Darkspace Calamity

by Christopher Bodan

  “Agreed,” Fiametta said, and wrenched the controls to send their ship spinning away from a dozen fighters in a rolling dogfight. “We still don’t have a destination. We need someplace to hide, heal, and figure out what to do next.”

  “We need to get lost, preferably in plain sight,” Candy said. “And we better do it fast. It looks like that paladin battlecruiser’s sensor package is better than we thought. I think they’re tracking us.”

  “What? How?”

  “Don’t know, but they’ve got sensor beams falling all around us. They don’t have a fix, but they’re close.”

  “Mother of Night,” Fiametta muttered, and swung the Chance hard to port to avoid an expanding ball of debris that had been a corsair boarding ship. “We need a destination, now!”

  “I don’t know,” Candy shot back. “I mean, if you needed to disappear but still be connected to what’s happening and have access to medicine and whatever else, where would you go?” She blinked and stared at Fiametta as the obvious answer rose in her mind.

  Fiametta stared back with clearly the same thought in her head. “So bloody obvious,” she muttered as she swerved again. “Excellent services, huge crowds that are mostly strangers, and I even have a few favors to call in there. Get me that course.”

  “Copy,” Candy replied automatically and called up the preset from the navigation computer. A silent explosion lit them all in angry red light for an instant. “Does this tub have any guns?” She turned to look into the silence and found Fiametta glaring at her.

  “It’s not a tub.” Fiametta jerked her chin behind them. “Dorsal and ventral mounts, but I can’t shoot them and fly at the same time. They’re routed to a common panel in the secondary control station, though. The big round room.”

  “Got it,” Candy replied. The course confirmation came up on her display. She punched the accept icon and then bolted back for the weapons control. The round meditation room lay about twenty meters and half a deck behind and above the bridge. She made it with only a few bruises from Fiametta’s fancy flying. Kneeling on one of the overstuffed cushions, Candy took a few seconds to bring up the weapons displays.

  Her eyes widened, and she grinned involuntarily. “Gods of our fathers,” she whispered.

  Fiametta chuckled over the internal comms. “I thought you’d like that. However lucky she may be, Kisa does prefer to stack the deck.”

  “No kidding,” Candy replied, skimming the displays. “Rapid-fire pulse cannons. A macro-load rail rifle with extended targeting. Hydrian implosion missiles? Are those even legal on civilian ships?”

  “Not in the Alliance.”

  “I promise not to tell,” Candy said, awed. “Oh, I take back everything I said about this ship.”

  “Good. Now clear the road. There’s a lot between us and the acceleration run to slip space.”

  Candy adjusted the fire controls and fed in the expanded sensor data. Her heart sank. “I’m not liking this, Fia. Even with these marvelous toys, I don’t think we can shoot our way clear.”

  “Well, try.”

  Candy sighed and tapped the nearest two targets, things the computer tagged as some sort of unknown heavy fighter. Neither Alliance nor paladin, and therefore a bad guy, she decided. Fast and maneuverable, the computer estimated it had only a forty-four percent chance of hitting the craft. Candy removed one target and set both pulse cannons to fire on a single ship, but that only upped her chances to sixty-two percent. At that rate, she figured, they would destroy three of the four fighter craft in their immediate vicinity, but the last would see them and probably end it. She tapped the Fire icon anyway.

  The strobing flashes of pulse cannon fire raced away over her head. A second line of energy bursts appeared from under the ship. In an instant they converged on the alien craft, and though it flipped over with almost impossible nimbleness, the shots caught and shattered its wings and engine housing. The other three fighters turned toward the source of the unexpected attack. Then all the fighters vanished in balls of expanding gas and burning oxygen.

  Candy looked disbelievingly at her display. The computer said that a cluster of hyper-speed rail gun slugs had torn the craft apart. “That’s capital grade anti-fighter weaponry,” she muttered and, on instinct, looked up through the armored glass roof.

  The paladin battlecruiser had come uncomfortably close. Its point defense batteries sprayed down the areas around the Lucky Chance with nickel-iron slugs moving at what would be escape velocity on any habitable planet. A dozen fighters and small attack craft vanished in an instant. The comms crackled beside her panel, and she heard a calm, professional voice.

