Beyond Antares Dimensional Gates

by Edited by Brandon Rospond

  She had little time to wonder about that. In seconds, the flame-things had reached the nearest troopers, and they lashed out wildly. Had they still been weak, starving, physical beings, these blows would have been no more than a nuisance, barely likely to leave a bruise. Not now.

  Kalta watched, helpless, as the first three troopers struck by the fire-monsters simply burst into flames, immolated like human torches. Writhing in agony, they fell to the ground. She could tell they would not live for long - but there was no time to wonder at their fate, no time to mourn them. Dozens of Ghar-shaped, unreal entities of fire were now surging out of the pyre, charging at the horrified Concord troopers.

  "Order the retreat!" she shouted at Lemelle, and he looked at her, bemused.

  "This is impossible," he said. "This can't be happening."

  Kalta wanted to hit him. She didn't waste the effort.

  "Cease fire!" she shouted instead, turning away from the hapless strike captain and toward the nearest troopers. She held no rank over them, of course - quite the opposite, she was the newest trooper in the company so she was more junior than any of them - but the confidence and clarity in her voice carried its own weight among so much confusion. They did as she said instinctively, backing away from the onrushing creations of flame. "Fall back!" Kalta ordered, matching actions to words.

  She ran, and the troopers ran with her, between the ruins, staying away from the worst of the rubble to avoid stumbling. She saw Javed doing his part, ordering the other troopers away. But then, suddenly, Baravit was alongside her.

  "What are you doing, Kalta?" he demanded. "We can't run from these things forever!"

  "I know," she said, breathlessly. "I have a plan."

  "Make it a good one!" the strike leader said, glancing back. The fire-beasts were closer now - they showed no sign of slowing or stopping, like the battlesuit that had killed Akantha had. Perhaps the energy that sustained them was stronger due to the intensity of the pyre. Perhaps there was no physical explanation - these things could not exist within the laws of reality, yet here they were; how could Kalta expect to place limits on their behavior?

  She could, however, make a gamble on how they might be destroyed.

  She and the rest of the company ran four more yan, past the largest ruin Kalta could see. It towered over them all, ten storeys at least; though it could have been twice that before the invasion, maybe more. The weapons of the Ghar, followed by years of neglect, had not been kind to it. It would suit her plan perfectly.

  "Halt!" she shouted, as loud as she could, and again the tone of her voice led the others to obey. They looked back - the flame-creatures rushed at them, ever closer. Kalta cursed inwardly. This would be close - and it would need her comrades' cooperation.

  "Pattern fire, angle zero-five-zero!" she shouted, raising her own weapon by way of example. "Company, fire!"

  Some caught on quicker than others. A few, misunderstanding, fired at the fire-monsters themselves, only to see them thrive and gorge on the heat energy of their shots. But most realized quickly enough what Kalta intended.

  The company let rip with everything they had, plasma carbines and lances spitting rapidly into the ground floor of the building. Chunks of architecture vaporized in the face of these blasts, the wall itself seeming to ripple in the violence of their shooting.

  But the unnatural, blazing things were getting closer fast, and Kalta realized that it was not going to be enough.

  She opened her mouth to give the order to run again - it would not save everyone, not this time, but perhaps some of the troopers might get away. Before she could do so, salvation arrived.

  The heavy support drone swooped overhead, the whine of its suspensors somehow rising even above the sound of several dozen plasma carbines firing at once. Then its plasma cannon fired, and the shriek overwhelmed all other sounds.

  The colossal energy of the cannon shot impacted into the ruin where Kalta had been focusing her comrades' aim, obliterating the already-weakened wall, and in a slow, almost gentle collapse, the ruin came down.

  The building landed square on the horde of advancing flame-things, swallowing them whole. A wave of thick dust burst out from the impact, and in an instant Kalta was blind.

  * * * *

  After so long away from the IMTel, bonding with it again was as soothing as a warm bath.

  Kalta relaxed the moment her implants made the connection. Now, she knew, all her troubles were over. IMTel would make the right decisions, based on perfect knowledge collated from everyone in the PanHuman Concord.

