Black Swarm

by Ivan Kal

  The ten Juggernauts had exited the access point and annihilated the defenses protecting it. The Josanti League might not be able to use the points, but they did know about them and they protected them as weak points in their systems. According to the AI, this system had become a shipbuilding hub of the Josanti League long before they discovered the access point, and afterward they didn’t see the need to move their shipbuilding facilities elsewhere. After all, the access point had been inactive for a long time.

  It was not a coincidence that there was an access point in this system, just like it was not a coincidence that the Josanti League had chosen this system to be their shipbuilding hub. Long ago the People had done the same, as the system was extremely rich and suitable for such a purpose. It had two stars, a red supergiant and a blue main-sequence star, several dozen planets, massive asteroid fields, and a small black hole on the outskirts of the system. It had once, long ago, been a main shipbuilding hub of the People—until the first incarnation of the AI had wiped it clean with its Swarm. Now they would take the system and convert it to a base of operations, as it was very suitable to their needs.

  The Josanti League had a large presence in the system, with massive rings surrounding several of the system’s gas giants. Others were speckled with harvesting stations, and many of the mineral-rich planets were covered with the mining operations, as were many of the asteroid fields. There were numerous defenses as well; this was clearly an important system for the Josanti League. With several fleets being present to defend it, the battle had already been raging for weeks.

  Doranis had brought almost half of his entire force here, more than two million ships, and had overwhelmed the principal defenders quickly—but the system was so large that the battle was still raging.

  He was not here just to do damage and then leave. He was here to completely destroy everything in the system.

  There were now hundreds of smaller battles raging all over as isolated pockets of the Josanti League still fought to defend their yards, and as the reinforcements arrived in a steady stream from other systems and joined the fight. It would not be enough in the end. His Created were even now assaulting the planets, wiping out the people working in the mines and those hiding away. Doranis wanted to take the opportunity to harvest as much bio matter as he could to bolster the ranks of his Created. Loranis was doing the same in secret out in the rim, but reinforcements from her would not be ready for a while. She was both growing the Created as well as crafting new ships for all of them.

  Seeing the large ships of Axull Darr’s children had given them new ideas, and she was experimenting with building newer and better versions of the Juggernauts.

  Doranis’ attention shifted to a large moon orbiting a gas giant. It had a massive defensive cannon placed on it, which prevented his forces from getting closer enough to take it down. It was actually a fairly impressive weapon: it fired a beam of charged exotic particles that reacted violently once they hit anything with mass. The greater the mass, the more damage it did. It had a great range; he had already lost several bioships to it, and it had even managed to injure one of his Juggernauts.

  Seeing the need to take care of it quickly, as he could already see the Josanti League attempting to reach and establish a safe zone around the moon that harbored it, Doranis stood from his seat and allowed himself to enter the Sha state. He cast his mind across the system and then pulled the space between himself and his destination, bending it and then pushing his body through. He appeared on the moon, looking at the massive cannon stretching far above him. He walked slowly toward the base of the cannon, a large building built into the rock. He could have, of course, destroyed the cannon without needing to get close to it, but he was becoming somewhat bored. It had been a long time since he had fought himself, and now with the existence of those who were capable of matching the Enlightened, he needed to sharpen his skills.

  Doranis used his telepathy to scan the building and find out just how many lifeforms there were inside, and nearly winced. The attack he had survived from the being known as Lurker of the Depths still left its echoes, even though he had healed most of the damage. It was not a large concern, and he was not really weakened—he was only angered that he had allowed someone to trick and hurt him like that.

  He marked every lifeform in his mental map of the place. He reached the wall of the building unopposed. Even if they had sensors that could detect things in their surroundings, they wouldn’t have seen him. Doranis gathered his power before placing a shield around himself and a portion of the wall to prevent the atmosphere from inside leaking out, and then he split the wall open. The ceramic alloy material bent and opened up, making a large hole for him to step through. He was in his evolved form, the form he had been in once the lifeform had infected them. He had two sets of legs, three sets of arms, an elongated head with powerful jaws, and was covered in scales which were now dark red in color—he could change them at will. As he entered the building the wall behind him closed and fixed itself as if there had never been a hole at all.

  He could’ve teleported directly inside, but he wanted to test his abilities more comprehensively. He walked down the corridor, his telepathy reaching to the closed rooms around him, and wherever he found a lifeform he smashed inside their head and ended their life. It was too easy; the beings here weren’t really all that strong. It was not the type of training that he wanted. But still he did it, and still he moved forward.

  Eventually his presence was noticed, and forces were sent to stop him.

  The corridor in front of him was filled with beings pointing their weapons at him and firing. Doranis paid no attention as their weapons harmlessly impacted his shield. As he was getting closer, the beings realized that their attacks had no effect, and he could feel their fear. Doranis did not much enjoy killing, but he knew that it was necessary; and if they were destined to die, what was the harm in getting some exercise out of it?

