by Rupert Segar
The Brood King kicked out at the smashed communication aerial and sent it spinning into the force field where it stuck, surrounded by arcs of flux and electricity. The Kargol Emperor looked down at the spider, rejected by its father. He almost felt sorry for the Brood King.
Chapter 20: The Prodigal Returns
Imperial Valliant emerged from the portal above Marylebone. At the command desk, Colonel Garth was mildly surprised to find his vessel englobed by twenty-five cruisers and three new Nemesis class battleships. Several tractor beams grabbed Valliant while a captain on board one of the battleships ordered Garth to drop all fields. The Brood King takes his security very seriously, thought Garth.
“Being scanned, sir, quantum level,” said his science officer.
“Logs and crystal records being accessed,” said the engineer.
Garth wondered briefly if this reception had been arranged for him personally. Then he dismissed the thought because no-one in the Royal Fleet knew when he was returning. After all, a trip to old Earth on the other side of the galaxy would, as a matter of course, be an unpredictable journey. I must curb my paranoia, said Garth to himself. This must be the security procedure for every arrival. The spider king is afraid.
“OK, boys and girls,” said Garth to the officer on deck. “Whatever they want, they’ve got it. Make sure you comply with their requests promptly. I’m turning in. Tell Sub-Lieutenant Wright to report to my cabin.”
Half an hour later, the young sub-lieutenant was naked on her elbows and knees as the colonel rammed her from behind. He was nearing a climax when someone knocked on the cabin door.
“Colonel, open up, this is an inspection.”
“Help yourself,” shouted Garth.
Daisy Wright tried to wriggle away across the couch but Garth gripped her hips.
“You stay where you are. You’re concealing my embarrassment.”
The door opened, a young captain and two marines stood in the corridor outside. As the young captain entered the room his eyes briefly flicked down to look at the naked woman with her face buried in a cushion. Then he looked squarely at Garth.
“Sorry to interrupt you Colonel but I need to take a blood sample from you.”
As the young officer held up the hypo syringe, his sleeve rode back to reveal tell-tale, coarse brown hairs on his wrist. Garth offered his left arm and the young officer pressed the hypo to his skin. Garth had never heard of compulsory blood checks before. He presumed they checked on his ‘infection.’ He wondered if there was some medical way of removing the tiny spiders that partially controlled his loyalties. The tiny spiders sensed his treacherous thoughts and Garth’s fingers gripped the naked woman’s hips even harder. She moaned into the cushion. The captain glanced down and smiled as he waited for the machine to analyse the sample. A light in the handle of the hypo flashed green.
“Valliant will be free to move in about twenty minutes, sir. You are ordered to berth at Orion. Sorry for the inconvenience, Colonel Garth.”
The captain withdrew and one of the marines closed the cabin door.
“Now, where were we?” said Garth, more to himself than Daisy Wright.
+
Colonel Garth carried the two crystal data storage devices inside a padded plastiform case. The marines guarding the entrance to loading bay 7 had wanted to scan the cubes but Garth refused to let them. The colonel noticed that both guards had the tell-tale coarse hairs on their wrists. He opened the box and let them see what he was carrying but they still would not let him pass. After an interminable five minutes, the marines received orders, apparently from the Emperor himself, to let Garth in.
The welcome from the Brood King was ecstatic. For a moment, Garth worried that the arachnid might envelope him in its legs. Even the Emperor seemed deliriously happy at Garth’s return, although the colonel thought the Emperor’s facial gestures and the tone of his voice felt forced. Something was clearly wrong in the relationship between the Brood King and the Kargol Emperor. Mind you, what could ever be right in the relationship between a spider and its prey, thought Garth.
“Peter, Peter, load up the crystal cubes.”
One of the Brood King’s legs took the case from in front of the colonel and swung it through the air towards the Sentinel. Garth looked on helpless, thinking the plastiform case was about to smash into the coffin sized sentinel. Crystal cubes were a phenomenon; just one cube could hold a yottabyte of information. However, the storage devices were very fragile. Garth did not want to go back to Earth again, especially as he had blown up their only remaining library. At the last moment, the spider arrested the velocity of the case and lowered it gently to the floor.
