Interstellar

by Bob Mayer

  There were no transmitters in the mass-produced suits or means for the humans to communicate with each other. There were hundreds of thousands, the results of generations of Tallies from Earth15, all kept in deep sleep until now.

  “If you do not board the teardrop, you will die here when your air runs out. If you do not get inside the Swarm ship, you will die when your air runs out. Protect those in the red suits. If you do not defeat the Swarm, they will kill every one of you. Activate your rebreathers now.”

  Kray’s hands automatically followed the procedure he knew without knowing how. He took several breaths. The air tasted stale. Not quite foul, but not that of home. A massive door opened in front of them and the air in the chamber dissipated quickly. The door slid up, revealing rows of awaiting ships.

  Kray glanced left and right through the clear visor. Scattered among the packed masses of Tallied some collapsed, those whose suits had failed or rebreathers malfunctioned. The equipment was cheap, hurriedly produced, and designed for diversionary cannon fodder.

  Kray whispered a pray for their souls that they travel on through All-Life with joy.

  He moved forward, up the ramp leading to the ship that was indeed shaped like a teardrop. Hundreds of feet long, resting on cradles, each one could hold five thousand humans strapped in stacked tiers inside. Kray moved in as far as he could, to an empty space. The harness had a four-foot-long power spear next to it. Every staging area had dozens of ships, side by side, on rails that would slide them into place to be launched into space by a magnetic rail gun, once the target was in range.

  The bewildered humans shuffled up the ramps into the ships, pressing forward, filling every spot, strapping themselves in.

  Kray checked his harness. Looked at the spear.

  He said a brief prayer for the souls of all those harnessed around him.

  Then he said a prayer for those Swarm that would be killed in the coming battle. Because all were creatures of the All-Life, were they not?

  *****

  Fourteen Motherships already at or above Orion Fleet Base, either awaiting deployment or in refit, were quickly scrambled to meet the oncoming threat, while the FTL transmitter on one of the moons called out to the Empire for reinforcements.

  Each mothership is a black, cigar-shaped ship, over a mile long, by a quarter wide at the beam. Attached on both ends are six talon warships, each 200 meters long and slightly curved from wide base to sharp tip in order to fit snugly on the mothership. They were not capable of FTLT, but designed for space battle. Besides the mothership talon complements, there were over thirty unassigned Talons, many of new construction, designed to replace fleet losses. They were launched from the planet. Fourteen Motherships and over two hundred Talons was an impressive force.

  But they faced a Swarm Battle Core, easily dwarfing the Airlia fleet. No alien race attacked by the Swarm had ever been able to find where the Swarm originated. It seemed as if they’d always been. Cores traveled alone and there appeared no overall strategy to where they would show up. A Battle Core is, in essence, a self-sustaining entity.

  The Core is the size of a small planet, an oblate spheroid so large it generated its own gravity. It rotates slowly on its minor vertical axis of four thousand miles. Its major axis at the equator is six thousand miles. The surface is black, fractured with red from within in random patterns due to the unique nature of its outer hull, compromised of once living material, constantly regenerating and repairing, much like coral. The black is the dead exoskeleton. The red is where living cells grow outward, adding to and repairing the twenty-mile thick exoskeleton hull. The interior is honeycombed with massive bays holding the various ships, scouts and warships and other specialized craft, along with other bays and tanks and living areas. No other Scale race had ever gotten inside a Core and come back out, so it was all speculation.

  All of this was designed for the reaping. The Airlia and all intelligent species that had encountered the Swarm and were still in existence, knew little about what exactly a reaping was or how it was conducted; just the results. Recon ships sent to worlds that had been reaped found few clues. Mainly because there was little sign left of whatever Scale life had inhabited the planet. Remains of the planet’s inhabitants killed in battle were found, but that was an insignificant number compared to the planet’s pre-reaping population. What had happened to the others, often counting into the billions? The obvious answer was that the Swarm took them on board the Core, but was that alive or dead? How did they manage that amazing logistical feat? And why were there no Swarm bodies found? Certainly, some had been killed in battle?

  The most chilling question was: why was the Scale taken on board the Core rather than just obliterated? What happened to them inside the Core?

  The Airlia war with the Swarm had gone on as long as there were records. The first encounter was lost in the oblivion of time and war. No one at Orion Fleet even knew where their own Airlia home world was; it was the greatest secret of the race. There were some who wondered if it still existed, but orders came from a high command that was supposedly located in the home system. It had been this way for so long, that few thought about it.

  The Core was moving fast as it entered the solar system having come out of FTLT, and now just below light speed and slowing. The Airlia initiated the delaying engagement as far out as possible, trying to gain time for more fleets to arrive. Talons fired energy weapons, cutting into the exoskeleton, blasting out chunks and burning deep gashes.

  The motherships fired massive bolts of power that began as a rippling from the stern, along the length of the ship and then pulsing from the bow toward the Core. These bolts smashed the Core, blowing craters almost a kilometer deep, which was barely five percent to penetration of the exoskeleton.

