Conquest (Rise of the Empire Book 9)

by Ivan Kal

  She also ordered all of her ships capable of firing kinetic rounds to do so. The kinetic shells theoretically had an infinite range, but at the distances they were now at it was almost laughably easy to avoid them, even with the limited maneuvering capabilities that modern shells had. But she hoped that it would at least disrupt them a little. She didn’t even bother firing s-missiles, seeing as the Erasi had not bothered themselves. The skim-field disruptor must be affecting them as well.

  And then the Erasi closed the distance, and almost simultaneously both sides opened fire with their long-range energy weapons. Particle beams shot out from both sides, bathing shields–and within the first minute, Ryaana lost her first ship.

  She kept her eyes on the holo, trying to see if there was any way for her to get an edge, something that would allow her time to get her fleets out of there, when a sensor officer yelled out.

  “Sentinel! We are detecting a massive energy buildup from the unknown ship!”

  Ryaana glanced at her board, seeing the numbers spike unexpectedly, and then all of her flag’s sensors went out and she was blind.

  “What happened?”

  “Sensory overload, Sentinel!”

  “Get them back online!”

  “We are resetting the systems–should be back online momentarily.”

  Ryaana waited, a terrible feeling coming over her. A few moments later, their sensors came back online. Ryaana looked at the holo…and saw an impossibility.

  A third of her force was gone, and many more of her ships were damaged. The reports were endless, and seemingly insane. Ryaana looked at the area where half of her ships had been just a moment before, retreating hastily, and saw space itself twisting her ships apart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Erasi system – Command-ship Gallant

  Vas’s eyes looked at the wall of the command center, but Aranis’s mind recoiled in horror at what he was feeling. The Sha was trembling. His eyes lost focus as he left the chaos in the command center around him and dropped down into the vast ocean that was the Sha. Without an amplifier he could not touch all of it, of course, but he could enough that he could see what was happening. An area of space-time was twisting; new gravitational fields were expanding outward and behaving erratically, twisting and churning in every direction, ripping ships apart. Some ships were ripped into thousands of pieces, while others were simply crushed, and a happy few somehow survived with just a few bents and rips. But most had fallen prey to the shaking of the new gravitational field.

  Aranis had felt the Erasi weapon fire. It was fast, a beam or a burst of some kind of energy he did not recognize. He was not sure, as he had not paid it that much attention. Not until it had reached its destination. In the middle of the fleets, it detonated, rippling outward spherically. Ships in the center hadn’t even had a chance–they had been pulled apart into billions of little pieces as the new gravitational field rippled outward, bending space-time around itself. The field was of a massive size, enough to have caught quite a large portion of the task-force, but those on the outskirts seemed to have fared much better. It had not reached the portion of the force where Aranis was, yet it was still so powerful that he could feel it.

  And the Sha…the bonds were straining, a thing that was not supposed to be able to happen. Not enough to break them entirely, but enough that Aranis could feel it. This was something new, something he had never even imagined. The Erasi had developed a weapon dangerous enough even to threaten the Enlightened–for Aranis was certain that, if he had been in the center of that weapon’s firing, he would’ve died. A shiver passed through him at the thought.

  Minutes later, the effect seemed to have abated, and the Erasi ships had started moving forward attacking and finishing off the ships that had survived. A few released escape pods, while others had transports and shuttles leave moments before the Erasi destroyed the ships.

  It didn’t matter. The Erasi fired on everything.

  Aranis shuddered at a thought of what this weapon could do if it was pushed beyond its current ability. If they managed to improve it, they could threaten the very fabric of the universe. And the foolish little idiots didn’t even realize what they were doing. They could bore a true hole to another dimension, not just weaken the dimensional barrier, and all in service of war, pointless squabble. This was why they all had to die, even if they somehow did not pose a threat by their very existence. Their nature itself was far too dangerous.

  Submerged as he was in the Sha, he felt the weapon charging to fire again, and realized that this time it would fire closer to where he was. He did not know the weapon’s range, but Ryaana’s ship was at the end of their formation, on the far side of the Erasi. So, at worst, he would be at the far edge of the weapon. It was still not a good position to be in.

  His thinking delayed him too much. The weapon fired. A burst of energy crossed the distance nearly instantaneously and detonated in the middle of the remaining formation. A ripple exploded outward and, in mere moments, reached the ship Aranis was on.

  A lurch pulled him out of the Sha and he stumbled, grabbing hold of Ryaana’s chair as he looked at the chaos around him. Lights were flickering and consoles were blown to pieces.

  He needed to get out. The problem was, he could not do that without revealing himself. If Ryaana or anyone who saw him survived, he would be discovered.

  And that meant that he would need to kill them all.

  “The drives are completely gone, Sentinel! They were ripped apart!” someone yelled.

  “Abandon ship! Get as many people as possible down to the shuttles and transport ships!” Ryaana yelled as she stood up.

