by T. R. Harris
“Are there any ships nearby?” Adam asked Copernicus at the nav station, the panic in his voice evident to all.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Any contacts?”
“It’s clear, Adam.”
I am still at a distance, yet within range of my mind’s link with your brain interface device.
Adam relaxed. This would just be one of those farewell speeches before they slipped back into the Milky Way.
Oh my god, it’s Kracion!
I sense the sarcasm in your thoughts. You have not come to accept me for what I am.
Sorry, I’m slow that way.
I see you have destroyed the portal array. You know that is but a temporary inconvenience. And if you do the same on the other side, the Olypon will simply rebuild. They know what awaits them on this side of the portal. I will not be stopped.
Never say never.
You can warn the galaxy of my coming if you wish, but it will make no difference. I come with advancements your galaxy has never imagined. Your fleets may be larger—for now—but that will change. I also understand societies, and what they will do to maintain their existence. You should know, as well, that I will not accept your surrender, at least not at first. What good is capitulation without the accompanying object lessons? Without knowing the alternative, any negotiated peace is but a political maneuver, designed to deceive or delay. Before I accept any surrender of your galaxy, you will first learn the consequences of opposing my will. And all the while, I will be absorbing your daughter into my being. I may also do the same to the gray mutant, acquiring all his powers as well. In the end I will become the immortal god of your universe.
“The portal is opening!” Riyad announced. He glanced back at Adam in the command chair and the trance-like expression on his face. “Snap out of it Adam. It’s time to go to work.”
Adam really wanted to stay connected to Kracion; he was his one and only link to Lila. But in a moment they would be through the portal and neck deep in another battle.
Excuse me, Kracion, but I’m a little busy at the moment. We’ll chat later.
Indeed, we will Adam Cain. We will—
This was an interesting feature of the ATD Adam wasn’t aware: Even though the portal was still open, once he crossed the threshold from one universe to another, contact was lost.
That was fine; he had other things to concentrate on…like the ninety Olypon warships massed at the portal.
“They don’t have their generators at full,” Coop reported. “Most are in standby status.”
“That makes sense,” Sherri said. “There’s no need for them to hop to the other universe just to turn around and come back. And I think we’re the last thing they expected to see.
But it wasn’t so much the Davion that had the Olypon concerned, as it was the trailing cloud of debris coming at them at just under light speed.
Riyad jerked the starship hard to the left just as he dissolved the well. They slipped to one side, avoiding the debris cloud which continued along the original flightpath, heading straight for the bulk of the stationary Olypon fleet.
Shields were raised, shields designed primarily for defense of charged energy bolts. They did little to stop the chunks of rock. Dull hull metal crumpled like tin foil, opening huge gashes that immediately erupted outward, shattered by the rapidly escaping atmosphere from within. Twenty ships disintegrated, while another nine took severe damage. Gravity-wells were created which helped to absorb the stray rubble, although several of the nearby ships were caught up in the influence of their neighbors. Whole warships simply disappeared into the invisible microscopic points in space.
The Davion flared off to the left of the once mighty fleet, which was now a mass of confusion and starship carcasses. But the Olypon rebounded quickly. They identified the Davion for what it was—an enemy warship. Twelve ships—each three times the size of the KFV-A—guided their gravity-wells in their direction.
It wasn’t too far to the boundary of the Kyrils star system from the planet Mon-Sim where the portal array sat. The Davion made a mad dash for that direction before taking an unexpected detour.
The Klin flying saucer dove for the surface of the Mars-size planet. They would only get one shot at this. And they had no mines left, only flash cannon.
Sherri sat at the controls, staring with intensity at the targeting screen. Unlike the array on the other side, this one had defenses. Blue balls of plasma streaked up. Riyad compensated.
“Hold it steady, dammit,” Sherri called out.
“Dammit…I’m doing the best I can!”
The defensive fire was becoming too intense. It was either avoid the bolts or give Sherri time to sight the target.
“Just do it, Sherri!” Adam ordered.
She fired.
Riyad pulled back on the controls, increasing the well depth until they were speeding away at many times the speed of light. Sherri transferred her targeting screen to the main display, which showed a slow-motion video of her strike.
She’d hit the tower array, just as she’d done to the other facility. And just like the other, it had little effect. The metal twisted some and cables were severed. The array was out of order, but it would be a simple fix, maybe a week or so of repair.
“It’s the best we could do,” Adam said. “Great shot under the circumstances.”
Now he turned his attention to the overview of the Dysion Void.
The star Kyrils, with its twin worlds of Elision and Olypon, was located off-center within the huge bubble in space. The entrance to the Void was the Volseen Corridor. On the way to Olypon, they’d dropped a couple of monitoring buoys near the opening, initially as a navigation aide for when they left. Now Adam tapped into the data stream. The Olypon had several squads of picket ships waiting for them. The Void was to become the new center of the galaxy, so they were taking precautions to keep it protected.
They would not be leaving the way they came.
