The rogue planet’s iron core was solid enough and moving fast enough to pass through Gethsemane like the aforementioned cannonball and emerge through the other side. But it was not quite fast enough to escape the pull of Gethsemane’s residual gravity. The hot iron core traveled out about 330,000 kilometers before being pulled back toward the planet.
Over the next million years, it was positioned to become a new moon as it accumulated debris from the planet’s orbit and the molten surface re-solidified.
The atmosphere of the planet incinerated instantaneously. The seas boiled away in the first microsecond of the cataclysm. The crust of the planet vaporized below the impact point and rapidly shattered into dust and rubble all across the planet’s surface. Mountain ranges were reduced to gravel or blown into space, roots and all. Two worlds annihilated each other and became one expanding mass of debris and hot magma. The cities and every man-made structure on the planet were obliterated in less than a second, except for one.
The Gateway survived.
Pegasus – Main Bridge – A large display on the main bridge showed the last two Aves fleeing the planet trying to make it to Pegasus. Zilla shot clear just as the planets crashed together.
Running hard ahead of the shockwaves, it made for Pegasus at high speed. The glyph representing Phoenix flickered and vanished.
There was a moment of shocked silence. “Did we lose them?” Eliza Change demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Specialist McCormick, the big blond Flight Controller reported as he reset and recalibrated his instruments. “Telemetry?”
“No sign of Phoenix,” Specialist Billy Keane reported from the Telemetry station. “But I can’t be sure through this interference. There’s flooding across all scanning bands, including neutrino, and they were on the far side when…” Suddenly, the entire bridge rocked as though hit by a groundquake. There was an abrupt lurch backwards, followed by a rapid buck upward, then down. Alarms activated and the bridge lighting switched to Tactical Mode. The shaking continued for several long moments and McCormick almost spilled his kava.
“What was that?” Change demanded, as lighting flickered, displays vanished, and control interfaces turned orange and red across the spoon-shaped bridge. She knew they were too far out to be hit by debris.
“Shockwave,” Keane reported. “It definitely came from the planet, some kind of raw electromagnetic energy.”
“Stabilizers,” Change called.
Atlantic was at the helm. “Unresponsive.”
Specialist Coldbeer had been monitoring ship’s systems when the wave hit. She pulled herself back up to her station and shook out her long brown hair. “Some of the power nodes overloaded. There are sporadic energy fluctuations throughout the ship. Some secondary systems have gone off-line.”
“Stability and navigation are primary systems,” Change challenged her.
“And their auxiliary systems should be coming on-line now,” Coldbeer replied, calmly watching several graphics turn from ocher to turquoise on her monitor.
Atlantic saw his own control board shift into active and nominal modes. By now, the ship was no longer shaking, but he tested his thrusters and stabilizers just in case.
Billy Keane was staring at the shapes forming on the part of his display monitoring energy output from the planet. “Something’s wrong.”
“Specify,” Eliza Change ordered.
Billy Keane projected his display. There was a nasty, rising curve on it. “The energy output from the planetary impact should be receding… but it’s increasing.”
“Impossible,” Eliza Change pulled up the data at her command station, double checked the readings, and realized immediately that the impossible was happening.
Billy Keane zoomed that Primary Sensor Display on the Bridge to show the fiery chaos of Gethsemane’s molten core boiling and erupting into space as the shattered remnants of its crust joined the pulverized remains of the rogue planet in a rapidly spreading field of chunky rocky debris.
Another shockwave rocked the ship; a much stronger one. Although they were better able to stabilize the ship this time, there was minor damage. Loose objects and tools tossed around in other parts of the ship. A water conduit cracked open. Coldbeer took injury reports from the Hangar Area.
When the wave had passed, Keane undertook to pinpoint the source of the shockwaves.
He focused the ship’s sensors at the center of the expanding energy force. It was deep in the heart of the debris field, but its energy seemed to be pushing aside, or perhaps annihilating, the debris around it so that it appeared as a tiny eye in the midst of a hurricane. “I have a sensor lock.”
