“Disgusting,” He said. “Why would they do this to their own world?”
“Your people used nukes to quell rebellions on Earth, MacKenzie.” I replied. “You really don’t have any room to talk about it.”
“Fair point, sir.”
We made our way up the sloping terrain, and it took me several moments realize that this was not a natural hill. “Daniels…did you set us down in a…landfill?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Sure did. The methane gas masks our drive emissions.”
I sighed and sloughed through the trash piles to the top of the rise. When I got there, I was stunned to see a towering cone, white hulled with a black lens. “That would be the gravity weapon.” I said. “The weapon that destroyed my home planet.”
MacKenzie stopped and looked at me. “I get it now.” He said finally. “That’s why you feel the need to do this yourself.”
“Part of it,” I admitted. I looked at my tacpad, which I had set to display a picture of my wife and sighed. “And other reasons. Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”
We could see the shimmering blue dome of the energy shield, and where it touched the ground a mile or so away. It wouldn’t be difficult, with the network of girders and scaffold that had been erected around the weapon, to find a location where the shield didn’t touch the ground.
We climbed down a long shaft and snuck through the sewers, not needing to evade any patrols, but also seeing a lot of surface contacts on our motion detectors.
Finally, we reached the edge of the shield, and we walked directly under it.
“That was anti-climactic.” MacKenzie observed.
“Yeah,” I said, looking around with my full sensor suite engaged on my helmet. “And almost too easy.” I checked the mission timer, we had just over twenty-two minutes to reach the target, and we were only five hundred yards away.
Creeping through the sewers, we found an exit very close to where we would need to end up and climbed the ladder. I used a small fiber-optic probe to peer out the manhole cover and around at the area. A half dozen Gilbaglians stood around the reactor controls, wearing yellow hazmat suits. I took a deep breath. “Six targets,” I reported to MacKenzie. “I’ll take the three left. Be careful with your shots, I don’t know how well shielded the reactors are.”
He nodded and I punched my fist, power-assisted, at the bottom of the manhole cover. It flew into the air and I jumped the last three feet out of the tube and landed to the right of the hatch. I opened fire on the Gilbaglians, killing the three I mentioned with suppressed shots from my carbine. MacKenzie’s rifle coughed and the other three went down. I was about to call the all clear signal when my HUD flashed a motion warning behind me. I spun and opened fire without thinking.
I was looking at the Devil.
Well, not literally.
But the ancient Christian, and even the later Phelb bible had depicted a tall goat-like creature with horns and angry red eyes. The part of my brain that analyzed threats locked up for a split second as I tried to figure out what I was looking at. The creature was almost ten feet tall and was roaring so loud that my visor was shaking inside my helmet.
Holy shit, I thought, as I figured out what I was seeing.
A Meyges.
The bolt on my rifle locked open, and my index finger on my right hand found the magazine release, letting the polymer construct fall from the bottom of the rifle, and my left hand fed a new one. I was about to depress the bolt release when the Meyges surged at me, bellowing. I can only describe it as an intense non-sound that was somewhere between a train whistle and wolf howl. I can’t describe it better than that. But it was loud, and…violent. This was not a species that had evolved for anything but violence.
It bowled me over and I rolled, bringing my rifle to bear from a prone position. I fired on the backward-jointed knees, eliciting a howl of pain and rage from the creature. But it went down hard regardless, and it rolled over to it’s back and tried to kick itself back upright.
I jumped to my feet, and MacKenzie joined me in aiming our weapons into its face and pulling the trigger. The most terrifying part of the creature was definitely the blood—it sizzled and popped on the floor and was clearly acidic in nature.
MacKenzie shuddered. “They know we’re here.”
I kept staring at the blood. It poured from the wrecked face of the Meyges, an ashy grey color and definitely acidic. “This is our enemy now.” I said softly.
“He wasn’t so hard to kill.” MacKenzie said.
“There was only one of them,” I advised. “Make sure your helmet cam got all of that.”
MacKenzie paused for a moment as he reviewed the footage. “It did, and I sent it back to the ship.”
“Good. They’re going to be coming quickly, and we need to do this.”
It didn’t take us long to find the reactor controls and begin manipulating them into the failure we needed. First, we would overload them, and then when they became hot enough, the grenades would be placed, as molten metal and composite would be raining down on…
…well, me.
I sighed as the reactors ramped up to full heat, then I turned around to MacKenzie to issue the order to get out of the area. We had less than five minutes.
But he wasn’t there.
I turned back around in time to see MacKenzie’s fist flying at me from nowhere. It hammered into my helmet and knocked my HUD offline for a moment, leaving me in total darkness. My armor seized up, and I felt myself falling. Then my armor came back online, and I shook my head to clear it. MacKenzie was holding me up. I blinked.
