The Destinia Apocalypse (The Starguards - Of Humans, Heroes, and Demigods Book 4)

by Raymond Burke

  They were all still laughing when Gordell suddenly looked up in alarm as if seeing through the cave walls.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  There was no time as tons of rock came tumbling down and buried them.

  The average height of a Surge was eight-foot; average weight two tons. Their metallic skin rippled in compressed folds over and over like a living samurai sword combining strength and flexibility. This enabled Surge to absorb as much energy as possible for their sustenance, locomotion, and weaponry. Surge were practically indestructible. Dropped from a great height, Surge could survive the experience mostly down to their physical nature, but also due to the fact that they would absorb any heat and other sources of energy created in order to heal themselves rapidly.

  Ten Surge surfed in low orbit, guided psionically by Valtare from the ground. From above they were led by Spearhead, a giant of a Surge, and their leader. Eight other huge Surge flanked him. But the biggest Surge of them all was Chasm.

  At twelve-foot and five tons, Chasm was a giant among Surge with large extra armoured platelets covering his torso, arms and legs, and a double-axe-like formation growing upward from his right shoulder. Unusually for a Surge, who were normally monotone in colour, Chasm was three-toned, with his black and silver body shaded in areas with burnished gold, the result of a cataclysmic collision with an asteroid. Chasm had impacted with so much energy he had also absorbed a considerable amount of the asteroid’s rich mineralogy. His size and colour reflected the compensation his body had made to heal itself. But Chasm was also a monster, his psychological compass skewed away from the Surge mean of order and justice.

  Chasm was a blunt instrument, a weapon of choice, and the first of the group to dead drop from a hundred and twenty miles up to impact the ridges and hills where Gordell’s cave lay.

  From a mile away and to the east, L’Coyle stood at the forefront of Valtare's force of two hundred men with a hundred Surge awaiting the fallout. His men were nervous, fidgety, standing around in hot armour in the dry wind which had suddenly whipped up. It presaged a growing ominous tone which accompanied an unnerving pressure from above. L'Coyle looked up, shading his eyes from the sun, though it was his ears that told him the story.

  An almighty ear-splintering whine announced the arrival of ten supersonic Surge as they dead-dropped through the air. They ploughed into the hills followed by violent ground tremors and explosive eruptions of several mushroom clouds of dark dust which fanned out threatening to swallow the sky. Even then, L’Coyle could see that much of the targeted hillsides had collapsed.

  Before the dust could settle, L’Coyle donned his helmet with a fibre face mask to block the dust and took his force into the hills to search for the bodies of the Starguards. The great bluffs and giant rock formations which had risen up hundreds of feet with sheer sides riddled with unexplored caves were now largely destroyed. The Surge combed the area psychically for any signs of life.

  One dark green Surge, whose name L’Coyle could not remember—they all looked alike to him—motioned to L’Coyle showing him the dark entrance to a still-intact cave. L’Coyle turned and whistled a signal to a section of men. Apprehensively, they all headed to the cave, scrambling over rocks avoiding slides and tumbling debris.

  Just before reaching the entrance there was a thunderous crack from the ground to their north, which trembled. The kinetic bombs had recovered themselves, boring their way to the surface. Each took off slowly, Chasm resembling a rumbling, giant alien bumblebee escorted by nimble wasps.

  L’Coyle and his similarly masked men had seen nothing like it and continued watching the metallic fliers as they arched away toward the Fortress. L’Coyle smiled at the sight; one of the wonders of the universe. But time was short and he urged his men on again as they continued into the cave.

  “Weapons,” he ordered through his helmet comms.

  Soldiers drew out laser pistols and rifles; advanced weapons Archron had collected over time. L'Coyle and the soldiers had been extensively trained with them over the past few months. However, every one of them still wore their sheathed swords belted to them. Old habits and tactics died hard even though they knew normal swords wouldn't cut it against the Starguards.

  Either way, the Starguards are dead, L'Coyle thought to himself.

