by Chad Huskins
Then, like a man being pulled out of the depths of a freezing ocean, he came up for air. The lights in the corridor came back on and he was stumbling into CIC, where Desh was calling for a starscreamer squadron to assemble with a group of Faedyan starfighters to help cover the Novas’ escape.
“What have they done?” said Kalder, his voice coming out like sandpaper. He tried to recall when was the last time he’d eaten anything, or drank. “What…what did the Isoshi do?”
“We’re not sure,” Desh said, not sparing the old man a look while his hands danced across the tac display. “They said they finally ‘made a connection’ with the Queen of Mothers, whatever that means.”
“They had a breakthrough?”
“Looks like it. Isoshi scientists said they reexamined what they knew of Brood worldships, then looked at the code from the node where Lyokh’s people used the Tablet, and worked with PI to communicate with the Queen of Mothers. They backfed a signal to the worldship through a bulk-space frequency, into the Midway…” He finally looked at Kalder. “It worked, sir. Your plan worked. Push me how we managed it, I thought we would’ve died years ago.”
“How long has it been?”
Desh didn’t answer, he turned and hollered something to Vosen.
Kalder looked at Julian. “How long has it been? Since this all started. How…how long have we been at it?”
“Two years, four months, sir.”
“Two years and four months,” he breathed. “And what’s happening now? Why are the Novas evacuating?”
“The Isoshi are expecting something,” Julian said, leading his mentor over to a seat and strapping him in, like a grandson taking care of a fading grandparent. “Something big, sir. They’re not sure how the worldship will react, but they’re slicing through its system, node to node. It turns out there are more than a hundred nodes just like the one Lyokh found, littered all throughout the ship, connected through branes and into bulk space. As they bring each one down, they can shut off parts of the worldship’s power supply, cause reactor meltdowns.”
Julian looked at the main viewscreen.
“The hope is that once the shields are competely down, the Isoshi can open up a portal to the Midway, and send the worldship into it before it…”
“What? Explodes?” Kalder didn’t dare think of the catastrophe that woud entail. Should it detonate so close to Deirdra, the worldship would surely destroy the surface of the planet, and sterilize every inch of it. Its massive size alone would do that just by crashing into the planet, never mind the size of the explosion that would result from so many unimaginable reactors going off at once. It might even be enough to destroy us all, even the Watchtower, he thought, looking at the stalwart thing, surrounded by seven broodlings still firing into it.
“Nobody knows, sir. We’re in uncharted territory, they say. No one’s ever done anything like this to the Brood. Not ever.”
“Conn, sensor room! We’ve got more friendlies coming out of the worldship!” someone shouted. “Looks like Prophet and Malphos made it out! No sign of Zanus den Uta, though.”
The Governor survives, then. Privately, Kalder wondered how much he had misjudged the High Priestess. She had fearlessly gone into the fight, into the bowels of a starship that was as large as a moon, more advanced than anything else in the known universe, and as alive as any organism. Kalder marked himself wise to have brought her along.
“Something’s happening!” shouted the helmsman.
Kalder looked up, and heard gasps from all around the room. As a Zeroist, he might’ve been ashamed to know one of them was his, but he was much too in awe of what he was seeing to care. Waves of white energy were rippling up the sides of the worldship. Its image became distorted, wavery, like a hologram winking on and off.
“Captain Desh,” Kalder said.
Desh nodded. “Ahead of you, sir. Helm! All back, full! Bring us about to port! Comms One, alert all commands, tell them to initiate Full Haul Reverse! Repeat, Full Haul Reverse! Engineering, cue up A-drive, give me a stable Faulkner field! Everyone not already in the Safe Zone, retreat out-system! I repeat, retreat to the outer system! We are abandoning Deirdra!”
“Sir,” Vosen said, “we’re getting word from Pride of Our Ancestors, the Isoshi are intent on staying behind. They still believe they can get the worldship’s shields down and send it into the Midway before—”
“Let them try, the rest of us are getting out of here! Let’s move it, people! We’re scrubbed!”
