Twilight of the Gods (Universe in Flames Book 8)

by Christian Kallias

  Zeus had sent her a holo-vid message before they arrived on Droxia, letting her know that Chase now had the full support of Zeus and Olympus. She remembered the discussion she had with Ares, and she wondered what it was that Chase had to do for Zeus to throw in his full support. The only thing that made sense was that the Fury, Oryn, had defected. Though Athena didn’t understand why just yet. But she’d find out eventually. Right now her objective was to win this battle and ideally to ensure the Asgardians participated in that victory.

  Once the Fury fleet was fully flanked, she decided to remote pilot a squadron of ships. She was not surprised when she had sensed some remote-controlled Earth Alliance craft in their previous engagements with both Fury and Gaian forces. But she was surprised that the humans and Furies were able to do so. The technology had been available to Olympians for countless centuries though.

  She selected a full squadron of drone ships from the launch bay of her ship and activated the neuronal remote control mode of her captain’s chair. A holographic 3D projected cockpit engulfed her. She wondered how Chase and his friends did it, but on Olympian ships, when a member of the crew activated this mode, the projected hologram informed the rest of the crew about what they were doing.

  She could pilot multiple ships at once, but one was selected as the master ship, and that was the one whose cockpit was holographically projected around her. She had the full squadron telemetry at her disposal and could either control the ships using preprogrammed maneuvers, or control each individually, though that required a much stronger focus on her part. A third option was to let the AI Olympian destroyer control most of the wing while she focused on mentally dispatching objectives, freeing her mind to do other things, like mentally provide orders to the rest of the fleet.

  She went for the latter option, as the battle around Droxia’s orbit was very volatile and she did not intend on losing yet another Olympian destroyer. Chase didn’t know this, of course, but Olympian resources were scarce. Zeus had not diverted too many resources on building war machines after the Furies had been defeated ten thousand years ago. So neither their technology nor their numbers had grown much ever since.

  Athena of course had argued this fact with her father multiple times, but she always ended up losing the argument. Zeus was not someone that you could coerce into doing anything he didn’t want to. She had learned that the hard way. Eventually, she gave up and accepted the tranquil and boring Olympian way of life that saw the status of their people evolve from the pioneers and most respected army to a dwindling civilization that fell off the radar of younger worlds as centuries went by.

  It felt good being part of the fight, and war strategy was something that was running in her blood, as well as something she enjoyed. Ever since Zeus had asked her to join Chase and help the Earth Alliance, she had felt like her life again had meaning.

  She engaged the cloak on her drone squadrons, which turned her holographic projection more translucent as a result and vectored the craft toward the nearest Fury starfighters and accompanying super-destroyer. If she could get the aggro on her squadron and lead them to Thor’s ship, she would certainly try, even though she doubted he would fall for it. She sure wouldn’t if their roles were reversed.

  Her squadron started pounding on the enemy starfighters, and then she dropped the cloak so the enemy ships could pursue and engage her in return as she vectored toward Thor’s ship, going evasive.

  She received a hail from the Mjölnir. Thor’s tattoos blinked madly.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Athena?”

  “Fighting to defeat the Fury, which is more than I can say for you, Thor.”

  “I’m not going to engage these ships, this isn’t going to work. This is not our war.”

  “We both know it will become your war one day. You’re just cowardly ignoring the problem until the Furies come knocking on your door.”

  “If they’re stupid enough to do so, we’ll deal with them. For the time being they’re not bothering us. Perhaps they know they’d lose.”

  “Oh, arrogance and ignorance in the same package. How efficient of you!”

  Thor did not look pleased at Athena’s word jabs.

  “Change course now, or we’ll be forced to fire upon your squadron.”

  That gave Athena another idea.

  “And start a war with the Earth Alliance and Olympians? I don’t think so.”

  “We’ve kindly brought your fleet here, and we were not obliged to do so. The least you can do is respect our wishes not to participate in this conflict. Last warning, Athena. My turret will make short change of your tiny starfighters.”

  Athena brought up her starfighters’ energy signature monitors and added fake Olympian life signs onboard the ships. Time for an old fashioned bluff.

  “I haven’t agreed to these terms directly, and right now I’m trying to evade my pursuers. Plus, I don’t think you’d be willing to fire on me directly. Surely killing me would bring about Zeus’ wrath upon Asgard, and then the Furies would be the last of your worries, trust me.”

  Thor’s eyes narrowed.

  Time to push her bluff to its utter limit.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” pushed Athena. “You were cowards ten thousands years ago, and I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you today. You smug sons of bitches.”

  Thor’s tattoos intensified and Athena could read inner rage boiling inside the Asgardian. They were very proud people, with honor. In that regard they weren’t much different from the Droxians.

  “But don’t let that make you lose any sleep, Thor. It’s not like Valhalla’s door opens to the weak and the cowards anyway.”

  “ENOUGH!” screamed Thor before turning off the holo-comm channel.

