by Barry Kirwan
She waited for one more ship to join her armada. She switched her sensors to show the Spider ships and Hohash in the underlying subspace, contingents of Shrell accompanying them. Qorall could probably see them too, and must be wondering about their capability. At least he appeared to have no soldiers in subspace.
Hyper-assessments had yielded uncertain results: the emergent predictions of who would win remained unstable. Reluctantly she downgraded into a more basic analytic framework. Kalaran had trusted these humans, and had confided in her that there was something about the crude and undisciplined nature of their thinking processes that had tactical value, so she uploaded one of the templates Kalaran had extracted, Blake’s, and fed it with data using a ridiculously small bandwidth.
The black hole: that was the problem. Neither she nor Kalaran had been able to fathom what it was exactly, as it was certainly not a normal singularity. Each galaxy she had visited – quite a few during her lifetime – tended towards a maximum number of black holes, reaching an equilibrium. They were nodes, intersections between universes, but not necessarily portals. Only twice had the Kalarash broken through to another universe, the first time it had been a one-way trip and their colleague was never heard from again, and the second was one where the laws of physics were different, the habitat of the Spiders. Their universe was smaller and ran faster – it would end long before this one – hence the Spiders had also been keen to explore other universes than their own time-limited space. They had travelled to fifty other universes, but few contained the conditions for sentient life; some had already fizzled out, others would stretch endlessly without organic species, bland space deserts spattered with dark stars in an endless ocean of space marred by vicious gravitational fluctuations.
In strategy terms, she held more firepower than Qorall. She should win. But since Qorall had defeated Kalaran, she had doubts. Qorall had been a game-changer since starting this current war: penetrating the Galactic Barrier, using organic weapons, the Orbs… Perhaps he had not yet run out of surprises.
Shiva arrived. Hellera contacted the ship mind and downloaded all its data. All had gone according to plan, except the second Queen, but Micah had handled that one. She was about to dissolve Blake’s template, but elected to keep it running in the background.
She signalled all her fleets to prepare to engage. On a whim, one that was possibly a hangover from Blake’s template, something to do with honour in war and some ancient surprise strike against a place known as Pearl Harbour, she sent a message to Qorall. It was a question, a warning, and a challenge. It was also a single word:
She wasn’t expecting a reply, but she got one.
Hellera stared hard at his black hole, his fleets of ships, and his greenspace. She realised she was missing something. He must know by now that his super white hole device at the galactic core had been neutralised. Yet Qorall had never bluffed before. He had, as Blake would have said, something else up his sleeve. She had no idea what it was.
Micah stared through the clouds of ships, unable to fathom any pattern or formation. “Vashta, what do you see?”
The Ossyrian’s mercurial eyes danced for a few moments before pronouncing.
“Intersecting helixes on our side, recursive phalanxes on theirs. An old argument in space battle strategy.”
Sandy interjected. “Did that mean anything to you, Micah?”
He laughed. “I wish it did, Sandy. Shiva, what’s our role in all this?”
Shiva spoke bridge-wide. “Hellera wants us to hang back.”
“But you’re Level Fifteen.” Micah said. “We could inflict a lot of damage.”
There was a pause, and Micah knew it was for his benefit, for him to reflect, as Shiva thought far quicker. “She said to wait, Micah. There is an unknown variable at play, she wants us in reserve.”
Having seen Gabriel killed, and having just hacked his way through a Q’Roth Queen, he wasn’t in a patient mood. And since Hellera’s ruse with Gabriel, he wasn’t sure he trusted her anymore.
“How about we leapfrog behind enemy lines? A short Transpatial jump? I know in-system jumps are very tricky, but you could do it, couldn’t you?”
“Qorall’s greenspace prevents any jumps; no conduits will open here.”
Shiva switched to private comms, for Micah’s ears only, via his resident.
Micah shook his head. Great. Management by surprise. But he couldn’t fault her logic, and knew she could take in all the real-time data from the ongoing battle, even anticipate up to a point, and make immediate and optimised tactical decisions. Still, he would have liked a task.
