by Ivan Kal
She shook her head. She didn’t have the time to dwell on that now.
“Send word to the commanders. They are to send the landing forces,” Urvu’ri ordered. They had already planned this battle out, and so far there hadn’t been many surprises.
Her subordinates acknowledged the order and relayed it further. Soon enough the Rimward Alliance and the Josanti League had pressured the Enlightened enough to open a way through to the rings. Within moments, assault shuttles flew through that gap and began their assault of the ring itself.
* * *
Sahib jumped through the still-smoking hole in the hull of the ring surrounding the gas giant, his suit’s sensors telling him that there were enemies ahead. The lights inside were dim, so he relied on his suit for targeting. His rifle lined up with a six-legged Created heading toward him and he opened fire. The pulse rifle sent three short bursts of intense energy crossing the distance and burning the Created’s skin. One of the shots penetrated deeper inside and the creature faltered. More of the Created were coming down the hallway, and his team opened fire from behind him. He crouched and allowed them more freedom to aim around him. The hallway was filled with light, illuminating their surroundings. Gento used telekinesis to guide a incendiary device among the rushing horde, then place a wide shield over it before it triggered. The device exploded, the blast contained by his shield burning everything inside. A few moments later, there were no more Created coming.
“Clear!” Sahib yelled out as they moved deeper in to the hallway. The others followed behind him. “All right, team, our job is to get to the command room for the rings and wake this baby up, powering up weapons and helping the fleet.”
“Any idea why the Enlightened hadn’t done so already?” Bross asked.
“Josanti League protocol in case of an invasion. The weapons were shut down and locked, and they can’t be reactivated without proper codes. Thankfully, our allies have provided us with them,” Sahib said as they started walking down the hallway.
“Fuck, why weren’t we briefed on this before we were dropped here?”
“Not the way the other races operate. The Josanti League told us about the codes just before the fleet got in range of the rings,” Sahib said. He felt the same way—going on a mission with little information and barely any warning was not his way of doing things.
“So why send us?” Misty asked.
“Oh, don’t worry, we aren’t special. Both our guys and the Josanti League sent several teams, and they’re hoping that one of us manages to get to the control room,” Sahib said.
“Damn,” Gento cursed. “Better that they assigned us with the main invasion force.”
“Nah,” Bross said. “Did you hear what kind of resistance they’re expected to meet?”
“Bross is right,” Sahib broke in. “Those poor souls are the bait. They landed before us and drew most of the Enlightened forces to their incursion points, leaving the rest of the ring fairly empty. That’s why we were dropped here.”
They had been dropped as close to the location of the control room as possible. Accounting for all the battle damage, and the fact that the ring was several dozen kilometers thick, they hadn’t been dropped all that close. They had work to do.
They were all carrying pulse rifles, which were better suited for this kind of an environment, as they prevented any accidents with ricocheting or punching through the hull and out to empty space. They moved quickly, following the map provided to them directly toward the control room. They encountered a few Created on the way, but nothing they couldn’t handle.
The lights inside the ring were dimmed. It didn’t appear like there was a lack of power; instead, it looked like it had been done on purpose. Sahib wasn’t sure if that was to create the spooky atmosphere, because the Created liked it that way, or because of some reason that he couldn’t think of. They reached a set of closed doors, and after trying and failing to use the console next to it to open it, he knew they had to force it open.
Once they had and the doors slid open, they stepped into a dark room. Sahib turned on his external light first, the others following behind doing the same.
“Well, fuck,” Sahib whispered.
“So, boss, what are the chances that whatever is inside those things doesn’t want to eat our faces?” Misty asked.
“We should back up slowly,” Gento whispered. “I can feel them inside.”
Sahib glanced at the large room filled with what looked like cocoons made out of flower petals. The floors and the walls were covered with vines that seemed to gather at the cocoons. Every piece of the walls was covered in cocoons, with more hanging from the ceiling.
“The control room is through those doors over there.” Sahib nodded at the large circular doors across the room, some hundred meters away from them.
“Are we sure they can wake up?” Bross asked quietly. “For all we know these are just being grown.”
“They can make their creatures quickly. I think this is something else,” Sahib said. They still knew far too little about Created and their creation process.
“Perhaps hibernation?” Misty suggested. “They might need less food this way.”
“All right, people,” Sahib said. “We’re going in, slowly. Try not to disturb anything.”
“Why aren’t they awake? The ring is under attack—they should be using everything they have to stop us from taking it over,” Gento said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Sahib said. He took a step forward and led his team slowly through the room. The cocoons were pulsating, the vines bulging as they seemed to feed something into the cocoons.
They had crossed halfway through the room when things went wrong.
Sahib froze as one of the cocoons next to him trembled, and he saw the large petals move, slowly revealing the Created inside. It was a warrior type, bipedal, and he knew just how powerful they could be at close range. The Created blinked its two sets of eyes and then they focused on Sahib. He didn’t hesitate—his rifle came up to the center of its chest and he fired. The pulse rifle heated up as the beam burned through the organ in the Created’s chest. There was no blood. The Created had none, and instead what leaked from deep inside its body was a kind of green ichor or sap. The Created screeched and Sahib sprang into motion.
