Black Swarm

by Ivan Kal

Garaam watched with eyes wide open as her ship collided with the massive bioship.

  Its hide split apart before the sheer mass of the Oath’s compressed-matter hull. Explosions rocked her ship—the walls were shaking, and lights flickering—but the Oath did not falter. Her Sovereign broke through the enemy bioship, leaving it with a massive, gouged hole, its lifeblood leaking and explosions rocking the parts of it that had been built with technology.

  Garaam laughed out loud, and her crew joined her. A Shara Daim expressing their emotions—a thing not done in their nation. But here and now, it was good. A tear rolled down her cheek as several of the massive enemy bioships focused their fire on her Sovereign.

  The moment came, and Garaam knew no more.

  * * *

  Doranis took to the field, bending space and appearing among the enemy ships. He spread his arms, and out of the palm of every one a beam of plasma left to impact the enemy ships. The enemy, disorganized and distracted, did not even have the time to look for him. He burned through the hulls of six ships, and then bent space again. Appearing next to a massive ship, he put a palm on its hull and it disintegrated, making the hole large enough for him to enter. He stepped inside as the air was vented, along with several bodies.

  With a gesture of his hand he pulled the hull closed behind him, stretching the metal to cover the entrance. He continued on, punching a hole through another wall, and entering deeper. He killed everything in sight, fighting his way through the ship.

  Sha users of great power came to try and stop him, but they were nothing before him. Sha was his to command, and his will was that they die. Balls of plasma, kinetic blasts, and psychic attacks lashed out of him and killed all that dared to stand in his way. He finally reached close to the center of the ship, and with an effort of will he exerted control on the Sha. It twisted and obeyed, and a black hole formed between his palms. He left it there and bent space to escape the ship.

  He turned back to the vessel’s cracked hull, and told the black hole to grow. It obeyed, and the ship was swallowed up by the singularity before it collapsed under its own weight, ceasing to exist.

  Quickly, Doranis looked around and found another target.

  * * *

  Johanna’s head cleared enough for her to look at her holo, and she saw a disaster. Her great armada, a force larger than any ever gathered—the fleets of the most advanced races in the galaxy—were burning. There was no longer any doubt of who was greater. The Enlightened had played her. She had been manipulated across this system, made to believe that she was better than her enemy, and now she was paying the price for her hubris.

  Her Sovereign was being hammered by the enemy, and their shields collapsed as the crew recovered. She watched with a kind of detachment, looking at people yelling about, seeing them trying to recover. They fired back, her ship smashing through the shields of the enemy bioships and taking down dozens in a fury of power. But it was not enough. Damage reports piled up on her board as two massive ships slid in front of her Sovereign.

  Each was the size of a World-ship, and each was brimming with weapons. Almost in slow motion, the enemy ships fired. Their entire fronts lit up as their beams slammed into her ship. It was shaking now, lights flickering on and off. Her people turned to her with wide eyes, terrified, asking for orders. But her mouth didn’t work.

  She had done this. She had killed them all.

  The beams cut through the Sovereign’s hull, and one hit the containment of the ship’s singularity core. It broke apart as the core destabilized, and a moment later the Remembrance lurched as a quarter of its hull imploded.

  Named for the memory of Earth and its destruction, a symbol that what had happened before would never happen again, Remembrance’s power cut off as the other five cores shut down safely. It didn’t matter; the enemy beams kept coming, cutting into the ship, tearing it apart piece by piece.

  Johanna closed her eyes, and remembered Earth as it used to be: the blue skies and the wind blowing through her hair. It felt wrong of her to even look at those memories, as she was the reason the Earth had been destroyed, but it was the last thing she wanted to remember nonetheless.

  A beam blew through the solid hull protecting the command center, and everyone inside died in an instant.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Doranis, back on the Devourer, watched as his forces finished up with the enemy. Their massive armada was broken, their ships dying. Some were trying to run away, but there was nowhere to go. His bioships had now surrounded the enemy. They were too deep in the system to use hyperspace, and the skim nullifiers around the system were back on-line. No, there would be no running away for those who opposed the Enlightened.

  He did acknowledge their power, however. He had lost more ships than he had thought he would. He had lost Juggernauts to the enemy’s equivalent. If there were words to be said about them, that they were cowards were not to be counted among them. Even knowing that death awaited them, they fought on—most notably the children of Axull Darr, and the ones called the Krashinar.

  A touch of sadness entered Doranis’s heart at seeing the great beasts die. They alone were innocents, and they alone deserved to live. A race untouched by the taint of the People, a race that had clawed its way to space on its own merit. He vowed that he would remember them once this was all done, that he would make sure that they were not forgotten.

  He felt Loranis reach out to him, and he accepted the connection.

  “It is nearly done,” she sent.

  “It is,” he responded calmly.

  “You toyed with them.”

  Doranis did not think so. Yes, he had the power to defeat them even without Loranis, but why fight a prolonged battle across the system when he didn’t need to? He was not ashamed to ask for help, and if he had guided his enemy’s actions to suit his, that did not mean that he had toyed with them. “I did not. I simply defended what is now ours.”

