by Shay Zana
Kitera gasps in horror, a pang of panic stabbing her chest. “Ranity?”
“Paragon Mazayus and I decided the most logical solution was to clear sectors D99 to D3 by restoring and venting atmosphere.”
“Is Mazayus safe? Are the other Paragons with him?”
“I cannot give a current and accurate report.”
“What was their status before you lost your observations?”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot give a current and accurate report.”
“I am not asking for a current report. I want to know each Paragon’s status right before your biometric systems were deactivated!”
A lengthy pause, as if the artificial intelligence needs the time of the human brain to think. “Accessing data logs...”
Kitera sighs and continues delving into the data around her, her body enveloped in holographic readings and graphs.
“I’m sorry, but that information has been wiped from my memory core. It appears that my star shard is actively being tampered with.” Her voice corrupts momentarily. “Good night, King Anzac, would you like my kinetic form to perform a massage?”
“Kitana... isik!” Kitera hisses again, the harsh words rushing through her teeth.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t recognise that language. Please specify so that I can request a dialect installation in my next routine examination.”
Washing her hand through the air and enclosing it in a balled fist, Kitera ignores the S.I and does not even wait for the stellarium to relinquish its displays as she leaves the room with haste, her cloak falling behind her as she disappears into the hall. With every footstep, she can feel the biological ship react to her weight, its nikita inner structure flexing in a flowing movement, and the symbols light up with extra brightness in acknowledgment of her presence as she passes. Altair can sense her stress.
She cannot imagine living aboard a non-sentient vessel and travelling across the stars for long periods of time. Just the thought of being within a living creature is comforting to her, giving her a warm sensation of safety and compassion, momentarily soothing her trembling nerves. Though she knows people can get just as attached to a non-sentient ship as much as an ikamanu. When a human works so closely and puts so much reliance into anything, machine or organism, growing attached is just natural.
“Altair,” she says as she paces into navigation and engages the stargrid. “Stretch your wings.”
At once, the ikamanu responds with a deep hum, not understanding the words she speaks to it, but understanding the pattern of her neural activity and translating this energy to a telepathic sense of direction, added with the extra clarity of the nav-point she has placed on its stargrid. Although the Cipher cannot understand the ikamanu like it understands her, she has learned to pay attention to the tiny details it emits. The echoing tones of its core, the slightest shift of its internal structure, the faintest flash of its symbols, and the softest wisp of entity sensations.
Altair’s hum lasts long and goes deeper the longer it holds it, and its insides seem to stretch length-wise. Its cyan symbols burn brightly as it utilises its stored light energy while simultaneously absorbing the energy from Rhadamanthus.
Without knowing why, Kitera’s gaze is pulled deeper into the hovering stargrid, enlarging on the guardian station and a tiny speck that flitters toward its hull. Quickly, the speck grows in the display, showing the torment of a Serenity Olympian tagged as the Ottawa, named after the capital city of Canada, Earth. The Ottawa is bombarded by a UEU Olympian and a wolf-pack of Spartans, and its stern is cracked with a wide gash, venting atmosphere violently. Kitera watches in horror as the massive vessel sinks downward, heading straight for a bright plume of the distorted nebula surrounding Kronos.
“Ranity, give me the status of the Ottawa. Damage report and casualties.” But the S.I does not respond at all this time, and not even static is reserving her place through Kitera’s earchips. “Ranity?”
The Cipher narrows her eyes into the display, following the trail of the Olympian as it seeps through the nebula. To her surprise, it is not vaporised, it is in fact visually unharmed by the distortion. She measures the trajectory. The Ottawa is on a collision course with sector D!
“Mazayus, can you hear me?” she pleads, tapping into her earchip. “A vessel is on an impact course with sector D, you must vacate! Do you hear me? You have to move!” No response. “Please hear me! Boone, Deo, Natheus! Get out!”
Only static responds, and it itches in her skull and invites worms of frantic chills.
“Altair?” she asks the ikamanu hopelessly, voice thick with a nervous tremor.