“Extreme zoom,” Eliza Change called for.
The sensors zoomed in on the source of the energy as Keane cleaned out the interference until they had a discernible picture of what was emerging.
There was a large parabolic circle, clearly identifiable as the Gateway. Until now, the crew had not realized that what had been visible on the surface, a parabolic arch, was only half of the complete structure.
In the middle of the parabolic circle, some thing seemed to be emerging. Tendrils… or maybe they were tentacles… horrible looking things, hundreds of kilometers long, with spikes and hooks were shooting out of the Gateway.
“What the hell is that?” said Atlantic.
“And what are those?” asked Coldbeer. The thing had not yet completely emerged from the Gateway, but other things were flying off its tentacles, things that looked like thin scorpions with needles protruding from their heads.
Eliza Change didn’t need to wait to see what they were. “Battle Situation. General Kitaen to the Bridge. Raise shields. Stand-by weapons. Accipiters to launch-ready status.” Phoenix – Trajan Lear’s ship had been almost opposite the point of impact – and barely clear of the atmosphere – when the rogue planet hit. Phoenix caught the trailing edges of the wave of white hot gases, plasma and debris that erupted from the planet, and was knocked hard into space as the shockwave hit.
Trajan Lear fought to keep his ship steady, to at least keep Phoenix’s keel parallel to the blast front to minimize damage to the ship. He used thrusters at maximum to try to add velocity as the ship fled the planet.
The first shockwave was primarily vaporized oceans and atmosphere. Phoenix was able to ride that out. The second blast wave was rocks and debris, which hit the ship’s after section like hail on a metal roof. By the time the third wave of molten liquefied magma and plasma hit the ship, Phoenix had been blown clear enough to miss the full force of its impact. But the energy was still enough to kick the ship ahead of it like a metal can, and a bunch of systems overloaded and crashed.
When the third wave had passed, and the ship seemed to have found calm space again, Trajan Lear checked his systems. “Thrusters are all right. Engine Main Power is stable.
Control Systems are functioning. We’ve got life support, for now. … ah, hell.”
“What?” Johnny Rook asked, like everyone else on the flight deck, still firmly pinned into his seat by crash restraints.
“The Navigational Core is gone,” Trajan Lear answered. “We’re over a million kilometers from Pegasus, and we don’t have a way to find them.” He flipped on the distress beacon, and it sent a calming, repeating pulse through the cabin.
“Now, what?” Rook asked.
“We await rescue, and watch the show” Trajan Lear explained. He jigged his control stick until the irregular ball of red hot molten lava surrounded by a debris field that a few minutes earlier had been a living planet was centered in the canopy. From here, it looked no larger than a pearl, a burning red pearl in the black sky.
They owed the subsequent hours of their survival to the fact that the more interesting show was happening on the other side of the planet.
Zilla – Zilla had felt the force of the shockwave several seconds before it hit Pegasus. It shook the Aves hard, but no worse than a crash landing.
“Bouncy,” giggled Redfire.
/> “Bouncy! Bouncy!” Keeler agreed. Both Keeler and Redfire were strapped onto landing couches on the Main Deck. A pair of Medical Technicians examined them, finding nothing wrong … apart from the fact that both of them were babbling idiots.
“Get the commander some booze!” Alkema ordered the Medical Technician tending to Keeler. He pointed the MedTech to the built-in booze-bar next to the commander’s seat.
Another hard blast rocked the ship from dead astern. A COM display appeared in the Main Cabin. “We’ve got demons on our six,” Toto reported. His sounded nonchalant about it.
Alkema and Hardcandy Banks dashed to the forward part of the Main Deck. Alkema brought up a tactical display. A swarm of targets was closing on the Aves, swooping in like a determined flock of raptors.
“That can’t be,” Alkema activated the sensor display. Surely, these were just bits of debris flung out by the planet.
