The entire cavern rumbled. Stones and dust fell from the ceiling as the entire moon vibrated.
“The DNIET,” Dekker yelled. The whole group made a mad dash towards their waypoint, weapons ready to destroy the device. A brief flash washed over the Watchmen, like the shockwave of a nuclear blast; their bodies seemed to separate from their spirits, pulling their astral selves away as the vibration crescendoed and then died, returning them and reunifying blur and body. Only Dekker had experienced anything similar: when he and Ezekiel had traveled through the great machine.
“What was that?” Guy howled in bewilderment.
Just twenty steps away they found the DNIET unit sitting dormant. “We’re too late.” Dekker pointed his blaster at it and fired repeatedly, melting the casing and slagging the device. The cavern shook again, rumbling as if the moon itself had awoken with anger for the intruders.
“I don’t think this will end well,” Vesuvius lamented.
***
Mechnar ships opened fire on both the distant Salvation and their Valkyrie enemies. Grappler tendrils shot out and attached to their robotic attackers; acid fire chewed through hull and armor as both groups collided while continuing the chase.
Britton dashed through the cruiser’s service passages and into the main engine rooms with a screwdriver clamped between his jaws and pry-bar in hands. He slid to his knees and wiped sweat from his brow as he twisted his tool against the attachment screws. Jamming the bar into the seam, Britton yanked open the access panel between the dual giant-turbine-shaped flow units.
The steady hum of the machines which drove Salvation’s powerful engines obscured his ragged breathing. Under a grounding panel-shield, which Britton hurriedly tossed off, he exposed two giant banks of wired plugs.
“SHIP! Is the enemy still in pursuit?”
“Affirmative,” the AI responded.
“Perfect. SHIP, have we cleared the area-affect field for the Plan-B contingency?”
SHIP responded, “Vessel will clear affective zone in fifteen seconds.”
Britton grabbed the wired pigtail bundles, one in each hand. He rocked back and forth on each leg a few times. As the wires loosened their connections, the Salvation bucked and swayed as her two primary propulsion engines cut in and out alternatingly. Then Britton propped his feet against the panel mounting and pulled with all his might. The plugs popped loose of their socket ports and the engines died in a simulated engine failure.
Salvation coasted with an odd fishtailing move as the propulsion died, perfectly mimicking the situation. Enemy forces continued pressing towards the disabled derelict, with even more vigor at the prospect of abusing the vulnerable craft.
“C’mon…c’mon!” Britton activated a HUD to track the aggressors’ movements as they descended upon his position—both groups of enemies merged together just beyond their location. “SHIP! Activate Plan B!”
When they earlier passed by the enemy army, silent and cloaked, they’d scattered a field with remote mines. SHIP beamed the activation signal and the seeded arena erupted with volcanic fury. A significant portion of both opposing armies were caught in the trap. The rhythmic blasts swelled and rocked the Salvation as she drifted just outside the blast zone. The eruptions culminated in a fevered pitch that nearly knocked Britton off his feet.
“MacAllistair,” he called through the comm, “Keep any enemies off us. I oughtta have the engines back online in a few minutes.”
He checked the HUD while he frantically matched plugs up to their outlets and saw that none of the remaining units continued pursuing. In fact, the Mechnar ships retreated while the Arboleans held their cautious position.
“All guns are down. But I don’t think that’s our biggest concern,” MacAllistair replied. “An entire moon just appeared out of nowhere! Only DNIET could have done something like that!”
Britton enthusiastically jammed wire onto matching receptacles. In the engine room he was blind, but if he went to the bridge they’d be immobile.
“Good Lord,” MacAllistair came back. “I think it’s Osix—Osix is orbiting Earth!”
***
One final mechnar ship left the folded-space tunnel opened by his interstellar drive. The small ship, a psy-nar interceptor didn’t bother to cloak. It didn’t open any communication channels that enemy forces would be able to overhear.
