by Joe Ducie
The forward ships in the Peace Arsenal engaged the nearest vessels from my fleet, firing strange and ancient weapons, laser cannons and pulsating missiles that moved impossibly fast. A wall of fire and death, glittering silently in space, and began to burn the Cascade Fleet from the sky.
The live count of that blinked destruction, unfortunately, was beamed directly into my HUD. In the space of thirty seconds I lost four hundred and twelve ships, crew close to twenty thousand men and women, before my ships began to fight back. In that half minute, I was now responsible for the biggest loss of Knight Infernal ships in history.
So much for my legacy.
I issued orders as fast as thought, firing the Blade of Spring’s complement of artillery as fast as it could be loaded. Thankfully, the Peace Arsenal ships burned just as easy as mine, but we were still outnumbered by several orders of magnitude, and still more dusty-yellow ships poured from the Void—a seemingly endless wave of reinforcements.
But after the initial attack, the ships pulled back. I pressed my advantage, though it didn’t feel like an advantage, and ordered the full attack. Thousands of my ships fired, blasting Peace Arsenal vessels from the heavens, but for every ship we destroyed a dozen took its place, a dozen times a dozen. We’d run out of missiles and power before making a dent in the mass of ships blotting out the interstellar clouds and swirling core of the galaxy.
“Your grace—Declan!” the young and grizzled crew member spoke up from the control consoles on the left. “We’re being hailed.”
I eased back on the attack, pulled my ships clear, creating a void between the Cascade Fleet and the Peace Arsenal of a few hundred kilometres. No distance at all on this scale. Below, the citadel, singed at the edges, shone with light as its damaged shields regenerated.
I sighed and, with a thought, acknowledged the hail and placed it on the forward viewing screens, already knowing what I would see.
My face appeared on the screens. The ugly, wasted, almost decaying version of my face. Shadowman.
And behind those bloodshot eyes, above that bloody, yellow-toothed grin?
Lord Hallowed Dusk.
“You’ve got the largest set of balls I’ve ever seen, kid,” he said, and threw back Shadowman’s head and laughed. That was the most relaxed I’d seen him ever since he floated all menacingly at Astoria’s funeral. Perhaps the bottle of blue liquor in his hand had something to do with it. His eyes spun, actually rotated in his head, like spinning tops.
“Oh,” Annie said and held her stomach. “That’s awful. I think I may be sick.”
“No one invited you to this party,” I said, aiming for bravado, but the band of sweat across my forehead gave me away. If Dusk attacked, if he unleashed the ships still pouring from the Void against me, it would be a short and swift battle—and the Knights Infernal would be destroyed.
This was it, the edge of the knife, and I had stumbled. Overplayed my hand.
There’s always a way out, whispered a voice in my mind.
‘No there isn’t, not this time,’ whispered the other, actual voice in my mind. Oblivion.
You’ve survived against odds as dire as this—not in the sheer numbers, of course—but when all looked lost, when all seemed ruin… you’ve survived.
“That island-citadel is an abomination that needs cleansing,” I said, sending orders and thoughts as fast as I could. Spread out, make yourselves less of a target. Be ready to fire and be ready to retreat.
“Hey now,” Dusk said, pouting, “you’re talking about my home. I was born down there, Declan. As such, I take this attack personally.”
“But you’re not surprised,” I said, as much a play for time as anything.
Dusk shrugged a shoulder, covered in a torn piece of an old waistcoat. Blood and whisky stained that coat. He had had an interesting week, I was sure.
“No, not surprised. You’ve proven yourself resourceful in the past. I assumed Oblivion would stumble, fail to foresee your potential… in his arrogance.”
Oblivion growled deep and low in the back of my mind.
“How did he do it?” Dusk asked.
“Ne’er you mind.”
Dusk searched my eyes and shrugged again. “No consequence, I suppose. As you can see, your grace, you are outnumbered and outplayed. Oh, the Shadowman is howling in my head right now. Trying to distract me. Despite your differences, which is honestly absurd, he doesn’t want to see you destroyed. Well, destroyed by me at the least.”
