Legacy of the Argus

by E. R. Torre

  The Reverie emerged from the cover of the Hagios and a barrage of fusion cannon fire slammed against the pursuing alien crafts.

  The damage was serious enough that three of the ships slowed to take on the battleship while the remaining two continued moving toward the Cygnusa.

  “Reverie, take cover!” Inquisitor Raven yelled into his communicator.

  It was too late.

  The three slowing vessels unleashed fire upon the exposed battleship and her hull and port side were darkened with multiple hits. Her thrusters died and the lights along that side of the vessel shut off. Like the Hagios, she now floated helplessly in space.

  “Hades!” Inquisitor Raven said.

  Having taken care of the Reverie, the three alien vessels picked up speed and joined their companions. The group moved toward the Cygnusa.

  “We’re all that’s left!” Lieutenant Sanders said.

  The Cygnusa and her cargo made their way through clouds of twisted metal from exploded torpedoes and past the Helios Displacer.

  “Is our companion doing anything?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Has she responded to any of our messages?”

  “No sir.”

  “By the Gods,” Inquisitor Raven muttered. “Was any of this worth it?”

  The alien vessels neared the Cygnusa and fired.

  Every one of their shots was directed at the Cygnusa’s thrusters.

  Damage reports and emergency sirens blared within the bridge of the Cygnusa.

  “Shut those damn alerts off!” Inquisitor Raven yelled. “Status?”

  “We’ve lost twenty five percent of energy. Aft torpedoes are down along with fifty percent of the fusion cannons.”

  “They knew where to hit us,” Inquisitor Raven said. “What’s our position?”

  “We’ll be past Helios’ Moon in two minutes,” Lieutenant Sanders said.

  On the large view-screen behind her, the pursuing alien vessels moved closer still. They weren’t in any rush.

  “Bring the alien vessel near our hull,” Inquisitor Raven said and activated his communicator. “Chief Muses, how are our thrusters?”

  “Three quarters power,” Chief Muses said over the communicator.

  “Run them with all they’ve got,” Inquisitor Raven said.

  He licked his lips and addressed Lieutenant Sanders.

  “Begin evacuation of all non-essential personnel.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me,” Inquisitor Raven said. “Get in touch with anyone that’s left back there. Tell them we’ll use the Moon’s gravity and try to circle back around and toward Helios. If we make it, whoever’s still able needs to provide cover.”

  “Understood,” Lieutenant Sanders said. “Sending message.”

  “Good. The evacuations?”

  “Commencing,” Lieutenant Sanders said.

  She watched the numbers on a monitor. The first of the evacuee ships were loaded and, one by one, launched.

  “If I don’t get a chance to say it, I’m proud to have served with you,” Lieutenant Sanders said.

  “Likewise, Lieutenant.”

  He faced the others in the bridge.

  “That goes for all of you.”

  46

  The Prototype made a motion with his arms and the plants again moved.

  They extended outwards, like deadly darts, and swatted at the Heaven Flies. Their aim was deadly. In a matter of seconds, every insect in the garden was dead.

  “You act like a petulant child,” the Chameleon head said. “There was only one mechanical insect, Prototype, yet you killed all those creatures that did you absolutely no harm.”

  The Prototype walked to the Chameleon’s head. As he did, he heard the sounds of fusion blasts coming from just outside the garden gates.

  “Their fusion rifles sure do kick, don’t they?” the Chameleon head said. “Looks as if they used the information Vulcan gave them to make them more powerful against your shields. Imagine what they’ll do to you.”

  The Prototype’s face remained impassive. He said:

  “When they break in, I’ll walk past them and they won’t even know it.”

  The Prototype’s face changed. Wrinkles disappeared and hair grew darker. Abruptly, the changes stopped and the wrinkles and gray hair returned.

  “What did you…?” the Prototype said.

  “You think Saint Vulcan sent me here, to the seat of your power, without having a plan to stop you?”

