fleet were larger than the ones he’d summoned at Vahan System. Their forms appeared to be in constant flux, portions of their kilometer-long bodies vanishing from sight and new sections appearing from nowhere, much like heat mirages, and it was hard to look at them for long before nausea and a feverish trance set in. Like Kerensky’s ships, the Warplings were dark, but in their case their inky blackness seemed to have depth, as if their outlines contained some endless chasm. They were deadlier than the lesser monstrosities he’d summoned before: these beings could lash at their victims’ minds and wipe out entire ship crews without touching them.
Many more awaited on the other side, preparing to cross over once the conditions were right. The vast majority of those weren’t powerful enough to craft a material body for themselves, but would be happy enough to rewrite a hapless sophont’s neural network to serve as a temporary home. The weakest and most numerous among them could only stay long enough to kill, to jump from one victim to the next for a few brief seconds, feasting on the horror and agony they inflicted before being forced back to the other side. Those beings were nowhere near as fearsome as the great beasts hovering in space, but their actions would be decisive. Their kind had inflicted most casualties at Vahan, turning dozens of ships into lifeless derelicts in a matter of seconds.
Ten warships, seven monsters, and an invisible host of murderous spirits. That should be enough, for as long as the monsters lasted and the spirits could be brought over.
Manifested Warplings required enormous amounts of power to remain in the physical realm. The initial sacrifices at Sokolov had created the conditions for their initial embodiment, and the three hundred million he’d slaughtered at Vahan had provided the necessary power for another summoning. The Prophet had informed him that the entities wouldn’t last for more than a few hours unless more nourishment was provided. The disembodied Psychovores were individually ‘cheaper’ but in aggregate would require even more power. At Vahan, the enemy had unwittingly helped to transfer those entities over, by increasing the size and depth of his warp signatures. He should be able to use them on the enemy fleet. After that, Primus System’s billions would be more than enough to empower them, and many others. Perhaps even the far greater entity that ruled them all.
Kerensky gritted his teeth. He’d encountered the leader of the Host that followed his fleet only once. It’d appeared to him in the guise of a human, a morbidly-obese man with white hair and an arrogant expression, but the entity beneath had been so awe-inspiring it made the lesser being now using the Prophet as its meat-puppet look tame by comparison. The brief meeting had left the admiral shaken to his core. Even now that he was no longer a mere human, he was beginning to understand his place in the new order of things, and it wasn’t very impressive at all.
“Don’t fret, Nikolai. Soon all your enemies will be gone.”
Kerensky turned to the familiar, hated figure. The Prophet had not been invited to the CIC, and the admiral wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was a mental image or if Dhukai had been allowed in by the security detachment watching the fleet bridge. For all he knew, the Warpling-possessed bastard had simply transported himself there. There’d been rumors that the spiritual leader of the Black Fleet could perform warp jumps without the need for catapults or starships. He idly wondered if he would one day learn that trick.
Assuming I don’t outlive my usefulness after this battle is over. Despite his efforts to guard his thoughts, the Prophet’s widening smile told him he’d been overheard.
“You will always have a place with us, as long as you remain willing to cooperate.”
That might even be true, but he suspected that once enough of those creatures manifested themselves, humans would become mere servants, or even slaves. There was enough humanity left in him to care about that, but not enough to care greatly. It was easier to let things unfold. Once you started an avalanche or a great forest fire, the time for action was over and you became a mere spectator for what followed. He hadn’t reached that point yet, but it was getting closer.
“Sir, some of the ships around Primus-Three have American signatures!”
Kerensky turned his attention to the tactical display, where identified enemy vessels were listed by class and configuration. Sure enough, there were about fifty US Navy warships in orbit around the Imperium’s capital. He knew many of them: the USS Thermopylae had been Third Fleet’s flagship, and many of the other ships
had been in that formation. IFF transponders and the sensor scans confirmed it. The Navy had joined forces with the very enemies the Black Ships had sacrificed everything to stop.
Betrayal. The shock was enough to awaken his human side. He couldn’t believe the US government would join forces with the Imperium. With the aliens who mere months before had been about to render humanity extinct. Rage blinded him; amidst the red haze he heard a chorus of animalistic growls coming from the minds of everyone aboard. It became impossible to tell whether the anger was his own, or part of the shared group-think.