“Those are some pretty ships you got there, mate.” A desperate plan had occurred to me—a way to make the best of a bad situation. But even I, with all my foolishness, didn’t quite have the nerve…
“You like them?” Dusk laughed. “You released them from their slumber. They were trapped in a pocket universe, lost forever. Only the Roseblade and the Shadowless Arbiter could have unleashed them. Something to do with fate, you think? No, me neither. Our battles, Declan, you against the Everlasting, span time as well as space. I’ve concluded we’re just playing against moves we’ve made in the future and the past. Some you win, most you lose.”
Damn it all, I’d come to the same conclusion. It irked me not to be the cleverest person in the universe.
“What now?” I asked. Never one to delay the inevitable, my ships were in optimum position, and giving Dusk more time to bring in more ships would only serve to doom us all the quicker.
“You attacked my home,” Dusk said, and in this his tone was deadly serious. “I will reciprocate, of course. I will destroy the Cascade Fleet and then I will blacken the skies above Ascension City with my Arsenal. Then the real fun will begin. I hope you’re still alive to see it.”
He laughed.
And I decided I did have the nerve for my desperate plan, after all.
The screen panned out from Shadowman and showed me the entire bridge of his command ship. Much like mine, we were twins here as well, he revealed a bridge full of uniformed soldiers. One thing stood out to me, though, and pieces of a very old puzzle fell into place within my mind. The crew manning Dusk’s ship were blue and purple, their skin various hues of azure and cerulean. And their eyes, though hard to see, were the colour of swirling opals.
I’d seen that before, more than once, though rarely.
The Vale.
The Builders.
Tylia, one of the last of her kind, had told me that the Vale—her race, humanoid but different—had been lost in a monumental Voidflood. Their world had simply been swept away, melted into the nothingness between universes. Only remnants, ragged strays, had survived. Like Tylia, who had washed up in Atlantis.
Did the Vale build the Peace Arsenal?
The Vale had existed before humans, but not before the Everlasting. They had built the grand, obsidian towers in places such as Atlantis, the Atlas Lexicon on True Earth, and the Fae Palace in Ascension City. The Vale Atlantia, the Vale Celestia, and the Vale Crystalis. Three towers I had visited in my time, three towers of monumental power and influence across the Story Thread.
And here they were now. Hundreds of thousands of Vale under the thrall of the Everlasting. Did they serve willingly? Was there some dark purpose at work here? The Vale I had met were kind, caring, even… human.
“Tal,” I said slowly, carefully. “When you fled from Riverwood Plaza after Oblivion seized me, where did you take Tylia?”
Tal bit her lip and danced from foot to foot, a hand on the hilt of her sword. “Meadow Gate, at first, but she vanished in the night. We lost her, Declan. I’m sorry.”
“No matter,” I said, and meant it. Having Tylia there would have helped resolve this current predicament, provided insight, and I should have anticipated… well, not this exactly, but needing her close. She had transported Oblivion across time and space, after all, and helped him blow up my bookshop, trick me into becoming his puppet.
Actually, I didn’t know if Tylia was my friend, all things considered. If the actions of the Vale on the screen were any indication, she may ha
ve been my enemy.
That made me sad—we had been friends, I thought, in Atlantis. Though what had she said about Scarred Axis, who had been partially masquerading as Forge Master of the Vale Celestia at the time?
”I am the last of my kind, Declan,” Tylia said, after considering my questions for a good half minute. “My world was claimed by nothingness, borne on the wings of an immortal monstrosity.”
That piqued my interest. I knew three short of a dozen ‘immortal monstrosities’. The Everlasting. “What happened?”
”My race, the Vale, built the Vale Atlantia in Atlantis, where the city found its name. We shaped the earth of this world, and built the Vale Celestia here at the university. You are human and can control Will light. I am Vale—and I am Will light. We are bonded to the unseen rivers that turn the universe.”
”And you’re the last.”
”I am the last. Darkness ate my world. I was just a child of five and remember little.” She brushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. Her blue skin seemed to shimmer in the light of the gemstone planetoids far above. “The stars went out, Declan. The land simple disintegrated. I was torn from my mother’s arms and when I awoke all were dead and I was here, alone in the Vale Celestia.”