As Kalder watched the planet bank hard away, he felt an uneasy sense of vertigo. The whole of CIC spun around him, and he felt plunged into a well. He even felt the sensation of falling, the tingling from sphincter to spine. And when he finally landed, he saw the universe laid open for him again. Only for a brief second was he tapped into zero-point energy, and when he snapped out of it he was sobbing, and trembling, his mind and body in awe of all of Creation laid bare just for him.
And Kalder saw a massive disturbance in the energies of the universe, he felt it as though it were happening to him. He saw the monster coming. He saw it through the veil of shadows, through the vast stretches of dark energy and dark matter, punishing the void and tearing space-time to shreads.
Then he came back to the hard, unromantic real world.
Someone was shouting, “—us out of here!”
“He’s here,” Kalder whispered. “He’s finally here.”
“Who, sir?” Julian asked.
Then, there were screams, like people terrified of a monster that had been left unattended and forgotten in their closet since childhood, and now, after decades, had leapt out from the closet to prove it was no fantasy.
“Dear…god,” Julian breathed.
Kalder looked up, and when he did, he saw Thulm’s promise fulfilled. He saw Magonogon.
: The World Serpent
Deirdra and its moon reacted to the presence of the single undulating mass. Sensors on all surrounding ships documented clear gravitational imbalance, threatening to separate the planet from its satellite.
The creature, if it could be called such, encircled Deirdra like a planetary ring, with alternating red and purple scales that pulsed with inner light, revealing networks of veins that weren’t entirely natural. Occasionally, silent bolts of lightning tore away from its surface and leapt into the void. There were structures along each fifty-mile-wide scale, ovoid space stations that kept geosynchronous orbit above the surface of the serpent. Roiling clouds of white gases, vented from the canyons between each scale, slowly turned about its body and formed weather patterns that stretched hundreds of miles.
The thing had ten sets of wings along its body, each set of varying size, and each one flapping slowly, silently, in a nonexistent wind. Cascades of light spread slowly across those wings, moving slowly when seen from a distance, but actually raced at thousands of miles an hour. The wings were occupied by whole cities, connected by elevated tubes, like bridges, which were flexible and moved with great ease as the serpent slowly flapped its wings. Above each city, dozens of wyrms flew about. Crodics, anguises, hatchlings, coils, serpenses, viperas, dragons and greatwyrms. The wyrms flew, but had no riders—they moved freely about, beholden to no one.
The head of the beast emerged from the dark side of the planet. As it crossed the terminator into the light, a hideous and huge face, continent-sized, stepped out of the nightmares of all living creatures everywhere and into reality. Its lips were pulled back tightly into a permanent grin, revealing jaws of such complexity that it defied geometry. Jagged fangs of brown and yellow stabbed out of its face in all directions. Exhaled gases and rocky debris orbited those fangs, while jets of superheated gases shot from its eighteen nostrils and formed moon-sized halos, which the beast’s head occasionaly passed through like a trained seal going through its master’s rings.
It obliterated everything it touched. All satellites, all starship debris falling towards the planet, even two broodlings which had found no way to escape.
The World Serpent had materialized out of nowhere. One second there had been a hazy film of wavering space encircling Deirdra, and the next second the colossus was there, elongated at first, but soon circling the planet like a shark around its prey.
The Brood worldship was utterly dwarfed by this thing, the entirety of its fuselage stretching maybe only one-eighteenth of the World Serpent’s length. Yet still, the firepower of the worldship was self-evident, as it abandoned utterly its assault on the Watchtower, and instead focused all its might on the fleet of starships ascending from the World Serpent’s surface and racing across space at them. From a distance, and against the backdrop of the World Serpent, the starships appeared as gnats.
The worldship made a maneuver that indicated it was attempting to flee, but its major thrusters and exhaust ports seemed to be failing. All starships of Crusade Fleet documented this. It appeared the Isoshi’s sabotage had been thorough. The Brood would not escape so easily.
