The Reality Incursion (Deplosion Book 2)

by Paul Anlee

  “Shields and sinks to maximum!” he commanded. Another hundred Angels were gone before his troops could comply. Because of me. I underestimated the threat—he chastised himself.

  Defenses activated and everyone on full alert, the Wing evaluated their losses and reported. For the moment, those remaining were safe. The shields made them practically invincible to physical aggression, but prevented them from attacking. The sinks could absorb the directed output of multiple hydrogen bombs without wavering.

  Mika floated among the debris of bodies the attacker had hacked to bits in his opening flurry.

  How can this be? He’s one of us! An Angel. Could this be another of Alum’s tests?

  Had he met this Angel before? He scanned his archival memory. In the deepest recesses, the face linked to a name: Gabriel, the banished Fallen Commander of the Virgo Central Wing.

  But that was over twenty million years ago! Ancient history. How could an Angel have survived so long without Alum’s Grace to support him? And how could he have traveled to this distant outpost? Where had he been these millions of years, and what was he doing here? Was he working with the false Shard, Darak, on the other side of the Realm? Or were the activities over there and here today merely a coincidence? There were too many unanswerable questions.

  For the moment, Gabriel was trapped inside the jump blocker field. The Angels from Mika’s Wing who imprisoned him couldn’t attack without lowering their shields for a few milliseconds. The speed of their attacker demonstrated the folly of that proposal. The two opponents studied one another, contemplating next moves.

  Mika focused on more tactically relevant issues: How could a solitary Angel destroy so many other Angels so quickly? What new abilities did this intruder possess, and how had he acquired them? Did he have weaknesses Mika’s Wing could exploit?

  He would try diplomacy first. There was no shame in a single Agent choosing rational surrender to an obviously overwhelming opponent. Alum taught them that escalating to violence without first exploring more subtle options was a sign of an inadequate tactical understanding. He opened a comm channel.

  Lord Gabriel. In the name of Alum, I command you to deactivate your shield and disarm your weapons. The Living God has instructed me to bring you to Him. If you do not comply, you will be destroyed—the Commander sent.

  The dismissive laughter received in response confused Mika.

  Have you not noticed how easily the first of your Wing was dispensed with?—the opponent transmitted. How many attacks can your Wing endure once you drop your shields? What makes you think I have any interest in an audience with your God? Go home and leave me in peace!

  The blasphemy elicited something deeper than anger inside Mika. “My God?” Mika sputtered. “Alum is the God of all. And how dare you address an Angel of the Lord of the Universe in such a tone?”

  He nearly unleashed the full destructive force of his sword on Gabriel right then. Was that what his opponent wanted? With considerable effort, he regained control of his outrage.

  Alum’s Angels were the most powerful fighters in existence. Thousands of years of war with the Aelu had proven that. The sword of a single Angel could destroy a planet. A hundred could cause stars to go nova. In the entire Realm, only Alum was more powerful.

  How had Gabriel severed heads, arms, and wings from hundreds of Mika’s powerful brothers so quickly that he could hardly be perceived?

  Our shields stay up…for now, but how can we break this stalemate? Would the first to make a move be more likely to win or to lose?

  Mika adjusted his projections to compensate for Gabriel’s speed and power, and then formulated a new plan, one with layer upon layer of backup strategies.

  He ordered the outer shells to realign, increasing the number of layers Gabriel would need to penetrate to escape, and then transmitted a random sequence for alternating shield on/off patterns so all of the layers could coordinate the attack. Eager to see this mission concluded, Mika initiated the program.

  Shields winked on and off. Each time a shield went inactive, a series of harassing blasts were unleashed at Gabriel, and several unprotected Angels jumped closer, attempting disabling blows with their swords.

  Gabriel appeared to be doing little more than delaying the inevitable. His sinks passively absorbed the energy blasts, while he calmly fended off slashes and shifted around the innermost shell of jump blockers.