  He pointed his six arms and plasma bolts started flying toward them, burning through their suits and killing them quickly. He walked over their corpses and headed toward the core of the building, where the weapon’s firing system was placed.

  They tried to stop him again and again, but always with no hope. They were not capable of killing him, not when he was in the Sha state and able to feel everything around them. He knew that there was no weapon here that could harm him, and there was nothing that could surprise him.

  He ripped open large slabs of metal that were the doors leading into the heart of the weapon’s system. Inside there were two singularity cores, feeding power directly into the firing mechanism. Doranis spread his mind through the weapon, seeing how it was put together. He was impressed by what they had achieved—it was a very advanced piece of technology. He put his six hands in front of himself and focused, pulling Sha from his surroundings to the small point in between his six palms. He created a shield around the compressed energy containing it and then sent it floating into the room. A moment later, he bent space around him and exited far above the moon before reaching out and collapsing the shield down below.

  He was rewarded by a massive explosion that expanded as a sphere and consumed the building in an instant. The moon cracked and as the explosion grew, it split apart, sending pieces flying in different directions. Satisfied that the weapon was no longer a threat, he turned his sights to the rest of the system. Not being willing to go back to his ship just yet, he decided to join in some of the battles.

  A wave of disruptive energy shimmered around him, creating a bubble where the skim-disrupting field generated from the AI’s ships in his fleet didn’t work against him. A moment later he created a skim field around himself and flew off across the system. Bending space would’ve been faster, but the greater the distance, the more it took out of him. Skim fields were generally easier to do. He came out of the skim next to a group of Josanti League battleships in the process of retreating from battle.

  They would’ve even managed it, if not f
or Doranis.

  He was floating in space, the Sha keeping him alive, as he reached with his power to the closest battleship and ordered the Sha to pull apart. The molecules holding the ship together split, and in space it looked like the battleship just came apart. He repeated the same with the second battleship, but when he reached out to the third he felt something blocking him. Surprised, he took a closer look and saw that one of the crew of the third battleship was a powerful Sha user. He could not enter the Sha state, and the only reason why he had foiled Doranis was because Doranis was barely trying. If he had used even a fraction of his will, he could get by the Sha user’s weak attempt at stopping him. But Doranis didn’t do so immediately; he was curious. The Sha user had spread his power across the ship. It was draining him heavily as he had no Sha state, but had to expend his own energy. By spreading his power over the ship, he interfered with another user’s attempts at affecting Sha.

  It was actually a good decision, if one was fighting beings that could merely use the Sha. It didn’t matter against Doranis. He bent space and appeared inside the ship, standing in front the Sha user who had his tentacles spread to the sides, trembling as he attempted to keep his ship alive.

  Immediately Doranis was noticed, but before anyone could react Doranis violently pulled the air inside their bodies out, rupturing them. Everyone but the Sha user collapsed to the ground. Doranis studied the being in front of him. It was…unremarkable. But it had achieved great power in the Sha, on the level of the People, at least. He wondered if, perhaps, if it lived long enough, it too could achieve the Sha state. Before, Doranis wouldn’t even have entertained the thought, but now he knew that it was possible.

  The Sha user finally collapsed to the ground, exhausted. It had tried to attack Doranis’ mind, but was repelled by his mental defenses. It was breathing heavily, as it was drained of energy. For a moment, Doranis entertained the thought of letting it live, but then he remembered why they were doing what they were. There were too many beings like this one in the galaxy, and it was causing everything to unravel.

  He telekinetically grabbed the being and crushed its skull, killing it quickly.

  Afterward, he turned his attention back to the ship. He ordered the Sha to split away from him, and the ship blew apart by his will alone, leaving him floating in space. Sighing, he bent space and arrived back on his ship. There was no challenge here for him. Disappointed, he took a seat and continued watching over the battle in the system.

  It would take several more days, but it would be theirs in the end.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Year 716 of the Empire — Kenos system — Empire territory

  Adrian looked at Lurker of the Depths, who floated next to him. Both of them were in the Sha state, up in the empty space above Axull Darr’s planet.

  “This isn’t working,” Adrian sent to Lurker of the Depths.

  “They’ve had far more time to figure things out, Adrian,” Lurker of the Depths sent back.

  Adrian frowned. Sha infused him with life, kept him alive in the vacuum of space. It was an amazing power, and it felt exhilarating. It felt as if he was connected to everything. It did not, however, prevent him from feeling frustrated. He had been attempting to replicate Aranis’s ability to teleport, with little success. After seeing him do it, Adrian had been attempting to achieve it for almost two years. Truthfully, he had not been attempting it for that long; he had been very busy and had little time to actually focus on that.