”A Voidflood,” I said quietly and cursed the word. A Voidflood could happen when the Willful, the rare few strong enough, tore open a hole into the space between universes. We did that all the time, travelling between worlds, but if control were lost… severed… if the intent turned malicious. Well, I’d seen what happened to Tylia’s people, the Vale, first-hand. Hell, I’d been responsible for minor floods—recently in the storm clouds of Jupiter to cast Scarred Axis and the Shadowman, my rebellious shadow, into the Void.
”I have been a ward of the Vale Celestia ever since,” Tylia said simply. “Alone, but alive, I carry the legacy of my people.”
”If you survived, perhaps more of your race did,” I said, not with much in the way of hope or enthusiasm in my voice. Surviving a Voidflood was impossible. Tylia was merely the exception to prove the rule. And the look she gave me said she thought the same.
”Our world shared trade with Atlantis, with your True Earth, as you call it. We were not of the worlds written into existence by the Willful. We existed before humans started to shape the universe with their words. If any had survived, they would have travelled here by now.”
”You don’t remember how you made it through the Void?”
Tylia shook her head and gestured at the awesome sky. “I felt the darkness, I blinked, and then I woke here in this forest under the sky. I remember staring at the moons for so long, before Forge Master Alexas found me.”
The Void spat her out. The odds of surviving being cast into the Void were so small as to be non-existent. The odds were better on firing an arrow, blindfolded and dizzy, from one end of the solar system to the other and hitting a target smaller than the head of a pin. No, the odds were worse than that. She had spun through the Void and somehow hit a target. A living, breathing world.
Tylia had said that Axis—Forge Master Alexas, that was—had found her after the annihilation of her world.
Only, I thought now, looking out at fifty thousand goddamn Vale ships under the command of the Everlasting, perhaps she had been misled, or outright lied to me. The Vale may have vanished in a Voidflood, their worlds destroyed forever and beyond salvation, but I was staring at millions of them, if each of those ships were fully manned.
“Your move, Declan,” Dusk said. “Should I make it for you?”
“Declan,” Tal said. “That’s a lot of ships.”
“Retreat through the Void,” I said, commanding it with the neural crown to the Cascade Fleet. Already the debris field from my fallen ships was too extensive. Dusk laughed and nodded, almost dancing on the spot, as I made the only move he thought I had. Keep dancing, asshole. “All of you, retreat back to Ascension City and form a defensive net around the planet. Expect an attack. This is my order as your king—defend Ascension City!”
“Declan,” Annie noticed, “we’re not retreating.”
“Nope, we’re not,” I growled, and engaged the fusion engines on my ship. “Like always, we’re going to solve this dilemma our damn selves, Annie.”
Dusk frowned a split second before his hail disappeared from our viewing screens. The expansive view of the citadel and the impossible number of vessels returned in full. I piloted us directly toward it.
As the Cascade Fleet retreated, thousands of ships surging back through the Void, through the strewn wreckage of thousands more, escaping the maelstrom, the sky on fire, I commanded the Blade of Spring forward against the Citadel of the Everlasting.
I ordered the evacuation of the Blade of Spring.
“All hands, abandon ship,” I said. “Knights, use your tomes to flee across the Story Thread now. Take as many with you as you can manage. The rest of you, I’m sorry, but it’s the shuttles and the escape capsules. Go, go now. You’ve less than three minutes before there won’t be a ship to stand on.”
The escape capsules were not necessarily a death sentence, but it would be a bumpy ride. Most of the crew could squeeze onto the shuttles and escape across the Void, but hundreds would be shot out into space and the capsules would have to find the nearest safe territory. Retrieval squads from the fleet would pursue them through space, but I didn’t like their chances this close to the citadel or the armada of ships in the Peace Arsenal.
“Declan,” Tal said slowly, as the crew abandoned their posts, pale faced and afraid, almost eager to be away from me and my catching madness. “What in the name of sanity are you doing?”