  The Surge hardly ever ventured into the hills, let alone enter any of the caves. Valtare had gleaned from his fragmentary telecommunications with the Surge that they thought there was something else in the caves besides Chryrians, something which Valtare dared believed made the metal folk skittish or even afraid. That should have been warning enough for L'Coyle, but Archron had insisted he lead Valtare’s force deep into the cave systems to flush out or kill the Starguards. For L’Coyle, after all his misfortunes with Gordell Exmoor and then the arrival of the Starguards, it would have been his honour to avenge the Knights Destina. And Surge superstitions were not going to deter him.

  Meters into the large cave musky scents assailed his senses, itching his nostrils, eerie noises putting him on edge, but he continued on shuffling slowly through the darkness followed by his men. The Surge remained outside. If he didn’t know better, even L’Coyle swore the cave was haunted. Weapons drawn for any sign of the Starguards, he rounded a corner, emerging into a low dark-walled cavern with mist rising from the murky ground.

  As he strained to get a better look, a flicker of movement to his right caught his eye. He charged at the shadow. But nothing was there. His men were spooked. Several invoked prayers to the Virgin Mary, some edged their way out. L’Coyle decided to follow them, treading backward lightly. Instinctively, he drew his sword pointing it out front.

  A cracking of rock behind them caught them by surprise. Before they could sprint for the exit several large jagged boulders crashed from the cavern ceiling sealing them off. Eerie sounds like stones scraping around the dank tunnels sent the men into panic.

  “Aargh!” screamed someone, flailing his arms about slashing the soldier next to him with his sword.

  Several men also screamed in abject fear as the denizens of the caves, wispy creatures, materialised from the living rock. Dozens of the creatures phased from the rocky walls, silvery-white in colour, intangible forms flittering around in the dark cave, tendrils brushing against faces and bodies. The knights tried to slash their way out to no avail. It was a desperate fight, L’Coyle treating his cherish sword as a common spade frantically digging his way through a gap in the collapsed wall. He had mercifully crawled half-way out gasping for precious air when something fibrous coiled around his left ankle.

  Fear strangled him, making him unaware he had soiled himself. He looked back seeing a snaking tendril wrap further around his legs. He tried to scream, as he was forcefully dragged backwards over jagged rocks into the cave, but a voice in his head told him not to.

  He obeyed, against his will.

  There were punctuated moments of screaming as dust billowed outside from between the gaps in the blocked entrance. The Surge had already retreated to the air for safety. There was another earth tremor around the cave.

  And then the screaming stopped.

  Three miles and a valley to the west, a bright light erupted from a portal and six figures were unceremoniously dumped to the ground. They coughed deeply and spluttered dust from their mouths, inhaling in and gagging on great gulps of hot dry air.

  “Geez, Zane, could you cut that any closer?” Force whined sarcastically, retching on all fours.

  “Last second rescues are my thing . . .” she gasped back.

  She just wanted to lie on her back and stop her heart from racing up her throat. She was glad her powers actually worked. Without thinking she had created a temporal bubble around them and ported everyone out just in time—destination anywhere.

  “Zane, get us to the Fortress, now!” demanded Sceptre, even though he was also on his hands and knees. “We'll have the advantage. They think we’re dead. Let’s go . . .!” he panted.

  “Oh,
classic counter strike,” Force grinned, wiping his mouth of grime, in anticipation.

  Zane looked around at everyone to see the same expectation on their faces. They were going into the breach.

  “Direction?” she asked, having no idea if she could be that precise with her power.

  Everyone pointed north.

  “Okay,” she groaned.

  Gordell held her hand gently. With his other hand he held up his crystalator with a holo-image overview of the Fortress with distance and direction. “We’re going here. I’ll guide you.”

  Zane nodded. She was getting used to this now. She closed her eyes and felt the exhilarating rush of chronal energy flow through her.

  How could I have missed out on this for so long? she rejoiced inside. Her brother, Aristedes had flittered about through time without so much of a care, but she would never take her new-found powers for granted, Zane vowed.

