by Barry Kirwan
He dashed to Sandy’s station. “Give me fleet-wide comms!”
“But Hellera –”
“Doesn’t care about collateral damage, Sandy. Do it now.”
She tapped feverishly. “Channel open, though Qorall will hear it too.”
As he’d hoped. “All vessels, those corkscrew ships are about to deluge the battlefield with fire.”
There was a sharp burst of comms that sounded like a chainsaw snagging on metal.
“What was that?” he asked.
Shiva answered. “Hellera ordered her fleets to fall back, except the Zlarasi and the Rangers.”
He heard an ice-cold female voice. “Do not do that again, Micah.”
But myriad ships retreated from the worms; not the Zlarasi, and he knew why. If they disconnected, the worms would be Qorall’s again.
He walked to the centre of the bridge as the corkscrews continued their advance. The light of a sun ignited inside each one, then flamed out either end like a giant double bladed nanospear. The solenoids began to rotate and twist, synchronised, a pattern designed to flail every millimetre of space.
He looked towards the fleets of ships allied to Hellera, many still in the kill-zone.
“They’re going to die,” he whispered, but then something happened he hadn’t anticipated. A new ship arrived out of nowhere. It looked like a stocky arrow, and he recognised from its rippling coloured shaft that it had to be a remnant of a Kalarash Crossbow ship: Jen. She launched toward the front in a looping manoeuvre, and swept up a hundred assorted ships inside her leeward shield, even as the light blades slammed into her, scorching her hull. Micah sat back in the command chair and gripped its arms, waiting for the ship’s shield to falter, but it held, and she escorted the ships to safety. He breathed out, and had an urge to punch the air.
“Sandy, contact –”
“I’m okay, Micah,” Jen said on intercom. “I managed to save some of our allies, but my ship is crippled. I’m out of the game.”
“Take them out of the system, and get to safety, Jen.”
“With all respect, Micah, get real, I’m staying till the end, but I’ll send the allies out of the sector.” She broke contact.
Sandy caught Micah’s eye. “She hasn’t changed.”
He laughed. “I don’t care, she saved them.” He turned back to the screen. “Shiva, would we –”
“No, Micah, we would not survive. We must wait until Hellera plays us.”
The entire space between the two sides was engulfed in energy, like a sprawling sun. Grey saccadic antimatter flashes told him the worms were being systematically destroyed, no doubt taking most of the Zlarasi ships with them. Then the super-sun flamed out. Through blotchy eyes Micah counted half the Ranger ships still on course. There was no sign of the worms or any other ship except the Nchkani on Qorall’s side. Finally, the Level Sixteen black-and-white, feather-bladed ovoids began to edge forward, spreading out like predators: the Nchkani ships piloted by Q’Roth warriors, and in one case, Louise.
The Rangers closed ranks, briefly presenting a single target, before they burst apart, each one attacking a single Nchkani ship. At that exact same instant, the Tla Beth ships speared forward, heading straight for Qorall’s asteroid ship. It caught the Nchkani ships off-guard, but quickly half of them raced to intercept the Gyroscope ships. Micah realised the odds were two-to-one in Qorall’s favour.
For the first time, Micah truly faced the likelihood that Hellera was going to be defeated. He stood back from it all, imagining again the battlefield as a giant chessboard, Hellera and Shiva held back on one side, Qorall on the other, the middle of the board awash with ships and carnage. He realised Hellera could still cut and run, but decided there and then that whatever happened, Shiva was not going to desert her allies.
Micah didn’t know how long it lasted, maybe three minutes, maybe five, but he watched fifty duels play out, trying to guess what weapons were being used and what counter-measures were employed in response, while space shimmered and rocked, spilling sprays of raw energy into space, sometimes ending in a Nchkani vessel exploding, but more often a Ranger vessel turned incandescent before vanishing from sight, or a Tla Beth vessel shattered into a cloud of fragments that flared scarlet before fading to dust.
He checked with his resident, and with Shiva, and then pronounced what was staring them in the face. “We’re losing this.”
Sandy spoke quietly. “Are you thinking of –”
“We’re not leaving,” he said, “until we either win this or are destroyed.”
“That’s more like it,” she said.