Adam used his arm rest console to call up a large view of the Void on the main screen. Normally, he would have moved to the nav station rather than sit on his ass. But right now, his ass was hurting too much to move.
“The Human fleet came through the barrier at one point,” he said. “Anyone know where that was?”
“I might know,” Tidus said. He had been uncharacteristically quiet. Most of the time his face displayed awe at what the Humans were doing. Adam figured he’d never spent that much time around them, having relied on stories told by his fellow Juireans before his split with them. Now he understood why they had been such a formidable adversary.
“You would know, why?”
“I was here, attached to an intelligence division during the battle. We spotted the Humans when they broke through.” He walked over to where Coop sat at the nav station and pointed to a spot on his screen. Copernicus highlighted the location on the forward display.
“Are you sure?” Adam asked.
He nodded. “The landmarks are prominent, and I remember the shock we felt when your fleet arrived from that direction. Brilliant move, by the way.”
“But they had to blast their way through,” Sherri said. “We can’t do the same thing. We don’t have the firepower.”
“But we’re a lot smaller, too. The channel they opened back then may still be wide enough for us.”
Sherri shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a try. And with a shitload of Olypon ships chomping on our asses, it’s about the only option we have.”
“Set the course, Riyad.” Adam ordered. He made a chopping motion with his right hand, aimed forward, beyond the viewport of the Klin saucer. “Engage!”
107
Except for the small break at the Volseen Corridor, the Dysion Void was like the Barrier outside the Fringe, but on steroids. Whereas the Barrier was a single sheet of brilliant nebulae gas, the Void was encircled by the same phenomena. The space within the Void was cast in a perpetual rainbow of colors, making every night on a Dysion world a
spectacular show of breathtaking beauty. But the beauty betrayed the danger. The boundary of the Void was a violent mass of chaos and confusion. Only the most fool hardy would attempt a passage through the wall of the Void…or a massive fleet armed with powerful weapons to blast away the debris.
It was all the Davion could do to stay ahead of the Olypon vessels. Granted, they weren’t as fast as the Klin ships, but they were pretty close to parity with the flying saucer. The tiny head start they’d gotten was making the difference.
“We’re going to have to bury ourselves in there right from the get-go,” Copernicus said. “Otherwise if we slow down to pick our spot, the Olypon will be right on top of us.”
“Pick a soft spot, Riyad, and then gun it.” Adam said from behind his pilot.
Riyad twisted around for a look at his friend.
“Soft spot…at about forty-times light speed. Yeah, no problem.” He turned back to his station. “Piece of cake.”
The gravity-well would protect the ship—to a point. Yet as matter was drawn in from the opposite side, there was a very real danger of overloading the well. This would produce a backlash of energy, as seen in most black holes with light-year-long jets of radiation blasting out from the event horizon. And the Void Shield was dense with matter, enough to cause such an overload.
With Coop’s help, Riyad quickly scanned the fast-approaching wall of gas and debris, looking for an area of relative thinness. He found something, but he had no idea how far it extended into the barrier. They were about to find out.
The ship reacted when it hit the wall, feeling a vibration roll throughout the hull as the generators fought the sudden influx of matter into the gravity-wells. There wasn’t a single well, but a series of them created one after the other in the blink of an eye. At the speed they were traveling, each new singularity was millions of miles beyond the next, drawing the Davion along with them and deeper into the nebula. They were also clearing out the space ahead of them of most of the rogue matter, but not all.
“That’s it!” Riyad yelled. He pulled back on the controls, dropping the ship into a shallow well and reducing their speed by ninety percent. The Davion fell out of light-speed, now imbedded deep within the Dysion Shield.
“Where are the Olypon ships?” Adam asked.
“They’ve fallen back,” Copernicus reported. “But they appear to be lining up for entry, creating a narrower signature. Something we have to remember; this is their neighborhood. They know this space better than anyone.”
Adam should have known that. Even still, this was their only way out of the Void. They had no choice but to continue.
Riyad was intently watching the proximity screen, dodging not so much massive objects but thick clouds of gas. They could screw up a gravity-well just as easily as an asteroid.
“Create a shallow back-well,” Adam commanded.
“A back-well?” Riyad questioned. “That will almost bring us to a stop.”
“That’s right, but it will also draw in a bunch of junk from behind and close up the hole,” Adam explained. “Then we can move forward again.”
“That might work.”
Riyad obliged.
“Coop…status?”
“The Olypon have slowed, but now they’re spreading out, creating new channels with their own gravity-wells.”
Adam fought through the residual pain of his injuries, trying to think. What could he do to stop the Olypon…?
“Increase both wells; kick them up to max.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“Yeah, but why? All you’re going to do is disrupt the gravity in…. Oh, I see.”
The rest of the team on the bridge now understood what Adam was trying to do.
“We can be sitting here in the middle when it happens,” Sherri pointed out. “And ninety-degree shifts won’t work while maintaining the wells.”
“Something oblique then.”
“This ship has a twelve-degree variant in the focusing rings,” Copernicus reported. “Whether that will be enough is anyone’s guess. I’ve never heard of this being done before.”
