by Dan Worth
Chen wrestled with the lifeboat’s controls as it plummeted into the atmosphere above Maranos. Something was very wrong indeed. The craft’s response felt sluggish and uneven. She instantly concluded that something must have been damaged during their escape. Looking at the row of status lights above the command console she saw several flashing red indicators. The craft’s braking field was behaving erratically; energy fluctuations were causing variations in its strength and hence the aerodynamic profile of the falling vessel.
Chen did her best to shallow the angle of their descent, but she was fighting a losing battle. The problem was getting worse by the second. She had to slow them down.
A sudden howling sound cut through the cockpit. The rear portion of the shield had failed completely. Now only the aero-braking shape of the lifeboat was acting to slow the rear portion of the vessel. Chen felt the nose rising due to the uneven action of the atmosphere on the ship, and quickly shut off the field completely to prevent them from flipping over. They were hurtling through the cloud deck now towards a broad stretch of jungle patchworked with farm clearances. She aimed for one of the defoliated spaces and deployed the chutes, switched the ship’s retros and airbrakes as high as she dared, and prayed.
The lifeboat bounced as it hit the ground in a shallow descent at over two hundred kilometres an hour. It skidded onto its side and hurtled across the entire expanse of furrowed fields, cutting a deeper ragged furrow of its own as it went. They were slowing down, but the ship was still sliding far too quickly.
The tree line at the far side of the cleared area approached with alarming speed. The lifeboat hit a stone wall and launched itself briefly back into the air in a shower of masonry before diving headlong into the dense jungle. Still airborne, it careened off a sturdy tree in a hail of splinters before slewing to a stop, draped in vines and smashed remnants of branches.
Chen opened her eyes groggily, and to her astonishment found that she was still alive. She was suspended sideways in her seat, six feet above the right hand side of the cockpit which had now become the floor.
‘Everyone okay? Anyone hurt?’ she called out.
‘We’re okay back here Admiral.’ It sounded like Singh. ‘A little shaken up but no serious injuries. This is a tough little ship.’
Chen looked at Ramirez. His face was a mask of pain. His legs were crushed between the mangled panels of the nose where they had hit the tree. He was struggling to pull himself free but it was futile. There was another wound too, more serious. A jagged piece of metal had twisted free from the instrument panel during the crash and had pierced his guts. A deep red stain was spreading across his uniform.
‘Oh m-my God,’ stammered Chen, then cried; ‘Someone get the medi-kit, and any tools or anything we have back there!’ She twisted herself out of her seat and carefully lowered herself down to his side. She held him, gripping his hands that had become smeared with his own blood. His face seemed very pale, contorting as he fought back the searing pain in his legs and belly.
‘Al listen to me, we’re going to get you out of here okay? I’m not going to leave you.’
He tried to grin. ‘And to think I had to drag you off the ship. Now you want to save me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should go, get away from the crash site before they come looking for us.’
‘I don’t care, I’m staying.’
‘I thought you’d say that.’
‘I couldn’t bear to lose you.’ She smoothed the hair on his brow and kissed him gently as Singh approached with the medikit.
There was confusion aboard the platforms. Rekkid and Katherine were barely back on board and out of their suits when Steven came running to find them in the equipment locker room. He seemed genuinely frightened.
‘Steven,’ said Katherine. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘We’ve gone on a system wide red-alert. Ships are coming out of the portal at both ends and they’ve entirely destroyed the fleet. So far the only ship that got anything more than a few crew off before she went down was the Mark Antony. We’ve tracked a few lifeboats to the northern jungle, but there’s little hope for anyone else.’
‘Who are they!?’ demanded Rekkid. ‘Steven what came through the portal?’
‘We don’t know, transmissions received from the Darwin indicated an alien vessel of immense size. It began launching millions of tiny little fighters. They were small and silver, like the creatures we found in the tunnel, and the one you found on the ship just now, but these ones seem far more sophisticated. Sleeker, more advanced. I saw footage of them literally taking the Cannae apart.’
‘It’s them, it’s the banished Arkari. Steven we are in deep, deep trouble.’
‘There’s some good news.’
‘Oh?’
‘Varish has returned. He tried to warn the warships but no-one listened to him.’
‘Has anyone got a message to the Commonwealth?’ said Katherine.
‘We picked up a number of transmissions from the ships before they were overwhelmed. We’re trying to send out our own via the relays in this system. I’ve been trying to get a message to Varish. I thought maybe he can get us out of here.’
‘Worth a try, if he can reach us. But our priority must be to get a message to my government,’ said Rekkid. ‘I think only they can deal with this.’
Fleet Admiral Haines stood on the bridge of the carrier Abraham Lincoln and watched the final resistance aboard the Banu-Baku shipyard crumble before his eyes. His fleet had pulverised the line of ships guarding the facility and now the Marine Corps seemed to be winning the battle for the shipyard itself. Flotillas of assault craft filled with heavily armed marines had seized strategic points throughout the massive star shaped structure and had succeeded in dividing the K’Soth forces within it. They had even captured one of the new Super War Temple ships. It was a stunning success, one of a series of many that had seen the Imperial forces collapse before the onslaught of the Commonwealth. This war would be over sooner than expected, Haines was confident of that.