From the surface of Deirdra, the survivors of the planet’s ongoing holocaust stood amid the smoking ruins of their cities, held their loved ones close, and looked up at the sky. Some collapsed to their knees and wept. Others fainted. Some shouted prayers to ward off the unfathomable demon that ringed their world.
From her castle in a far-off expanse of virgin green fields, a duchess looked out her window, touching the heirloom that hung from her neck, and whispered a silent prayer to Lord Christ, and to the Strangers.
: Doyen
The rumbling of ancient gears was what woke him. It was felt throughout his suit, and deep in his skull. He was lying on something that was vibrating. Something huge. He was feeling lightheaded. An alarm was going off somewhere, telling him he was nearly out of atmo. He wiggled his feet, flexed his fingers, testing them. All seemed in order. He opened his eyes, and looked into a field of wonders, of crisscrossing wires big enough to be bridges, dripping with pearlescent light and spitting out arcs of lightning.
Getting up was hard. By some miracle, his field sword was still in his hand, and he used it like a crutch to stand. When he came waveringly to his feet, with his STACsuit’s assistance, he cast around, finding himself standing atop a massive blue sphere with multiple black towers jutting out of it, their size so incredible that their purpose could not be guessed at.
The screens on his visor were jumping around, flickering on and off. “This is Sol Actual,” he said, trying an open channel. “Does anybody read? Over.” Nothing, not even static. “This is Captain Lyokh, is there anybody out there listening? Over.”
Silence.
Lyokh nodded. It was further confirmation. He was going to die. He thought it was going to happen sooner, but by some miracle he had been spared. He looked up and saw how it had probably happened. A latticework of support structures stood above him. Most likely, as he’d fallen, he’d smacked into a few of those beams, slowing his fall, rendering him unconscious, but never killing him.
He nodded again at this conclusion. So he was going to die. “Just a little later than I expected,” he muttered to himself, chest tightening, lungs struggling to breathe. Part of him thought about just taking off his helmet, letting the last of his atmo vent out, and inhale deeply until the alien atmosphere killed him.
No. The thought came simply and succinctly. No. He would not surrender even in this small way. If he could, he would fight still.
There came the screaming of gears and twisting metal. All around him was a miles-wide chamber, with miles-high girders ringed with coruscating lights, bulky still boxes that looked like storage chambers or computer servers, and fleshy wires that oozed bioluminescent algae.
He walked across the domed top of his sphere, limping slightly. A sprained ankle, he noted with clinical detachment.
Suddenly, an explosion shook the sphere and everything around him, sending him to his knees, and a plume of blue flame half a mile wide came up from the depths, catching nearly everything it touched on fire. Red arcs of lightning crawled slowly up the towers all around him, like the tickling fingers of a lover.
“Find someone to marry,” his mother had told him, her words climbing up the chasm from his past. “Find someone and settle down. Where do you think you’ll end up if you don’t?”
Here, Lyokh thought.
Lyokh had never known romantic love, he suddenly realizied…or maybe he had. There had been Heeten, and women before her, but he’d never had time to squarely settle his heart on a single person or thing. Death was all he knew. Love had always seemed…well, like something that only people of the past had the luxury of, like clean, unpolluted skies, and the simplicity of governing a single planet. Here at the Fall of Man, love was a fantasy, as desirable and unattainable as a pet unicorn.
I never knew love, he thought with queer profundity. So what was it all for?
It was strange what occurred to one when all else was lost, when the last breath was so near. He wondered if Heeten had had time to think of the same thing, if Lucerne or any others had. He wondered if all death was met with such inward casting.
As he limped across the sphere in search of an enemy to slay, Aejon Lyokh found poetry in the destruction of this place. He watched the fleshy wires snap, heard the screeching moans of far-off machinery being wrenched apart, and felt the vibrating death throes of the worldship in his chest. Whatever the Crusade Fleet and the Isoshi were doing, it appeared to be working. Once or twice, he saw one of the centipede drones go falling past him, plunging from some great height and disappearing into an unknown abyss.