  Mika discerned no apparent pattern to his enemy’s movements and yet, within seconds, the innermost shell was dotted with dead Angels. Gabriel slew them the instant they dropped out of the decoherence shield network, before they could even leave their positions to attack with swords!

  How could he have calculated the sequence? It was random. Yet the evidence that he had done so was strewn on the periphery of the shell.

  As casualties piled up, Lord Mika shifted reserves from the outer shells to replace weaknesses in the shift-blocking net. The lattice of overlapping blocker fields held, though dead Angels littered its active nodes. Gabriel intends to destroy my Wing bit by bit. We’ll see about that!

  He instructed the inner shell to attack en masse, allowing that layer of Gabriel’s prison to dissolve.

  The freed Angels began shifting through a patterned sequence to within striking distance of their opponent. They swarmed in an intricate dance, advancing and retreating, never occupying a single position for longer than a second. To the human eye, the collective effect was of shimmering stardust.

  Gabriel responded by accelerating his movements.

  That’s it, wear yourself out. Lord Mika was feeling more confident. At least one of the troops will get in a damaging blow before the next layer of concentric spheres falls.

  Angels winked in and out of existence too fast for a mortal onlooker to follow. It’s unlikely that Gabriel would’ve encountered this pattern in his relatively short Wing career. The maneuvers were developed at the end of the war against the Aelu, long after Gabriel had been humiliated and banished by Alum.

  Once again, Lord Mika underestimated his opponent.

  As fast as Mika’s brothers shifted and as fierce as they struck, Gabriel was faster and struck harder. Most of their attempts met with empty space. The enemy’s sword blocked and parried, then struck out of nowhere and another Angel would die.

  For all its fury, the killing was silent, typical of all battles in space. The Angels died quietly, their final anguish left unvoiced.

  Mika’s losses mounted.

  * * *

  Gabriel/Darak was a killing machine. With a terrifying grimace fixed on his face, he moved in a swirling dance of shift, whirl, duck, leap, rotate, spin, slice, and thrust. His hands, arms, elbows, wings, legs, and feet deflected blows from his opponents that were intended to sever limbs.

  His attackers were aiming to disarm or disable him and take him captive. Darak put no such limitations on himself. His blows were intended to kill.

  He released blasts of planet-destroying fury toward the Angels occupying the outer shells. The blasts were mostly absorbed into their sinks but an occasional Angel would be overloaded and disappear in a silent, fiery burst.

  He set his tactical computations for the minimum level of fighting superiority needed to defeat his enemy without drawing the Living God’s suspicions that the actions were supernatural. He preferred to keep Alum out of things a while longer.

  Sooner or later, we’ll have a chance to escape—Darak thought as he severed another Angel’s head. Acutely aware of Stralasi’s location, he kept moving the battle away from the place where the Brother’s disembodied retinas observed the action. He doubted the monk was able to follow much of the detail, but the man had insisted on being able to watch.

  As Darak shifted within the constraining shell, he hoped Mika wouldn’t notice he’d been avoiding a specific area of the space available to him. To be sure, he shifted Stralasi and his protective bubble to a different spot from time to time.

  Things are moving so quickly, Stralasi probably
won’t even notice. At any rate, how could he complain?

  He laughed at the absurdity of it, as he pierced the power supply of another Angel.

  Darak allowed Mika’s bothersome gnats to chase him around inside the decoherence shell. He could destroy them all with a thought, were it not for the subterfuge he was conducting. I can’t give away too much about my powers just yet.

  The Angels’ attacks were a bother but if he weren’t careful, they could be dangerous enough to the body he’d chosen to wear.

  If he took too much damage, he’d need to retreat from this universe for repairs, and all of his work might be undone before he could return. He’d certainly lose Stralasi and, in that time, Alum’s plans might move forward enough to become unstoppable. We could lose the Real Universe!

  Darak fought on patiently, hoping to wear them down. Angels fell by the hundreds but the Wing’s strategy didn’t change. There will come a time when Mika’s patience runs out, when his losses make him desperate to finish this battle. He will accept my death, at some point, if he deems it necessary. Or, I should say, my apparent death.