  She pulled on his arm and started running out of the command center. He looked around and found everyone running. He followed close behind as they maneuvered through the ship, but space was still twisting and lashes hammered the ship, throwing them off balance. They ran for minutes before they reached the hallway leading to the main landing bay. Aranis knew that Empire’s warships had low crew counts–most of the things were automated–but he still did not think that there would be enough room to get everyone off. Just as they reached the end of the hallway, the ship lurched again and the gravity of the ship changed direction, sending both him and Ryaana flying to the side wall. Ryaana hit her head hard, dazing her. Then, a moment later, the gravity righted back to normal, and they dropped to the floor. Picking herself up, Ryaana stumbled forward. “Go!” she yelled at him and he followed behind.

  Inside the landing bay, a throng of people was closing in on the transports and the shuttles. There were far less people than Aranis had expected; most must not have reached the bay. They were dead, or had been cut off by damage to the ship.

  “Everyone get to the shuttles!” Ryaana yelled.

  “Sentinel! Here!” a pilot yelled out, standing close to one of the ship’s two small scout frigates. Ryaana and Aranis ran to him when another shudder passed through the ship. A massive grinding noise filled the landing bay and then a crash. And in the next moment air blasted outward toward a massive tear in the hull, pulling people around him with it. Aranis grabbed hold of the Sha, abandoning his disguise and anchoring himself to the floor.

  The pilot near the frigate flew off, pulled away. Ryaana followed, her body smacking against the grounded frigate’s hull with a hard thump. Without thinking, Aranis grabbed her unconscious body and pulled it to him, just as he grabbed hold of the diminishing air and pulled it around them in a bubble. A moment later, an energy shield flashed over the tear and the decompression stopped, although most of the air had gone along with the gravity.

  Aranis looked around the empty hangar, and then down at Ryaana. Unconscious and alive only because of him. He didn’t know why he had saved her; she was still doomed. He did not need air to survive and he could easily slip away from this system. It would take him time to get to another system where he could find a faster mode of transportation, but not an excessive amount of it. He could form his own skim field and trave
l, although not as fast as a ship could. But she could not. Keeping her alive would not change anything–she would still die, only later.

  He gazed down on her unconscious form. Somehow, even though there were very few physical similarities, he could not help but think of his daughter. He had not been able to save her. He had watched her die, had mourned her, along with all of his other children. This thing before him was nothing to him. And yet he was hesitating.

  Aranis heard another groan of the ship’s hull, and the energy field over the bay’s exit flickered off along with the shield covering the hole, letting the rest of the air out. Quickly after, the lights died down as well. Aranis knew that he needed to make a decision quickly.

  “Damn it,” he whispered.

  He grabbed her with the Sha and floated over to the small sixty-meter-long frigate. Using his wrist unit he sent the command to the ship to open the doors, making sure to spread the air bubble around the doors to prevent the ship from decompressing. Once inside, he checked to see if any of the crew were on board. Sensing nothing, he moved through the small hangar area to the living space, strapping Ryaana down in one of the chairs. Then he climbed the short ladder to the upper level and the small flight room.

  He had very little training piloting Empire’s vessels, but he had trained some, as Ryaana had insisted. Most of it was automated anyways. He disengaged the grounding gear and slowly took the frigate through the exit and flew it out. Looking at the sensors he saw the Erasi warships moving forward to finish the damaged ships, but they were on the other side of the debris field left by what had just minutes before been Ryaana’s force. A few other transports and shuttles were fleeing as well, but he did not see any others from the ship he had just left. The comm channels were a mess, so he didn’t bother with them. The skim-disruption field was still in effect, so they couldn’t enter it. But if his calculations were correct, the frigate should reach the hyperspace barrier before the Erasi reached it. Regardless, he did not plan on allowing them to reach it at all.

  Ryaana was still his best connection to the top of the Empire, he reasoned. Saving her made sense for his mission. Nodding to himself resolutely, he reached to the other room and into her mind, making sure that she would remain unconscious for a while, and then he turned off the ship’s sensors. It would not do for this ship to have any records of what would happen next. Afterward, he simply pointed the ship toward the hyperspace barrier.

  He stood and walked out of the small flight room, closing the door behind him and securing them. He removed his clothes and put them neatly into a small locker to the side. Then he went to the ship’s airlock and entered. He opened the doors, venting the atmosphere as he changed. Thick dark plates grew out of his skin and his wings emerged–in a moment, the visage of Vas disappeared, making way for Aranis of the Enlightened.

  He dropped into the Sha, feeling the entire system around him. The skim field was being disrupted by a series of emitters placed all around the system, but he was not looking for that. He searched and mere moments after he began found the Erasi communication relay. Drawing the Sha to him, he bent space around himself in the same way that access points did, and crossed the distance in an instant. He might not be able to achieve the same range as an access point, but bending space was still a very useful ability. He looked over at the capsule-shaped object the size of a small shuttle and put his hand on it. The cold metal attempted to draw heat from his body, but it, like the vacuum of space, was denied the ability. With a thought he triggered a reaction that collapsed the bonds of the matter, effectively turning the capsule into stellar dust and cutting off the system from the rest of the Erasi comm-grid.