Lyokh couldn’t walk too far across the sphere, because, naturally, it started angling down, and if he went further he would slide off and fall. He instead made his way over to one of the towers jutting out of the surface, sheathed the sword on his back, and started to climb it. Halfway up, there was a cable as big around as a man, one that dripped a thick tar-like substance. He climbed atop the table, slipping on the sludge, and walked across like a man on the largest tightrope in the universe.
When he was halfway across, Lyokh looked down, and saw swirling gases that parted on occasion to reveal a universe of interconnected spheres, towers, and wires below him. The walk was slow going, for the cable was slippery and he had to move with surety of balance. At the other side, he came to a tower with many platforms, all of which had drones taking off or landing—non-combative drones, these were little more than many-pronged utilitarian things, like plasma welders built into the sides of flying buckets.
Lyokh walked across the platforms, completely unassailed by the drones, but nevertheless unsheathed his sword, twisted the hilt to activate its plasmetic edge, and ripped them to shreds. If it helped in any way to prevent them from repairing the worldship, or crippled their efforts to undermine the Isoshi’s plans, it was worth it.
Another explosion shook the universe, and another blue flame, miles long, shot up from underneath him and incinerated those drones that took flight to flee him. Lyokh was fortunately protected from the flames by the wide platform beneath his feet, but the heat itself threatened to boil him in his STACsuit. He fainted, woke up from a nightmare with a start, a nightmare where he was being swarmed by invisible enemies, and came up swinging at phantoms before his sprained ankle had him pitch to one side and collapse.
Once again, Lyokh found his way back to his feet. Something smacked the platform in front of him, something small and fast that sent up chunks of debris.
A voice called out, “Doyen!”
He was sure he was imagining it.
Lyokh used his sword partly as a cane now, limping across the platform and onto another one, where more drones were trying to take flight. He looked up, saw a sky filled with them, tens of thousands of drones still trying to save the worldship. Lyokh slew as many as he could before they lifted off, even the dying ones didn’t seem to notice him.
“Doyen!” a voice in his head cried.
Something else small and fast-moving—too fast to be seen—smacked the ground in front of him, sen
ding up more shards of metal and chiton and sludge. The ground bled from the tiny wound. Black, viscous fluid came seeping out of it. Madly, Lyokh held his sword tip-down, and plunged his blade into the wound, hoping even this small act would amount to something. He meant to fight the worldship till his last breath, which seemed very close. The air in his helmet was thin, and he felt faint.
He fell, dropping his sword, landing on his hands and knees, as if finally bowing in submission to the Brood gods.
Another tiny fast-moving object smacked into the ground by his hands.
“Doyen!” Now the voice sounded like it was inside his helmet with him, coming over a speaker.
Another fast-moving thing panged off the ground beside him. He looked at it. The hole was exact, maybe only a few centimeters wide, looked like the result of a high-impact round. Then, blinking through the fog in his mind, Lyokh raised up on both knees, and looked in the direction the object seemed to have come from.
Takirovanen was standing two hundred yards above him, lying on his belly and hanging halfway over the edge of a platform. His Fell rifle was in hand, set to sniper configuration, and the muzzle was smoking.
Bullets, he thought dumbly, and realized that, unless this was an illusion brought on by asphyxiation or hypoxia, Takirovanen had been up there this whole time, trying to get his attention. His voice was coming through Lyokh’s helmet.
Snatching up his sword, Lyokh once more fought back to his feet. He tried to say something to Takirovanen, but his words were coming out jumbled. Definitely hypoxic now. Bad luck, he told himself, laughing at the joke.
More out of habit than want, Lyokh stalked over to a vertical beam with holes that appeared meant for venting exhaust, sheathed his sword, and started climbing. At the top of the beam was a spider web of those fleshy wires the Brood liked so much. The world shook as he made his way, hand over hand, up and then over to a platform that was just twenty or so feet below the one where Takirovanen was. No sooner had Lyokh come away from the beam than it snapped. The whole worldship seemed to shake, and the platform tilted to a forty-five-degree angle. Hearing an old Timonese hymn being sung in his mother’s voice, and laughing hysterically for no good reason, Lyokh fought his way uphill.