“Run for the doors! Bross, get them opened! Misty, covering fire! Gento, give us some room!”
All of them sprang into motion. Bross jumped over what had probably been some kind of a desk before it was overgrown with Enlightened plant stuff and ran for the doors. The cocoons were opening and the Created were waking up. Sahib and Misty opened fire as they ran behind Bross, hitting every cocoon they saw opening. He threw an incendiary grenade on one side of the room where a few of the Created had already left their cocoons. Gento was sending blasts of his mental screech at the Created that were leaving cocoons, disorienting them and then putting shots in their chests as he brought up their back.
Misty pulled a device from her back and threw it behind them in the middle of the room. It triggered and gas left the canister before a wideband laser fractured on a crystal in the device and hit the gas. An instant later, the laser’s photons knocked the electrons out of the gas’s atoms, which made them lose energy and, at the same time, heat. The Created rushing through the gas froze, and a frag grenade dropped among them. The explosion sent their pieces flying in all directions.
Up ahead, Sahib saw that Bross had reached the doors and was trying to get the console to work. His suit’s hard connection was pulled out and connected with the panel. Sahib and Misty reached him and took positions behind the waist-high walls on both sides of the doors. Gento was just behind them, and they fired at the Created running after him.
There were hundreds, perhaps more of the creatures inside the room, too many for them to fight off. Gento turned as the Created woke up more fully. A few of the Sha types had gotten out of the cocoons and lances of energy curved toward him. He raised a shield, blocking or deflecting the shots
into the Created that were gaining on him. Sahib sniped a scout type midair as it was aiming for Gento’s head. Then Gento raised his arms up and the Created froze, and a moment later he pulled his hands violently down and the Created slammed into the floor. Gento swayed on his legs and Sahib ran out and grabbed him. Once he pulled him back he saw that the Created had only been stunned by the attack, but were recovering quickly.
A few more grenades flew from their cover, detonating and sending shrapnel flying into what was now a horde of Created.
“Got it!” Bross announced and the doors behind them slid open.
“Go!” Sahib ordered and pulled Gento into the control room. Misty fired a few more shots and made a break for it as well. They entered and fired their weapons through the doorway as Bross tried to close the doors. They started to slid closed, but several Created managed to enter, dying inside to their pulse rifles. The doors slid closed on one of the scout type Created, cutting it in half. Sahib put a few shots in its chest, making sure that it was dead.
“Well, great. Now we’re trapped in here,” Bross said. The loud knocking on the doors reverberated through the room, but the doors held.
“Get on those consoles and start working. Our job is to get the defenses back on-line,” Sahib ordered.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Year 718 of the Empire — Josanti League Territory
Doranis watched the battle around the gas giant with great interest. His forces were losing, that much was true, but the rings weren’t all that valuable to him—not while there was a war going on in the system. There was no need to waste ships in order to protect it. His ships didn’t needed to be repaired, they healed themselves, and most of his troops spawners were on the planets. He was going to let the invaders have the rings, as it was just one more place where they would need to fracture their force. Already, they had left a sizable force at the edge of the system protecting their backs. They had learned from the destruction of their last fleet. Sadly, Doranis had no such plan this time around, but they didn’t know that.
And just as they had learned, so had he. There was no need in being rash; he had all the time in the world. As long as this force was here, it wasn’t in the core. And he still didn’t know how many of the Sha-state users were with them. He hadn’t seen them acting since the short exchange a few days ago. He had healed from his injuries, but he was wary of clashing with them again. He could be more vigilant, of course, but it was not the danger you recognized that killed you, but rather the one you didn’t. Like the explosive devices.
Still, he didn’t won’t to lose all his forces for no reason. He didn’t know what the future held, what other obstacle the children of Axull Darr would throw at them. He needed to be able to act. And so he would need to act soon, as there was no reason to allow them to move around his system with impunity.
His attention was drawn back to the battle at the gas giant as the rings’ defenses came to life. He grimaced—he hadn’t thought about that. He linked with his Overseer breeds and got an update of what was happening. Apparently the defenses had come alive on their own, probably as a result of the boarders. He watched as those defenses started cutting into the ships he had stationed over them, taking them by surprise. He couldn’t allow that, as his plan was for an orderly retreat with minimal casualties. As it was, his force was going to be decimated from two sides.
With a growl he stood up, his bipedal form rising nearly three meters tall. He bent space and appeared high above the enemy formation in the area filled with debris from the previous battle. He had gathered pieces of ships’ hulls and compressed them into balls the size of his body, each carrying an enormous amount of mass. It was a trick he had used before, but it was effective. He grabbed hold of them and sent them all flying toward the enemy ships, targeting a few of the large fleet-killer ships as well as several of their smaller ones. Then he bent space and appeared inside of the enemy formation. He could tell that the Sha-state user was among this part of the enemy’s fleet. He couldn’t detect them precisely—they weren’t in the Sha state, not yet—but anyone who had achieved it had a different signature that could be felt if one was close enough. He felt only one, but that didn’t meant that there weren’t others with the other pieces of the fleet.