  Opposing them, thousands of pulse weapons rose to the surface of the Core through long tunnels that opened in the living portion of the exoskeleton and returned fire, outgunning the 72 talons and motherships. Evening the odds slightly, the Airlia ships conducted evasive maneuvers. The Battle Core was an easy target, moving in a straight trajectory and easy to hit. However, the Swarm now countered with their own ships.

  Portals over two and a half miles wide opened on the surface of the Core. Swarm warships launched in the hundreds, spheres twice the size of the motherships, two miles in diameter with eight quarter-mile long weapons arms evenly spaced on the surface.

  The few ‘victories’ the Airlia had achieved in Core confrontations had required a minimum of thirty motherships and attendant talons, enough to focus their firepower while fending off the warships.

  The goal for the moment was to hold until reinforcements arrived. Another tactic was to aim at the launching portals, hoping for a perfectly angled shot that would go straight through the exoskeleton hull into the interior of the Core. Even those rare hits, while they produced a volcanic explosion, only affected a small portion of the massive alien ship.

  The Airlia had a new weapon that was being employed for the first time. From seven moons surrounding the sixth planet, a gas giant, the first of thousands of Teardrops were rail-gunned on ballistic courses to intercept the Core as it passed. As each teardrop was sent out into space another slid into place and launched.

  *****

  Kray was in the first teardrop fired from his moon. He was slammed back, the harness holding him in place. Although the armor was tight fitting, Kray was nevertheless bruised from the rapid acceleration. He hadn’t known what to expect so his position g-forced him in a feet down position. The blood rushed from his head during the acceleration along a five-kilometer-long mag-track before reaching escape velocity. Then came zero-g, a concept foreign to the humans.

  Many were vomiting into their masks, some drowning in the noxious fluids, unused to the movement and lack of gravity. Kray didn’t mind the feeling. Indeed, he found it rather intriguing. He glanced to his right as the woman next to him took off her vomit filled helmet. Her eyes bulged, her mouth opened wide gasping for air,
and then she was dead, slumping inside her suit.

  “May she travel on through All-Life with joy in her soul,” Kray whispered.

  The majority survived.

  Because the ships had no engines, no electronic signatures, and no weapons systems, the teardrops were noticed but not considered a threat by the Core’s sensors.

  Initially.

  Some of the Swarm warships spotted the teardrops and automatically engaged, although it wasn’t clear what they were. The lack of engines and weapons was unusual. The teardrops weren’t moving fast enough nor were they dense enough to pose a ballistic threat if they struck the Core.

  Teardrops were blown apart by Swarm warships and surface guns, but most made it.

  Kray’s was the first. The specially designed nose absorbed enough of the impact to keep those inside from being killed, but he was slammed hard in the opposite direction from the launch. Then all was oddly still. He realized he was hanging in a certain direction, no longer weightless. His implanting directed his next action as the sides of the teardrop split open, giving access to the black surface of what appeared to be another planet.

  Despite being disoriented, Kray hit the harness release, grabbing one of the lines with one hand while the other automatically snatched the spear without conscious choice. He made his way to closest side, merging with others doing the same.

  He slid down and reached the pitted black surface of the Core and looked about. Where to go? Get inside, that was imperative, but how? Several miles away was a large semi-circular pod with a barrel sticking out of it. Every few seconds it sent a bright bolt into the sky.

  Kray paused, despite the urging of his conditioning, and looked up. Without realizing it, he dropped the spear.

  It was beautiful. More stars than he’d ever seen. Closer, the sky crisscrossed with lightning bolts. Explosions as talons and motherships were hit. The ground rumbled under his feet as a strike from a mothership hit the weapons pod, obliterating it and alerting Kray to his danger from above. Better to face the danger below. A stream of black figures was heading in one direction and he joined it. He found he could bound over thirty feet with each step and reveled in the ability.

  They reached the edge of a large hole in the surface. Two and a half miles wide with rough walls, it was initially lined with black but then the walls turned red. The first humans didn’t pause. They climbed down the sides in the low gravity, like ants scurrying into a volcano.

  Back on the surface, as the Swarm recognized the cargo that was being dispersed, the weapons pods ceased engaging the teardrops and went back to battling the talons and motherships, allowing the rest of the teardrops to crash unopposed on the surface with their human cargo.

  While this action was swirling around and on the Core, the first reinforcing Airlia fleet of six motherships came out of FTLT inside the solar system almost within weapons range of the Core, a dangerous maneuver, but a clear indicator of the desperateness of the situation. Talons detached and immediately became embroiled in the space battle.

  On the moons, the last of the teardrops were launched. The staging areas held the humans who’d refused to board and whose conditioning hadn’t taken fully. They remained to die once their rebreathers stopped functioning.

  Hundreds of thousands of surviving humans scurried across the uneven, scared and pitted surface of the Battle Core, finding openings to descend into the alien spaceship and fight. A number died in blasts from the motherships and talons.

