Empire Burning (Emerilia Book 11)

by Michael Chatfield

  “So, we go with the idea pitched by the portal, teleport, and ono group: portal in a grand working! We fire out grand working missiles that link to certain portals. They go off away from the Jukal, then a portal activates; at the other end, ships, batteries, missile loaders—whatever we think of—they fire out rounds, missiles and the others, one missile creating a portal, unleashes the firepower of an entire FLEET! Okay, now that’s damn awesome, but! What about the ships! They’ve got blind spots and when they’re going forward, chasing the Jukal, they only have a few weapons that can hit the enemy other than missiles. So, what if we had a portal there? They open up the portal, contact the fire team, fleet, or whoever is on the other side of the portal. Their blind spot is now a strong point! They’re unleashing some of the most powerful attacks out of their front. Shit! We could have multiple person spell formations! Doomsday spells, readied and waiting, unleashed through the portal and out at the Jukal. Instead of prep time, we just have that portal on the ship cycle from casting area to casting area with the mages unleashing powerful spell after powerful spell right into the Jukal!” Dave smacked his head as if he had now seen the light, not noticing the clear looks of shock on the other people’s faces. What he was talking about was simply incredible. Their shock only grew deeper. “But wait—and I know I sound like a terrible TV ad—but, what if we were to combine it all?”

  Dave waved his hands and the spot-covered sphere in the middle of the room was cut in half, revealing its innards to everyone.

  “So, in the center, we have the heart of this beast—portals! Tens of them. We shoot through portals at one location; they come out of these portals here, then they’re transmitted through the teleport pads around them. Not sure if to go with onos or teleport pads right now but need to work on it. Then,” Dave traced from where the onos were, through an impressively thick ring, pointing out runic lines that spread from the core of the sphere to the exterior, “from the teleport pads or onos of the interior, they are connected to the onos on the exterior. The ship has no weapons, only massive shields and then this massive metal armor. I’m thinking asteroid because it would be faster to make and easier. It has some power from power plants, but has no engines. For thrust, we fire through a massive flame spell, goes through a portal, a teleport pad and then exterior ono. An AI controls what’s going where inside of the portal bastion and we’ve now taken our original firepower and doubled or tripled it!” Dave said.

  “How are we going to power it?” one of the techs asked.

  “We have a dozen power plants. Have a soul gem umbilical pass through one portal into the ship. The only time it won’t have power is when it’s transitioning between portals,” Dave said.

  “The onos on the outside will create a wormhole. However, they’re going to be not pointing away from the portal bastion but rather along the sides of it,” one of the portal techs said.

  “Not if we remove the restrictions on them! Right now, we’re creating wormholes like they’re a doorway, when actually they’re like a big sphere. We remove the power drain of altering the wormhole—cheaper energy-wise—and we start to make a nodule that we can shoot out in any direction with.

  “Any other questions for now?” Dave looked around and pointed finger pistols at everyone. Not finding anyone and seeing their looks of disbelief, he snapped his fingers.

  “Also, if not all sides of the portal bastion are being used, then we could fire out a spray of missiles that connect to the teleport pads around the portals. More stable and last longer—also means that all of the portals will be able to work all of the time, bringing more weapons fire down on the Jukal!”

  Dave was breathless as he looked to the model with shining eyes. He wasn’t the only person; the others in the room looked at the conjured sphere as if it were some holy relic.

  “Prototype Mirror of Communication?” Ela-Dorn’s voice cut through the room.

  “Yes! All right, asteroid miners and refiners, I want you to get with the armorers and the shield makers. We need to see what we can do to make this hull as strong as possible. We don’t have long to get this working! Our people are going to reach the Jukal in just two weeks. I want to have this ready, if not completely prototyped out, and we’re working to get the first one made!” Dave said.

  He knew that his demands were high, but he also knew that with such a tight deadline and pressure, people would push themselves past their limits.

  “I’ll make a copy of the model here and we can look at it together within the prototype conference room.” With a wave of Dave’s hand, the prototype fell apart and a spell formation covered the room. The room disappeared as they were all moved across the asteroid base, coming to the prototype Mirror of Communication room. This was the same room that they had used in order to make the battleship prototype. The room had shown its value as multiple projects had been worked on and their issues figured out.

  Those in the group were all talking to one another in excited tones as the people who saw them started to talk and make guesses for what they were doing there.

  “Is that Dave? What is he leading people into the prototype room for?” one asked.

  “Maybe he’s come up with another idea?” another suggested.

  “Malsour is with him as well. Look at all of those people from the portal and teleportation division!”

  “What are the asteroid miners here for? They might need to supply different materials but I don’t see what they would be here for a project in such numbers. Would only need a few to talk to the prototype team to tell them what materials would work best and what wouldn’t,” someone muttered, confused by the group’s members.