  Just as the chronal energy felt it would tear her apart, Zane released it, ripping a threshold into the fabric of timespace where only time flowed. Her own energy was attracted to the portal like a magnet which pulled her in as she held on to everyone else within a temporal bubble, its fields protecting the others from the harshness of the raw timestream. They navigated temporal nodes and streams until Zane sensed the exit portal coordinates she needed, lit up in colliding eddies and flashes of colours and brightness which only she could read.

  The trip had taken less than a second in real time, but to Zane it had been like a walk through a park where everything was translated into a temporal landscape. It was a beautiful alien ecosystem to behold as much alive as any natural environment.

  Zane was still in the middle of an infinite reflection as the portal neared, but something caught her attention in the void. She didn’t know if it was normal or not, but she swore she could hear the word “Stoooop” within her mind in slow motion. But there was no turning back.

  The portal’s threshold unravelled around them with a blinding flash. None of the Starguards had a chance to react as Gordell’s psychic warning came too late when the circle of fifty Surge in the large room they had emerged within bombarded them with a barrage of psionic shocks and close-range energy blasts. The stunned Starguards crumpled easily to the ground, unconscious.

  Archron, Decion, and Valtare walked through the encircling Surge, standing over the prone intruders.

  Archron grinned and clapped with pleasure, his applause echoing around the large domed room.

  “Oh, well done, Decion. Well done indeed!”

  INTERLUDE

  PROPHESIES OF THE END OF TIME

  I had first seen it at the age of five. Waking, screaming, I had ran out of my bedroom and into the warm night. My guardians stood nearby talking and laughing unawares, until I disturbed their evening with my torment.

  Urgently, I pointed to the darkening skies. My squeaky child's voice at pains to verbalize my nightmarish thoughts. My guardians struggled with what I could see, which they could plainly not.

  “Can’t you see? The war, all the fighting?” I waved frantically to the sick blood-spewing sky again.

  There was nothing to see. Even Mother Matrix was confused.

  As a little girl, I could see and name all the Great Races of the Universe at war against the stars. Only the stars were very much alive.

  My Godmother, Zenergy was concerned. At my tender age, I should not know all these peoples. I heard her whisper to the others: “Is she also becoming precognisant?”

  If I was, it was a worrying sign, for a terrible war was coming which would engulf the entire universe.

  “Let’s go see your parents,” Zenergy said in a worried manner.

  So she and Mother Matrix and even the implacable Colonel Con who for once was astonished enough to agree with both of them, accompanied me back to my other home.

  When we returned, there was grave news.

  I was right. A great war was raging. In the far future. It was spilling backward through time. Changing things. The Universe, the Multiverse, the Hinterverse, and even the temporalverse were all in danger.

  The war was coming. And so we prepared; and hoped we were in time.

  From Tales of the Time Empress

  CHAPTER THREE

  Phasia swam in time, trying to tread hard light in currents of chronitons falling in glittering torrents around her. But she could still see the faint buzz of light ahead, a shifting exit which rapidly closed and opened. There was a time storm brewing. She could feel it. It would wash her away from her destination, location unknown, forever lost if she didn’t make it ashore to a safe temporal coast.

  Since leaving the Chronopolis five months ago, telling Helexius— the erstwhile leader of the Astrals—that she had received a cryptic message, Phasia had leaped into the timestream seeking allies. And now she was two million years away up time or down time, she did not know as the intervening timestreams had crossed and twisted her beyond her experience. She dubbed her surroundings: weirdtime.

  There was no sound in the weirdstream, but Phasia sensed there was thunder all around her as charged tachyons and chronitons collided together unleashing lightning-like temporal strings which rippled violently out into unknown universes.

  Who knew what kind of time those dimensions experienced, she mused.

  Aching from pain and homesickness, Phasia looked behind her into the darkening abyss of swirling time. That way lay home, safety, and failure. She had to go forward. She was in her Lore energy state, her energy wings and self-spun temporal anchors of energy about to fail.