She is rewarded with a high pitched squeal, similar to that of a whale, and now she can see the cyan entity of the ikamanu emerge fluidly throughout the walls.
Do something.
Altair increases its speed and dives for the Ottawa, pirouetting straight through the nebula. Again, she races to the portside observatory and presses her hands against the transparent skin, glaring out into the fiery naval war as it speeds past her vision with increasing velocity, only to be clouded by the gaseous nebula.
“Do not engage SS speeds,” she warns Altair. “The distortions are unstable.”
But the ikamanu continues to increase its speed, pushing itself without entering SS. No hostile fire has touched it or even been aimed its way, as it is moving too fast to track, and Kitera can see that its entity is not even enveloped around it in a protective cocoon. Why? Is it that confident in its speed, and the slowness of human technology? Are its wounds affecting its telekinetic abilities? Or is it saving its entity for another use...
By the stars...
“Altair, no! This will kill you!” It is going to attempt using its entity as a force field to pull the Olympian away from the guardian station. But even for an ikamanu, this immense strain will overload its nervous system, drain its entity, and leave it vulnerable to enemy fire, maybe even destroy it entirely in an entity supernova. The ikamanu are the most powerful entity users, but to attempt moving a vessel that is almost ten kilometres long is insane. Moving a five hundred metre long Spartan warship is still insane even for an ikamanu, but more reasonable and certainly possible. After all, Altair had pushed the Marauding Exile out of the path of a moon. But an Olympian warship? If fully-manned, the Ottawa will have a crew of over thirty thousand. Thirty thousand lives weigh on the next few seconds, including her, Altair, the Paragons, and anyone else who may get caught in the blast radius of either the Ottawa making impact with the station, or Altair’s suicide in an attempt to stop it. She is lost for words and thoughts.
Before Kitera can say anything more, Altair’s entity spreads along the stern of the Olympian as it glides up beside it, and the effort of just wrapping it in a force field has the creature convulsing on the inside and pulling long strenuous groans that torture Kitera’s mind in pity. It cannot even place a field around the Ottawa, let alone move it.
“Stop!” she shrieks. “You will kill yourself!” She pounds on the transparent skin as the creature’s pained cries grow louder and louder, and she screams in hot desperation as the floors beneath her shudder and crack. “STOP!”
Heat envelopes her body as Altair protects her in an entity shield, but this shield does not block out the sounds of an ikamanu in agony or the tremors of its suffering body. Kitera continues to yell and scream at the stubborn and selfless creature, its devoted loyalty to the Paragons driving it to suicide. Without knowing, she slips into the language of the Ciphers, her english vocabulary disappearing as her terror drowns it out of existence. Many harsh words roll off her tongue, words that were meant to be spoken softly, with lightness and elegant care, but all the lightness and elegance has left the Cipher as her veins rumble within her body, pulsing with burning blood that makes her feel as though she will rupture from the inside out. Is it her own desperation, fear, and adrenaline that are fuelling these intense feelings? Or is it the entity of Altair as it rushes over her in a cocoon-like barrier, streami
ng from the ship’s nervous system into hers, journeying through every particle of her to armour her flesh and physical form.
An enormous shudder rocks the sentient vessel, followed by an explosion of the star energy of its entity that thrusts outward and slams against the hull of the flailing Olympian warship, forming an undulating entity star from the centre of the ikamanu and stretching its mass and body to great lengths. The sheer brilliance of the entity star blinds all eyes that watch, burning unshielded retinas and blaring at raw flesh.
Kitera eclipses over pain and enters a realm far deeper. Coldness pours through her as darkness takes hold. Oblivion claims her.
THE OCEANUS
As the ikamanu had sliced its way effortlessly through the battlefield and docked with the guardian station, Rockland had directed Zee to shake off the UEU Gladiators tailing them, who obviously thought the Marauding Exile had been commandeered by Serenity.
It was no easy task for Dylan Zee to shake their allies off without harming them, but after braiding his way through the many shattered and bruised remnants of Olympians, he was able to lose them in the fields of debris, the Exile’s shields far more resilient than those of the small Gladiators.