  “If you say so,” Loranis told him. “I have word from our Overseers—half the relays are in position. It will not be long now until the others are in place.”

  Doranis closed his eyes. To think that they were so close to accomplishing their goals… It almost didn’t seem real. “We’ve dealt a blow to the children of Axull Darr today, but they are not defeated.”

  Loranis sent her agreement. “But this will hurt their alliance against us. They know now just how dangerous we truly are.”

  “The next time they come will be the true test of their power and determination,” Doranis sent.

  After a few moments of silence, Loranis continued, “They did not send the ones Aranis warned us about.”

  “No,” Doranis said, clearly transmitting his confusion. “Adrian, Anessa, and Lurker of the Depths… If they had been here, this battle would’ve been very different. I remember Lurker of the Depths—he holds great power over the mind—and Adrian injured Aranis. They are clearly capable and powerful.”

  “Why do you think that they didn’t send them?” Loranis asked.

  “I do not know,” Doranis admitted. “This force was large enough that, with them accompanying it, it would’ve been a serious threat. Perhaps this was just a test, to see what we can do?”

  “I do not think that they are so willing to throw away lives. Their people are not like our Created.”

  Doranis agreed, but he did not see any other reason not to send them. “It doesn’t matter. We hold this system, and soon enough it will start producing bioships at a much greater rate. The more time they give us, the more we can grow.”

  “As long as they don’t realize what we are really doing, I shall remain content. Aranis should be in position soon.”

  “Yes,” Doranis agreed. Keeping the galaxy’s eyes off of Aranis was the only thing that mattered.

  * * *

  Aileen, Sentinel of the Empire, sat on board her ship, hiding in the outer reaches of the system and watching as the force of the Great Alliance was decimated and crushed. She knew that there were other
watchers aside from her. The Suvri had their stealth ships somewhere, and there were more Sentinels.

  A part of her urged her to leave now, to run and deliver the news of the defeat to the Empire and their allies. But she couldn’t—there were still ships fighting, and she owed it to them to see everything. Their fight was futile, but still the ships fought with valor, with a ferocity unlike anything that Aileen had ever seen. They died bravely. She made sure to see everything, to record everything, so that the galaxy would see, would know that they fought for them and died. For the galaxy to see their deaths and understand once and for all what a threat the Enlightened were.

  She didn’t know how long she and her crew sat there in silence, watching their people die. But as the last of ship of the Great Alliance fell, Aileen bowed her head. She remained like that for a minute, paying respect to the people who had fought for the galaxy and died.

  She raised her head and looked around, seeing the somber looks of her crew.

  “Get us home,” she ordered.

  A moment later they were in hyperspace rushing toward the closest access point, and from there to Sol.

  Her message would spread—and the deaths of so many would shake the galaxy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Year 718 of the Empire — People manufacturing system

  The Custodian analyzed the reports it was receiving from its ships across the galaxy. The Enlightened assault had already destabilized the majority of the star nations they had reached. The attacks were meant to cause chaos, and that was exactly what they had achieved—most star nations were too busy scrambling to defend their territory to pay much attention to anything else, and the ones that had joined the alliance were too busy engaging with the Enlightened to take note of those who were not. This included the AI. It had not been disturbed so far.

  One report, however, caught the AI’s attention: the great battle that had been won by the Enlightened in their new base system. The Great Alliance had assembled a large force, attacked, and lost, as the Custodian knew would happen. It had been inevitable that once the Enlightened proved too difficult to expel by the Josanti League alone that the core power would reconsider its stance on joining the Great Alliance. It had occurred earlier than the AI had predicted, precisely, but within a standard deviation.

  It had not, however, been the only thing that it had not predicted.

  The Great Alliance had not sent the Nomad Fleet and the three people capable of the same feats as the Enlightened. Indeed, almost all of the AI’s predictions concerning the Nomad Fleet had turned contrary to what it found the most probable. This was not something that it was surprised about, as after all the Custodian had very little data on the Nomad Fleet, and ever since the battle in the control system it had been unable to learn anything more. It had been surprisingly difficult to find information about it, and it was equally difficult to infiltrate. The Nomad Fleet remained an unknown variable.

  It had still based projections on the data it had available from other sources, and the Custodian’s lack of information on the Nomad Fleet had been accounted for—but as it looked through its ships’ reports, it knew that such a lack of information should not have impacted its projections so much. It had entirely failed to see the Great Alliance’s attack without the Nomad Fleet present—all of its projections had clearly indicated that the Nomad Fleet would be.

  The Custodian delegated more of its processes to the problem; it did not like having things happen that were unforeseen. Once again, it went through all the reports it had gathered and information it had stolen from star nations across the galaxy. Based on an earlier projection, there had been the chance that the Nomad Fleet was looking for it… But that should not be such a large concern. The Great Alliance leadership did not consider the AI a threat, which was by its own design. It had not attacked since the battle in the control system.