Leviathan grinned with his twisted, destroyed face beneath the jet-black helmet as his systems showed the current battle situation surrounding Earth. All had gone according to his god’s plan.
A perverted variant of joy welled up inside Austicon’s general and he reached out to make mental contact. I have returned, master. Rico has been infested with the scarabs. The power of the Verdant Seven is broken,
***
The cavern continued to quake as the tremors intensified. A white light shone down from high above, piercing the dark haze. It intensified as the light expanded.
High above, the ground had split open and pulled away from a fault line, opening the cavern of Gamma Station up to the open air. The Watchmen came out of the shelter they’d taken under an overturned magnetic rail car. High above them they could see the distinct, blue curve of Earth’s atmosphere.
“Matty! Fly directly above our signal and retrieve us,” Dekker ordered into his comm. “I don’t know exactly what this thing is, but it’s more than a moon. I think the whole thing could be alive.”
Deep in the passageway, the shrieks of the reptilian zombies restarted. Their screams were drowned out by the whine of the Rickshaw Crusader’s VTOL engines as it descended into the crevasse, its ramp open to extract the team.
The Watchmen scrambled aboard as the ship ascended from the growing crater. As they climbed further, the flat landscape made it easy to see other, identical holes opening in the distance.
Hovering at a high height, they watched as the entire moon shuddered, like a planetary sneeze. When it calmed, the moon sat silent in the radiant beams of sunlight. The Watchmen could see a rising powder, like dust in a sunbeam, emanating from the face of Osix. Arbolean spores ascended and continued rising away from the alien atmosphere where they would be pulled down to Earth.
Dekker watched from the edge of the open ramp. Vesuvius stood behind him. “What can be done now?”
He grimaced. “Only things we’ve never considered. Acts of desperation.” The words of Jude Knight, Dekker’s father, rang in his ears. Double loading the reliquary is like calling down the finger of God. A triple load could destroy everything, like a bucket of divine wrath.
Dekker unslung the reliquary and jammed open the empty chamber. He rammed two canisters into the compartment and leaned over the edge. The gusting updraft blew through his hair wildly.
“Just in case this is it,” he yelled and sent a wink to Vesuvius, “It’s been a pleasure, Watchmen.”
Dekker’s Dozen #011
The Finger of God
Dekker slammed the chamber shut and locked both cartridges into the reliquary. He pointed the barrel at the surface of the Osix moon and fired, clutching the artifact tightly against the bucking, shuddering recoil.
A thin ruby beam shot out and stuttered. Wreathed with winding, silvery lightning, the beam grew in width and potency. The reliquary’s constant recoil pushed harder against the force of the blast and the beam bucked and shook Dekker as it slammed against him like a hammer drill, thrusting its fierce energy beam deep into the surface of Osix. Vesuvius ran to Dekker and helped steady him so he wasn’t flung from the open edge of the landing ramp.
Mounds of blackening soil swelled and rose like superheated blisters across the Osix crust; they crumbled and shot flames skyward as they suddenly imploded and burst open at other random locations. As the beam grew in width and intensity, a shrill cry rose up from the very moon itself.
The sky darkened momentarily and the air crackled; pockets of ribbon lightning sprang from the ground and dissipated as the godlike energy released from the reliquary dissipated. The electroni
cs on the Rickshaw Crusader flickered and momentarily faltered before the EMP failsafe circuitry cycled the power-loop back around and restored functionality.
Finally, the smoke cleared from the hole blasted by the weapon. A massive crater smoldered and burned miles deep into the face of the moon.
The groan rose again as the crust cracked and split. Giant tendrils crept from the crevices and crawled like giant, hungry worms across Osix’s surface. Like carnivorous fronds of some massive Venus flytrap, two of them reached out and swatted the air in their general vicinity.
“This is more than just a moon,” Dekker whispered to himself. “Matty! Get us out of here, and fast!”
***
Salvation hung closer to the orbit of Mars than to Earth’s. Cut off by their enemies, battered and bruised, the ship had proven herself. As the last remaining Earth battleship, she represented mankind’s last chance for defensible survival. The weight of that notion carried enormous burdens.