  Javed smiled at her. The open expression on his face showed that he too had reconnected successfully. "We made it back," he said.

  "Never a doubt," she laughed. They stood by the ship's viewport, looking out over the surface of Astioch far below, looking back to where they had been before the dropship had come to extract them.

  "It was for a while," he said, seriously. "If you hadn't thought of bringing down that building on those things..."

  "I didn't even know it would work," Kalta confessed. "I mean, I hoped it would... I still don't know if they were crushed by the masonry, or the fires were choked by the dust, or if whatever it was that created them just ran out of energy."

  "Maybe none of those things," he shrugged. "I don't think any of it was even real - I mean, the threat was real, right? But those things... they had no place in our universe."

  Baravit's gruff voice interrupted before Kalta could reply. "And we had no place on that planet."

  She turned to him. "Is the strike captain still angry with me?" The thought did not worry her. Her fate was not in Lemelle's hands, but the IMTel's, and the IMTel never made mistakes.

  "He is still angry," conceded Baravit, "but I think soon he will realize he is not angry with you. He made the wrong call in declaring Astioch safe to resettle. The IMTel has concluded that already. The strike captain will learn from it - the whole PanHuman Concord will learn from it."

  "How long do you think it will take?" asked Javed.

  "Until Astioch can be reclaimed?" said the strike leader, raising an eyebrow. "Years, generations... maybe not until the next age, nor even then, who knows. The IMTel will decide. In any case, not now."

  "Those Ghar we fought... the real ones, I mean," Kalta said, slowly. "Their guns were crude, ineffective. Primitive, really. I can't imagine them tearing apart the fabric of space-time."

  Baravit inclined his head. "No, they wouldn't. They were just Outcasts, slaves. The higher-ranking Ghar, in their battlesuits; you got a glimpse down there of what one of them could do, but until you see one fighting, for real, it's hard to understand. The Ghar are mad, every one of them. Nothing else in Antarean space would be insane enough to use quantum gravity in the way that they do. Now you know why."

  "Then what of the... other things?" asked Javed. "They weren't Ghar - I mean, they took the shape of Ghar, but that's not what they were. So… what were they?"

  The strike leader smiled, and shrugged. "Trooper, I have no idea." He looked at Kalta. "Good job down there, Kalta. You did well."

  He walked away, as did Javed, leaving Kalta alone with her thoughts. She could not take her eyes off the planet below. She had fought there. Her comrades had died there. She had begun by fearing she would never prove herself capable; it had ended with her directing the company in battle. She still couldn't quite believe how far she had come.

  The most bemusing thing was that after all that, no one even knew what manner of creature they had actually been fighting against. Information from the scanners and the probes had been uploaded into the nanosphere, but even the IMTel had rejected the data as invalid, impossible – far too dangerous to toy with. Kalta understood what she had fought against, though - or at least she thought she did. The enemy hadn't been creatures at all. They had no form of their own, no existence to speak of in reality, dangerous as they were. Such things as the C3 had encountered on Astioch might never be seen again in that form, in all of space and time. It
had been null-space itself that the Concord had battled, an unreal non-existence that no mere word could define.

  It had been Kalta's first mission and, she decided after a moment's reflection, it had been a success. She would never be able to put a name to what she had seen, though. In the vastness of Antarean space, not least in those parts of it tainted by null-space, some things defied classification.

  Papa

  By Dave Horobin

  “No!” Kaig exclaimed as his gnarly fist impacted on the wall of the Boromite’s subterranean hab-dome. A mixture of anger and frustration filled his living quarters.

  “It’s not your choice.” A gravelly, yet cool feminine voice from behind him countered. “She’s my sister and she is quite capable of making her own decisions.”

