Twilight of the Gods (Universe in Flames Book 8)

by Christian Kallias

  Ares never thought he’d get his father’s approval from this meeting, but it went above and beyond his expectations. An invisible weight that Ares had carried for thousands of years was suddenly lifted from his soul, and now he knew that his aim was true. It left no doubt in his heart that they were doing the right thing.

  “Thank you, Father. And— goodbye, for now. No matter what, we’ll eventually meet back in Elysium, right?”

  “Absolutely, son.”

  CEDRIC’S HEART skipped a beat when he saw Spiros enter Engineering. It was late and both Yanis and Kvasir had left to get some sleep.

  “Hello, my friend,” said Spiros.

  “It’s so good to see you again. I never thought I would, after—”

  “That’s kind of why I’m here.”

  “I’m so sorry for what happened. I should have been more careful…seeing you die, and the way it happened, from my own hands. I’m still having nightmares about it.”

  “It wasn’t you, it was Gaia 2, and I understand you did everything to make sure she bit the dust. So, please, don’t blame yourself for that. Plus, as you can see, I’ve actually gotten a younger body for my troubles.”

  “I was about to say you look in top shape.”

  “We have Argos to thank for that.”

  “At the beginning of our journey, I never thought we’d utter such words,” said Cedric with a chuckle.

  “He’s also shared his cloning methods so I can bring Gaia back to life.”

  “I’ve heard she was damaged…how are you coping?”

  “It’s not easy; it happened at the most unexpected time. Just when I thought something wonderful was about to happen.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear this, Spiros. And I hope you can bring her back, I know what she means to you.”

  Cedric could tell by his facial reaction that Spiros was in a fragile state of mind.

  “Thank you. She brought me back, with your help, so the least I can do is return the favor. Let’s just say we have unfinished business, and I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet.”

  Cedric gave Spiros a warm and compassionate smile.

  “What’s the plan, and how can I help?”

  “I’m going away for a while; that’s why I wanted to see you before I leave.”

  “Where to?”

  “One of Argos’ old cloning facilities. I’ll make Gaia a real flesh and blood body.

  “That sounds like the best move. But you could use my help, I’m sure. Let me come with you.”

  “As tempting an offer as it is, especially since my time alone on Damocles-3, I’m not keen on finding myself alone for long periods of time—”

  “Then it’s settled, I’m coming with you,” interjected Cedric.

  “No, Cedric. Thank you so much for proposing, but we both know your place is here. Chase and Yanis will need your help with what’s to come. Saving Gaia is something I have to do on my own and without depriving the Alliance of one more of their top scientists. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  Cedric wanted to argue but he knew in his heart that Spiros had made his decision and that it wasn’t open to negotiation.

  “How long do you think you will be gone?”

  “I have no idea. Making a clone is the easy part, interfacing it with the ancient sphere and unscrambling Gaia’s code, that I have no idea. I might pick your brain via subspace from time to time if that’s alright.”

  “I was about to say that; yes, you do that my friend. Anytime!”

  They embraced each other in a warm hug.

  “You take good care of yourself and of Earth, my friend,” said Spiros.

  “You too, and be sure to both come back and to say hello when you’re done.”

  “That’s a promise.”

  CHASE WAS in his ready room when the holo-transmission started. It was the Emperor calling from his ship.

  “Admiral Athanatos.”

  “None of that, please! Plus I hold you personally responsible for everyone calling me Admiral.”

  Altair smiled. “And that is a problem, why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like being called that. So please, call me Chase.”

  “Very well, Chase. I wanted to discuss something with you earlier, but we’ve all been busy. And I needed a bit of time to grieve.”

  “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “So, what is it you wanted to discuss?”

  “Your next ship. The newest class of battle destroyer is ready. We have been churning out a lot of ships around Alpha Prime. But the latest ship design, the new flagship, is just out of space docks.”

  “I didn’t even know we had a new design in progress.”

  “Saroudis wanted it to be a surprise. We’ve taken the specifications of the Hope as well as some Olympian tech Athena was generous to share with us, and added some of the latest Obsidian upgrades as well. The only thing missing is a name to christen the new destroyer.”

  “Well that’s a nice surprise, indeed. What about naming it the Saroudis?”

  “I’m sure he would have liked that very much. And, I also had thought of that myself. But Adonis had chosen another name.”

  “Which was?”

  “The Victory.”

  Chase smiled. “I like that.”

  “Me too.”

  “Alright, so be it. I propose the ship’s true name be known to the two of us as Saroudis’ Victory. But for the sake of simplicity, we’ll give the ship its original name.”

  “I like the way you think. It will be done. Should I send it to rejoin you in Asgard?”

  “We’ll be there way before you will have time to send it.”

  “Not as much time as you’d think. It so happens we already have half a dozen jump gates operational that will considerably shorten travel time.”

  “Saroudis was right; you guys are nothing if not efficient. He told me how impressed he was with how fast the shipyards had been constructed around Alpha Prime.”

