“They will be a serious target for our enemy,” he said. “Arrange for one of their Starforges to link with one of our own and bring the humans here. That might even give Corvus more time to—”
“Sir!” The Laronian officer stood up behind him, her eyes locked on to the view-screen. “Enemy ships just emerged from subspace around Corvus.”
Telarrek froze in the central aisle. “Alert C-Sec and have them divert whatever they can afford.” The Novaarian wanted to send more and save what few remained of the human race, but then he would be no better than Uthor.
Roland waited until the colossal ship had left the system before reactivating the Rackham’s engine and powering up again. They had drifted through the debris, watching helplessly as the Sentinel disappeared within the storm of enemy ships. Between the loss of the Sentinel and the state of Arakesh, the Concave had suffered a massive defeat.
“How do we beat something like that?” Ava asked, staring absently at the blanket of destruction laid out before the viewport.
“Maybe we can’t…” Roland replied. He could tell that his response hadn’t helped the tension on the bridge, but he was too exhausted to care. For all the battles he had witnessed, this one carried a level of death that couldn’t be fathomed. And the enemy had already moved on to the next planet…
Len broke the silence, “Message coming through on all bandwidths. Direct from Clave Command Tower.”
“Let me guess,” Roland interrupted. “They’re ordering a full retreat.”
The Ch’kara hesitated. “Full retreat. All ships in the system are to pull back to the capital.”
Roland pushed away from his console and kicked the empty bottles at the base of his chair. “They could have done with sending that…” His anger bubbled over and he couldn’t find the words. “Rackham, set course for the capital. Make it fast.”
“Course set. Leaving the system now.”
The bounty hunter was already heading for a fridge of cold beers by the time the Rackham dropped into subspace.
Chapter 17
Kalian looked up, beyond the tropical trees that lined the streets of Corvus’ capital, and altered the lenses in his eyes, focusing them on the turquoise skies. The two-pronged vessels took shape as they breached the atmosphere, hurtling towards the surface with a trail of fire and smoke behind them. The closer they got the more their structure changed, morphing into a single point.
“Everybody take cover!” Kalian shouted at the top of his voice.
The caravan of humans being led through the streets scattered to the buildings, desperately trying to take shelter inside or behind the giant palm trees. The Trillik security force did their best to keep everyone together while simultaneously ushering their own citizens to safety.
The ground shook violently beneath them as a giant ship landed on either side of the city. The earthquake ripped through the foundations of more than one of the mirrored towers. Kalian turned to the street on his left and watched one of the skyscrapers topple into another on the other side. A moment later, a wall of dust and debris was pushed between the buildings, an impenetrable fog that promised a death from suffocation to any within.
Kalian pushed out both of his hands and condensed the air around their street, forcing the grey fog to run over them. They were instantly enveloped in darkness until the dust ran its course. He looked back down the street to see a hundred thousand faces looking back at him with panic and awe battling for their expression.
“We need to keep moving!” Li’ara shouted over the chaos.
Kalian turned to Sef. “Spread yourselves out. There’s a lot of people here and I don’t want a single person being separated from the rest of us.”
The big Gomar nodded and the rest of them dispersed between the throng of people, taking up positions on each side. They were all still in need of more training, but at least they could keep any harmful debris from killing people.
Captain Fey approached the head of the Trillik security force. “Which way is it?”
The Trillik blinked all four of its angular black eyes, clearly in shock. “It’s… It’s that way.” His bulbous green finger pointed down the street where the tower had just collapsed.
“Is there another way around?” Jed asked.
“There’s no time!” Kalian shouted, looking to one of the enemy ships poking over the edge of the city. His sharpened and he saw thousands of Shay pouring out of the nanocelium walls. “They brought Shay with them…”
“What do we do then?” Captain Holt asked.
Kalian looked at the horizontal tower sitting in the middle of the street. “We have to go through it. Come on!”
He didn’t give them a choice, grabbing Li’ara b the hand and making a run for it. With the other hand he continued to push the fog away, sending it up the adjacent buildings. The mob of humans naturally followed him, more than happy to be around the person who continued to save them. That wasn’t always how Kalian saw it, however. He often felt, as he did now, that his presence only brought more trouble.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” he said to Li’ara as they made their way through the debris strewn across the street. “We’ve endangered the lives of every person on Corvus.”
“What else could we do,” Li’ara replied through laboured breath. “We’re an almost extinct race backed into a corner. We need to survive.”
Kalian extended his hand and blew out the twisted framework and glass that cut across the street. “At what price do we survive?”
“Really?” she asked incredulously. “You want to have a philosophical debate right now?”
It was another reminder of how much he was changing. Despite the madness and violence exploding around them, Kalian’s mind was capable of running through a hundred different things at once, compartmentalising their problems, and allowing him to carry what others would feel is a strange conversation.
He shrugged it off. “Fair point.”
Kalian expanded his mind to map out the fallen building. He found the structurally weak points and exerted his telekinetic will into them, preventing any further collapses while the human population made their way through.