I leaned forward in my chair and steepled my hands together, resting my chin on my fingers. The Blade of Spring tore through the wreckage and carnage of the sky on fire, the ship’s shields taking one helluva battering from the debris and the enemy weapon’s fire as Dusk caught on and targeted me. It didn’t matter. Through the chaos, I glimpsed the scorched citadel, smoke and ruin rising in lazy curls from the minor damage the Cascade Fleet had been able to inflict. It wasn’t enough damage, but this…
…this will be.
I let Oblivion glimpse my plan and he snarled, fell back in shock, and then rallied his efforts once more against the prison holding him in place. Only the neural crown could save his home now, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
“One minute,” I said to Tal and Annie. “Be ready to run. I’ve kept one shuttle aside, just for us. We’re going to need it.”
Dusk, whether through lucky guess work or just plain old planning for the worst-case scenario, had figured out my plan about thirty seconds after it was too late to stop it. The Peace Arsenal ships that had been pursuing my retreating fleet stopped in that pursuit, spun on a dime, and pursued the flaming hulk of the Blade of Spring.
In the neural net, my HUD display, I saw swarms, countless ships, more than the navigation and diagnostic console could keep up with, a heavy blob of red enemies, circle the Blade of Spring and fall upon her in fury. Dusk commanded them in kamikaze runs, hurling them into the hull.
They were too slow.
My ship cried out in protest, quaking with the impacts of cannon fire and missiles. The shields and armour plating ruptured and we were thrown across the bridge, me from the chair, Annie and Tal clinging to one another as they rolled and hit the control columns hard.
The viewing screen showed the citadel just below us, if ‘below’ was a direction in the emptiness of space, only hundreds of kilometres away now—no distance at all in deep space. I gave the control column a final command, activated a two-minute countdown on every missile still aboard the Blade of Spring, and then ripped the neural crown from my head and crushed it underfoot.
“The escape shuttle. Now!” I said, and helped Annie and Tal to their feet. Blood dripped into my eyes from a cut on my brow, trickled down my face, hot and coppery on my tongue.
Annie and Tal gazed at me, then past me to the viewing screen a
s the sharp, pointed nose of the Blade of Spring veered down toward the Citadel of the Everlasting—and the fusion engines cycled up to maximum speed.
“Oh, shit,” Annie said, and burst out laughing. “We’re going to crash.”
“On purpose,” Tal whispered. “Only you, Declan. Only you…”
“We’ve got less than a minute. RUN!” I thrust them toward the gravity elevators and slammed my fist into the panel of buttons, hitting the one for the shuttle bay. We shot down through the Blade of Spring, flashing past abandoned floors. Thankfully, the crew had escaped. Most of them, anyway. Those who had been left with the capsules were target practice, but I hoped what was about to happen would buy them some time.
Annie, Tal, and I dashed along the metal walkways from the lift and entered the last and lonely shuttle in the bays at the aft of the Blade of Spring.
“Sit,” I commanded and pushed a big red button on the control column. The shuttle doors hissed closed and the craft simply dropped from the Blade of Spring, clean through the energy shield protecting the bay from the vacuum of space, the controls coming online in an instant.
I seized the controls and steered us down and away from the bulk of the crashing ship. Her engines, at full blast, scorched the outer hull of shuttle and sent us shaking through her wake.
Below the main battle, tens of thousands of ships blasting away at the Blade of Spring, I turned the shuttle in time for us to stare up at her impact against the citadel. Given another minute, maybe even less, the Peace Arsenal would have been able to break apart the grandest ship ever built by the Knights Infernal and prevent the impact. But I hadn’t allowed them that minute.
Blazing with pockmarks and wounds, vast sections of the ship tearing away, her main weight still intact, the Blade of Spring struck the Everlasting’s home at the point where the crystal bridge met the bulk of the island—against those impressive golden gates held within the obsidian black-glass archway.
‘NO!’ Oblivion roared.
“I told you this would happen,” I said. “I warned you to let me go, or this would be the cost. I’m many things, Oblivion, few of them kind, but I keep my word.”