  It was obvious he wasn’t going to escape their shift-blocking net easily. He’d have to destroy it or punch a hole through it.

  Alum must have issued a directive to capture the intruders, or Mika would have unleashed his most powerful energy beam by now. The Wing Commander was staying above the main fray.

  * * *

  Lord Mika’s instincts, built on eons of battle experience, told him they still didn’t have the full measure of this troublesome Fallen Commander.

  Thirty percent of the Wing’s been annihilated, and we’re no closer to capturing this menace. If we continue this way, he’ll just keep picking us off one by one.

  Gabriel was fast. He perceived, fended off, and delivered attacking thrusts at a speed unmatched by anyone in the Wing. But, so far, he’d demonstrated no unusual strength of shield, sink, or sword. His main advantage could be entirely explained by increased computational ability.

  Alum’s directive is too constraining. It’s time we err on the side of safety. A star-destroying blast will dispense with this menace with less effort and fewer losses.

  Mika assembled one hundred Angels along an arc of the shell that restricted Gabriel’s movements. Their combined force would be enough to make a sun go nova. No Angel, however enhanced or upgraded, could survive such a blast.

  He’d have to forfeit the few hundred Angels that were chasing Gabriel around the shell or blocking his escape. No matter; he’d already lost thousands.

  Alum would order their praises be sung, and they’d be forgotten. Such had been an Angel’s existence since long before the Aelu.

  He aligned the selected troops to ensure the blast spared the ringworlds, suns, and as many of their brethren as possible, and prepared to give the command.

  ONE MOMENT.

  The unmistakable voice of Alum entered directly into his senses. Whether the signal was shunted through the starstep on the asteroid or had been gifted to him as a direct starcomm while in transit, Mika couldn’t tell. Either way, he felt blessed to be in direct communication with God, while so far away from Him.

  The Wing Commander assumed the zero-gravity equivalent of bending one knee in genuflection. Floating freely, he spread hands, legs and wings wide and bowed his head, the ultimate defenseless pose. “I am yours to command, my Lord,” he sent.

  I WILL COORDINATE THE ASSAULT DIRECTLY.

  Alum has gifted me with a starcomm! The Living God has chosen me as a direct conduit for His Divine Action!

  Mika gave over full control of his sensory and command capabilities to Alum.

  The Living God charitably permitted Mika’s processors to continue monitoring what would follow.

  * * *

  Darak watched the Angels in the outer shells maneuver into position. Finally! Mika’s organizing them to send a synchronized bolt of energy to destroy me and end the battle.

  That Lord Mika would kill several hundred of their fellow Angels to put an end to this folly did not surprise Darak; that was considered acceptable loss by Angel tactics.

  He increased his shield strength and checked his sink capacity. It could absorb a combined blast from over seven hundred of them for at least one full second. But he couldn’t do so without revealing important and potentially deadly information about himself.

  We’re better off sneaking away when they fire.

  Darak computed the trajectory of the Angels’ beam, given their positions and where he would place himself and Stralasi when they fired. There’d be a small track just outside the beam’s path—only one—where they wouldn’t be seen while they executed their escape.

  If his calculations were right, the blast would overload the Angels that were generating the decoherence shell, and he’d be able to escape. There’d be no more than a millionth of a second between Mika’s beam destroying the edge of the innermost imprisoning shell, and striking Darak. Just enough time to get away.

  At the precise moment, he’d tether the Brother to himself, and pull them both near the beam and through the hole it created in the shift-blocking shells. He’d have to shield Stralasi with his own body, absorbing the majority of energy that would strike them. The smaller energy sink he’d placed in the shell with the monk would protect him from any stray radiation.

  The beam’s energy was going to play havoc with the virtual space through which they’d be shifting, but there was nothing he could do about that. To navigate reliably they’d need to be outside the beam itself. In virtual space, you either navigated reliably or you got lost forever.