A cube reader had already been cabled up to the Sentinel. Peter, whose clothes were now little more than soiled rags, licked his finger tips and wiped them on his stained vest. Carefully, he opened the plastiform box, bending down and turning his head to look into the box before opening it fully. Both crystal cubes were intact, glittering against the dark, silk like padding inside the case. Gingerly, Peter picked one of the two cubes out of the case and held it aloft. The demented former guardian lieutenant made a throaty sound of approval, then he slotted the cube into the reader. Peter performed a backwards somersault of delight.
“The Sentinel knows what to look for,” said the Brood King
The large vid screen above the Sentinel came to life. A quick series of still images were displayed before the Sentinel selected one special vid. There was a parabolic dish transmitter on what was clearly a small asteroid. The pictures must have been taken by a camera bot as it circled the transmitter twice before ducking underneath the asteroid and coming back up the other side. You could see that the parabolic dish was lined up with a sun. The asteroid must have been quite some distance out in the solar system as the sun was little more than a bright star.
Underneath the transmitter was a graphic. It showed the parabolic dish sending waves of some description towards the sun. The vid screen cut to a close up of the sun. Now it was more recognisably the centre of a solar system but there were two bodies. One was a typical white star. Several black spots could be seen on its surface and two large jets of plasma millions of kilometres high arced out past the corona. The other body was a brown dwarf, barely visible. Suddenly, the sun exploded. The vid screen cut back to the earlier wide shot with the transmitter in the foreground. The distance sun went supernova. The vid screen went to white then blanked out.
The assembled viewers were all silent for a minute. The first to speak was the Emperor.
“Was that real?”
“I believe it was,” said the head hanging below the spider’s abdomen. “There are further data packages detailing the construction of the weapon.”
“Then it was Sirius, the brightest star in Earth’s skies,” said the Emperor. “Everyone has heard the stories of how it went supernova without warning. There were over five billion colonists on Sirius six. Now, we know, Humans blew up the sun. That was why the rebels gave up at the end of the first technological war. But within ten years the insurgents had all taken to space and the second technological war began.”
“No wonder they hid this under layers of encryption and protection in their lunar library,” said Garth. “But why keep a record of this atrocity at all.”
“Vanity,” said the Kargol Emperor. “Even if you knew you would never use such a weapon again, you would keep it, just in case.”
“Now, there is someone prepared to use this weapon once more,” said the Brood King. “It is not vanity to want to kill your father. It is simply revenge.”
Chapter 21: The War on Land
There were three planets in a row, they were connected to each other by land portals. The gateway on Zander Prime led to Danube 6, which in turn led to Boston. This was where the tide of the land war turned in favour of the guardians.
The Empire’s Black Ops forces first took Zander Prime then they overwhelmed Danube 6. The voyageurs on Boston expected they would be ne
xt. The grey portal hanging a metre above a blackened patch of soil had detectors and warning alarm systems in front and behind. The ion cannon had been moved well away from the portal and to the side. Every ten minutes or so, voyageurs fired a confined beam at the portal. The ray of particles was narrow enough to miss all the detectors, although the power surge upset quite a few which triggered alarm bells and wailing sirens. The ion beam passed straight through the insubstantial doorway leaving it completely unmarked. The ion cannon had been fired every hour or so for 15 days. The voyageurs wanted to keep the field gun ready but the only way to do that safely was by periodically discharging the terrific energies gathered in the cannon’s capacitors. The voyageurs also hoped they would hit lucky and fry any Black Ops troopers as they came through the portal.