“Gladiators have disengaged,” one of the tactical officers on the bridge informs.
As they clear the newly formed debris field and avoid the strange looming clouds of hot dust, the UEU Titan comes into view. This Titan, Oceanus, was named after the Greek mythological god, in remembrance and honour to humanity’s old religions before the Ciphers revealed themselves along with the real identity of the Zodiacs.
The myth of the Greek god Oceanus depicted him as the creator and guardian of Earth’s fresh water, from rivers, wells, springs and rainclouds. The Greeks described this fresh water stream to circle the entire Earth in a never ending flow. Later, he was redefined as the sea-god of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and the idea of the fresh water river around the entire world was discarded.
In ancient Greek mythology, Oceanus was the son of Gaea and Uranus. In the war of the Titans and Olympians, the Titanomachy; the ten year long battle fought between the two sodalities of deities, Oceanus refused to take the side of his fellow Titans, and chose to withdraw from the conflict, though the UEU’s Oceanus is famed for its power and kill-count in naval combat. Every Titan flagship in the fleets of the UEU and Serenity are widely known to each nation, mainly because none have yet been destroyed, and the two nations war so often that a fleet without a Titan backing it is seldom seen.
Each Titan warship is named after a Greek Titan, though the main Titan fleet was split after the UEU and Serenity separated.
Oceanus was often described as having the upper body of a man, with horns that were often represented as the claws of a crab, and the lower body of a serpent. This appearance is tagged to the vessel in virtual representations, and is the iconic emblem of the UEU’s Oceanus Fleet.
Many religions and beliefs failed and withered after the Ciphers emerged. Many wars were released, many faiths were abandoned or defended to the death, and many cultures were destroyed. Never did the Ciphers or the Zodiacs want war, but it happened, and they could not stop it. Religions fought other religions, and it soon became a battle for the survival of each. It was just another bloody chapter in humanity’s existence, but one that would shape the future of the universe and the humans who dwelt in it.
Rockland’s eyes roam the view of the Oceanus as the Marauding Exile draws closer, the giant Titan dwarfing the slim Spartan. The enormous Titan lurks far behind the bulk of the UEU’s fleet, carrying the admiral, providing heavy long-range fire support, and refuge to wounded and limping vessels that can no longer engage in combat.
Titan class warships are typically over one hundred kilometres in length, with several layers of two metre thick nikita armour, and incredibly dense nano-shields. No warship other than another Titan would stand a chance against these vessels, and that fact has yet to be proven wrong. No Titan has ever fallen. Wounded, forced to retreat, but never fallen, and no Titan may ever fall.
“The Oceanus is requesting a visual link,” announces a young woman from one of the many terminals surrounding the command deck. She quickly glances at her commander to make sure that he heard her and has acknowledged this, to which she is rewarded with a tight nod from the stern looking man.
“Accept,” he says bluntly, folding his arms over his chest as he waits for the kinetic screen to appear and display the visual link of whatever comms officer is contacting him aboard the Oceanus. A moment before the link is made, a green image of the fleet’s emblem pops onto the holographic screen, showing an image of the Greek god Oceanus with the UEU triangular logo behind him.
Now, a rather petulant face dominates the screen from the shoulders up. A young man, Rockland figures maybe in his early twenties, though it is hard to tell these days with all the rejuvenation tech that the UEU has made breakthroughs in. As a citizen of the Universal Eden Union, whether you are military or civilian, you can live forever if you so wished it, though few have the luxury of being able to afford such expenses. Rockland despises those who can afford the procedures and boast about the amount of credits rolling out of their economy-clips; the universal data chips used as credit, and their never ending youth because of it. Next we will be bringing the dead back to life, but for a price, of course! Just another thing for Serenity to get bitchy over, he thinks to himself.
“Identify yourself,” comes the dull command of the young man on the screen, invading Rockland’s world of thought.
“Commander Jaron Rockland of the V-1 Marauding Exile Spartan of the UEU: Oceanus Fleet. Reconnaissance Black Mamba unit, codename: Black Mamba One.”