Without waiting for them to detect him, he appeared next to one of their battleships and fired a beam of energy of disintegration, breaking apart one of its main weapons and punching a large hole in the hull. An explosion of air and fire was seen for a moment, but then it stabilized—he could tell that the ship was heavily damaged, but not dead, as was proven a moment later when its weapons turned on him. He caught all those beams and curved them around himself, sending them flying back at the ship and bisecting it with its own weapons.
He saw one of the massive ships—a Sovereign—change direction and fire on him from a distance. He didn’t want to get entangled with those ships, as they were far too powerful to be taken lightly, and filled with Sha users that could hamper him if he tried to break it apart. He shielded himself from the first strike, and then his attack arrived. The kinetic shots struck across the formation, several smashing into one of the fleet-killers. He saw its shields blaze with light as the enormous kinetic power of those shots was transferred to the shields. A shield failed and a massive force punched into the hull. He saw the powerful hull bend and crack, but the ship survived. Those ships were designed to take punishment—that shot was powerful enough to blow a moon to pieces.
As he prepared to try and finish the job he felt the presence of another in the Sha state. He turned around to see a shape appear near him: a biped, wearing armor. He nearly chuckled. He hadn’t had the chance to study it during their last encounter, but the person wore a black and silver armor that covered their entire body. He didn’t know much about the technology it was built with, but he wondered why they even bothered. There was no need for such things when one was in the Sha state, as they could survive in most environments. They were young and new to the Sha state, however, and perhaps it was too much for them to pay attention to so many things at once.
Several ships opened fire on him, but he casually redirected their fire back at them. It was annoying, but he could prevent them from tracking him if he moved constantly. For now, he stayed where he was.
“Who are you? What is your name?” Doranis asked. Aranis had told him about the three, but so far only two had been engaged in direct combat with the Enlightened, Adrian, and Lurker of the Depths. He didn’t think that this was Lurker of the Depths—he would’ve recognized the feeling of that bastard.
“I am Anessa,” the person replied.
Doranis didn’t know if he should feel disappointed. It didn’t matter which one it was, other than the fact that he had a grudge against the Lurker of the Depths and he wanted to see what Adrian and his ship that wasn’t a ship could do.
“And where are the others? Waiting to jump me when I’m not looking?” Doranis joked.
She didn’t answer, but then again Doranis didn’t expect her to. He could tell that she was gearing up for battle, and the ships around him started to move suspiciously, so he obliged.
He struck forward with all four of his arms, sending kinetic blasts toward her. He caught her off guard and sent her flying through space. He bent space and appeared next to her. He didn’t want to make the same mistake as Aranis, nor did he want to give her a chance to surprise him with some kind of trick again. He went in for the kill.
* * *
Anessa acted immediately after she noticed the Enlightened attacking the fleet. She arrived in space and saw that it did not look like any of the Enlightened, but she could feel that it was Doranis. She had only a limited encounter with him once before, but it was unmistakable. He looked like a cross between a Shara Daim and some kind of scaly being, with four arms. She needed to act, to strike first, but standing so close to him, feeling his power, made her hesitate. When he asked her for her name, she answered, trying to buy time to think of a strategy.
They had designed several ways of fighting the Enlightened, but already she knew that many wouldn’t work.
Instead she reached into her armor’s systems and triggered a program. Immediately, her suit’s systems and sensors connected to nearby ships, and she saw several Sovereigns and Titans alter course and head her way. Now she only needed to stall him until they arrived.
She nearly missed the attack. Doranis slammed a kinetic attack into her, with her just barely managing to deflect most of it. She was still sent flying. Then she sensed him appear next to her, all four of his arms glowing with eerie, dark blue energy. He stabbed down toward her chest and her eyes widened. She sent a kinetic blast at his face, and twisted in space. Two of his hands scored hits on her armor, cutting through it. She felt pain as crackling lines spread through the gashes he made. She didn’t know what that was, but if it had hit her directly, she would’ve died.
Her armor’s weapon systems roared to life, and back-mounted turrets rose over her shoulders, firing bolts of plasma at the Enlightened. She pulled the canister filled with gas and cracked it, using her power to create containment around it and beginning the process of splitting it in half. She exerted her will on one half, reversing the charges of the atoms inside. Doranis had tanked most of her plasma shots, but now they splashed on his shield. He pointed a hand in her direction and she felt him prepare an attack. Before he had a chance, she smashed the two sides of the opposing particles together. The anti-matter annihilation blossomed inside her containment and she guided it forward as a lance. Brilliant white light filled the space and she saw Doranis’s eyes widen. He didn’t try to defend against it, and instead he moved.