  But now they were waiting for a lead on the AI, and had some time for it.

  “It is infuriating. I can’t even begin to imagine how he did it,” Adrian sent.

  Again, Adrian formed a field around himself. The first line of thought he had had been that it was something like a skim, which he and Lurker of the Depths had managed to do. But what he felt then wasn’t anything like that. Honestly, just being able to skim in space without a ship was incredible. It required him creating a skim field around himself, then contracting the space in front of him while he expanded it behind. Using the skim wasn’t really traveling; it was more standing still while space moved around you. He needed to put himself partway into subspace in order to achieve it, the same way that ships did. Adrian had been thinking that Aranis’s teleporting had to do with subspace, but he couldn’t figure it out no matter what he did.

  “It is not a matter of imagining. You cannot do the impossible with the Sha. When we move objects with telekinesis, we order the Sha that makes up the molecules of the object to move. When we create a kinetic blast, we force the Sha that makes up the air to move and strike at our target. When we fly, we order the Sha to be still around our bodies. I do not think that the skim is the secret to this teleportation.”

  Adrian frowned, trying to remember what he had felt from Aranis. It had been very complicated—he remembered that Aranis seemed to almost glow as he was completely surrounded by Sha field. It had felt almost like a shield, only not.

  Lurker of the Depths floated forward, looking toward the system’s star far in the distance. “What about access points?”

  Adrian looked at the old Sowir. “Huh… They are kind of like teleportation… But they require an incredible amount of energy to be used. Doing something like that with only Sha would require a great amount of energy.”

  “Not if you are in the Sha state. You only need to know how it works.”

  Adrian thought about it. The access point’s ring was basically a marker. It drew power from the sun to connect to another ring somewhere in the galaxy, then it bent the space between them, making the inside of the two rings basically the same point in space.

  If Adrian could replicate that somehow, he might be able to do it. But he knew that it would be extremely dangerous. He could even kill himself if he did something wrong. And he was certain that if he tried to make his own body share the same space as other matter, he would rip himself in two.

  Then he got an idea.

  He raised a shield over himself and slowly contracted it until it was just over his body, with no wasted space. Then he thought about how the access points worked. In the Sha state, he found a place close to his location, and mentally made an image of the same exact size like his body. For a moment he thought about trying to switch all the Sha in that area with himself, but that was not how this worked—Sha had to move it. It could do many things, but not that.

  So he did what the access point did: he tried to compress the Sha in between the two points, but it did not work. He frowned, thinking. The access point bridged two points in space so that they were one, but it didn’t compress the space in real space. No, that would’ve been noticeable, even catastrophic. So instead, he looked deeper into subspace. Sha was there as well, like a mirror to the real space, only distorted and somehow different. He did the same thing there. He exerted his will and tried to compress the Sha between the two spots, and the Sha obeyed. He saw it compress, but the image he had in his mind of the second point did not move. He let the space in subspace return to its original state, and then created another image at the same location, only now in subspace.

  Then he compressed the Sha in subspace again, pulling until the image that was the exact same size and shape as him was laid over his body. He didn’t feel anything, because he was in real space and it in subspace, so he let the compression go, then told the Sha to snap back into its original state.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn,” Adrian sent to Lurker of the Depths along with everything he had tried to do.

  “It probably has no effect on you since you are not in subspace,” Lurker of the Depths told him.

  Adrian tried again to remember what Aranis had done. He was certain that Aranis had some kind of a field around him. He had assumed that it was like a shield, but now he thought that was perhaps inaccurate. So Adrian dismissed the shield around himself and on instinct created a skim field which he tailored to cover only his body. He knew that he needed to go into subspace, but the skim field did not do th
at entirely, and he was not sure if he could even survive there without a field. His understanding of subspace was that it was not a completely different space with a hard boundary, but more something that was on a spectrum, existing alongside normal space. He reinforced the skim field around himself and put up a shield beneath it just in case. Then he started pushing the field into subspace as if he wanted to use the skim, only he didn’t let it compress space in front of him.

  Everything around him suddenly had a grayish look to it, and Lurker of the Depths looked fuzzy, as if he was not real. The area he was in was the image with compressed space, and Adrian let it go, feeling himself snap forward to the location the image occupied earlier. He slowly pulled himself back into real space; the feeling was strange, but he managed it.

  “You did it,” Lurker of the Depths sent, along with his sentiment of congratulations.

  Adrian felt his Sha state waver. His mind was strained, not to the point of being in danger of slipping out of the state, but drained nonetheless. Keeping so many moving parts fixed inside his mind had been hard. “I moved barely ten meters. I wonder how hard it would be to move greater distances…”

  “We will have the time to test it out. Now, let me inside your head and show me exactly what you did. I want to try it too.”