Shiva spoke bridge-wide again. “Micah, Hellera said to keep an eye on this ship.”
Micah stared at the screen as Shiva highlighted one of the Nchkani vessels. It was the lead ship in the last arrowhead formation of Nchkani vessels.
“Louise,” Micah guessed. “I still don’t get what her game plan is.”
“Kill her, Micah,” Sandy said. “Then extract it from her brain afterwards. That’s what the Alicians would do.”
She walked in front of Micah, obscuring his view.
“Whatever she does, Micah, it will be for her benefit and ultimately our loss, she has to go down. You told me what she did to Hannah, remember? Not forgetting the two thousand on Ash’s ship that she plunged into a sun.” She leant forward. “And not forgetting Vince, either.”
Micah held her gaze a moment then looked aside. He hadn’t forgotten any of it, and her mentioning Vince’s name rattled him. He zoomed out, and studied Qorall’s massive fleet. Of all the people he’d like to be here with them now, it would be Vince, even more so than Blake, because Vince had been a ruthless tactician, and because it had taken Vince to bring down Louise last time. He envisioned all the carnage Louise had wreaked over the past twenty years, and what else she might do if she survived this war. Yet he recalled a conversation a lifetime ago, back in his Optron lab before the fall of Earth, before he’d known she was Alician, when he’d seen a glimpse of another Louise. Sandy must have read his face, seen a crack of doubt, because she moved right in front of him, close to his face.
“You know why I chose Ramires instead of you? One of several reasons, actually.”
It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him; Micah’s senses snapped to attention.
Sandy held the nanosword in her hand, weighing it. Her voice unsteady at first, then solid as rock.
“You’re an analyst. Analysts always leave their options open, playing the uncertainties, the angles, retreating into nuances. Ramires was a man of action, Micah. He swore a blood debt. Warriors make a decision and stick to it, ignoring the shifting sands around them. I’m telling you this because soon we’ll be in the heat of battle, and there may be a crucial moment when you can either act decisively, or reflect and analyse, and the window of opportunity will be lost.”
Her voice softened a little. “Maybe it’s an inferior way of thinking, maybe it locks us into Level Three, I don’t know, but you have a choice to make today. There’s a Sentinel saying that how you die defines you. In any case, now you know how I feel. And we, too, are in your hands, Micah.”
Micah wanted to respond that all this was probably futile, that Qorall would destroy them, and that Louise’s ship might be blown apart by another vessel, but such arguments would only confirm everything she’d just said. All verbal options sounded hollow, so he said nothing. He thought of that split-second when Gabriel had looked to him just before he was killed by the Queen. Micah’s mind cleared, the analyses, the hypotheses and counter
-hypotheses, all of it stopped.
Sandy spoke more quietly. “You slew a Queen back there, didn’t you? On your own.”
He nodded.
“Then whatever else happens, I’m proud of you for that.”
Vashta intervened. “All ships are powering weapons and maximising shields.”
Sandy returned to her comms console. Micah touched a few pads to bring up multiple displays. Shiva contacted him via his resident.
Another view superimposed itself onto the screens, via his resident, so that only he saw it. Around thirty Hohash were arranged in a sphere around a white funnel, which he realised from normal view was Qorall’s black hole. Next to each Hohash was a stubby cigar-like rainbow ship – the Spiders. Shrell swooped around them in undulating arcs. He’d never seen them before; they reminded him of manta rays, the edges of their wings waxing silver.
Only three hours ago, the Spider and the Hohash back on the Q’Roth homeworld had opened up a black hole. It occurred to him that it must have needed both of them to do it, perhaps the Spider affecting space and the Hohash amplifying or stabilising it somehow. But here were thirty! All he knew about the Shrell was that they could lay down tripwires in space, as they had done around Esperia. But he recalled someone saying that most of the time Shrell repaired subspace, after it had been damaged by too much Transpatial travel. Like him, they were all waiting to be brought into play by Hellera.