“We’ll give Hellera a little more time.” But not much; soon it would be too late to have any effect. His left hand hovered near the thruster control panel.
Then one of the Nchkani ships began attacking its own kind, neutralising fifteen of them in a single coordinated fire-burst. The targeted ships had been well-chosen, too, saving Rangers about to be defeated, and breaking both the Nchkani attack and defence lines, freeing up Rangers and Tla Beth ships, who rallied to their colleagues’ defence. The tide of the battle turned. Micah could scarcely believe it. It must have been her. Louise had made a decisive move. Five of the Nchkani broke off from fighting the Rangers and circled Louise’s ship, determined to destroy her vessel, spraying it in blue fire. Micah found his hands hovering above the engine controls.
Sandy shouted from her console. “Don’t, Micah. Let them kill her.”
His outstretched fingers curled into fists, then he folded his arms.
The battle became a rout. Several Tla Beth slashed their way through the remaining Nchkani ships, until all of them were laid to waste or – like Louise’s – inert and drifting in greenspace. There were no more intermediaries.
The Tla Beth and Rangers re-grouped, then sped directly towards Qorall’s asteroid.
Micah felt what happened next, as Shiva and all other ships were savagely tugged toward the black hole. At this distance, Shiva and the others could resist, but he knew the Rangers and Tla Beth would find it harder given that they were already accelerating towards it. Qorall’s asteroid ship, inactive until now, began to glow green. The black hole was no longer pure black, like an unfathomable iris. Instead, its surface had texture, like a black-and-green sea of deep ocean swells. An enormous wave started from its circumference and swept toward the centre of the hole, until it collided with itself. A second later, Micah was knocked out of his chair as the entire ship lurched forward in space.
“What just happened?” He glanced over to Sandy, who was getting back to her feet; Vashta too.
“Ripples in space-time,” Shiva said, “of immense power, not normally seen except…”
Micah’s mind leapt ahead as his resident showed him the energy levels. Qorall was tapping into the most primal energetic event ever.
“A Big Bang. Shiva, the black hole, it’s a doorway to another universe, isn’t it, one that’s being born, or dying?”
“This is known as a never-event, Micah,” Shiva said, “because it must never be allowed to happen. It is of ultimate risk. No beings, neither Qorall nor Kalarash, can control such forces. He must be stopped.”
Micah did a full sensor sweep. At least twenty ships in greenspace had been crushed, flattened into wafer-thin disks. The Ranger ships and even the Tla Beth Gyroscopes had been blown back and scattered like flotsam as if struck by a tsunami.
Hellera’s Crossbow sprang towards Qorall’s asteroid-ship. Micah was out of his seat. At last!
His resident activated, and he saw that the Spider ships and Hohash lying in subspace around Qorall’s black hole were moving. Then they disappeared, and the subspace image vanished. He couldn’t believe it. Had they deserted Hellera? Where had they gone?
Another wave began on the circumference, and just afterwards, the rainbow-hued cigar-shaped Spider ships appeared there, dotted around the lip of the black hole.
He heard Hellera’s ice-cold voice again.
ng the attack now. Evacuate all ships below Level Fifteen.>
He’d been hoping for such an instruction, it was down to the heavy-hitters now.
“Shiva, tell all the ships around us to get out of here. Transpace should work if they are heading out of the sector.” But he wondered why she’d called him, not a higher-ranking commander. Then he understood. Shiva was Level Fifteen, Micah and his crew were staying.
He watched the wave sweep inwards, growing in size. He wasn’t sure, but it looked bigger than the first one. On another screen he saw ships flare briefly and wink out of the sector. But the Tla Beth and Rangers were still inside Qorall’s greenspace; they could not escape. Hellera’s Crossbow reached the leading edge of the attack when the second gravitational tsunami struck. Micah thought he’d been hit by a hover car. Sandy had managed to anchor herself down, and Vashta had clamped her claws onto her console.
The sensor displays flashed erratically, some of the pictures distorted.
“Shiva?”
“I have sustained… damage... Micah. I can no longer control flight, I have handed over full manual control to you. We do… not have long. Lost… contact with Hellera.”