  The Prototype ran his hands across his face. He tried to move the flesh manually and make the needed changes. But his face kept returning to its original form.

  “Saint Vulcan’s agents have been in Helios many times since she realized who you were. She set traps.”

  The Prototype initiated an internal scan of his system. He could feel a foreign body, a virus, inside him. It was likely brought in with the Chameleon unit and spread throughout the garden when that body was ripped apart.

  The virus could be combated and the Prototype could rid it from his system, but that would require time.

  Time he did not have.

  “What else did she leave?” the Prototype wondered.

  “There are no dangers worse than that of the unknown,” the Chameleon head replied.

  The Prototype flicked his wrist and the plants moved again.

  “I will return,” he said. “I will return to all these worlds. Now that I know Saint Vulcan lives, I will make sure our next encounter is the last.”

  “Do you want me to relay that message to her personally?” the Chameleon head said.

  A deep frown appeared on the Prototype’s face.

  The plants violently wrapped themselves around the Chameleon’s head. They pulled. Hard.

  The pressure increased until the head exploded in a grotesque burst of flesh, blood, and machinery.

  “If there’s anything at all left of you, tell Saint Vulcan I’ll see her in Hades,” the Prototype said.

  He turned away from the Chameleon’s gruesome remains and hurried to the other side of the garden.

  The energy field keeping him safe was rapidly disintegrating. Heat patches appeared and the metal doors began melting.

  At a corner of the garden, the plants pulled back and made room for the Prototype. He stepped into the empty space and, once he did, the plants wrapped themselves around his body and merged together. They created a shell around their master. The shell hardened until it turned to polished metal.

  Inside the newly formed shell, the Prototype watched. The doors leading into the garden were almost gone and the Inquisitors were only seconds from rushing in.

  They would not find a beautiful garden. Instead, the area looked as if it had exploded. The plants closest to the door turned a sickly gray. Saint Vulcan’s virus, whatever it was, was making its way inside.

  “I’ll see you rot as well,” the Prototype swore.

  The metal cocoon around him further compressed and changed its shape until it looked like a small spacecraft.

  Just as it finished its transformation, the door leading into the garden collapsed and a group of Inquisitors rushed into the garden.

  They were shocked by what they saw but quickly noticed the spacecraft. They lifted their fusion rifles and fired.

  They were too late.

  The spacecraft’s engines roared and the Prototype’s ship flew up and through the garden’s tinsel glass roof, shattering it as she rose into the heavens.

  47

  The alien crafts neared the Cygnusa.

  Their silent inhabitants locked their offensive systems on the vessel and the alien craft it was towing.

  The Cygnusa’s remaining fusion cannons fired relentlessly back at them, chipping away at their defensive systems and causing wild fluctuations in their internal energy readings.

  If they wanted to, the machine creatures could have destroyed both vessels.

  They could have done this a while ago.

  “Seventy
three percent of non-essential personnel are evacuated,” Lieutenant Sanders said. “The enemy vessels are ignoring the escape crafts.”

  “Chief Muses, how are our thrusters?” Inquisitor Raven asked.

  “We’re down to quarter power,” he said over the communicator. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be drifting very soon.”

  “Is there anything you can do?” Inquisitor Raven asked.

  “Sir…” Chief Muses began.

  “Understood,” Inquisitor Raven said. “Thank you, Carlos. For everything.”

  Inquisitor Raven eyes were upon the monitor displaying the pursing crafts. Their bows were lit up with hellfire energy and when unleashed, it would all end.

  Inquisitor Raven thought of his beloved wife, may she rest with the Gods, and of his sons, somewhere down on Helios, and hoped they still lived.

  “May they grow to be the men Holly prayed they would become,” Inquisitor Raven whispered.

  He silently recited a prayer for the living and followed it with a prayer for the dead.

  It was all he could do.

  The crew of the alien vessels received the message from their master.

  The Prototype was in the process of escaping Helios and ordered them back to Helios. They were to protect him as they left this system.