He focused on the foreground, in particular the Ossyrian Diamond ships, and addressed Vashta.
“I didn’t know Ossyrians still had weapons tech. It’s been aeons since you last waged war.”
Vashta took a few moments to reply. “After Level Seven there is never species memory loss. That is why when certain species rebel, they are completely eradicated.”
“You were lucky, then.”
Again, there was a pause. “It did not feel lucky, Micah.”
Micah was about to apologise, when Sandy interrupted.
“Xenic has just arrived with the remains of the Mannekhi fleet. He’d like a word.”
Micah nodded, relieved to see a fleet of black and purple Spikers enter the system.
“Xenic, glad you could join us, but there’s some pretty heavy firepower out there.”
“Do you see the black ships with two prongs at one end?”
Micah did, they reminded him of scorpions.
“Those are Tazani, our overlords for fifty thousand years. As Kilaney would have said, it’s payback time.”
Micah felt he should point out the obvious. “They are Level Seven, Xenic.”
“We brought along some new friends.”
Micah peered at the viewscreen and at first saw nothing, then massive Transpace conduits opened, revealing snake-like ships in the lead that rippled aquamarine. Shiva informed him they were Zlarasi Serpent-ships. He knew what Kilaney had done to them, destroying their home planet in order to salvage Blake, and was about to ask Sandy to contact their Commander when the Zlarasi commander opened a channel.
“Do not worry, human, we know who the enemy is. And Kilaney’s actions have proven effective.”
Micah was relieved, and wondered whether humanity would have been so forgiving had the roles been reversed.
Wagramanian Hammer-ships arrived, behind the Zlarasi Serpent-ships, and Micah recalled that the Wagramanians – the first to be recoded – had recently been restored. When he saw what they were towing, however, he stood and walked up to the viewscreen.
“Worms? You brought dark worms here?”
Xenic’s sharp laugh cut across the bridge. “The Zlarasi tamed the ones Hellera didn’t kill; that’s why there’s not been much activity.”
“What do you propose to do with them?”
“Use them as shields, Micah. And if we get close enough, as mass-drivers. You’ll see.”
He doubted they would perturb the Nchkani vessels, and Qorall could use his black hole to swallow any amount of matter spewed in his direction. Then he remembered something; the worms, whose natural habitat was the intergalactic void, could excrete antimatter. That might make a difference.
“Have you told Hellera?”
“She’s the one that made it happen, Micah, she’s been calling in favours across the galaxy. Kalarash aren’t above a little politics now and again.”
Of course. Micah kept forgetting that humanity was just a pawn, and there were more skilled players.
“Don’t get killed, Xenic. I’ve buried too many friends recently.”
Xenic replied in Mannekhi and broke the connection. Micah glanced back to Sandy for a translation. After a second she looked up from her console, a small smile on her face.
“He’s been reading up on Earth culture. ‘Only the good die young.’” Her voice caught on the last word, and she locked her face onto her displays again.
Micah focused on the arrays of ships again, imagining a gigantic chessboard: Hellera and Qorall at opposite ends, their armies lined up ready for the battle, waiting for one or other side to make the first move. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be particularly subtle.
A klaxon sounded aboard Shiva as Qorall dispatched three waves of Tazani battle-cruisers and attendant fighter ships towards Hellera’s position. The Wagramanians launched the worms – presumably anaesthetized – towards the first wave. Three Hammer-ships and a Serpent-ship skulked behind each dark worm, hidden in the giant folds of the creatures. Micah zoomed in on one, and saw a pulsing green cable protruding from the worm’s neck; the Zlarasi were controlling them directly.