“Traitors.”
To be disavowed, outlawed even, he could understand. But to find fellow humans fighting alongside their enemies went beyond the pale.
“Worse than that, Nikolai,” the Prophet whispered in his ear. “They want you dead because they fear your strength. They will court extinction rather than owe their lives to you.”
The waves of fury coming from every crewmember in the fleet made rational thought almost impossible, but Kerensky managed – barely – to suppress the urge to order an immediate attack on the American fleet. Before he committed his forces, he needed to learn as much as he could about the enemy. If he failed, humanity was doomed. Watching his country make common cause with her executioners made the stakes clear enough. He forced himself to watch the passive sensors’ readouts, data that was several hours old but which might prove vital in the battle ahead.
“Some of the US ships are Lamprey designs,” he noted out loud, using both his regular voice as well as his mind. The professional demeanor he projected helped restore calm among the rest of his people. The anger was still there, but they wouldn’t let their feelings interfere with their jobs.
“That is correct, sir. Converted models, with warp shield attachments and some sort of armor enhancement, also present in the American-made ships.”
“Interesting.”
He’d read files about new ship systems using technologies seized at Xanadu. Third Fleet, being closest to recently-conquered system, would have gotten them first. They were going to be tough nuts to crack. And dealing with them would allow the Imperium to pile on. The Gimps had another capital ship fleet in the system, at least as powerful as the one he’d obliterated at Vahan. Between them and the Americans, they had more than enough firepower to destroy him. Even warp-ghosting wouldn’t protect the Black Ships forever, and they lacked the firepower to destroy their enemies.
And they’ve grounded the Gimps’ STL fighters, now that they know their ‘disruptors’ will only help open their way for our allies. Which means we’re going to need another way to bring them over.
Fortunately, he knew just how to do it. The method would send a few million aliens to hell a little sooner, but wouldn’t change anything otherwise. By the time the Black Fleet left Primus, none of the system’s current forty-three billion inhabitants would be alive to see it.
The Prophet’s smile told Kerensky his thoughts had been read loud and clear.
Sixteen
“Warp emergences! Fifteen of them at one light-second. Fifty inside Primus-Two’s atmosphere!”
“Activate GHOSTBUSTER,” Admiral Sondra Givens ordered. “Main fleet elements, fire at will.”
The fifty atmospheric transits would be the Black Fleet’s fighter forces, configured to slaughter civilians with Mind-Killers. GHOSTBUSTER would hopefully deal with them before they could do too much damage. The new force field configurations her miracle workers had devised could only protect a fraction of the people on the ground. There had been only enough time to make the required modifications on the space and orbital defenses, and a few ground installations. It was up to her own fighters and the Death Heads to protect the rest of the civilians. Sondra wished the fighter and gunship jocks the best of luck and concentrated on the fleet action.
Fifteen emergences. Kerensky was only supposed to have ten ships, one of them a converted freighter turned into makeshift carrier. There was only one probable answer, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
Eight of the vessels that hung on the threshold of warp were former American warships. The other seven weren’t ships of any kind.
Can’t be, her mind gibbered. Even after reading the reports from the Battle of Vahan, she found it hard to believe what she was seeing. The black blobs emerging into real space were real, however, real enough to be detected by her sensors, to generate a multitude of emissions in dozens of spectra, and to make her want to claw her eyes out. And they weren’t alone. Even though they couldn’t be seen or detected by the naked eye or any mundane sensor system, there was a flickering on her force fields that told her what her t-wave capable personnel already knew. A horde of disembodied Null-Space Sophonts emerged from those warp openings, leapt towards her ships – and were stopped by their re-attuned force fields. As long as those shields held, Warplings couldn’t play havoc with her spacers’ minds. But when they failed, as force fields invariably did in combat….
We’ll just have to kill ‘em all before that happens.
Out loud: “Engage all contacts!”
By sheer chance, the Thermopylae’s target ‘basket’ included one of the writhing shadowy things that had invaded her universe. Training overcame shock and horror, and the dreadnought blasted away at the entity – designated, somewhat erroneously, as Sierra Eleven – with a full spread from its main guns. High-intensity grav beams tore into the dark substance – flesh? – of the creature. No force fields or warp shields protected them, but even though the target seemed to recoil from the impacts, it wasn’t torn apart. Nothing made of flesh – or stone or steel, for that matter – should have survived exposure to those energies, but the monster did. They had wounded it, but it wasn’t dead yet.