  They were to do this immediately.

  The machine creatures requested orders regarding the Cygnusa and the vessel it was towing.

  The orders were given.

  A blinding flare of light emerged from one of the alien vessel and leaped forward.

  It bridged the distance between attacker and victim and a burst of light lit up the heavens.

  Under the Cygnusa, Saint Vulcan’s vessel violently exploded. Shrapnel flew in all directions, some smashing against the Cygnusa’s underside.

  The Phaecian battleship shook wildly and began a slow spin.

  In the ship’s bridge, Inquisitor Raven gripped his seat. Several officers were tossed onto the floor.

  “Status?!” Inquisitor Raven yelled out.

  “We’re… we’re in one piece sir,” Lieutenant Sanders said. “The alien vessels fired upon the craft we were towing. She was blown apart.”

  “All that effort,” Inquisitor Raven muttered. “Chief Muses, can we stabilize the ship?”

  “I’m on it, sir!” Chief Muses replied.

  Directional thrusters came on and the ship’s spin slowed.

  Having destroyed Saint Vulcan’s ship, the alien vessels broke off pursuit and moved in the direction of Helios. Before Inquisitor Raven could ask why, Lieutenant Sanders said:

  “Sir, we’re getting strange reports from Helios.”

  “Now what?” Inquisitor Raven asked.

  “Please look at Monitor Twelve.”

  Despite all that occurred to this moment, the images from Helios’ Capitol proved incredibly shocking.

  Large, plant-like tendrils erupted from the ground along the Holy Square. Their bright metallic luster quickly turned to ash gray as they flayed about, smashing windows and ripping up structures around them. It was like the last violent twitch of a dying animal.

  “By the Gods,” Inquisitor Raven said.

  People fled while the Castle, the home of Overlord Emeritus, collapsed under the tendrils’ assault. Even as they destroyed the historic site, the vines and metal plants flattened and turned to dust.

  “Sir, monitor fifteen!” Lieutenant Sanders said.

  On it was a satellite view of the castle. Another alien spacecraft, this one much smaller than those which attacked the Cygnusa, emerged from the Castle gardens and rose up into the sky.

  “Early reports are it carried Overlord Emeritus. That he—”

  One of the central view-screens went blank and a woman appeared on it. Those who recognized her –almost everyone in the bridge– gasped at the sight.

  “People of Helios, the alien craft carries Overlord Emeritus,” the woman, Saint Vulcan, said. “As you know by now, he is not what he seemed. He is a machine, one that I’m ashamed to say I created. A machine I intend to destroy.”

  48

  Within his escape craft, the Prototype watched his five ships approach.

  He listened to Saint Vulcan’s final transmission and threat and examined all the information streaming in from every source at his disposal.

  The Prototype sensed a cloud of infected nano-probes in a stationary orbit around the Capital. They were rapidly approaching his escape craft.

  “You’re clever,” he said. “But so am I.”

  The Prototype’s vessel released its own cloud of nano-probes and ordered them to float around his ship. As the escape craft flew through Saint Vulcan’s trap, the nano-probe cloud insulated him, absorbing Saint Vulcan’s nano-probes while his ship switched direction. The turns the vessel made were abrupt and would have killed any human passengers. The Prototype found an opening in Saint Vulcan’s trap and flew through it and into deeper space.

  The craft did not slow while it approached the five alien craft. Its front end grew longer, sharper, until it resembled a spike and then a very long needle.

  Its speed increased and the escape ship slammed dead center into the nearest of the alien vessels, penetrating it and disappearing within.

  Once gone, all ships changed directions and sped up.

  They moved toward the Helios Displacer.

  The Prototype walked through a dark room and stopped before an equally black wall. With a flicker of his wrist, the wall became opaque.

  Before him was the darkness of outer space. Flashes of lights coming from both the Reverie and the nearly dead Hagios, along with tons of debris, lay between his vessels and the Helios Displacer.