  The group found different places to sit in the room and quickly accessed the Mirror of Communication.

  Dave threw up the rough conjured sphere he had made. As people joined in, they moved to look over the sphere, starting to make notes and talk to one another; groups started to mingle and to throw out their ideas for the prototype. Dave wandered from group to group, working on different ideas as around the sphere different workstations appeared with different projects being created on them. Outside of the Mirror of Communication at the prototype stations, the different items that were being created within the Mirror of Communication were being formed.

  Some things were only half formed before they exploded, the containing shields stopping them from hitting anything else. Others melted or didn’t work at all.

  As time went on, the projects of first one group then one group after another stopped failing and started to work. Projects were moved from place to place, assembled within the Mirror of Communication and tested out within the shield-sealed prototype modules.

  Messages were sent out and tests were run with power lines going through portals and connecting to ships that used their jump drives, or went through portals. People started to draw their own conclusions and wild theories. But none of it was confirmed or denied as those within the Mirror of Communication only stepped out of the Mirror of Communication in order to eat. They would sleep within the Mirror of Communication, most of the time collapsing on top of whatever they were working on.

  Finally, some five days after they had entered the Mirror of Communication, the various people came back together.

  They all looked weary and tired, but their spirit was higher than it had been in months, with fierce determination making them stand straight as they looked to Dave.

  “All right, so let’s see if we can do this.” Dave didn’t need to say anything else as a massive asteroid filled the room. It was identical to an asteroid that the mining group had picked from within the asteroid belt around the asteroid base.

  Dave watched as the asteroid was slowly shaped into a sphere. Light mages and miners shaped the asteroid and cut out the interior as Fire mages heated up the asteroid to make it easier for the Dark mages to form and shape the metal underneath. Shuttles and ships attached to the asteroid, spun it, giving it a gravitational pull, and turned it from an abstract shape
into a sphere. Through the rotations and the Dark mages’ spells, they compressed the asteroid, turning it from porous stone and metal into composite armor panels.

  After some time, a hollow area formed in the center of the asteroid. A portal was teleported in via teleportation array. They activated it and linked it to a waiting portal.

  Dark mages entered the bastion through the main portal and continued on with the next step. With their magic, they altered the interior of the asteroid, just as those on the outside continued to form the massive asteroid’s exterior according to their design plan.

  Openings appeared inside the asteroid, turning into corridors and pathways through the highly compressed metal and stone.

  Engineers and those familiar with soul gem constructs laid down soul gem seeds that formed more portals and started to grow through the openings made by the Dark mages.

  A thick soul gem umbilical passed from the asteroid base through the connected portals into the asteroid that was being worked on. It formed a box in the growing hollow area. From the box’s corners, pillars of soul gem spread outward, affixing the box in the center of the asteroid.

  The pillars burrowed into the walls as Dark mages worked to reinforce the pillars with metal superstructure as the hollow area grew outward.

  Thin soul gem runic lines spread out from these pillars, passing through walls and openings, connecting to the soul gem seeds. The seeds started to speed up their progress as the vague outline of a network started to form.

  Lines passed through the asteroid and started to poke out through openings onto the surface of the asteroid. Now they were thin lines but with time they would grow in size.

  The asteroid was still being compressed and the areas inside were only partially excavated. It would take time to complete the portal bastion but its basic form was already taking shape.

  The entire sphere was covered in complex but faint runic lines that glowed with power even as the asteroid shifted and moved.

  On the inside again, multiple runic lines and soul gem constructs were broken down and modified, improving efficiency. Some other areas were just altered slightly. Some of the ideas and theories turned out to be wrong; but learning how one way failed allowed them to see other ways to do what they wanted.

  For three days and nights they worked, not taking a break as they altered, changed, and updated the asteroid and its systems.

  Finally, everything seemed to work and no one needed to do anything else. There were updates they were already thinking of and ways they were thinking to improve it, but for now they had a working prototype.

  There were no openings in the portal bastion. Even to the creators, it looked strange, with its mirror-like surface cut only by the soul gem-created runic lines. It hummed with power. All those who looked upon it were filled with apprehension.

  Dave stared at it, his eyes bloodshot from the number of hours he had spent on the prototype and how much energy he had poured into it.

  They exited the Mirror of Communication and grouped around the prototype that sat in the middle of the room. Companionable silence and utmost satisfaction filled the room.

  “We have just six days until our fleets meet the Jukal,” Dave said softly. In the silence, all could hear his voice.

  The others’ eyebrows knit together, the pride changing with the knowledge that now that they’d completed the prototype, they would need to build the true portal bastion—not to expand their knowledge or prove their theories, but instead save lives and protect their homes.