“Mac?” I asked.
“Sorry sir.” He said softly, pulling off his helmet. This would expose him to fatal levels of radiation. As a Phelb, he was not able to withstand it. “But we need you too much.”
I felt my eyes grow wide. I thought they were going to touch the inside of my visor. “Mac!” I shouted.
He shook his head, the skin on the side of his face blistering. “Sorry sir,” He said again. “Now get out of here. I’m blowing this thing in two minutes, with or without you.”
He let go of the front of my armor and the full software suite finally rebooted and I hit the bottom of the sewer tube. I scrambled to my feet and activated my com. “Mac! No!” I shouted. I looked back up the manhole, then suddenly the lid clanged into place. “No, Derek!” I shouted, beating on the ladder up. “Damn you! It’s supposed to be me! You son of a bitch!” I slammed my fists against the rungs of the ladder.
“It’s all right, sir.” MacKenzie said. “Start running. Daniels is powering up.” His voice was so resigned, and my heart felt like it was getting ripped out of my chest. “Just do me a favor?”
“What?” I sobbed, tears running down my face.
“Just tell my wife and my kids that I love them.” MacKenzie said, and then the comm popped as he destroyed his device.
I banged my head against the rung of the ladder once more and screamed at it, letting my pain and fury out.
“Run!” A voice in my helmet urged me, and I finally obliged, sprinting at my top speed down the sewer we had used to infiltrate the facility. I could barely see so I let my suit sensors warn me of anything in my way. I burst out into the top of the landfill and let gravity help me as I ran downhill. The ship suddenly loomed in front of me, and I kicked off hard and jumped, landing on my hands and knees just inside of the hatch.
The airlock slammed shut behind me and I felt the air buffet me as the hatch was pressurized.
“Hold on back there!” Daniels shouted over the comm. “We may not get clear in time!”
The deck tilted up and I was pressed down by the heavy acceleration. I just laid down on the deck and let my tears flow.
“Destota!” Mallory shouted into my headset.
I ignored her, and just breathed heavily trying to control my emotions. “It was supposed to be me.” I whispered to no one.
“Daniels!” Mallory shouted over the open comm. “Get ou
t of there!”
“Trying Ma’am!” Daniels shouted back. The ship rocked repeatedly. “Valentine!” Daniels shouted. “I need you in the gun pod! Now!”
I gritted my teeth and pushed myself off the deck, ripped my helmet off and stumbled down the corridor to the weapon pod, a rotating turret on the dorsal section of the ship. I climbed the ladder, trying to get the image of MacKenzie’s burned face smiling at me.
Sinking into the seat, I activated the controls and saw the issue, dozens of small fighters pouring away from Gilbaglia. I opened fire on them, destroying several of the little bastard ships quickly, then they pulled back to take potshots at it. About that moment, a tiny voice in my brain said: ‘zero’.
I blinked rapidly as there was a flash and a massive shockwave that pushed the clouds away from the place where the gravity weapon had been centered.
It occurred to me just then how stupid it was for the Gilbaglians to bring that entire weapon onto their home planet.
And then it hit me what we’d just done. Mallory had known. Everyone, probably, except for me had known.
The Gilbaglia system had four inhabited planets, all of them filled with the avian species, orbiting one star.
There was a flash, and the blast tinting on the weapon pod darkened to almost black.
And just like that, there were two stars in the Gilbaglia system.
“Admiral!” Daniels cried. “I don’t know if we’re far enough from the distortion field to escape!”
“Engage drive now.” Mallory said calmly. “Now. Now, Daniels.”
The star lines warped, and the frigate Ruiz plowed into subspace. Before the green flash of radiation that signified the transition, I saw the rear hatch open and dozens of probes spill out of the cargo hold and be left behind in the Gilbaglia system to monitor the situation there.
“Admiral,” Daniels called. “What is the status of the fleet there?”
“The Gilbaglians are fleeing, in the direction of their home world.” Mallory replied with confidence. “We took some serious losses. But the Meyges are pulling back to regroup and so are the Gilbaglians. We’ve won this round.”
I put my gloved hand to my head. We’d won, but it had cost a life that could not ever be replaced.
“Copy that, Admiral, can you give us a heading?”
“Drop out and come to 282.6, mark 180. Eternity is really beat up but she’s diverting to pick you up before you return to Earth.”
Epilogue
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Sector 000
Earth, Sol System
One year later
I never seemed to get any sleep any more, but that was just fine for me.
Alyssa rested in my arm, her small head on my shoulder, looking out over the nightscape; snowy fields stretching out beyond as far as I could see in the darkness. The northern lights danced overhead in alternating shimmers of blue, red, and green.
The lights behind me danced on the paned glass as I stared out.
“Da.” My daughter said, clapping me on the shoulder with her tiny hands. “Da. Da. Da.”