  Well beyond the Displacer and drifting around Helios’ Moon was the Cygnusa.

  Of the three battleships, it was the one which suffered the least damage.

  “Inquisitor Raven,” the Prototype said.

  He replayed how the ship captured Saint Vulcan’s fighter and how, ultimately, his fighters allowed the Cygnusa to survive even as they destroyed Vulcan’s ship.

  Though he was forced to flee Helios space, he would know what happened here. He would know more than Saint Vulcan thought.

  It was time to regroup and plan the counter-attack.

  “What are they doing?” Inquisitor Raven asked.

  “They’ve lined up in a defensive position. It’s as if they’re expecting an attack.”

  “It won’t come from us,” Inquisitor Raven bitterly noted.

  Rescue ships flew from Helios and toward the Reverie, Hagios, Minoan, and Bastille while the many escape crafts launched from those vessels made their way to the planet.

  “Chief Muses, how long before we get back our thrusters?”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be delivering any miracles today,” Chief Muses said. “The entire system is a mess.”

  On the monitor, Chief Muses took a moment to see how his officers were doing. Their bodies were covered in sweat from the heavy work and stagnant air below while Chief Muses looked remarkably fresh.

  “I heard some of the transmissions,” he added. “Is it true that Overlord Emeritus is… what exactly is he?”

  “We’ll find out,” Inquisitor Raven said. “Keep me updated.”

  Inquisitor Raven faced Lieutenant Sanders.

  “The alien vessels are moving toward the Helios Displacer,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were retreating.”

  “Next time, we’ll really show them what we’re capable of,” Inquisitor Raven muttered.

  Minutes later, the Displacer’s interdimensional corridor came alive. The Prototype and his ships neared their exit from Helios space.

  “They had us, Lieutenant,” Inquisitor Raven said. “But I’ll be damned if you’re wrong. They are running away. Are they that scared of Saint Vulcan?”

  Lieutenant Sanders scanned through messages coming from Helios and the ships around her.

  “There’s no indication Saint
Vulcan has any other forces nearby.”

  “She did something to spook them,” Inquisitor Raven said.

  “Inquisitor Raven?” Chief Muses said of the communicator.

  “Yes Carlos?” Inquisitor Raven replied.

  “Sir, I know I just told you the engines were… well…”

  “What?”

  “I’m… I’m getting some very weird readings. I’ll forward you the information.”

  Inquisitor Raven looked at a side monitor.

  The power levels in the ship’s main batteries, damaged as they were from the alien vessels’ assault, now showed signs of improvement.

  “Chief Muses,” Inquisitor Raven said into the communicator. “You are a miracle worker!”

  “I’d gladly take the honors, Bill, but I can’t explain any of this,” Chief Muses said. “We’ve got a skeleton staff left here and what we’ve done is minimal. We didn’t touch the batteries. At all.”

  “What about the thrusters?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’ll be,” Chief Muses said. “I’m detecting minor improvements there, too. We’re getting back some of the directional thrusters. This shouldn’t be happening.”

  “Figure out what’s going on,” Inquisitor Raven said. “At this point I welcome any miracles but I want answers.”

  “Yes sir,” Chief Muses replied.

  Inquisitor Raven shut the communicator down and addressed Lieutenant Sanders.

  “Use whatever propulsion we have available to slow us down.”

  49

  Within the alien vessel, the Prototype noted the minor changes in the Cygnusa’s flight path.

  Given the damage the ship incurred, this should not be happening.

  The Prototype switched his focus to the many escape craft flying past his ships and to the safety of Helios. The crafts came from the battleships, cruisers, and the Helios Displacer.

  A few quick energy bursts and thousands would die.

  Eliminating them was tempting, but the Prototype resisted doing so.

  Saint Vulcan surely had other traps in and around Helios. Expending his ships’ energy and time on crushing these few insects might delay him just long enough to set those traps off.