Dekker looked out the viewport. The red planet rotated in the distance, reminding Dekker of the futility of human occupation on other planets without the support of Earth. Down on the surface of Mars, old colonization structures still remained from humanity’s early attempts at off-world population, centuries ago. Without the advances in space travel, they’d been left to try and sustain themselves in the unsuitable Martian environment—the sparse supply drops weren’t enough and entire colonies died slow and miserable deaths, even despite terraforming which had given Mars a sustainable atmosphere and ecosystem. While habitable, it was no Earth and the stigma of past failure had been enough to dissuade future colonists from settling there.
Without the blue planet, Dekker could not see the future survival of his race. The ease with which all the other human colonies fell only reinforced his point. Earth and the human race were intrinsically linked; humanity was made for her and could not truly live without her.
Dekker sighed. Nearly a day had passed since they’d fled Osix. The moon had somehow corrected its close orbit so that it wouldn’t destroy the planet under tsunamis caused by a close proximity. It fell into a nearly synchronized revolution opposite of the moon. Only a few arbolean ghost ships remained alongside a couple Valkyrie units; the real threat was Osix.
The Mechnar forces hung close to the moon, using the Earth as a barrier. While their numbers had also been substantially depleted, they still outnumbered the arbolean space forces. But the moon still posed far too great a threat; its full power remained a largely unknown factor.
Dekker stepped into the command center and went to work. “Hull integrity?’
“One hundred percent,” replied one of his live-aboard refugees. Their numbers included a plethora of tradesmen; they’d formed a perfect corps of repair and maintenance workers.
“Shield systems?” Dekker asked.
“We’re running about eighty-five percent,” replied another. “It’s not a power issue; the generators output is probably stronger than it needs to be. Our shield-energy transmission towers were damaged in some areas by those grappler vines. Eighty-five is our new maximum shield threshold.”
Dekker asked, “Weapons systems?”
“Laser turrets are beyond repair. Output energy banks are fine, we just can’t fire them. Torpedo and flak ammo are around twenty percent. We have maybe a dozen rail gun cartridges left. We’ve got plenty of explosives if we had a way to fire them; that acid bath we got from the Valkyrie flagship did a real number on us. Gunneries are just too slagged to operate.”
Dekker nodded, ready to conclude the briefing on essential systems. He stood to leave.
“Aren’t you forgetting life support?” a woman asked.
So preoccupied with offense, it had slipped his mind as vital. “Yes, proceed,” he placated her. But he couldn’t make plans beyond the next battle.
“Air cyclers are at a hundred percent, now that hull integrity has been restored,” she said. “The remaining systems and ratios are all fine.”
He nodded and thanked them all, then went to his Watchmen. They’d set up a war room in the conference hall just off of the command center.
They reviewed the scenario briefly and quickly determined that a frontal attack against the cumulative forces arrayed against them amounted to suicide. Earth seemed a lost cause, by consensus.
“Our planet is fully seeded with the apothecium spores,” MacAllistair stated. “The natural immunity factor is there, of course, but given what we saw in District Three, the survival of that minority is not a strong bet.”
“Osix is alive, just as you thought,” Shaw stated. “Or at least, there’s some kind of massive life form living inside it. Sensor patterns closely resemble that of plant-life. Your last blast to the surface did do major damage, just not nearly enough. It opened the surface up so wide that you could hide three Salvations inside it.”
“You don’t happen to have any other tricks up your sleeve, do you?” Guy asked. “Maybe another time-traveling friend or ancient artifact of mass planetary destruction?”
“No. Just this.” He set the reliquary on the table and the shell satchel next to it. The cartridges rattled against the ancient container inside. Dekker withdrew the long, decorative container Ezekiel had given him.
The box sat there like pure temptation. “We should open it,” Guy stated.
Dekker shook his head, resolutely. “No. The old man said not to until the end… until my destiny arrives.”