  Her instruments showed that Asgardians were powering up their weapons, and her squadron got locked. She spun three of her fighters on their axis to face her following Fury tail and showered the squadron with intensive laser and missile fire. When she took out three ships with the intense firing barrage, a nearby second Fury squadron changed vector to follow her, with a super-destroyer repositioning itself to open long-range fire upon her ships.

  She spun her inverted fighters back into position and pushed all engines to their max, entering the Mjölnir firing range. Her starfighter computers bleeped madly, informing her of the multiple locks on her entire squadron. She armed countermeasures and reprogrammed them to take a missile trajectory forward instead of their standard flare-scattering patterns.

  That’s when volley after volley of Fury missiles soared toward her squadron. She deployed the countermeasures at the last second, and once the Fury enemy ships opened fire with added laser fire, she cloaked her ships and re-vectored her squadron to scatter toward the Asgardian destroyer.

  Thor’s ship opened fire on the Fury missiles, now on a direct course for the Mjölnir. But he made sure to hit them one by one with impressive precision, never risking hitting the Fury starfighters in the process.

  Methodical bastard. He’s not gonna budge, so let’s return to my initial plan, thought Athena.

  She positioned her ships in the path of the Asgardian turrets the moment they stopped firing, having destroyed every one of the missiles and Athena’s countermeasures. She quickly hacked her ship’s firing system to emulate the Asgardian firing signature, which she knew she’d have to answer for later. But right now she had enough of Thor’s attitude. She would complete the assignment Chase had given her.

  She redirected most of her ships power, except cloak, to the weapon system and boosted them to three hundred percent firing power. That way they would resemble destroyer class turret fire. It was a rough hack and she would only get a few shots from her squadrons before the weapons fried, but she was running out of both options and time.

  She unleashed heavy fire to the incoming Fury ships and blew them to pieces in a matter of seconds before her ship’s core engines and weapon system started overloading.

  The F
ury answer was immediate. The nearest super-destroyer didn’t even bother to adjust its vector. It micro-jumped instead and came face to face with the Mjölnir raining fire on it with everything it had.

  DANIEL VECTORED his ship toward the nearest trio of Fury starfighters and locked his drones to them. He pressed the trigger but he had forgotten the drones weren’t equipped with laser.

  Right, they’re supposed to scramble their shields.

  The drones took a torpedo trajectory and sped toward their targets instead.

  Let’s see if almost dying for this mod was worth a damn.

  Daniel didn’t start shooting his lasers at the ships until the drones were upon them, which didn’t take long. The first drone impacted with the Fury’s shield and stuck to it like a leech. The reddish shield around the Fury starfighter acted as if it was being taxed, which Daniel took as a good sign. He locked onto the target and unleashed a volley of supercharged laser fire. The first two shots got absorbed by the enemy ship’s shield but the others went through unaffected, tearing the fighter to pieces.

  “Holy shit! It works!”

  Daniel admitted he needed to reconsider Yanis’ ass kicking. Perhaps a six-month no-sitting level would do. He smiled as he unleashed a missile to the next Fury starfighter who fell prey to his drones and sent it straight to hell. He then obliterated the third one just as easily.

  Now we’re talking.

  “Alpha Leader to all squadrons. Follow my lead, I’ll paint up your targets, and you engage them at will when they light up on your targeting systems.”

  His comm clicked multiple times to confirm his orders.

  Daniel painted up to eight targets at a time, not even bothering shooting many of them, since they were falling faster than flies; he barely had time to just keep up targeting the next targets. He noticed too late the lowered shield level of one of the drones before it blew up, taking three more enemy fighters in the process but damaging Beta Seven.

  He received an incoming transmission.

  “Go easy with my toys,” said Yanis.

  Daniel could tell from his chief’s voice that he wasn’t exactly at ease and used humor to deflect his guilt over almost getting Daniel killed.

  “You’re lucky these are so efficient. You may just have bought yourself a reprieve. Why did the last drone blow up though?”

  “You’re using them faster than they have time to recharge their own shields. So eventually they fall prey to the ship’s explosion from your kills.”

  “Makes sense. Now have that brain of yours find a solution to that problem.”

  “I already have. But it will have to wait for our next engagement. It’s not the kind of tweak I can do with a software update, and that’s also something I’m never ever attempting without a ton more simulation and standard weapons testing. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened to your StarFury, Daniel.”

  Daniel was still pissed off about it too, but it had turned out okay in the end, and this new advantage was something they would definitely need. So he decided to cut Yanis some slack.

  “That’s okay, Chief, I’m still here and your new drones are a thing of beauty, that’s all that matters.”

  “That’s nice of you, Daniel, but no, that’s not all that matters. If I hadn’t played mad scientist with doing last minute changes before we went into battle, my sister might still be alive.”

  Fillio. Daniel’s heart sank.

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Yanis. We can’t change the past and no good can come from blaming yourself. However, let’s agree to do more testing on your new ideas, but never lose sight of how important they are to our daily survival. Your mind does wonders and if it wasn’t for you, at least in part, we’d all be dead by now.”

  Daniel thought he could hear a sob on the other end of the communication.

  “Thanks, Daniel.”

  Daniel looked at the seven remaining drone shields and saw they had fully recharged, so he locked them to the next series of targets and sent the painted targets to his squadrons.