Screams sounded from the back of the trail and kalian caught sight of several Shay being flung into the air and smashed into the buildings. It was a level of violence he had come to expect from the Gomar.
“Keep everyone moving through,” he directed to Li’ara and the others.
Kalian shuffled past the mob, trying to fit through the jagged hole in the side of the tower, and ran to see the Gomar. All twelve of them had formed a rough line in the hope of keeping the vying Shay away. The cyborgs, who now appeared more savage than ever, were crawling along the walls of the building and desperately trying to climb over the bulky armour of the Gomar. Still, they held the line. Garrion waved his hands over the buildings and pulled slabs of it away with the Shay still attached. Vox swept her arms out and yanked multiple limbs from their bodies.
Sef and Kovak reminded Kalian of gorillas. The largest of the Gomar, they waded into the waves of infected aliens and used telekinesis to enhance their strength. The Shay flew in every direction, each one taking injuries that would kill a normal being. Any who dashed beyond the line were intercepted by the sisters, Nadreen and Nardel. Between the two of them, they used the heavy debris and in some cases, entire vehicles, to crush the advancing enemy.
It was clear to see, however, that it wasn’t going to be enough. Within the entangled mass of savage Shay, the nanocelium was already putting itself back together. The two alien ships only continued to release more as well as tendrils that Kalian could feel digging through the earth.
“Get everyone to the Starforge!” he yelled over the destruction.
Vox turned back to him. “If we don’t hold them here they will kill everyone!”
Kalian walked past the sisters and faced the mob of crazed Shay. “No they won’t.”
With a single hand held out before him, Kalian fell into a world of concentr
ation and connected with the universe, feeling for every molecule that connected him to everything else. He could feel them. The nanocelium writhing around inside the Shay, controlling their motor functions.
“Go…” he said with his eyes closed.
The Gomar hesitated until they realised the Shay were no longer attacking them or even moving. Kalian flexed his fingers and every infected alien doubled over as the spasm ran through their muscles. He found every nanite of nanocelium and pulled, just as he had with those who had attacked them on Evalan.
“There’s too many even for you!” Garrion warned.
Kalian wanted to answer but his jaw was clamped shut. It was taking everything he had to keep them frozen and pull at the nanocelium. The Gomar finally left him, making their way through the collapsed building, though a small part of Kalian could feel Sef watching him.
As the first of the nanocelium burst forth from their bodies, the Shay began to fall from the walls and drop in the streets. The black powder weaved through the air, coalescing in a manner not dissimilar from a tight flock of birds. Something wet touched his lips and Kalian tasted blood. It was good, he told himself. He needed to push himself. Through gritted teeth, he pulled and pulled until every Shay was lying on the ground, motionless.
Returning to reality was jarring, with its environment pushing on all of his limited human senses. Only through his Terran mind did he feel in total control. Kalian let his shoulders sag as his lungs filled with ragged breaths. The nanocelium continued to float in the air, a black fog that masked the city beyond.
He knew exactly what to do with it…
After a few long breaths, Kalian centred himself and held his hand out to his side. The nanocelium moved as one, floating through the air until his telekinetic powers brought it all together. It took but a single touch to infect the nanocelium and free it from the slave coding. With his eyes fixed on the black tower in the distance, Kalian fashioned a spear from the nannies, binding them together in a tight weave. The point was so sharp he was sure it could pierce Callic-Diamond.
Kalian pulled his arm back before he forcefully gestured towards the tower. His tether over the spear was released and the shaft of nanocelium flew across the city, its speed enhanced by Terran abilities. A quick alteration to his eyes gave him the perfect view of the spear as it impacted the side of the enemy ship.
It wasn’t long before he felt it. The roots it had deployed underground slowed down and the ship itself began to vibrate. It had accepted the nanocelium from the spear into the rest of its systems and fallen prey to the human DNA that was now running through every nanite, irrevocably changing it.
Kalian!
Sef’s telepathic call had him turning around, where the Gomar was still waiting for him.
We need to go.
Kalian agreed and started for the hole in the building when he heard a slither of info from the headset of a dead Trillik. He paused to remove the headset from the solider and listened to the warning.
“I repeat,” said a terrified Trillik voice, “multiple invading ships have emerged from subspace! Get off the streets! Seek shelter outside the cities or find your nearest Starforge! Evacuation by ship is no longer an option!”
Behind him, the black tower was falling apart, layer by layer of nanocelium dropping away in a cascade. Expanding his awareness, Kalian could feel the second tower was still pouring out infected Shay, only now they had a direction. Instead of creating chaos in the streets, there was a horde of them charging through the city, searching for the humans.
“We’re being targeted…” he said to himself.
Can you stop them all? Sef asked. Can you remove the nanocelium?
“Maybe,” Kalian replied. “It would be easier if all of you could help…” he hoped those words had some kind of impact on the Gomar, because they were going to need them all if this war was going to turn.
“Come on!” Vox cried from the other side of the fallen tower.
Kalian looked back at the waves of raw nanocelium now washing through the streets. It moved in ways that couldn’t be attributed to its momentum, showing a level of intelligence as it spasmed up the buildings and across the streets. Entire trees were encompassed and reduced to atoms, consumed by the hungry, yet confused, nanocelium. It gave Kalian an idea.