  “We play on our strength in this Alliance. Obsidian territory was the least damaged in this war, so we have more resources, and more manpower. We’re happy to be the working force of the Alliance. I’ll have the Victory sent to you with its new crew. Personally handpicked by both Adonis and myself.”

  “Your timing couldn’t be better. I was just about to give command of the Hope to Sarah.”

  “I’ll send your chief engineer the latest specs of the ship so he can debrief you on its capabilities. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  “Now, I’m really curious. Looking forward to captaining the Victory. Thank you, Emperor.”

  “Please, Altair.”

  “Very well, Altair.”

  “Goodbye for now, Chase.”

  Chase answered with a relaxed two-finger salute.

  19

  Yanis and Sarah entered the captain’s ready room. Chase realized that it would be the last time he would consider this his room.

  “Thank you for coming. Please take a seat,” instructed Chase.

  “Sure thing, Cap!” said Yanis as he sat down.

  “Hey, you,” said Sarah.

  “Hey, glad you could come as well. We’re about to exit hyperspace, so I wanted to make something official.”

  Sarah smiled.

  “What’s so funny, Captain Kepler?” said Chase playfully.

  Her eyes grew wide with excitement. “Captain?”

  “Effective immediately, in fact, and as I can tell that you already know, the Hope is now your ship.”

  “Congratulations!” exclaimed Yanis.

  “Thank you, the both of you,” said Sarah.

  “You really deserve it. You’ve proven you can captain your own ship, and it’s my honor to have you relieve me of my position as its captain.”

  “Does that mean I’m getting transferred?” asked Yanis.

  “I haven’t decided yet, but until we get possession of the Victory, you’re staying whe
re you are.”

  “Are we expecting a battle around Asgard?”

  “I don’t know what to expect, besides the near-certain assassination attempt on Odin. If anything else, we can’t let that happen. We’ve been given a chance to get our most powerful ally yet. If we prove ourselves to the Asgardians, and they join the Alliance, we’ll finally be in a position to take the battle to the Furies with both numbers and superior technology on our side.”

  “The Victory is one hell of a ship, Chase,” said Yanis. “I think you’ll like her.”

  “Well, that’s why you’re here. I’ve been dying to know what she is made of ever since the Emperor told me you would debrief me on the ship’s new technology.”

  Yanis got up and lowered a portable holo-projector on the nearby table. He flicked it on and a projected image of the Victory filled most of the ready room.

  “Wow!” said Sarah.

  “Why does the projection seem so big?” asked Chase. “I suppose it’s not much bigger than the Hope, right?”

  “You’d suppose wrong, Admiral. Here,” continued Yanis as he entered a holo-command on the floating interface. The Hope appeared next to the Victory, only representing a third of its size.

  “This can’t be to scale?”

  “Oh, but I assure you it is. In fact, it’s only slightly smaller than a Fury super-destroyer. And believe me when I say, it packs a punch!”

  “Now I understand why you gifted me the Hope,” Sarah smirked playfully.

  “I honestly had no idea I would be getting a new ship when I made that decision.”

  “I’m just teasing you, but if you feel like trading, you know where to find me.”

  Chase laughed.

  “Should I come back later, perhaps?” asked Yanis.

  Chase shook a finger. “That’s okay, sorry, Yanis. Please continue.”

  “Alright, so the Warheart class super-destroyer Victory is a true war machine. Everything in that ship has either been streamlined, upgraded, and or plain redesigned. Thanks to our Obsidian friends, they provided the new reinforced alloy that composes most of the armor of the ship. This new alloy makes the ship harder to detect in a long-range scan by shielding the power emissions from within to impressive stealth levels, and that’s even the case at full power.

  “The engines upgrade we owe to Athena’s willingness to share with us some of their ship’s specs. The triple quadrinium core engine of the Victory is ten times more powerful than the Hope’s.”

  “Ten times?!” exclaimed Chase.

  “Yes. You can now fire the main Heracles guns with barely a drop in power or the need to worry about being a sitting duck when you fire a full-powered shot. Firing frequency has also been improved. There’s two hundred and fifty laser batteries on each side of the ship, for a total of five hundred. And with fifty Quantum torpedo launch tubes, we now have the possibility of one shot taking out a Fury super-destroyer.”

  “Holy shit,” exclaimed Sarah.

  “Language, Captain,” teased Chase. “How many squadrons of StarFuries can it carry?”

  Yanis couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear. “Twenty-five, and half of that can be deployed instantly from the launch tubes.”

  “That’s a lot of StarFuries.”

  “Yes, especially the Mark IIs.”

  “The what now?” asked Chase. “New StarFuries?”

  “I’ll get to that soon. Right now let me finish with two more notable features of the Victory. The multi-phasic triple-layered intelligent shields make the Victory one hell of a ship to bring down. We’ve installed smart capacitors all around its hull that reinjects most of the diffused energy blasts they deflect right back into their own power conduits. The more you fight an enemy, the more the predictive modular frequency learns from the firing ship, thus lowering its tax on them and augmenting its ability to recharge faster.”

  “Did you just say that the longer we fight, the better the shields get?”