He turned to see one of his officers running across the bridge towards him. He seemed greatly alarmed. The man saluted and thrust a print-out of a message recently received by the carrier into his hands. Haines began to read it carefully, his expression darkened. Enemy ships in the Fulan system? How was it possible?
‘My god, Commander,’ he muttered. ‘Have the K’Soth managed to outmanoeuvre us?’
‘No sir, read on.’
Haines studied it some more. It had been re-broadcast via Fleet Command.
‘An alien fleet of unknown origins has emerged from the portal. We are falling back but our drives no longer work, some weapon of the enemy prevents us from jumping. Admiral Chen attempted a withdrawal but we are being overwhelmed. The ship is being torn apart by alien fighters and the magnitude of their mothership’s firepower is unmatched. We request immediate reinforcements and…’ The message was cut off abruptly. The Tipu Sultan had exploded at this point.
‘The authenticity of the transmission checks out,’ said the officer. ‘All the correct encryption protocols were used.’
Haines felt a sense of dread overcome him. They were several days travel from Fulan. All of his first-line forces were deployed for attacking the K’Soth whilst an unknown alien fleet directly threatened the security of the Commonwealth. The core systems would be relatively defenceless.
‘Have the government been informed?’
‘Yes sir, they have appealed to the Arkari for immediate assistance. I have an additional briefing from them here.’
‘And what did the Arkari say?’
‘They said: “We know.” ’
Varish first detected the warp signatures. His sensitive instruments spotted the incoming wakes as they entered the edge of the system before anyone else. They were harder to pick up than usual, made by refined warp technology that generated smoother ripples in space-time. They were however, massive, and a great many in number. After analysing th
e engine signatures Varish concluded that the Arkari had come.
Varish saw the first ship emerge from hyperspace just over half a million kilometres from the portal. It was enormous. Like all Arkari warships its shape resembled that of a terrestrial sting ray. This one however, was larger than any ship Varish had ever encountered.
Its form deviated from the norm by being longer and more slender than the usual, that and its immense size. From bow to stern the dreadnought measured over two hundred and fifty kilometres, across the beam around a hundred. Though the vessel’s exterior was dotted with an almost uncountable multitude of weaponry, its main gun consisted of a immense spatial distortion cannon whose systems ran almost the full length of the craft, its muzzle a cavernous opening on the underside of the ship’s bow. It was a weapon that could tear apart the very fabric of reality.
For its size, the ship moved with a staggering grace and speed. It swooped towards the alien fleet, and began firing. As it did so, an armada of smaller vessels poured into the system behind it, the great destroyers of the Arkari Navy. Though deadly in themselves, they were dwarfed by the behemoth they escorted as it ripped through the waves of tiny attacking ships.
Varish watched in awe. That ship was more like an entire nation in flight, rather than a vessel. Calling it a ship hardly did it justice. It wielded an almost god-like level of power. It bore down on the mothership at the northern pole as three more of the great vessels emerged in its wake and began to disperse.
The alien ship had advanced. Behind it another vast craft was now emerging from the portal. This one was longer, spikier, like a handful of broken sea shells clustered together.
A storm of energy was building inside the Arkari ship. Varish read a power spike from the craft’s reactors that his sensors misinterpreted as a stellar event. The dreadnought brought its main gun to bear on the lead alien vessel and fired.
Varish saw space itself turned inside out. An immense pulsing beam of hyper-dimensional warp energy was vomited from the bow of the dreadnought, striking the bow of alien vessel dead centre. Varish saw space itself bend around the beam, the light of the background stars stretched into prismatic smears. The mighty ship buckled for second, its petals quivering, before it shattered.
Katherine, Rekkid and Steven had moved to the bridge of the platform. Desperately, they were trying to find out just what was going on. Sensors in the system had picked up a great number of incoming ships, followed by an intense energy surge that had burned out the arrays. They now had no way of telling who or what now fought in the skies above the planet.
There was a message coming through. One of the technicians relayed it to the public address system so that all could hear.
‘This is Admiral Irakun Mentith of the Arkari Navy, commanding the Dreadnought Sword of Reckoning. We intend to employ all necessary means to prevent the enemy gaining full control of the portal and thus gaining unfettered access to this galaxy. The risk to all our races from this incursion is too great to comprehend. To this end, demolition of the system will commence once our vessels are in position. All ships and personnel are advised to vacate the system and retreat to a distance of no less than one light year within four hours, Commonwealth standard. Mentith out.’
Katherine looked at Steven.
‘Demolition? They’re going to use their ships to destroy the portal?’
‘No,’ he replied slowly. ‘It’s much worse than that. The Sword of Reckoning is a Night Bringer class Dreadnought, the most powerful ship class ever built by the Arkari. Do you know they call it Night Bringer?’
‘No.’
‘Because it extinguishes stars.’