Micah got back to his seat. Hellera’s ship was stationary, firing a continuous red and white beam at Qorall’s asteroid. The few Tla Beth and Ranger ships that weren’t dead in space had joined her, belching forth a torrent of fire that looked like a waterfall in space, drowning Qorall’s vessel. But the next wave had already started. It was colossal this time, taking longer to build.
“Sandy, Vashta –”
“Whatever you’re going to do, Micah, just do it,” Sandy said. “We’re with you.”
He hit full thrust, and Shiva sprinted towards the titanic struggle between Hellera and Qorall. The wave was still building, grey froth boiling at its top, and then it started to move.
But something else was happening. Blue dots appeared around the black hole, well inside the event horizon, and began to expand, all in the same rotational direction, until a ring of sapphire surrounded the hole. Micah made an educated guess as to what was happening. The Spiders were opening up a rift into another space, the Hohash acting as amplifiers, the Shrell most probably stabilising the rift or preventing it widening too much. He’d heard of Quickspace, an anomaly that had occurred a few times every million years, and led to a few unlucky ships disappearing out of Transpace, never to be seen again. That had to be Hellera’s game plan: not to destroy Qorall – he reckoned she couldn’t – but to send him elsewhere.
As Micah sped towards the asteroid, he kept one eye on the wave. It was nearing the centre, but now thin blue lines stretched forward from the edge of the hole, spiralling inwards. The wave foamed, then lost cohesion as the black and green sea suddenly caved in, and a sapphire vortex opened up, spanning the entire width of where the black hole had been. Rainbow-sheened arcs reached upwards towards Qorall’s asteroid ship and looped over it, criss-crossing each other in a grid. Not a grid, Micah thought: a web.
Qorall fought back, streams of energy whipping against Hellera’s Crossbow and the Tla Beth ships, two of which exploded in bright flashes and were gone. Milky tendrils grew from the asteroid and reached away from the vortex, hooking onto Hellera’s ship. Neither her firepower not the Tla Beth or Rangers had any effect on the tendrils. Slowly, Qorall’s asteroid ship reeled Hellera towards him.
Micah brought Shiva’s still-active weapons to full readiness, particularly the forward shear system – effectively a giant nanoblade – and accelerated to maximum speed. Shiva was a scythe-ship, after all; time for her to live up to her name. Klaxons sounded, warning of imminent collision.
“Sandy, sorry it has to end this way,” he shouted.
“I’m not,” she replied.
Shiva dove down beneath Hellera’s ship and headed straight for the tendrils. Micah reaped tendril after tendril while Vashta fired at Qorall, and tried to neutralize his weapons fire on them. Micah kept one eye on the main battle display; Qorall’s asteroid was still resisting the tug of the vortex and the Spider net. Micah ploughed on through the last line of tendrils even as Shiva was rocked back and forth by enemy fire.
“It’s Hellera,” Sandy shouted.
He stared at the battle display again, and made up his mind. He turned to Sandy and shouted his reply to Hellera.
“Take these two now, Qorall needs a little distraction.”
Sandy’s eyes flared, and she was about to voice complaint but then she and Vashta vanished. He activated tactical at his console, and slewed Shiva around, banking briefly before aiming her straight at the asteroid.
“See you in hell, Qorall,” he said, and hit full thrust.
The screen blanked as Qorall switched his main beams onto Shiva, and all Micah saw was brilliant white. He heard a metallic scream like a battle cry, as his resident told him the front hull sections had almost boiled away. He squinted as the asteroid’s surface raced towards him, and then Shiva broke clean through its outer crust. Kat had once told him Qorall’s asteroid was hollow, and now he saw it with his own eyes. Instinctively he pulled Shiva up from its dive straight towards what looked like a boiling lava sea. Sure enough, above him was a gaping hole, showing blackness criss-crossed with deep blue lines. The inner surface of the protective shell surrounding Qorall’s ship was grey rock, with patches of orange where Hellera and the remainder of the fleet were still firing at it.