  There was, of course, no way they were coming back, regardless of the outcome.

  So far, there had been no sign of the many-armed, round Swarm they were supposed to kill.

  *****

  Deep inside the Core, in special bays, was the Metamorphosis, the key ingredient for the reaping. While the Battle Core and the warships were effective in space battles and engaging planets from space, an invasion required ‘boots on the ground’, or in this case, scales, claws, paws and more. The Swarm tailored its invasion force for the Scale life to be reaped from vast vats of organic soup inside the Core. For an Airlia planet what was formed was essentially the same as for a human inhabited world as the two species were practically identical on the large range of Scale life.

  This was a key part of the reaping that the Airlia, and other intelligent species, had no idea about, since no one survived on a reaped planet. The only corpses that had been recovered had been Swarm from scout ships that were destroyed. The results of the Metamorphosis, if killed, dissolved back into the organic liquid and dissipated quickly.

  The invasion force had been crawling, slithering, flying and walking into warships in preparation for the drop on the second planet. As the humans began to infiltrate their way into the exoskeleton of the Core, the Swarm brain in the middle of the Core finally recognized what was happening. If the Swarm had a sense of humor, it might have laughed, but the Swarm didn’t possess one, being a force with only one over-riding drive. Humor was foreign to it.

  The humans weren’t a serious danger. The furthest advance by any of them so far was barely a couple of kilometers into the exoskeleton. There was little damage they could do until they made it all the way through.

  Some of the Metamorphosis was diverted to await their arrival.

  *****

  The humans faced more danger from the attacking motherships and talons than the Swarm. In fact, they’d encountered no resistance so far. The blasts from the attacking Airlia on the surface added impetus to get as far inside as possible.

  In the low gravity, they made their way along the pitted sides of the portals. Kray was among the first to reach a red membrane blocking the way. Some of the others fired their spears at it, blasting a small hole that was immediately sealed.

  Kray reached with his armored hand, pushing into the red. He penetrated to his wrist, his elbow. Then he pressed his body forward, into the red. As first it resisted him, but then it parted, flowing over and around his suit and he was on the other side, the membrane snapping into place behind. The other humans followed through the living airlock.

  *****

  The surface of the Core absorbed the energy weapon hits, large chunks being blasted away. The gun pods and warships were taking their toll on talons and motherships. Three of the latter drifted dead in space, ripped and blown to pieces. Seventeen talons had been destroyed.

  And through it all, the Core continued toward Orion Fleet HQ. It was slowing but would arrive there in hours. The majority of the Metamorphosis was loaded onto warships for the drop and the reaping.

  Desperation was setting in among the Airlia in charge of the Orion Fleet. Indications from the last FTL messages were that more reinforcements would not arrive until after the Core arrived in orbit above Headquarters. Thousands of teardrops littered the surface of the Core, but there was no indication the humans were achieving any success.

  The admiral in charge contemplated ordering the surviving motherships to engage FTLT. That would abandon the Talons and the surface facilities, workers, and population to the Core and reaping but would salvage the motherships, the most valuable asset.

  However, her orders from higher, were to fight to the last.

  *****

  The first humans made it through the portals into large hangers containing docked warships, scout ships and—the Metamorphosis.

  Kray paused in amazement, as monsters of legend awaited. In the lead were dragons swooping through the air; lizards with forty-foot long bodies and wings with twice that in span. They came at the humans like dive bombers.

  The approaching danger shook Kray and the other humans out of their shock. The others brought up their power spears, pressing the fire button. Bolts hit the attacking beasts, causing some damage, but not enough. The dragons opened their mouths but it wasn’t flame that came out. Thousands of thin black objects spewed forth. Wormlike, ranging in length from a few inches to several feet in length, parasites with no eyes or mouth, they rained down on the invaders.

  Kray realized
he didn’t have his spear. He couldn’t remember when he’d dropped it. He watched in awe as a dragon passed by, looping to make another run. A number of black suits were around Kray, forming a circle to protect him, but he didn’t understand why, not having been programmed in the same manner as them.

  A human to Kray’s right was covered in the black worms. They slithered and swarmed over him, looking for a way through the armor suit. Kray took several steps back as worms slithered toward him. He chanced a glance forward and saw on the floor of the large bays the rest of the Metamorphosis. Naga, massive seven-headed snakes, slithered forward. They were accompanied by swarms of spiders skittering on eight legs with circular, flat bodies two to eight inches in diameter. Each had a small forest of the invasive parasites on their back.

  Amidst all this were huge anthropoids walking upright. Thirty to forty feet tall, the legs were bent backward at the knees and the feet ended in sharp claws. The arms were long and had clawed hands. From the elbow to the shoulder the arms were webbed to the torso. What terrified most of the humans, though, was their heads: a mound with a gaping hole for a mouth and surrounded by long writhing tentacles. The head slanted back from the mouth to a large bulb with loose skin hanging down the back. Two red, beady eyes peered forth with mindless malice.