“Probably.” I replied with a grin, having no clue what the child was attempting to say. She was beautiful, with her mother’s liquid brown eyes, light brown hair and chubby little legs that were adorable by any standards.
She nodded, satisfied that all was right in the world and laid her head back on my shoulder and promptly fell asleep.
Mallory strode into the room a few moments later, held up only briefly by her Ministerial duties. She started to say something, then saw Alyssa asleep on my shoulder, and smiled instead. She walked over and kissed our daughter lightly on the forehead.
I’d arrived back at Earth only minutes before my child was born, with the rest of the fleet. We’d lost a dozen ships, big ships, in the fighting, but the Gilbaglians had been taken completely by surprise by both the sudden strike, and the deadly assault on their home planet.
Gilbaglia, and the four outlying planets had been obliterated by the explosion of the gravity weapon.
Ten Meyges ships, that had flown in to try and stop us, had also been destroyed, and the star in Gilbaglia had been pushed almost a light year in the opposite direction, and then went nova as it was destabilized. The nova was so bright, you could see it from Earth.
In the daylight.
That star would, eventually, become a massive black hole which would suck in everything that remained of the Gilbaglian home system.
Estimates of deaths were in the trillions, on the Gilbaglian side. The most devastating attack ever carried out by humanity, and it had been pulled off by two men.
One of which had never returned home to his family.
The MacKenzie family was openly hostile to me from the moment I returned, accusing me of ordering him to remain behind. So much so that they’d lodged a formal protest and finally been shown the helmet cam footage, which proved what a tremendous hero Derek had been.
Then they went to quietly resentful of the man that they felt had gotten their son, father, and husband killed. I didn’t really blame them. I felt the same way.
The most shocking outcome of the mission had been about four months after we’d escaped, when the Gilbaglians had contacted Earth, and to the total shock of all humanity, surrendered, asking only that we return the planet we called Cesspool.
We’d agreed, pulling our token force back so they could retake the system. We’d established a defined and strongly defended border. The Meyges had been stubbornly silent, staying in the Atom system, not moving nor speaking. The Cetoplin had even contacted them several times but were greeted only by silence.
We’d left them alone for now, while we built stronger ships, stronger weapons, and even a prototype mechanized armor.
The war had ended. The Gilbaglian Empire had fallen, and the Human Empire had arisen from the ashes of its own civil war to become the dominate power in the Galaxy.
“It’s over.” Mallory said softly as I lay Alyssa in her crib. “We ratified a peace agreement with the Cetoplin today. They’re going to repopulate on Mars and part of their population on New Vandor.”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “So, no more war, huh?”
“None.” She answered, rubbing a hand on my back. “Well…except for that one thing.”
“What one thing?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“There are sensor echoes coming out of the Sagittarius arm. Might be something worth checking out. In a few years.” She wrapped her arms around me.
I grinned. “Well, we’ll see in a few years then.”
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This is the end of Book Two, but the story continues with Book Three: Echoes of Sagittarius.
Dramatis Personae
Human Empire
Destota Valentine: Colonel, overall leader of human army; commander of the Night Stalkers
Mallory Valentine: Admiral, leader of the human navy.
Ivata Noku: Major, training commander.
Derek MacKenzie: Major, executive officer of the Night Stalkers.
Miranda Dawes: Captain, Predator
Cerasi Jones: Captain, Shockwave
Mikaela Grace: Lieutenant, Night Stalkers
Gavin Antillon: Lieutenant, Night Stalkers
Creston Severson: Lieutenant, Night Stalkers
Mikel Kelis: Lieutenant, Night Stalkers
Rosita Daniels: Lieutenant, Night Stalker Pilot Corps
Advirdia: Councilor, Vandorian Leadership
Kendalis Wingell: Councilor, Vandorian Leadership
Jonathan (John) Moore: Councilor, Vandorian Leadership
Chancellor Davon Wrathe Jr.: Leader, Phelb Faction, Human Empire
Duchessa Venlent-Wrathe: Major General, Phelb Faction, Human Empire
Cetoplin Imperium/Remnant
Shipmaster: Overall leader of the Cetoplin Remnant
First Class: Second in command, Cetoplin Remnant
Third Class: Adjutant, Cetoplin Remnant
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I’d
just like to take a moment to thank my friends, my family, my readers for making this dream possible, and viable. Stay tuned for the remainder of the six-book series, as well as the new series from Fallen Empires Productions, “The Genesis Program, Book One: Cascades”
Requiem of a Nightmare, text copyright 2019, by Fallen Empires Productions and Jeremy Spires
Any relation to any persons, entities, companies, or real events are entirely accidental.
Fallen Empires, Book Two: Requiem of a Nightmare
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Requiem of a Nightmare Page 25