  Darak shifted Stralasi closer to where he wanted to be when the blast was delivered, at the far end of the innermost shift-blocking shell. He fired his own energy bolts, reducing the Wing’s numbers along one specific arc of the shell. He tried not to be too obvious about his intentions. The moment was drawing near. The Angels had settled into place.

  The timing relied on too many uncertainties and estimates for his comfort. Still, he and Stralasi would be safely gone. Even if Alum deduced their escape was assisted by supernatural powers, He’d be powerless to stop them. At worst, He’d be forewarned that someone like Darak existed in His Realm. That would be regrettable, but Darak could manage.

  Darak’s attention was drawn toward Mika’s smaller group near the outer edge. The Wing Commander had paused and assumed an all-too-familiar pose: floating submission. He was talking to Alum.

  If the Living God were taking direct command, Darak’s precautions might all be for naught. He contemplated altering his plans and opening a destructive microverse at the edge of the shell.

  The prostrate Angel resumed its command posture. Darak hoped he’d only been reporting the Wing’s progress and receiving approval to proceed.

  The arc of Angels pointed their swords in his direction. He could sense the enormous energies building up inside the crystalline blades as they drew from miniature unborn universes.

  It’s time. Darak locked Stralasi’s position to his own and shifted the two of them together alongside a decapitated Angel’s body. To the observers, it would look like a fruitless attempt to employ the dead Angel’s still-functional sink to protect himself from the blast. He altered his and Stralasi’s connection with the Higgs Field and got ready to push the body away as hard as he could.

  Being so focused on the arc of Angels and possible intrusion of the Living God, he didn’t anticipate the blow that came from the opposite side of the containment zone before the energy bolt was unleashed.

  * * *

  The Angel, Lord Mika, materialized in the Hall of Alum. He stood alone on a ramp leading to the Main Stage above which the Living God’s hundred-meter universe swirled.

  APPROACH—beckoned the undeniable voice in his head.

  Mika walked forward slowly and dropped to one knee beneath the miniature galaxy that displayed Alum’s might for all to see.

  What am I doing here? Am I being called to task?—he
wondered. He and his Wing had been poised to unleash a torrent of energy sufficient to destroy any one of those suns. Alum had not only approved the action, He had taken direct command.

  And yet here I am, removed from battle, back in the Origin system from which Alum ruled His Realm. What happened? Was the opponent destroyed? The questions he dared not voice burned the tip of his tongue.

  “The Fallen Angel once known as Gabriel has been destroyed.” boomed Alum’s voice.

  “Your Will shall not be denied, my Lord,” Mika replied.

  “Neither My Will nor My Power.” Alum paused and softened his voice. “As you may have suspected, Gabriel was more than he appeared.”

  “He seemed to have enviable enhancements, my Lord.”

  “Enviable, indeed.” Alum replied. “I have many questions about how he came to these new capabilities. But they were not mere enhancements, however enviable they may have been.”

  “No, my Lord?”

  “No. In fact, they used supernatural powers similar to My own and to those of the Aelu.”

  “The Aelu are still active, my Lord?”

  “It would appear so, in some manner. Perhaps our Fallen Commander Gabriel found an Aelu outpost that survived the war and collaborated with them. How insolent of them to imagine they could challenge Me!”

  “Blasphemous, my Lord.”

  “Blasphemy of a high order. I will assemble a new Wing for you to search out these blasphemers and destroy them before they can cause any further disruption.”

  “A new Wing, my Lord?”

  “Yes, your previous Wing was destroyed in battle.”

  Mika was shocked. To lose an entire Wing was an act of great shame. He reached for his sword. Such shame demanded he take his own worthless life.

  STOP.

  The command froze his hand on the hilt.

  Alum appeared on the ramp in front of the Angel.

  Mika pleaded, “My Lord, I have proven unworthy. I must end my service to You to redeem myself. Please, let me do this one final, honorable thing.”