  “Aaaargh!” her desperate cry sailed out into the time void, howling against the injustice and the cruelty of the universe.

  Phasia prepared herself to be timewrecked as the raging tides eroded at her tethers.

  Then she saw it. Through the surging waves and rapids, a reel of energy snaking her way—a lifeline. She reached out gratefully for the energy coil, wrapping it around herself, immediately feeling a sharp tug as she was reeled in toward the blinding light.

  The iridescent hole grew closer and Phasia could see it was a portal embedded within the weirdstream fabric. It was like nothing she had seen before, the portal seemed almost crystalline. Just as she reached its threshold, it flashed around her, practically sucking her out of the temporal storm and through into . . .

  . . . Somewhere else.

  Tumbling helplessly as the energy coil suddenly released itself, disappearing back into the distance, Phasia flopped weakly against a solid surface. Catching control of herself and gaining some semblance of strength, she looked dazedly around. A white-light oasis stretched out to every horizon; the brightness somewhat blinding her Lore senses. There were no reference points or sounds, no smells, breezes of air; only the light texture of the floor. Clear white exerted everywhere, yet she stood solidly on ground.

  “Hallo,” she called out, her voice falling flat in the echoless, white expanse. “Thank you for saving me.” A hopeful chance of a reply was not returned. Forlornly, she looked around for any movement, listened for any sound. She was all alone.

  Feeling subconsciously threatening all fired up, Phasia transformed into her physical Celestian state. Her high-cheekboned face framed by long tumbling brown hair was thin and pale from exhaustion. Her usual wide smile and greeting green eyes were absent as she slumped down. Drawing her knees up and hugging them to her chest for warmth, Phasia rested her head against her right arm and waited. It had been a long, hard two-million-year slog through eternity and she was tired.

  She drifted off to sleep.

  Time passed; how much Phasia did not know, as she awakened. To a bright light. She laughed to herself that in this weirdspace—as she had decided to dub it—there was no notion of time. She was just in a moment, one moment that stretched forever—a waiting room out of time. . .

  Phasia's head spun around.

  Something had changed.

  She didn't see or hear it, so much as feel it; almost as subtle as a neutrino kiss. But
Phasia knew she was not alone. Tilting her head slightly to one side to feel the vibration ripple through her, she turned around and saw the legs of someone standing behind her. She kept looking up to a strong body of a young man, dressed in golden crystalline armour. He walked around to her front offering a hand to pull her up.

  Phasia unhesitatingly accepted with an outstretched hand. She felt a strange and unexpected euphoria rising within her. The man was tall, taller even than her, and handsome. And even though Phasia had never seen this Celestian before, she instantly knew who he was with golden armour and the looks, complete with the wild golden hair, of his father.

  “Oh, Universe, it’s you!”

  “Hallo, Mother,” he smiled.

  “Hellennius,” Phasia lovingly cupped her son’s cheeks in her hands. “Hellennius,” she whispered again as she kissed his face and hugged him to her. “We thought you lost forever. What happened? Where are we? How can this be so?” Phasia wanted to know everything at once, her voice a high-pitched wail of exhilaration. “You were taken from me and your father, Millennius. Do you remember? You just vanished into thin air without a trace.” Tears streamed down her face, as she hugged her son again. “Oh, no matter, I’m here now to take you home. I wasn’t sure who or what to expect when I received a message I could find help here. Did you send the message?”

  Hellennius smiled cryptically. “There is much to tell you, mother.”

  “Can you travel between temporal planes?” She took his hand ready to go, but he resisted. She looked back surprised.

  “What's wrong?” She instinctively searched around for danger, holding her son tight should he disappear again.

  “Mother,” he said, softly, “It is good to see you, but this is my home,” he said, sweeping his arm around him. “This is my Kingdom.”

  “Kingdom?” She again took in the incomprehensible blankness.