  Kaig turned away from the wall and into the center of the room, almost kicking the micromite loitering around his feet as he moved. His graying completion was tinged with a mild pink hue beneath his heavy set Boromite features. He let out a deep sigh. “She is trouble. I know she is immediate family to you, but I don’t trust that woman. She has all the integrity of a Vard.” His narrowing steely gaze was matched with equal intensity by the lady in front of him. Grita’s arms moved from her hips and rested atop her pregnant belly. Kaig saw the corner of his wife’s lip curl, her tongue visibly running across her front teeth. He had been hard-headed before about her little sister in previous disagreements, and he regretted it. His wife has always insisted it was her sister’s choice of whom she married and with whom she associated with. This marriage would set her up to become matriarch of the small Aeof family of Boromites, after the untimely end of the previous heiress-less incumbent. She had only birthed males, all of which were on the hunt for wives. The eldest son was betrothed to Grita’s sister, Bardina. Once married, Bardina would inherit the Aeof matriarchy and their two families would have much greater power in the local systems.

  “Do not think you can continue to speak to me in that way, my love.” Her velvety voice hissed smoothly. “Just count yourself lucky you are my husband and future father of this little one,” she patted her pregnant stomach gently, “otherwise you’d be hauling rocks in zero-G.”

  Kaig looked away in frustration and mute anger, fixing his stare on the micromite. Its many legged form mindlessly fidgeted near his feet. It was a lavamite in a previous life, but after having many natural organs replaced it was now little more than an automaton toy, gifted to them by Bardina. If the dumb critter was capable of thought, Kaig could have been forgiven for thinking it was giving him sympathy. He braced a hand on the cool wall of their living quarters, steadying his mind as much as his body. Grita really knew how to drive him mad by picking on his dislike of weightlessness. He wasn’t just arguing with his wife, but also the leader of their guild. She had been the matriarch of the Riglurn family guild for several years, acquiring the mantle after her very successful mother had passed away. So successful had Grita’s mother been, she hardly had time to raise Grita and Bardina; her two daughters raised themselves.

  A comm-chime chirped in the room. “Boss,” the gruff voice crackled, “we’ve broken through. You may want to come and inspect this place for yourself.” Kaig’s eyes flashed up from the floor to meet his wife’s steely gaze. He knew the current discussion was far from over, but business was business.

  “Thank you, Hoz,” Grita replied lightly, all notes of the disagreement with her husband had left her voice. “I will send him down to you shortly.” Her scowl turned into a wry smile. “And don’t start without him, you know how hard-headed he can be about inspections.” Her eyes flashed toward the door to dismiss her husband. He gently brushed his wife’s tummy with his hand as he trampled out, making his way to the transmat station.

  * * * *

  The cavern tunnel matched the scans they had taken when they had first arrived on Niraka a mere week ago. Intent on mining the planet for the rare metals and minerals to barter with traders, they had stumbled upon a deep underground tunnel system. The auto-lanterns had spread out along the tunnel, suspensor lifts allowing them to hover in the silent stillness, illuminating wide areas. It was reminiscent of burrows of the Lavan species that Boromites exploited, but much deeper and without the tunnels to the surface. Whatever creatures created the tunnels, they appeared to spend their entire life cycle deep underground. More importantly, they could burrow much deeper than most of the common Lavan creatures.

  Kaig moved past the frag borer array, the moisture within the cavern steaming from the heat of the mining equipment. His skilled eyes surveyed each and every detail of the bare rock. Some of the other Boromites joked that he could read the walls in a mine the same way younglings could read picture books.

  “It seams from around here,” his outstretched arm gestured to a part of the cavern wall as his voice echoed around the mining team, “through to there.” Moving his arm and gesturing further down the tunnel, he sucked the cool air through his teeth thoughtfully. “There’s not much in it though. Yield may be low. Get the borers into position and perhaps take the depth of the dig to three yan for now, just for a sample.”

  “Yes, Boss.” The accompanying miners muttered in unison as they broke out of the group and onto their assigned operation details. They’d performed this routine on many different worlds and knew the process well. Kaig suspected that a reasonable profit was to be made and well worth the effort his crew was making; but he never liked to be overly positive in his estimates. If he was wrong, he would never hear the end of the teasing banter from his brethren.