He skimmed Shiva just above the surface of the lava sea, and headed towards a land region of steaming boulders. Random fire tornadoes coiled upwards from the sea, and it took all Micah’s concentration to dodge them. The tactical display warned that something was following him, and gaining, though he couldn’t see anything. He accelerated again. Then he saw what he’d been looking for, in the distance. It fit Kat’s description of Qorall: a colossal skeletal structure, like femur bones joined together into the rough shape of a cube, each strut or bone partly covered by flesh, but no evident head or torso. It clumped along slowly, and as he sped towards it, a slit formed on the closest upper bone, and a mouth opened. Micah fired at it with everything he had.
A tactical alarm whined, and Micah knew that whatever was chasing him was about to make contact, but he held his course.
Shiva came back on-line.
He didn’t understand but without warning his command chair shot upwards and backwards out of the ship. He felt searing heat as Shiva simultaneously struck Qorall and was blown to smithereens by his defences.
The chair he was in careened to the side, and rocketed towards a narrow gulley between two oversized boulders. He bumped, bounced, and skidded to a landing, ending up thrown out of the chair, rolling onto the rocky floor before coming to a halt. He tried to get up, as every surface was red hot, but his left arm refused to work, and he saw a bone protruding through bloody flesh on his forearm. Just as he was wondering why it didn’t hurt, searing pain burst through with a vengeance. He staggered through scalding steam that rose from cracks in the rocks and smelled strongly of sulphur, making his eyes water, and managed to make it to the remains of the chair, whose fabric had already started to smoulder. He touched his face and found blood there from a gash in his forehead. He could just see Qorall moving off in another direction, one of his upper bones fractured where Shiva had struck home. No doubt Qorall was more concerned with Hellera and the vortex. Micah would not even register on the nuisance scale now that Shiva was gone, and would soon be dead in any case. He clutched his left elbow, trying to find a position that minimised the pain.
A sound like thunder made Micah look up to the ceiling. Large metallic flakes, a light blue colour, stuck to the asteroid’s shell, triggering cracks and fissures in Qorall’s primary defence. The first flake broke through, and fell until it plunged into the lava sea, fizzing and steaming before disappearing below the surface. Another broke through, then another. Energy beams flooded thr
ough the resultant holes in Qorall’s protective shell, one of them vaporising a boulder not far from Micah’s position. Micah could barely see, but a turquoise metal fragment sailed downwards and crashed into the landscape not far from him. Before it settled, Micah saw part of a symbol on one side: an ivory ankh. Kalaran’s ship.
A roar exploded all around him, the heat intensifying, and Micah covered his face with his right hand as his skin began to blister. Something nudged him, almost knocked him off the chair, a section of which had just ignited. He turned and saw a Spider, and behind it one of the Spider ships, the hatch open. Micah ran, the soles of his feet burning with each step, and threw himself into its dark interior, trying to protect his left arm as much as possible. The hatch sealed behind him, and with a shock he realised the Spider was still outside; there was only room for one. The last thing he saw was the Spider climbing a boulder, its fur aflame, possibly to get a better vantage point of the battle as it died. Then Micah decided it was probably helping Hellera target Qorall.
The small ship lifted off the ground and oriented itself towards one of the holes in the roof and shot upwards. Micah hurt all over, but as he panted, his flesh stinging, hands and forearms covered in blisters, and his scalp singed, the ship spun around so he could watch Qorall’s crumbling asteroid descend into the sapphire vortex, dragged down by the Spiders’ net. Fragments from Kalaran’s ship – they must have been there all along, waiting just beneath the event horizon of the black hole where even Qorall couldn’t see them – continued to attack Qorall’s asteroid-ship. Micah caught one last glimpse of Qorall himself descending into the lava sea. A few seconds later the entire landscape, and what was left of the roof, boiled off into space in a series of startling flashes that hurt his retinas, leaving behind nothing but a black pearl, which Micah reckoned to be the core of Qorall’s ship. It looked impregnable.
Hellera stopped firing.
The remnants from Kalaran’s ship had been vaporised, but the Spiders’ blue net was still intact. The black pearl sank into the vortex, foundering in Quickspace. It was like watching a setting sun, one Micah hoped would never, ever rise again. At last it was gone, and the vortex snapped closed, leaving behind a dozen Spider ships and Hohash. The greenspace had vanished. Stars re-appeared, and his ship turned and headed towards Hellera’s burned and battered Crossbow.