  “Doctrine vessel, this is the Inexorable Justice. You are clear for slip run. Good luck.”

  “What just happened?” Fiametta asked.

  “Once again, I don’t care,” Candy replied. “Punch it.” A second later, the ship lurched forward, bucked hard, and forced its way out of reality.

  Chapter 25

  Origin Point

  Sebastian Cross led the way down the tunnel and moved boldly. In short order, the passage widened into an enormous chamber. Malya honestly could not believe that the asteroid could accommodate such a space without collapsing. Blue-white light fell softly across the vast space and glinted off of polished stone walls. The reflections had an unhealthy sheen to them that made Malya vaguely nauseous. The cathedral ceiling peaked dozens of stories above them, its features only dimly visible from the weak lights and pulsing veins of esper that ran through every surface. All six esper types flowed through the room, hundreds of rivulets of each type twining and swirling around the others but never mixing. Her eyes followed these paths and saw that the esper moved to the rhythm of a staggering heartbeat toward a huge, ornate device of arcane and malevolent design at the lowest point of the chamber.

  The device looked like nothing so much as a round mirror clutched by six spidery talons. Each of these black claws pointed to the distant ceiling, and a halo of one of the esper types glowed faintly around them. She could make out ribbing and strange couplings beneath the disk that suggested bones and veins and the dried husks of dead things and somehow still seemed to writhe. The surface of the disk had the same sickening gloss as the walls, which lent it the glint of a mirror or still water. Diseased yellow-green oils slid across its surface. Esper motes drifted away from the talons and collected into a roiling blue-black above the disk. Each of the six colors shimmered briefly across its surface before vanishing inside, subsumed into black.

  Malya could not look at the device for long without getting dizzy. She tore her gaze away and focused on the angelic figure floating between them and the machine.

  She was almost divinely beautiful, even at this distance. Clad in violet-tinged armor, with alabaster hair spilling from her near-featureless battle helm, she turned slowly on arcane wings of esper. She turned a distant, almost disinterested look on the three knights, and for an instant, Malya felt like a girl again. She was looking up at a woman who was everything that the princess wanted to be: powerful, distant, accomplished, untouchable. Everything she had felt when she saw her first racer. She shook her head, snapping out of it, and saw the other two drawing back much the same way.

  “You have succeeded where I thought no one could,” the alien said. Her warm voice carried to the entire chamber. Her distant indifference made Malya feel like an object instead of a person. “Congratulations. Your reward is oblivion.”

  “That,” Harker managed after a ragged breath, “is Amelial, the Herald of the Void.”

  The alien cocked her head at this, and her eyes widened slightly. Had she been human, she would have looked impressed. The esperic ball behind the Herald pulsed twice, and the Knights shuddered as a wave of poisonous energy swept over them. Mr. Tomn wailed softly. Malya forced her eyes back to the device and saw the esper flowing faster.

  The Herald smiled slightly at their pain. “Well done,” she said to Harker. “Few ever learn so much of us if we do not choose to t
ell them. It will avail you nothing. The gate is opening. The Void Reaper approaches, and with him comes the death of the Last Galaxy.” She turned lazily back to the rapidly pulsing esper and raised her arms. “Rejoice, for you shall be among the first to die.” At her gesture, the ball of esper doubled in size, pulsed once, and then collapsed to a concentrated mote almost too small to see. That mote exploded. The collected esper washed across the room and struck them all in a freezing wave of corruption, entropy, and chaos. Malya’s vision went dark.

  When she could see again, she discovered that the surface of the mirrored disk had gone utterly black. No reflection raced over its face; not even light escaped it. It seemed to have gained depth, but she could see nothing within it. She pulled her gaze away, dizzy, and fought down the feeling of falling headlong into that pit.

  “That is the Calamity,” Harker shouted. He pointed to the disk without looking directly at it. “Nothingness, Darkspace. A universe devoid of life, of light, even of matter. That is what will become of everything if we don’t stop them now.”

  “That is what will become of everything no matter what you do,” said a rich, pleasing male voice.

  Malya blinked and looked back at the machine. A shape, grey and vague like smoke, drifted out of the disk. She could not understand why she had not seen it there before. It rose into the chamber and shifted into a twisted, humanoid form. She saw the suggestion of wings, of arms, of robes across its slim body. Something like a cloud of hair trailed behind as it moved toward them.