“I didn’t ask for an autobiography.” The man falls silent as his head lowers from the screen, seemingly engaged in another task that Rockland cannot see. After a time, his face appears again. “Recent reports indicate that the Marauding Exile had purposefully attacked the V-4 Longbow, and threatened several UEU Gladiator warships. It was therefore presumed that the Marauding Exile had been commandeered by Serenity forces and immediate action was to be taken. Do you confirm or deny this?”
Mechanically, Rockland spreads his feet wider apart and clasps his hands behind his back, lifting his chin higher toward the screen. “Confirm the attack on UEU forces, but the Marauding Exile has not been commandeered... there are complications.”
“Complications that can justify mutiny and cease an immediate court-martial?”
The quick words of the man sting Rockland momentarily, but he regains his nerve after hearing a few rude and muffled words from Zee toward the young man through the screen, to which he fortunately did not hear. “We are reporting back from a classified operation, and we have information that is crucial to this fleet, and maybe the entire UEU. Requesting permission to board the Oceanus.” Rockland’s gaze is steady again.
The young man sighs without the decency to cover his frustration, and again, his face disappears from view as he either operates on a nearby terminal, or consults with someone else nearby.
Rockland refuses to shuffle his weight nervously for his crew to see, but instead glances around at the people surrounding him, some exchanging glances with each other with just as much nervousness as he is feeling, or some just too focused on monitoring space traffic to care either way. Jason Dimitri is among those of his crew that are heads-down-asses-up and are busy working away, while his XO Ike Kann is standing just to his right, owning a stern and frosty expression, his eyes targeting the virtual link screen as if he is ready to jump through it and pounce on the young and arrogant man aboard the Titan.
Once more, the man’s head bobs into the screen and his eyes narrow on Rockland. Rockland allows himself to wonder what rank this man is as he scrutinizes him equally.
“Operation: Ghost Tempest?” the man asks matter-of-factly.
Rockland simply nods, hiding his surprise that this comms officer is informed of such classified intelligence.
“Permission granted,” he finally says. “Exterior Dock 19 is free. Report to Admiral Coleman on the bridge, immediately. Please relinquish any weapons in your possession. You will be escorted under armed guard.”
As the transmission is cut and the screen vanishes, Rockland is left still surprised at the man’s change of tune. He has never actually met the admiral in person, just a few briefings over virtual link, but he has heard many things about Coleman. The man is a ruthless genius, and he just happens to control the most powerful naval fleet in the entire universe. Scattered Planet is the largest galaxy to be inhabited by mankind, and although it is shared with Serenity, the UEU has more territory and a larger fleet to guard it.
Before Rockland can even give the order to Zee to dock with the Oceanus, Zee waves his hand casually from the helm and gives the commander a loud, “on it! ETA in 30!”
Silenced before even opening his mouth, Rockland nods to the flight lieutenant and turns heavily, striding down the length of the command deck toward Navigator Dimitri, not even conscious that Kann is in tow behind him. “Dimitri, any idea if that ikamanu made it?”
Jason inclines his head toward the holographic console he is operating on, the typical green and white displays of the UEU’s kinetic technology glowing against his dark eyes and eliminating their once weary appearance. “Space whale is safe and sound, sir. Got it tagged and we’re tracking it around the rims of the battlefield. Not doing much at the moment, just flying around, no doubt keeping an eye on its Paragons.”
Rockland reins his eyes in on the screen, seeing the battlefield around Kronos and the many vessels. Sure enough, the Serenity ikamanu is skimming along the edges of combat, its speed casual but consistent, and nothing is bothering it since it appears to pose no threat way out there. Anyone who locates it on radar will probably think it is just a wild ikamanu, curiously inspecting the raging war of the humans. Ikamanu have always been too curious for their own good, but are usually smart enough to know not to get in the way of naval combat, and not to get involved in shipping routes, though of course they cannot resist tagging along beside a cargo vessel as if they are dolphins on earth swimming after a boat.