  The Great Alliance might be worried about it, but they would choose to focus on the threat that was actively assailing them. The Nomad Fleet alone would not be able to threaten the Custodian, and there were no other star nations which would be able to assemble a force large enough to do so. There was also the fact that this system was fairly well hidden, and the AI had patrols and watchers always on the lookout for any intruders.

  It was possible that it could have missed someone coming in to its system—the Alangians, for example, had the most advanced stealth systems in the galaxy—but it dismissed their involvement. The Alangians had isolated themselves ever since their rebellion against the People alongside the Partenai and the now extinct Darshi. They did not care for galactic matters, choosing instead to keep their existence a secret from every other race. The only ones with stealth technology even close to Alangian tech were the Suvri.

  The Custodian did have ways of seeing through their stealth, but there existed a chance that it could have overlooked something. If the Suvri had discovered his system, there was a 96.45% chance that they would inform the rest of the Great Alliance, in which case the Custodian would’ve seen evidence of them knowing.

  Unless it was missing some variable. The Nomad Fleet was one such unknown, and already it had seen results from them that were unlikely. The rumors surrounding its disappearance were worrying, and the Custodian knew that it could not risk any error, not in such a critical time.

  Reevaluating all the data it had, the Custodian developed several new projections. It did not have much information on the Nomad Fleet, but it had a lot on the other nations in the galaxy. By using recent events as a base, it developed several predictive algorithms designed to predict the most probable course of action of the Nomad Fleet.

  The result was worrying, but it ran similar projections for seven days in order to make sure, and with every new projection or prediction, one thing became almost certain.

  The Nomad Fleet was coming to its system.

  It did not have enough points of data to extrapolate their possible numbers or plans, but based on the recorded past action of the Nomad Fleet leader, the AI knew that it would soon be facing a force capable of defeating it.

  The Custodian finished with its projections, and adjusted its plans—preparing for a battle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Year 718 of the Empire — People manufacturing system

  The Seventh was sitting in the innards of the great Araxi, its manipulators curled around the nodes that made its connection with Araxi greater. They were still in hyperspace, but it could feel the nervousness of the other handlers around it. The Seventh understood their feelings; it had been elevated to a greater position now, one that had never before included combat, and yet they were now heading straight into battle.

  The handlers did not like that. All Krashinar remembered the death of its predecessor, and none of them wished to be responsible for the death of another. The Seventh understood those feelings; it had felt the guilt of its sire’s death for a long time. Because of this, it had agreed to stay in the back formations and help facilitate communications between the two great hunter packs and the Nomad Fleet. Araxi did not like that, but the Seventh had managed to convince it—though still it grumbled in its mind.

  The Seventh and Araxi were with the Eternal Hunters and the portion of Nomad Fleet led by Ryaana, while Lurker of the Depths was with the Old Hunters. Their plan was for a simple frontal attack. Ryaana’s battlegroup and Lurker of the Depths’ forces would act together to punch through the AI’s lines quickly and get control of the star which held the access point, as they did not want to see unexpected reinforcements from the Enlightened.

  Their larger plan relied on them getting control of the star for another reason, however. From the records Suvri had showed them, the AI’s force was mostly focused close to its core and its Swarm, which should allow their force to get through to the star before the AI’s numerical advantage could be brought to bear on them.

  A handler reached out to the Seventh, letting it know that they were going to drop out of hyperspace at any momen
t. The Seventh settled in, preparing its mind for the battle to come.

  * * *

  Ryaana sat nervously in her command chair, on board the Bastion, her mother’s ship. It was a World-ship, an Empire-built one, not at all like the Titan she commanded. It did not have as many offensive weapons, but then it had never been intended to. The World-ship was the capital of the Nomad Fleet, its flagship in battle, and now Ryaana would be commanding from it.

  It was a great gesture of trust that her parents had extended to her, but a part of her couldn’t help but feel that the only reason she had gotten the job was because she was not strong enough in the Sha state to be of use in their plan. She knew that they were right, of course, but that did not mean that she couldn’t feel the way she did.

  But getting the command of such a battle was a large responsibility, one which she was not sure she deserved. She had led ships into battle before, of course—losing some, winning others—but she would’ve thought the Seventh a better choice than her.

  She knew that it was probably because it was a bit hard for the Krashinar to communicate with other races, even if they did so exclusively with telepathy. While the majority of this force was Krashinar regardless, the Nomad Fleet was arguably more important, as it was their Titans that would be protecting the Krashinar beasts and leading the charge.

  At least she would have both Lurker of the Depths and the Seventh nearby to offer any needed advice or guidance.

  Finally, the clock on the holo hit zero—their forces had arrived in system.

  Immediately, every ship they had pinged the system with their sensors, getting a clear picture of the space around them.

  Ryaana immediately felt a touch of fear. The system was massive, with fields of planet remnants covered in machinery and mining operations. The massive black hole at the center of it was the most impressive. Stations curved around it, and there were so many ships moving about that even their computer had trouble putting numbers on them. Most of them were machine ships, cruisers and battleships placed strategically around the system in colossal formations. There were stations, defense platforms, and satellites filling the space.