“Yeah, what was that about? The creepy old man said that the other day.”
Vesuvius put her hand on Dekker’s shoulder. She was the only one he’d told, and only recently at that.
Dekker sighed and leveled with them. “Ezekiel claims that it is my destiny to destroy reality. I’m the triggerman, although the real culprit is clearly Prognon Austicon, or whatever is living inside of him.”
“How is that even possible,” MacAllistair asked.
“Austicon claims to be the embodiment of a powerful demon. My family has battled him for generations now.”
“No, not that. I mean, how can you destroy reality?”
Dekker’s throat was dry when he thought back to his encounter with the great engine. “I don’t know how to describe it. But think of existence as a by-product of a divine machine.”
“Is the machine God, or is creation the machine?” MacAllistair asked, genuinely intrigued.
“I have no idea,” Dekker stammered, trying to put his experience into words. “I only know that it is beautiful beyond description—pure life and love; I’ve seen it, been inside it. If Austicon succeeds, the machine will seize—its function cease. All facets of existence, all dimensions and reality, will grind to a stop.”
Dekker’s impassioned statement left them all speechless. “There’s a lot riding on us, Watchmen. It’s not about revenge or justice anymore; I don’t think it ever was. It’s about the continued existence of all life.”
Vesuvius squeezed him. “Then whatever is inside this box can only be used to that end: a self-destruct for the universe.”
An emergency channel notification chirped. The Watchmen looked at each other.
“Could there be other survivors?” MacAllistair hoped aloud.
Dekker pressed the button. The video screens filled with Prognon Austicon’s snarling face. And yet, something had changed in him—he looked even more sinister, if possible.
“I broadcast on all available human channels. I am Dione, the only god you survivors will ever know, and I am a god of death. If you hear this message, despair and take your own life; it shall be a more merciful end for you than my wrath.
“Also, I desire to speak with you Dekker Knight. I so yearn for your presence here on Earth. Come down. Come down that I may finally kill my enemy and God.” As he spoke, the Mechnar ships in the far distance began their descent; realigning their individual trajectories, they entered Earth’s atmosphere.
“I can sense that you have grown; your Watchmen have multiplied—I can feel it, sens
e it in my spirit.” The demon giggled, as if it were funny. “You are too few and you have none left to proselytize. Humanity is painted death macabre and I am her artist.”
Austicon—Dione scooped up a handful of dust and made a show of sniffing it. “You see the apothecium, these beautiful spores? This new breed is an evolved variant—exactly the same in every way, except that it incubates so much faster: twelve hours at most. The last of your race to fall under the arbolean thrall is currently blooming: nervous systems shattering as spikes burst through craniums. Hear me Watchmen! You are too late; mankind is cut off!”
Dione smiled wickedly and took a step back from the camera. The demon keyed in a combination on an electronic lock that had been fitted to an archaic, stone ossuary. With inhuman strength Dione tossed the lid aside; a thick cloud, writhing and buzzing emptied from the box, flitted around the room, and dissipated.
“These are my arbophage scarabs. Tiny little beetles: hungry things! They’ve been dormant, resting in torpor for many thousands of years—since the last time they feasted on their only natural food source, arbolean xylem fibers! They will devour spore and victim alike, the woody flesh of the arboleans. A great feast is upon them and they will annihilate my enemies present. For you, Watchmen, this is the end. Come down. Come down to Jerusalem that I may kill God!” The demon ended the transmission.
A pall hung over the room. “Earth, humanity, is dead,” Dekker stated. His voice was steel and his eyes were fire. “Our mission remains unchanged. Today Prognon Austicon, Dione, dies and reality lives. Watchmen, prepare for what might be our final battle.”
***
“This is Dekker.” His voice echoed slightly as he spoke through the Salvation’s shipboard speaker system. “I wanted to update all humans aboard my vessel of the current situation. Mankind has fallen; Earth has died. To the best of our knowledge, the human settlements on all other worlds have fallen to one of two enemies camped in orbit.
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