“Get everyone to the Starforge,” he ordered Sef. “Make sure no one is left behind.”
What are you going to do?
Kalian considers the amount of free floating nanocelium. “I’m going to hold back the tide.”
ALF emerged from subspace, seeing the Corvus system through every external camera on his new Starforge. There was no space battle to speak of, since the Trillik’s security force had been nothing but a bug on the windshield of the Kellekt armada. Judging by the skeletal remains and floating debris, C-Sec had lasted longer. Two Nebula-Class cruisers were already being consumed and added to the bulk of the nanocelium.
“Ships have been deployed to the surface,” Talli’s young voice now came over the Starforge’s speakers, having sensed ALF’s discomfort at having the new AI in his mind. “They have released thousands of infected Shay upon the population.”
ALF could sift through every data readout in his mind’s eye. Linking through what little remained of the local AI hub and undamaged satellites, he could see the Shay flooding the streets of the capital city as well as the ships that had touched down. Other cities across the globe were already smoking having been bombarded from space, a process that would soften the ground and allow the Kellekt to begin the harvesting process.
“No sign of the Three,” Talli commented, aware of ALF’s concerns. “The last report to cross the AI net states that they have left the Arakesh system but have yet to reappear.”
ALF focused his view on the capital city and scanned for human life signs. They were yet to have lost any, but the static Starforge had only just been activated and they had over a hundred thousand people to get through.
“Our scans have been detected,” Talli warned. “Kellekt vessels are locking on to us with weapons systems.”
“Activate the wormhole,” ALF commanded. “And reposition us to 349 point 36. I don’t want to hit the planet.”
“Hit the planet?” Talli questioned.
“Like all great feats in technology, it can always be used as a weapon.” ALF placed a memory packet on the bridge between him and Talli, allowing the AI to see the events that took place in the Helteron Cluster. There, Malekk had used the Forge to open a wormhole side the local star and focus that raw power into a single beam and obliterate the Gommarian.
“I’ve never seen it used that way before,” Talli commented.
“That’s because the Three have always used Forges for transportation and Eclipse missiles for annihilating entire systems.”
The Starrilliums came back online but this time ALF made certain the navigation system was offline. When all three of the giant orbs, situated on the outer surface of the crescent station, were ready, he had Talli open a wormhole connecting it to the sun.
“What circumference would you like the beam, ALF?” Talli asked.
ALF inspected his view of the oncoming Kellekt vessels. They weren’t clustered together, covering a diameter of six thousand kilometres, a spread that was easily targeted with the massive circumference of the Forge that he had available. At the same time, Talli had the station’s thrusters shifting the entire Forge, ensuring that Corvus wasn’t in alignment beyond the Kellekt.
“Let’s go for seven thousand kilometres,” ALF replied. “That should do it.”
“What would you like to do about those already on the surface?” Talli asked. “I can refocus the beam, but getting it any smaller than a kilometre in circumference will take some adjustments.”
ALF considered the AI’s suggestion of decreasing the size of the wormhole to narrow the beam, but a kilometre wide beam of energy directly from the heart of a star was still like swatting a fly with one of Roland’s Tri-Roller
s. He magnified the images he had of the capital city, checking again the status of the human evacuation. Locating Kalian’s position within the cityscape was all too easy; it even brought a smirk to his face.
“I think Kalian has the surface under control. Let’s just take out the vessels.”
“As you wish,” Talli said jovially. “Wormhole established.”
ALF brought his attention back to the small Kellekt fleet traversing space towards them. “Let’s giving them something to think about, shall we?”
The Starforge opened a wormhole seven thousand kilometres wide and let rip with the power of a star.
Kalian was past the point of having fun and was now beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake. His exosuit was now five times its normal size, having absorbed and repurposed a portion of the nanocelium from one of the towers. There wasn’t an inch of him that was exposed and there was at least a metre of nanocelium between him and the outside world.
An initial blast of telekinetic energy kept the horde of Shay from overwhelming the fleeing humans, but he had wasted no time wading into the Shay masses and putting his tree-like arms to good use. A single backhand, coupled with telekinetic energy, was enough to send ten of the infected aliens flying away in a jumble of broken limbs.
He stomped this way and that, flattening them under his heavy feet. Alarms were flaring inside is HUD, alerting him to the Shay on his back, desperately clawing at the nanocelium. Kalian jumped forward into the air and landed in a row that squashed the aliens on his back. Another blast of telekinesis scattered those directly in front of him, as well as blowing away the bottom corner of the nearest building.
Another alert broadcasted across his face, notifying Kalian of the link trying to be established by ALF. At least he was asking this time…
“Are you in orbit?” Kalian asked as he picked up a Shay by the leg and hammered it into the road.
A slither of nanocelium wormed up his neck and came to rest behind his ear. “Not quite,” came ALF’s reply. “I’m just mopping up the reinforcements up here. How is it down there? Looks like you’re in the thick of it now.”
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