  “Futility is the definition of life,” the voice continued, pleasant and warm. “What you see here is the answer to that futility: nothingness. The perfect dark, the original being of all things. The void, unspoiled and undiluted.” The voice seemed to come from all around them, though they all looked at the smoke.

  “Don’t let it touch you,” Cross hissed.

  “You have done well, my Herald,” the voice said, focused away from them this time. It had lost some of its echo.

  The Herald bowed her head. “It is my honor, my lord. And my pleasure.”

  “And mine as well. Now, let us begin the final work.”

  “Are you going to talk all day or get on with it?” Harker shouted.

  The Herald glared at him, but the voice laughed. It definitely sounded more solid. The smoke, however, broke apart and swirled around them. “Patience, Captain Harker. There is much to do, but it must all happen in its own time. Yes, we know your name, though for all your desire and tireless effort, you do not know us. All your sacrifices and pain could not discover what you most wished to learn. Now, when it no longer matters, I will grant you that wish. I am Harbonath.”

  The small hairs on the back of Malya’s neck rose, and she whipped her head around. She saw a shadow in the smoke, like someone looming out of a fog. A huge, skeletal humanoid relic appeared behind her. Bound in its ornate ribcage stood a beautiful man. His porcelain skin and perfect features accentuated the malice in his eyes. He wore a black-and-white armored bodysuit similar to the Herald’s.

  When he saw Malya watching, he winked at her. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Too late, she saw that the relic had its arm drawn back. Too late, she realized that it had summoned a massive scythe. She screamed and reached out, too late. She could not stop it. The blade seemed to hiss through the thin air, leaving a bone-numbing chill in its wake. Harker had an instant’s presentment, and he twisted away, but the scythe still raked him across the body from shoulder to hip. Harker sobbed and flew back from the force of the blow. Blood splattered out. It instantly pooled into droplets in the low gravity and formed a thin skin of ice. Caesar screeched and plummeted to the floor. Black tendrils of esper like silk cords trailed from the pirate’s body. Yellow-gold esper flowed from him up those trails and coiled around the scythe. Harbonath sighed in obvious pleasure.

  Without a word or shout, Sebastian Cross raced toward Harbonath and swung with his mace. He struck hard enough to shatter starship armor. Harbonath grunted and went spinning away. Cross swept the Shattered Sword down through the black tendrils, and the blue fire along its blade broke the esperic connections with an audible snap. The pirate gasped and shuddered. Caesar picked himself up and hopped over to his Knight. Malya saw green-white esper flow from the cypher to enshroud the captain.

  “Princess, the gate!” Sebastian moved between her and the now upright Harbonath. “Destroy the gate.”

  She wrenched Sedaris around to face the shimmering black disk. Mr. Tomn bounced up and grabbed onto one of the relic’s maneuver fins. Rook leapt and clung to one of her forward stabilizers. She shot him a surprised, questioning look. The paladin’s cypher responded with a calm nod, and a sense of reassurance washed over her. She fired her thrusters, but the Herald moved to intercept her. A blue-violet energy blade flickered to life in her hand, haloed with void-dark esper. Malya set her jaw and increased her speed.

  The black halo spread up the Herald’s arm to encompass her entire body. It pulsed rapidly for a few seconds as Malya closed the distance and then burst outward. The protective fields around her relic shimmered ever so slightly at the passing of the energy, but the machine registered no damage. And then she realized that damage did not matter. The Herald had already moved between her and the gate. The alien’s blade drank in the weak light around them, and the princess could feel it leaching her esper. Nothing she did, nothing she tried, would get her past Amelial and her vampire sword. She was not fast or strong enough to succeed; none of them were. Even Cross was struggling against Harbonath, and this was only the vanguard. The armies of oblivion would march through that disk from their endless abyss; bitter angels of the void come to snuff out existence, and nothing anyone could do would stop them. Futility overwhelmed her.

  She shuddered and shook with sobs as she surrendered to the terror and despair. She felt Mr. Tomn strengthening Sedaris’s defenses, but it would make no difference. They all would be cut apart like every other galaxy—like everyone who had opposed these aliens. She could not get enough air, though she gulped it down. Her blood-stained, sweat-soaked bodysuit clung to her clammy skin as tears streamed over her cheeks.