At highest magnification, he got a look at them, and he knew they weren’t random debris. They were too alike, too complex to be mere debris. They were horrible. They were headless and eyeless… just stingers and claw-like legs attached to bodies that were needle-thin, segmented carapaces. They moved like a swarm of wasps, their hundreds of tiny legs pumping vigorously, as though they were running across something solid. He wondered how they could propel themselves through space like that.
And, more bizarrely, he felt like he could hear them… like a buzzing on his head.
“Where in Hell did they come from,” he whispered. There were at least two dozen space-scorpions closing in on Zilla very fast. Alkema churned the possibilities over in his head, tried to think past the buzzing, but his ideas made no sense. All he could picture was that Gethsemane was like some giant wasp’s nest, broken open and setting free all the things that had secretly lived in its core the entire time.
Hardcandy Banks concerned herself with a different display. “The energy coming out of the Gateway is increasing exponentially,” Banks reported.
Something hit the ship, some kind of energy beam that cut right through the shields, right through the hull, and through the cabin like a superheated plasma knife. It charred and boiled the bulkhead at the front of the ship and made an unoccupied landing couch burst into flames.
One of the Medical Technicians grabbed a Fire Control device and extinguished the fire as the emergency lighting came on.
“What the…” Alkema began, but he was overtaken by Toto and Banks talking over each other.
Toto: “Damage to rear thruster cluster. Hull damage, aft section…” Banks: “Massive energy discharge. Type unknown. Reconfiguring shields… I don’t know if it will do any good.”
Alkema gave the only sensible order under the circumstances. “Toto, get us the Hell out of here.”
Toto responded. “Pushing engine output to maximum velocity. Engaging evasive maneuvers.” Pause. “You guys might want to, you know, strap yourselves in or something, if you haven’t already.”
“How long until we reach Pegasus?” Alkema asked.
“Another eighteen minutes at least,” Toto replied.
Alkema looked at his screen. The Demons would overtake them in about six minutes.
And then an odd, almost lucid expression came across Commander Keeler’s face. The irises of his eyes disappeared, leaving only a large black pupil. And in a low sober voice he said, “Heaven isn’t the only Afterlife.”
Redfire’s eyes turned black, and he spoke in that same deep, thoughtful voice, “When you open a door to get out, something else always gets in.” Alkema heard them, but at that moment, he was preoccupied.
“Another energy beam, incoming,” Banks reported.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Alkema ordered.
Toto banked the ship hard to port. The blast beam passed just underneath their starboard wingblade, leaving a char mark. A power node embedded in the wingblade overloaded and exploded, igniting a small fire. Power to the main cabin flickered and died.
Tertiary power kicked in.
“Another energy beam!” Hardcandy Banks reported.
“Hard to port,” Toto warned as he corkscrewed is ship into another evasive maneuver.
Caliph appeared. Her avatar projected from the transport cylinder and stood in the main cabin. With glowing blue eyes, she read the telemetry and sensor reports on the screens in front of Banks and Alkema. She calculated the time to intercept of the closing demons and the strength of their weapons. She also took in all the data the sensors had on whatever was emerging from the still open Gateway.
She sized up the situation, and came to a conclusion.
“Bye,” she said to the crew before blinking out and transporting herself back to Pegasus.
Pegasus – Main Bridge – The Bridge had gotten more crowded. In battle mode, the stations were double manned, and the tactical stations triple manned. “Uh, oh,” said Coldbeer. And just as she said it, the bridge went dark. A few seconds later, auxiliary lighting came up, but every display was gone.
“Some kind of energy surge from the planet,” Keane reported. “Some kind of… I hate to describe it this way, but … dark energy.”
“Dark energy?” Eliza Change asked in a what-the-hell-is-that-crap tone of voice?
“It seems to suck the energy out of anything it passes through,” Keane answered. “Until now, I thought it was theoretical.”
Coldbeer reported. “We’ve lost sensors and communications…”
“How long to get them back?” Change demanded.