  Kaig watched his kinsmen execute his request with efficiency. As they milled around, his mind wandered back to the earlier conversation with his wife about his sister-in-law and her situation. He’d heard from some of his most trusted gangers that something was not completely right with the arrangement for Bardina’s marriage. The whole affair left him uneasy, similar to how spaceflight would turn his stomach, the artificial gravity causing his feet to tingle. Once he had asked his wife how her feet were during a flight, she had been bemused by the question and forced the conversation to why he had asked. She had claimed it was another of his lame excuses about wanting to stay planetside. He patted the solid wall he had unthinkingly propped himself against. Nothing like the solid feeling of uncut rock to ground oneself. At least rock was trustworthy, not at all like Bardina. He knew he would have to speak to his wife again, but his apologies always sounded hollow. Perhaps that was his disdain for accepting he was wrong? Except this time, he knew he was not wrong; something with this situation was awry.

  This was not just about nuptial difficulties, something had really perturbed him. He spread his aging fingers out across the cold rock he was leaning against. There it was, a tiny tremor from deeper within the rock. It was not induced by the frag borer beams, nor the man portable mass compactors the Boromites used for mining. “Boys,” his voice echoed around the chamber as the workers attentively readied themselves for further orders over the din, “everything down and off.” With quick moments of superb dexterity, everything was winding down, and each of the bulky figures crouched in anticipation. The intimation within Kaig’s words alerted them to ready themselves; the Boromite’s voice took on a certain tone when things were about to get violent, and he was happy they realized it. In seconds, the miners changed into a cohesive fighting unit.

  Silence fell through the cavern. Hoz watched Kaig’s hands on the rock surface and slowly moved to caress the rock beneath his own feet. Kaig caught his eyes and Hoz nodded. He felt the tremors too. The others placed their hands on surfaces around them. By feeling the vibration with one part of their body and then almost instantly again in another part of their body, they all directed their gaze toward roughly the same point. They’d done this a few times before, although usually to determine where a hidden enemy artillery post was spewing forth its payload. Kaig pointed at the operators of the frag borer nearest the origin of the tremors and gestured for it to be readied for activation. Calmly they mane
uvered the mining equipment and readied it as a weapon.

  The silence shattered as rocks exploded from the cavern wall, showering the Boromites in stone splinters. A carnivorous beak snapped ferociously at the intruders, its nostril-tubes flaring as it sniffed for them.

  The whine of the frag borer joined the cascade of echoes bouncing around the cavern. Mass compactors focused on the beast, which in turn winced as the equipment pinched to tear chunks out of its leathery skin. Designed to strip rock, the mining tool was capable of causing severe trauma to unshielded flesh, especially at such short distances.

  The frag borer operators leapt back out of the way as the creature thrashed into the suspensor-mounted equipment, causing minor damage that would take a while to repair. Time was not something the Boromites had right now. Kaig’s eyes surveyed the creature. It had evolved to spend its life tunneling through solid rock, a heavily protected beak housing what passed as a nose, while strong muscles ran down the length of the worm-like leathery body to push it through the tunnels. It was approximately three Boromites high, yet appeared small within the cavern.

  A twisting knot formed in Kaig’s gut as he barked out orders. “Go! To the transmat, now!” The worm-like creature appeared to be flailing aimlessly rather than thrashing aggressively, but it was still capable of causing harm. Experience had taught the Boromites to know better than to question Kaig. The first of his gang was barely into the transition point where they had breached the cavern when another monstrosity burst forth.

  A colossal mass of jet black tentacles and snapping teeth belonging to a single massive beast erupted from below - a beast large enough to burrow a tunnel as large as the cavern. Kaig’s warning had at least given the Boromites a slight advantage, although much of the equipment was demolished in the fray. His trusty plasma pistol drawn, Kaig fired at what could have been antenna-whips, perhaps these brushed against the tunnel walls to help whatever it was find food. If they were antenna, Kaig was not going to allow the beast to use them to locate his guildmates. Momentarily the thing turned toward the injured beaked-worm and devoured it whole. The miners were filing though the access tunnel toward the transmat as Kaig followed. The monster did not appear to have been sated by its most recent meal and turned its attention to the Boromite. Kaig did not look back as he sprinted along the narrow passage. He could see the transmat being illuminated by the auto-lanterns dotting the path. He could feel the rush of air behind him, a pressure wave caused by the beast hungrily pursuing him, causing the narrow column of air to compress with every yan covered.