Above and around the planet, the battle still raged. To the Dendratha it seemed as if the very heavens were on fire above them. Ships twisted, dove and swooped like living things as they fought one another with unwavering ferocity amid a sea of raging energies.
Gradually, the Arkari Navy were being pushed back from the portal exits. The ship that bore a likeness to a handful of sea shells that had emerged from the northern pole had now split into several separate craft before the dreadnought could recharge its main gun. They had now surrounded the vast vessel on all sides and were attempting to knock out its armaments.
It now appeared that the chief focus of the unknown aliens’ push into the system had switched to the northern exit, concentrating their forces into one offensive effort. More ships began to emerge from the portal as the huge Arkari vessel recharged its main armament whilst fending off its attackers with its multitude of lesser weapons.
Meanwhile the dreadnought at the southern pole fought its own battle with a large metallic nautilus shaped vessel with long grasping nanotech tentacles that frantically tried to ensnare the Arkari ship.
However there were two other dreadnoughts in the system. Two more had not engaged in the battle at all, but had positioned themselves above the poles of the two stars. They were charging their spatial distortion cannons now, preparing to unleash waves of energy that would eclipse those used to destroy the alien mothership by a factor of thousands. They had focused the arrays of the great weapons on the cores of the very stars they now floated above.
The spatial distortion cannons that Arkari ships carried worked by causing catastrophic hyper-dimensional ripples in the very fabric of space-time. These ripples would tear apart any solid object they were focused upon by interrupting the very molecular bonds that held them together, bypassing shields and armour and delivering a knockout blow to any spacecraft. However those carried by the Dreadnoughts were a much more powerful variant of the standard weapon, and could be more finely tuned to produce different effects.
One of these effects required the most energy and was potentially the most destructive. The weapons could be used to briefly generate singularities, points of infinite space-time curvature that drew in all matter and even light itself. In other words, the weapons could generate artificial black holes. Though they were unstable and generally dissipated once the weapons were turned off, the gravitational effects of such events were of apocalyptic proportions. Caught by a singularity carefully placed within it, the core of a star would implode and destroy itself. Even stars of a comparatively small mass could be induced into supernova in this fashion, thus obliterating everything within the system.
It was the ultimate doomsday weapon, and two of them were now about to be used on Fulan A and B. The planet Maranos would not stand a chance. The blast waves from the simultaneous destruction of the two suns would boil away the world and destroy the portal for good. On Maranos, all life would cease within seconds once the blast waves struck the surface.
Varish knew this all too well. As he worked towards the fruition of his plan he was constantly aware of the seconds ticking away until the dreadnoughts destroyed the system. He now saw that the battle unfolding in front of him was a holding action by the Arkari, nothing more. They just needed to hold off the Banished until the portal could be sealed once and for all.
Chen and her remaining crew succeeded in sedating Ramirez and cut him free of the twisted remains of the co-pilot’s seat. Chen thanked the foresight of whoever had designed the survival kit of the lifeboat to include cutting gear to be used in the event of a crash landing. They laid Ramirez in the back of the craft and covered him with emergency blankets. However none of them were medically trained beyond immediate first aid and they had no way of properly setting Ramirez’s broken leg, though they had managed to staunch most of the bleeding from his belly wound.
Chen sent the others in search of help. Even on this backwater planet they might be able to find a doctor. After all, a broken bone was a broken bone wasn’t it? She was less sure about any local ability to treat the hole in his belly. She didn’t know what to expect, but it gave the crew something to do whilst she tended to him.
She sat for a long time with his head gently cradled on her lap as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He was waking up again now and trying to speak.
‘Mich
elle, there’s… there’s something I have to tell you.’ He was drowsy from the painkillers, slurring his words slightly. His eyes looked unfocused. ‘I was sent to… to spy on you for the Navy. I’m sorry…’ he was partly delirious.
‘Al, you told me, you remember? When we stayed at the Falls Tier in Elysium?’
‘Listen to me! They sent me to keep an eye on you. No-one trusted you, but I did! I did… and I fell in love with you. That… that wasn’t part of the plan… but I never told them about that.’
‘Al, I know all along. Even before you told me I knew.’
‘You knew?’
‘A captain has to know what goes on aboard her ship. When you first came aboard I figured you for a mole, you didn’t seem to know your duties that well for the first couple of weeks and despite your glorious service record none of the other captains had ever heard of you. So I had a watch kept on your computer account and made a record of all the encrypted transmissions you sent and received. I know that they had you watch me after you told me too.’
‘And you… you didn’t hate me for that?’
‘At first, yes. I tried to get close to you at first just to give you a good impression of me that I hoped you’d pass on to your superiors, but when I got to know you I realised what a good officer you were becoming, and what a good man you are Al.’
‘So all we have together… was that all a lie, was that just to make me like you?’
‘No! No it isn’t… I… I was so lonely Al, and you were there for me when everything and everyone else had deserted me. You don’t know how isolated it can be being in command. No-one wants to get to know you because they’re all too scared of the boss. But you were always there to care for me.’