“We’re detecting warp fluctuations from Sierra-Eleven. It – ”
An impossibly-wide stream of white-hot energy poured forth from somewhere inside the entity. All sensor screens went blank and Thermopylae was buffeted with enough force to rattle everyone inside like dice in a bucket. Sondra was thrown against the five-point harness holding her to the command chair. Several bridge crewmembers who’d been on their feet for one reason or another were tossed against the nearest object or bulkhead with bone-crushing force. It took a lot to overwhelm momentum baffles, but the beast had managed it.
“Some sort of spacetime fluctuation,” the Tactical Officer reported, wiping blood from his lip, which he’d bitten through during the impact. “Very much like a graviton beam.”
A warp-based weapon of some sort. Powerful enough to wash over warp shields and smash through force fields and armor. The flagship had taken some damage; her cursory check showed several hull sensors and weapon turrets had been scoured clean. Thirty-seven spacers were dead, and fifty-three badly injured. The dreadnought’s captain was still fighting the ship, though, and that was all that mattered. Sondra let him do his job while she concentrated on hers.
Tactical displays came back online, and showed Sierra-Eleven was coming apart under the relentless hammering of dozens of gun batteries. A squadron of Imperium ships and two orbital fortresses were adding their firepower to the mix, and the monster, incredibly tough as it was, still remained limited to some physical constraints. Whatever it was made of couldn’t withstand continuous exposure to high-energy attacks. Gravitons and plasma appeared to have the most effect, and luckily those were the most common power sources for heavy anti-ship weapons.
Or perhaps luck had nothing to do with it, she considered as the Warpling fired its own weapon, this time at an Imperium superdreadnought. Its multi-megaton mass reeled under the impact. Maybe the Elder Races learned those were the weapons of choice when dealing with those entities, and passed the knowledge along to their descendants.
Pointless speculation, of course. She watched the giant space monster – somebody in her staff would come up with a proper designation to use in the after-action report – seem to fold into itself and disappear in the flashing multicolor display that accompanied warp even
ts. Destroyed, or merely forced to flee? No way to know. The important thing was that the manifested Warpling was gone. It had taken about as much pounding as a capital ship to take it down, but down it was, and while it damaged three ships before being banished, it hadn’t destroyed any. Three others were gone as well, but they’d done better, taking five ships – one of them an American vessel – with them. One of the damaged vessels had stopped responding. The Imperium super-dread had lost its shields for a few seconds too long – now it was only crewed by the dead, insane or possessed. Sondra barely suppressed a shudder.
The Black Ships still stood, protected inside warp space. It would take hours of steady pounding to get through them in their current state. And if their fighters succeeded in feeding the Warplings more victims, those seven monsters would only be the first of many.
I never thought I’d end my career fighting giant space monsters.
A few command bridge spacers looked up when they heard her chuckle, then turned back to their jobs, hoping the Old Woman hadn’t lost it.
* * *
Lieutenant Gus Chandler basked in slaughter like some pagan god.
Not too long ago, he’d been terrified of the Foos, the monsters that lurked in warp space. He’d watched them kill his friends, had been chased by them, and almost gotten caught a few times. His own personal demon, the Bogeyman Under the Bed, had been the worst. The idea of what the Bogey could do to him still made him shudder, even now that he no longer had to fear him. The old saying had turned out to be right: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The Bogeyman was now his copilot.
The Foos had been willing to make a deal with Gus and his fellow fighter pilots. They ended up doing the same with Admiral Kerensky and a bunch of ships from Seventh Fleet. They’d had to leave the Navy, though, something that still bothered him when he thought about it. That didn’t happen very often, though. At the moment, all he felt was a mixture of joy and rage.
Now that he and the Bogeyman were fully linked, he got high on killing. He could feel the monster inside him purring like a cat while he turned on his fighter’s Mind-Killers and sent hundreds of thousands of Gimps straight to Hell. The aliens’ souls were absorbed by the Warplings surrounding his Black Eagle, with Bogey taking the lion’s share.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 147