Mannekhi Spikers accelerated towards the attacking front, over-taking the worms, their purple spines spitting fire at the Tazani. In return, each of the Tazani ships’ two prongs forged a beam between them that launched lozenges of energy at the Spikers, ignoring the worms. Space lit up like a firework factory exploding, but without sound. Shiva filtered out the glare. Micah saw the Mannekhi suffering heavy losses, many of the Spikers blown apart by the energy impact, spilling Mannekhi into space. None of the Mannekhi ships retreated, and nausea gripped Micah’s stomach. But as the worms reached the centre of the battlefield, the Wagramanian Hammer-ships engaged, living up to their name as they spun like tomahawks towards the less manoeuvrable Tazani battle-cruisers, weathered the defensive energy lozenges, and smashed headlong into and through the cruisers. Once a Tazani cruiser was damaged, Spikers descended on it like vultures, to finish the job.
Bronze ships that looked like giant squid entered the fray, and Shiva tagged them as Level Eight, Hushtarans. They began capturing the Wagramanian Hammers with long tentacles of antimatter, burning their way through the Hammers’ fuselage. Hellera deployed the Ossyrian Diamond ships. Micah didn’t actually know what weapons the Ossyrians possessed, only that they had once been feared across the galaxy.
The crystal diamonds approached the squids and split into two pyramids, then began cutting each Hushtaran vessel, slicing through its hull, twisting and turning, the two halves of the diamond working together, gouging and dismembering the ship. Soon the Hushtaran fleet was listless in space. Micah zoomed in to one that was in pieces, but detected no bodies. Shiva informed him that Hushtaran pilots merged organically with their ships; they were one and the same.
Micah knew that this battle, though terrible, was all a preamble to the real one, and at the moment a ploy by Hellera to get the Nchkani vessels to enjoin battle. But it wasn’t working. Instead, Qorall fired his famed spatial lightning bolts, criss-crossing the space with green plasma arcs of awesome power. Any Spikers, Diamonds and Hammers that didn’t make it quickly enough to the leeward side of the worms were vaporised, as were the remaining Tazani and Hushtaran ships, evidently collateral damage as far as Qorall was concerned. Micah prayed that Xenic was still alive.
Sandy must have been thinking along the same lines. “Xenic’s ship is still intact, Micah.”
He nodded a thank you, then turned to Vashta. “Sorry for the Ossyrian casualties, Vashta.”
“You hav
e no idea, Micah, how proud we are to be here, fighting, after so many millennia of enforced pacifism. We are complete again.”
Micah stared at her awhile, and realised that whatever happened here today, whoever won, ten million years of ordered Grid Society was going to be torn down. He wondered if Hellera knew, and then decided that of course she knew, she was Level Nineteen.
The Rangers’ assortment of small scout ships swept in like fireflies, dodging the green lightning bolts with faster-than-eye movements, and for the first time Micah appreciated how physically robust the reptilian Rangers must be to survive such manoeuvres. Still the Nchkani hung back. Instead, hundreds of copper-coloured vessels shaped like corkscrews appeared out of nowhere, reminding Micah of old-style solenoids.
For the first time ever, he felt a jab from Shiva via his resident, and guessed it was her equivalent of a flinch. He interrogated, and Shiva replied:
Micah paced the length of the screen, thinking. Unknown and some kind of stealth tech. It only made sense if Qorall had concealed them all this time, during nearly twenty years of war. The discipline behind his strategy was breath-taking.
“Are we out-manoeuvred, Micah?” Sandy asked.
He mentally flicked to the subspace view. The Spiders, Hohash and Shrell remained in position.
“Not yet,” he replied.
The corkscrews took up a network formation, a lattice barring the way through to Qorall. Inside each corkscrew, orange beams formed, ready to fire. Micah saw what was coming. But Hellera’s fleets remained in place. Why didn’t Hellera do something? The beams grew brighter, building up power. Still, no command to attack or retreat. It suddenly dawned on him that Hellera might be willing to let numerous ships be destroyed in order to let Qorall think he was winning; a feint, but at huge cost in lives. He had to do something, he wasn’t about to watch Xenic and countless others fried. Maybe he could prompt Hellera…