  “Look how quickly we’re dispatching these assholes now with only one StarFury equipped with your latest invention. When all our fighters are retrofitted, starfighter dogfight engagement with the Furies will be a walk in the park.”

  “If they don’t adapt their shields.”

  “Even if they do, I know it in my heart that you’ll find a way to give it yet another advantage. Fillio would be damned proud of you, I can tell you that.”

  “I hope so.”

  THE HOPE SHOOK under the heavy fire of three different Fury super-destroyers in their current vicinity. They were gangbanging on the Hope and its shields were depleting faster than Sarah was comfortable with. She micro-jumped the Hope away in order to let its shield recharge, but the reprieve was short-lived, as two of the three Fury super-destroyers micro-jumped in pursuit.

  We need to get them off our backs.

  That’s when Sarah felt a weird sensation, and her hands briefly lit up orange.

  What the hell is that?

  She felt a strong electric current reach the tip of her fingers and saw small lightning discharges in between her fingers. She started to panic as she felt more and more current build up inside her body. She hadn’t had an incident of uncontrolled Fury powers in a while now, and she thought it had just been a fluke.

  No such luck.

  She focused on calming herself down as now was not the time to be distracted. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and took a few deep breaths, but when the ship started rocking again, she got pulled back to reality.

  “Captain!” shouted her tactical officer.

  “What is it?”

  “Three more ships are on attack vector; they are ignoring the ships firing on them and all are vectoring toward us.”

  Were the Fury determined to bring down the Hope? It had been in many major engagements with their forces in the past, and perhaps they knew it was the flagship for the Earth Alliance. Bringing it down, even if that meant losing many of their forces, would definitely impact morale. But Sarah would not let the Hope be destroyed. Chase was still dealing with the loss of the Destiny and Commodore Saroudis. Losing the Hope was not an option.

  She opened a channel to Athena.

  “A little busy at the moment, Sarah.”

  “I need reinforcements. The Hope has caught all the aggro.”

  “I’m dispatching half my ships and some Obsidian destroyers to assist.”

  “Thank you, Athena.”

  The comm turned off and Sarah wondered why Athena had been so brief and almost cold on the line. She looked at her tactical holo-display and saw something she couldn’t believe at the other side of the battle theater. The Asgardian destroyer Mjölnir started opening fire toward an incoming Fury destroyer.

  7

  Thor opened fire on the Fury super-destroyer with everything his ship had and quickly lowered its shields. More Fury ships micro-jumped in the area and started engaging his other two destroyers.

  The ships’ commanders requested orders from him. Reluctantly, he gave them orders to return fire. Thor hated the idea of entering the conflict under these circumstances and knew that his father Odin would reprimand him for this.

  Damn you, Athena!

  He sent a volley of quantum torpedoes to obliterate the now shieldless Fury super-destroyer, which was still unleashing everything it had toward the Mjölnir to little effect, thanks to the Asgardians superior shield tech.

  While he wouldn’t admit it openly to Athena or Chase, Thor actually wanted nothing more than to obliterate the Furies, and well, today he had been forced into a military action he wanted to avoid because of his orders. But it felt good to kill many of this universe’s biggest scourge. The flame of battle ignited inside his soul, and he could hear the drums of war beat inside his heart once more.

  It’s been too long.

  He opened a channel to Athena.

  “There, are you happy now?” he said coldly.
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  “Ecstatic, in fact. Sorry for calling you a coward earlier. I needed to get a reaction out of you, and it seemed to me that whatever broomstick Odin has lodged in your rectum was firmly planted there, so I had to get creative, no offense.”

  That really had angered Thor but he knew his Father’s position and non-willingness to choose a side in this conflict was inherently wrong. It clashed with the warrior within him and he knew many other Asgardians felt the same. It had been centuries since they had stepped into a battlefield. They all missed it. Truth be told he had nothing but respect for those fighting and risking their lives to make this universe a better place, like the Earth Alliance was. But Odin was adamant that it was not Asgard’s place to enter a conflict they had nothing to do with.

  Of course, Thor disagreed, but he had too much respect for his Father to openly defy him. The Asgardians had played a vital role in the previous war, in both working with the Olympians to develop the dimensional shifting device and also providing the most powerful fleet to counter the Furies’ mad conquest. Not being part of this fight following the resurgence of the worst enemy this universe had ever known was preposterous. So even though he would not admit it openly, he was actually glad Athena put him in this position. He had put on a show of disagreement for his Father’s sake, but inside he was glad how things turned out.

  “None taken. And apology accepted, but know that this stunt of yours will most certainly cost you and the Alliance in the long run.”

  “Right now I don’t care about that. With your ships’ help we’ll finish this battle in no time.”

  “Perhaps, but this won’t play in your favor when the subject of the fully fledged alliance is brought to the table. Odin does not like being coerced into anything. You may have won an ally today, but prevented one in the future.”

  “Come on Thor, you can hide all you want behind your impassive cold blue Asgardian face, but we both know you love the thrill of the war. I know I’ve never felt so alive for eons.”