  Then he turned to the new Erasi weapon. Space bent, and he arrived above the massive Erasi warship. He wondered if their sensors could pick him up; it was not like he was attempting to hide, but there was a lot happening in the system. He reached into the ship, studying it. It was powered by six fairly large singularity drives, suspiciously similar to those of the Empire, which were themselves a slight improvement on the drives of the People. This implied that the Erasi had probably stolen the relevant blueprints from the Empire. But there was also another singularity: larger, and somehow different. He took a moment to focus on it–and then he saw.

  Ah, so that is how they did it. It was very brilliant, in Aranis’s opinion, but also foolishly insane. The Erasi did not understand what they were doing, nor what the consequences could be. They were manufacturing unstable black holes on demand, pushing them into subspace and throwing them forward, kept contained and from collapsing by a kind of space-time field similar to the skim fields. The calculations necessary for them to actually hit their target were mindboggling. For every shot they needed to calculate how much power their containment needed to hold on to before collapsing in order to reach the target. Just a slight miscalculation could have it collapse early or late, missing the target by enormous distances.

  Allowing the black hole to collapse inside subspace had the effect of rippling space-time in real-space, tearing anything and everything in the area effected, creating an effect it would not have in real-space. But the fools probably didn’t even realize that a single misstep could have the collapsing black hole break phase and manifest inside real-space, feeding on everything around it to sustain it. They could very easily swallow the entire system in a new black hole. And if they realized what they truly could do with this technology… Aranis did not want to imagine such a scenario. It was exactly what the Enlightened wanted to prevent.

  Well, in any case, they will not get the chance, he thought. Taking hold of the Sha permeating through the ship, he studied it in greater detail. He did not want to accidentally cause the very thing he had feared, which meant he needed to be very careful. Doranis preferred brute force, and Aranis knew that he would’ve simply pulled the ship apart with the Sha, but Aranis was not so reckless.

  The first thing he did was find the part of their weapon that phased their fire into subspace. Once he did, he crushed it with the Sha, forcing the particles it bound to move closer to each other, effectively making it crumple in on itself.

  Then he looked at the ship’s six drives, and, reaching inside, he simply destabilized them, forcing them to collapse. As soon as he did so, he watched as the massive ship lurched and then imploded in on itself. Most of it was consumed by the singularities, leaving only a few pieces of debris.

  Satisfied, he turned around to the rest of the ships in the system. He could not let anyone of them leave, not when they had seen that Erasi ship getting destroyed. They might not know what had done it, but any information that could even remotely indicate his presence was information he needed to prevent from spreading. That meant that neither the Erasi fleet nor the fleeing remnants of the Empire’s fleet could survive. He did not want to overextend himself–he did not relish being vulnerable–but he needed to get it done.

  With a thought he bent space around himself and appeared above an Erasi super-battleship.

  Somehow they had managed to detect him, as one of their turrets swiveled and fired a particle beam at him. But as submerged in the Sha as he was, they might as well be moving at a pace a thousand times slower than his. He raised an arm and bent the Sha, and the beam curved around him, passing by harmlessly.

  He put his other hand forward and a lance of energy exploded out of it, piercing the ship, going through it as if it were nothing. He swiped to the side, cutting the ship in half. The two pieces separated slowly, drifting apart as the air inside escaped between them. Then several short explosions rocked the rest of the two pieces, throwing them away from each other.

  Again he turned, finding another ship and bending space around him to appear next to it. Not giving this one a chance to fire, he grabbed hold of all the air inside of the ship and ripped it out. The ship exploded into pieces, leaving only an empty husk behind.

  Sighing, he saw how many more ships there were in the system. It would take him forever to destroy them one by one. See
ing no other choice, he let himself drop deeper into the Sha. He would have to start breaking them in greater numbers if he was to have the time to take care of the fleeing Empire ships. Annoyed, he set himself to it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sanctuary

  High Matriarch Levisomaerni sat in the private quarters given to her in the palace, her mind reeling from the knowledge she had gained. More had happened in just a span of a few days than had happened to her in a span of thousands of years. Many revelations, as well as new questions. The Emperor had given her much trust, but had also proven to be a shrewd ruler. He had accepted the offer of debt Levisomaerni had offered, even though it was not technically owed to them. But she could not fault him for taking advantage of her weakness.

  Indeed, he had repaid that a hundred times over by the knowledge he had given. She had learned what had happened to the People, a question the Partenai had wondered about since their punishment so long ago. When the People had taken away all the technology they had given them, when they had stranded them on a single world without technology as a punishment for their crimes, the Partenai had suffered, but had also come to realize the error of their ways.