Coldbeer answered. “About two minutes to reinitialize the total system.”
“How are tactical systems?” Change asked out loud, although she herself was already at the tactical board.
Tactical Specialist Raider reported. “The tactical systems are also off-line. Weapons interlinks not responding.”
“I’d suggest engaging electromagnetic shields to protect against further disruptions,” Keane suggested.
“Why haven’t you done that already!” Change ordered. “Is the armor deployed?”
“Armor deployed before we lost systems,” reported Tactical Specialist Gage, from the tactical control station. Key areas of the ship were now protected with thick slabs of neutronium armor.
General Kitaen arrived at the Main Bridge. He was in full warpaint and Sumacian battle regalia, including the chest shield and shoulder armor. He took a position next to Change’s command seat, and she seemed to tolerate his presence.
“Scramble Accipiters,” Kitaen ordered. “Bring Phalanx railguns, particle weapons, and hammerhead missiles to ready.” He snapped his fingers once at Specialists Raider and Gage.
One hundred Accipiters, remotely piloted fighter craft, began launching off the electromagnetic rails in the ship’s hangars.
“Helm, bring us about and put some distance between us and that thing,” Change ordered.
“What about the Aves?” McCormick asked.
“They can catch up with us after we get clear,” Change answered him. “We have to save this ship first.”
Pegasus — Hospital Three – The sound of battle-stations awakened Max Jordan from his healing sleep. He sat up in his healing bed just in time to feel the ship shudder from the impact of another dark energy wave. The medical bay was filled with children, and when a few of them started screaming, most of the others joined in.
He pulled the nearest COM display over to his bed and brought up a tactical summary to see who was attacking his ship. He took only a few seconds to process the available tactical information. While the medical crew was distracted trying to calm the children in the ward, he got out of bed, pulled on a robe, grabbed a pair of crutches, and snuck out of the ward.
His right leg was horribly stiff and painfully sore as he hobbled down the corridor, but, he didn’t need legs to remotely pilot an Accipiter. Being nearly a liter of blood low was more of a problem, and moving down the corridor he nearly passed out. Getting to the control deck would be the hard part of the journey. Finally, he found a tr
ansport station.
He traveled to an auxiliary control deck and entered his new Access/Over-ride code. He slung himself onto the saddle of one of the Accipiter control simulators and prepared to join the fight.
Suddenly, Caliph appeared in front of him. “Hi, Max!”
“I’m busy,” he told her.
“I know, and I know you don’t like me as much as you used to…” Something massive bumped the hull near that section of the ship. The lighting flickered as power to the deck fluctuated. “Hold on a sec,” Caliph closed her eyes for a moment in concentration.
When she opened them again, the impacts to the shields were muted. “I’ve reinforced Pegasus’s outer shielding, but it won’t last very long. I’ll also need to augment the ionic cannons. But first, we have to take care of this.”
She brought up the display of the tentacled entity beginning to emerge from the Gateway.
“What the heck is that?” Max Jordan asked.
“I don’t have time to explain it, but just imagine there’s a really, really hungry monster coming through the Gateway. He hasn’t eaten for a billion years, and human souls look like little frosted cupcakes to him. It’s kind of like that.”
“Is that what’s attacking the ship?” Jordan asked.
Caliph shook her virtual head. “Yes and no. It can’t attack us directly until it gets through the Gateway. That’s where the dark energy pulses are coming from, but he also has these things attached to him. They’re like parasites, like those Chenga flies back in the woods of Bodicea. They’re hungry, too. They don’t have weapons, but they will smash through the hull to get to us.”
“How can we destroy the big monster and all the little monsters?” Jordan asked.
“We can’t destroy them, but we can send them back,” Caliph answered. The Accipiter displays changed abruptly. Max Jordan wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Caliph explained. “You’ll need to pilot a Nemesis carrier vehicle and drop a warhead right into the Gateway. Actually, one might not be enough.” Additional displays activated. “That should do it.”
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