  “We also need to build the weapons and engine thrust batteries, as well as the portal to provide power to the bastion,” Malsour said.

  Dave looked to Malsour and nodded. “We’ve only just started.” Dave pulled out memory crystals from his bag of holding. “Record your memories of the project. That way, we can pass them to those who will be building it to make the production time shorter. It’s time we made it for real.”

  Chapter 8: To Stop an Invasion

  Induca circulated her Mana and looked down on the asteroid that had been selected to make the portal bastion.

  Thousands of people looked at the same asteroid, a gleam in their eyes. They’d all integrated the memory crystals with their minds, allowing them to understand just what they were making.

  Induca still hadn’t got over the shock of what Dave and the prototype team had come up with.

  “Ready?” Dave called out through the command chat. The different leaders reported back their readiness one by one.

  They’d spun the asteroid with shuttles, so that it was constantly rotating, with the AIs using spell formations to keep it moving how they wanted it.

  “Fire it up!” Deia said.

  Thousands of spell formations appeared around the spinning asteroid. Fire spells poured out from the untold hundreds of mages’ hands, immolating the asteroid like a space-based forge. It quickly began to heat up as Dark mages behind the Fire mages worked together to create a spell formation that appeared around the asteroid. Dave and Malsour led them as the asteroid started to become smaller. The layers compressed so that they became denser as heat seeped into and was conducted throughout the asteroid. The water content and ice that would have led to explosions had been removed by Water mages already. The mages pushed inward, forcing the massive asteroid into submission.

  Induca unleashed dragon breath after dragon breath; even Fire herself was out in space, adding in help as minute by minute, hour by hour, they compressed the asteroid more and more.

  The construction for the true portal bastion was underway.

  ***

  In the darkness of space, an ark could be seen hovering in the center of a massive portal. Soul gem umbilicals connected it to the portal that was covered in swarming engineers and mages, checking the portal one last time.

  As they finished their checks and entered the ark once again, the umbilical soul gem constructs receded back into the ark.

  This ark had left the Emerilian system as soon as it was cleared of Jukal. It had one job: to create a portal network from Emerilia to the system closest to Emerilia.

  They moved away from the portal. It was one of the last, hidden in the darkness between two unoccupied systems. As they moved away, the runes across the portal started to light up as power surged around it.

  A connection was established as the portal looked out into another system. Bare minutes after the portal was connected, three destroyers sped through the portal, followed closely by a massive battleship. The four ships automatically peeled off and began scanning for threats in their areas of responsibility, efficient and lethal.

  As they ran their own sensor checks, the missile ports were sealed back up and the glowing runic lines over the long-range cannons dimmed as they were powered down.

  The rest of the first fleet exited. The portal closed and then new runes appeared along its surface as a new connection was formed. A second fleet passed through the portal before it closed once again. This was repeated as they were followed by a third fleet, and all the way to five entire fleets.

  Their runic lines glowed as spell formations appeared above the ships’ hulls. Arcane fire was cast, pushing the ships. If this arcane fire was hundreds of times more powerful than anything that had been wielded by fire mages in the past, it was only slightly weaker than the spells being used on the portal bastion. Even with its destructive force, it was not focused on destroying, but rather providing thrust.

  With the spell formations that could be cast in any direction, it allowed the Pandora ships to have unrivaled agility and speed against any known ship.

  Three of the fleets moved together, creating one massive armada. There were no arks in this armada. The destroyers and missile boats encircled the battleships, creating a loose sphere hundreds of kilometers wide; at the same time, two of the fleets stayed in their original formations and moved to either side of the main armada.

  As the armada finished moving into position, the runic lines across their ships
flashed as wormholes appeared before the ships. Powerful ripples from expended Mana emanated from the ships as they cruised through the wormholes.

  The wormholes disappeared as the armada rushed to meet the Jukal fleet that was en route to destroy Emerilia.

  ***

  Frank was aboard the BloodHawk. Pandora Fleet One had been made one of the secondary fighting forces of the armada.

  “Well, looks like Lady Luck was on our side.” Xiao looked to the extra fleet that had joined them. It was from the Nal system, fresh from the asteroid base’s slips.

  For the crew, this was their first outing as a fleet. Strong leadership and innate ability had helped them come together as a tight-knit crew and showed that although they might be a new fleet, they were no less effective than the rest of the veteran fleets that made up the fighting force.

  “That we are, sir,” the second-in-command said as Frank looked over the latest information coming from the Nal system, specifically the details about the massive sphere that was being created there.

  It had been under construction for a few days already, but there were no signs of it being close to finished. In fact, the people working on the ships had, for the most part, not stopped working. There was so little information on it as the construction crews were hell-bent on getting it completed and didn’t have time to talk to others about what they were working on unless they, too, were part of the construction team.