  “Basically, yes. Of course, the enemy might adjust their firing frequencies to adapt. But that will take some time for them, and that’s one more thing going for the Victory and the next Warheart class destroyers to follow in its footsteps.”

  “Is there anything that ship is bad at?” asked Chase.

  “The ship is— how do I put this mildly— a resource devourer. The amount of quadrinium required to not only build it but also to run it is enormous. And while it can accommodate a vast crew, the entire ship runs itself thanks to a very efficient central computer, requiring only a few men at the main stations on the bridge. That’s for us mere humans, as, of course, you can remote pilot the ship and most of its subsystems like you’ve been doing for a while now. The ship is constructed around self-healing circuits, with a gazillion repair nanites on standby in all critical systems. Everything has been doubled, or even tripled for maximum redundancy. Power conduits, capacitors, shield emitters— the works.”

  “This sounds like a true war machine,” said Sarah.

  “It is. Every system has been designed to counter Fury technology, right down to the Mark II StarFuries.”

  “About time,” said Chase, beaming a playful smile.

  “Forty percent stronger armor, faster jump recharge cycle, bigger engine, and all this means bigger range and for the first time…” Yanis mimed drumrolls. “Shields capacity of still fifty percent after using the cloak.”

  “Now that’s a tactical advantage these fighters needed! How did you achieve this?”

  “Believe it or not, but Obsidian power management was quite ahead of our own.”

  Chase nodded his appreciation.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, one last thing, in fact. The ship can now be customized with two types of drones. And you can mix and match them too. The older drone models with increased shields and firepower thanks to that aforementioned improved power management, but also the newer model that drains enemy shields faster than a mosquito sucks your blood at the height of summer.”

  “Interesting, if somewhat yucky, analogy,” commented Sarah.

  “I second that,” said Chase.

  “Realistically, what types of odds do you give this new class of ships against Fury super-destroyers?”

  “There’s a little bit of warning attached to this answer,” said Yanis. “In our last engagement, the Furies seemed to have fine-tuned their own systems to counter ours. Just like we’re doing now. So, it’s not exactly possible to say for sure. But I’d say the Victory should be able to take on three Fury super-destroyers and live to tell the tale.”

  “I’ll take ten,” said Sarah with enthusiasm.

  “You’ll need to be patient then, while the shipyards are working twenty four hours a day, thanks to the large Obsidian workforce, they can only churn out a ship this size every week or so. And that’s by stopping the construction of other, smaller ships, like the new Destiny.”

  “I didn’t know we had one in the pipeline.”

  “Saroudis had ordered a new Destiny with all the modifications that we had added to the Hope, and with the addition of all the new technology included in the new Warheart class destroyers, just in a smaller package, so to speak.”

  “When will it be ready?”

  “Soon, in fact, and then we need to decide what proportion of each class we’ll build.”

  Chase turned to Sarah. “What do you think?”

  “While my first instinct is to construct only the bigger toys, it might be a good idea to alternate between Warheart and Prometheus class ships.”

  “We’ve actually renamed this new category of ships to Hephaestus class,” said Yanis. “Since they pack a lot more firepower than the Prometheus class.”

  Sarah slapped Chase on the back of his head. “So basically you’ve given me the crappiest ship in the fleet now.”

  “Ow!” complained Chase. “I didn’t know any of this was in the works. Been kind of busy lately.”

  You’d better make it up to me one way or another, mister! s
he thought.

  Will do, answered Chase.

  Did you just read my mind?

  No, I think you just sent your first telepathic message without realizing it.

  Neat!

  “What’s happening?” inquired Yanis. “Why are you looking at each other and not talking?”

  “Who said we weren’t?” smiled Chase.

  “I think that’s my cue, guys! I don’t like that spark I see in your eyes, so please wait until the door closes before the fireworks begin.”

  Did he say fireworks? Tell me, is your friend overconfident about your abilities in that department? teased Sarah.

  I don’t know if it’s the big guns that got your motor running, but let’s find out if fireworks are indeed on the menu. Let’s hurry though, we only have a few minutes before reaching Asgard.

  Then bring it, bad boy!

  Yanis had barely left the ready room when Sarah decided to take full possession of her desk by throwing Chase on it and climbing on top of him.

  ZEUS WAS WALKING around his temple gardens with Apollo.

  “So what do we do with our remaining forces? I’ve already sent another twenty ships to Earth Alliance space, and we have another twenty in orbit at the moment. I also wonder if we should dust off the shipyards and put them back into full production mode?” inquired Apollo.

  “Olympian population, as you know, has not grown much in the last five thousand years. I’m not sure we have enough crew to man new ships.”

  “Our ships mostly run themselves. And we can always ask the Alliance for crewmen if that’s our only concern.”

  “I suppose so—”

  “I’m sorry for asking, but is Ares’ visit the reason for your absentmindedness?”

  “Not the only reason, but it added to a very long and eye-opening reflective period.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  “No, but it’s nice of you to ask. As per your question, I’m not sure about new ships. I have that feeling—”

  “What feeling? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “That none of this will matter to me soon, I can’t put my finger on it, it’s just instinct.”