  Then Sedaris stuttered and barrel-rolled left. The spin almost threw her off, and when they came upright, she saw the Herald floating behind with a look of frustrated rage. She had attacked, Malya realized, and her relic had acted of its own volition to save her life. And it had; the blow had missed.

  Almost at once the cloud in her mind vanished. The aliens could be defeated. Harker’s people had been killing them in space. They could be stopped, and no one had a better chance than these three Knights, right here, right now.

  She felt Rook place a hand on her calf. “This is what you were born to do,” he said. “Go, and fear no darkness.”

  Esper from Mr. Tomn flooded into Malya along with adrenalin. She grinned, turned Sedaris, and raced back toward the Herald. The relic’s arms extended, and its sword glittered with esper. Amelial raised her sword to guard, but Malya leveled her weapon and sent a blast of pink and gold esper into the alien. The blade seemed to split the esper, shearing away some of the attack’s destructive power but none of its pure force. The Herald tumbled end-over-end, shrieking, as the princess pulled up and changed her attack angle.

  Amelial regained control almost immediately, esper pouring from her wings, and streaked back the way she had come. Malya saw the second when the alien realized that the princess was not where she had been. She recognized the instant when, because of their combined speeds, the alien would have no chance to dodge or even react. And she saw the look in Amelial’s eyes when she realized that too.

  Mr. Tomn poured esper into Malya and Sedaris, bringing them to impossible speeds. The Herald’s desperate twist and swing at the racer seemed slow and clumsy. Malya ducked easily under it and drove her blade through Amelial’s stomach. Power coursed along the weapon and burned at the alien from within. Amelial screamed. Blue-white light streamed from every seam in the He
rald’s armor until it cracked and shattered. Her wings cut, her mind overwhelmed, her body broken, Amelial tumbled away from the princess and slammed into the cavern’s rocky floor.

  Malya glanced over to where Sebastian Cross and Harbonath still fought. Both relics were damaged; Cross’s mecha was deeply scarred and trailed smoke. The Void Reaper’s machine, however, had lost an arm and he lacked something of his former swagger. He glanced over as the Herald fell, and an angry, frustrated growl echoed from him. Malya recognized the duel for what it was, Sebastian buying time, and turned Sedaris around. She winked at Harbonath and sped toward the gate.

  “No,” Harbonath shouted, barely audible behind her. “No, you will not deny me!” A shock wave rippled past her, and she risked a glance behind. The Void Reaper had sacrificed one of his relic’s legs to land a blow that threw the paladin across the cavern. Harbonath fired his immense thrusters and raced after Malya. For a sinking instant, she though he might catch her. Then the skeletal relic shuddered and stumbled, as if it had reached the end of its tether. Behind, she saw Sebastian Cross, his relic on one knee, extending his hand as if clutching the Void Reaper. The alien machine strained, but the paladin pulled it backward inch by inch.

  Red-gold esper laced with black rippled across Harbonath’s relic like water on a force shield. Cross’s psychic bonds snapped. The paladin grunted in pain, and the Void Reaper rocketed toward Malya. He would be too late, she saw. She turned back and found her goal just below her. A quick pull on the handlebars turned Sedaris into a sharp skid and brought her in a tight circle around the circumference of the disk. Thin, foul-smelling trails of wispy gray esper, like steam rising from a hot spring, drifted lazily up from it. She stared down into the darkness.

  It looked infinite, like a tunnel, and she knew that it was. The gate had opened, and it connected this galaxy to . . . somewhere cold and alien. It did not look like anything at first, but then she saw distant energies like lightning. The energies reflected on the shapes and forms of an irregular landscape. Even this emptiness, then, held something. As she watched, that something moved. It took on definition and scale and finally intent. Ghost images like the smoke that had brought the Void Reaper drifted closer and quickly became clear enough. She recognized humanoid shapes in ordered rows, soldiers moving with drilled precision and inhuman grace. Others floated around or near them, discernible only by the shadows they cast in the smoke. She felt cold, and a terror clearer than the Herald’s illusion swept over her. This was an army, an alien army, and they were coming to murder the galaxy.