“Neither have I,” Adam said with a grin. “That’s the reason it may work.”
“Which makes no sense at all,” Sherri stated.
“Riyad, get ready to make the course adjustment.”
“I’m ready,” he said. “Timing will be everything.”
“As it always is. Sherri, keep an eye on well pressure. No one who has done this before has lived to talk about it, so we don’t know the limits.”
“Wonderful…leave it up to me to make the call.”
“No one I’d trust more.”
“Bastard.”
The bridge grew quiet, with each member of the team engrossed in their duties and thoughts. The Davion was now stationery in space, with two massive gravity-wells—one forward and one aft—competing with each other for the attention of the starship. The nebulae surrounding the incredible forces of gravity was swirling and cascading ever faster into the formerly invisible points in space, now alive and charged with blue and white energy. The singularities were being fed with an ever-increasing volume of matter. At any moment they would overload.
“Now!” Sherri yelled.
Riyad shifted the Davion and engaged the chemical engines. The saucer shot out at sub-light speed, allowing the two-opposing gravity-wells to merge without crushing them in between. A moment later, twin shafts of white light shot out in opposite directions from a point in space, covering a diameter of several million miles with their thickness. This was enough to obliterate anything behind or in front of the wells.
The Davion was only marginally outside the path of the deadly spikes of raw energy and radiation when they flared. Alarms sounded onboard as levels spiked and circuits overloaded. The chemical engines failed, as did the internal gravity and inertia compensators. The crew had strapped in prior to initiating the dual wells, so they remained in their seats, yet were violently whipped about as the ship tumbled away in the accompanying shock wave.
Some of them passed out….
108
But they survived. The Davion was thrown clear of the massive energy jets by a margin of several thousand miles.
It took a moment for the systems to come back online, including the unconscious crewmembers. Riyad righted the ship and reactivated the compensators. The spinning stopped and the team began to take inventory.
“Hull integrity is intact,” Sherri reported.
“And as far as I can tell, the Olypon are no more,” Coop added. “And get this, there’s a big-ass hole burned completely through the barrier!”
“That’s our way out,” Riyad cheered, “if we can get the gravity-drive working again.”
Copernicus unbuckled his harness. “Leave that to me.” He headed for the bridge exit. Sherri followed.
“I better keep an eye on him,” she said through a nervous smile. “You know how he can get.”
Adam nodded. He looked around at the rest of the frazzled team. Tidus was just coming to, as was Arieel.
“Okay, Riyad, we still have chem drive, so get us moving into that new hole we just created,” he said to his pilot. “The Olypon may try to take advantage of it themselves and send a fleet through.”
“I wouldn’t,” Riyad said, “at least not until I figured out what just happened.”
“And when they do,” the Juirean Tidus Ne Landon began, “they will be just as impressed as I with the resourcefulness and ability of the Humans. I see now why your race has made such an impact on the galaxy over the past twenty years. Well done, my friends. Very well done.”
With ambivalence, Adam looked at the green-skinned alien. He had a lot to answer for, including his manipulation of Adam and the team throughout this whole affair. But for the moment, Adam accepted the compliment.
“What now, boss?” Riyad asked.
“What now? Now we have a galaxy to save.”
“Not again.”
> “What about Lila?” Arieel asked, her voice desperate.
“That will have to be a priority as well,” Adam admitted. “If Kracion can make good with his plans, then we’re going to have that bastard around for a very long time. The problem with evil immortals is…they’re immortal, and they’re evil.”
The lights and screens flickered for a moment before steadying out.
“Looks like Copernicus is doing his unplug/plug-in thing with the gravity-drive,” said Riyad. The system came to life. “It worked…this time.” He angled for the weird tunnel cut through the thickness of the Dysion Shield, marveling at the strange roiling of the nebula along the boundary of the shaft. There seemed to be an invisible force holding the gases and debris at bay. He didn’t complain. Instead, he engaged a modest gravity-well and accelerated. He didn’t want to risk the integrity of the inner eyewall with anything stronger.
Arieel walked over to Adam, who was still strapped in the command chair, hunched over on the left armrest, exhausted and in pain. She bent down and picked up one of the bloody bandages that had fallen off—from somewhere—during the buffeting. He shrugged.
“Yet again, what about Lila?” she said. “We must locate the Aris space station before Kracion.”
“And we must warn the Expansion of his coming,” Tidus added.
“And Earth,” said Riyad, wanting to contribute to the litany.
Adam snorted. Then he turned serious. “Something evil is headed this way my friends, and we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“Why is it always us carrying the load?” Riyad asked.
Adam shrugged again.
He hadn’t had a chance to tell the team about his brief mental conversation with Kracion, to tell them about how he wanted to inflict incredible harm upon the galaxy before he’d accept any surrender. He wanted pain and suffering first, a way of teaching the Milky Way a lesson. That was just sick. And then after that, Adam was sure he wouldn’t accept anything short of unconditional acceptance of him as the new God of the galaxy. The alien was insane, that was obvious.