The latest offensive by the Empire had begun a little over two weeks before. It was not known exactly when Zander Prime fell but it must have been only hours before the Empire started its assault on Danube 6. Everything was normal on Danube. A group of voyageurs had come through the portal from Zander in the early hours of the morning. By midday it was all change and they were under attack. Thus, the voyageurs on Danube had no warning but they managed to repel the initial assault. A lone trooper had emerged from the portal. Because of the element of surprise, he had enough time to arm a flux grenade and throw it at the defenders. By chance, one cannon was being charged as part of its maintenance routine. The crew fired a single beam which caught both the man and the bomb. The ion beam dissolved the man into his constituent molecules and atoms. It also stripped away the outer shell of positive flux ions on the bomb, leaving the inner core of rotating, negative flux ions to evaporate harmlessly.
The voyageurs took defensive positions all around the portal. The defence leader made a copy of the recordings of the assault. He gave it to one of the voyageurs to take to the next station on the gateway network, Boston.
As soon as he had gone through the portal, one of the voyageurs tried to use a controller to ‘turn off’ the gateway. This was always the first line of defence. The tiny grey blue curled wisps of smoke stopped moving and the disc looked much darker than normal. However, within minutes the portal came back to life. Clearly someone on the other side also had a controller. The second wave of the assault came an hour later. Two troopers jumped out of the portal on the far side. An ion beam cut one of the soldiers in half but the other ducked and rolled out of the way. He threw a flux bomb before he was gunned down. Despite being protected by body armour and personal force screens, 8 voyageurs were killed and ten more seriously injured.
Another messenger was sent with recordings to Boston. She was the last person to pass through the portal between Danube 6 and Boston. It was assumed that Danube was lost.
Unlike both Danube and Zander, Boston was not a heavily fortified garrison planet. Another messenger was dispatched to Dakota to ask for help. However, it was a long journey there and back.
Until reinforcements arrived, the voyageurs had to manage their defence as best they could. The Black Ops troopers were using suicide bombers to defeat the voyageurs. The only real defence was ion cannon. They moved the single cannon well back out of range of any flux bomb. A live flux grenade could not be carried through the portal. If anyone tried to do that it would explode inside the portal. So it had to be armed by an attacking trooper after he or she arrived at Boston. That gave the cannon crew at least two seconds to destroy the invader and the bomb. A raft of detectors would tell the crew when the portal was about to be used. The voyageurs were under siege and the enemy was clearly playing a waiting game.
Alarm bells rang but info pads flashed green. There were flux ions coming from the portal but they were all right handed spin, which meant that someone was coming not from enemy occupied Danube but from the other direction. Maybe it was reinforcements sent from Dakota. Maybe the enemy had encircled them.
The crew of the fully charged ion cannon had the portal in their sights, much as they had for the previous two weeks. Other voyagers were holed up in hastily constructed pill boxes made out of sheets of corrugated plastiform. All weapons were trained on the grey oval as its lower lip dropped to the floor. A man wearing a silver suit and silver helmet walked out of the portal. The material looked seamless and appeared to flow around the man’s body from top to toe. The gunner in charge of the ion cannon was nervously moving his fingers towards to firing pad.
“Bon jour, voyageurs,” said the silver figure in an amplified voice that echoed round the site. “We bring you good news from Dakota.”
“Who are you?” shouted the captain in charge.
“If you avert that cannon, I can show you, mon ami.”
The officer in charge waved to gunner to lower the weapon. The silver suited figure put his hand to his collar and the helmet covering his head flowed away. There standing in front of the defenders was a familiar figure with grey grizzled hair and a weather beaten face, with as many lines as a crushed brown paper bag.
“Mercie, I am Anton Blanc, master voyageur,” he said, needlessly, as every voyageur recognised him, “We ‘ave, as la Ship would say, a few tricks to share with you. But first, let us gather our regiment.”
The portal lowered its lip once more and out walked a pair of silver suited figures, a man and a woman. The process continued three more times until there were nine silver figures all being greeted enthusiastically by voyageurs.
“Let’s make sure we keep this party private, eh,” said Anton pulling a slim line controller from his belt. “The enemy will have detected our use de la porte.”
Anton swiped the pad a couple of times and the portal went from smoky grey to a deep black.
“le passage est fermé, the way is closed, until we decide to pay them a visit, eh?”
+
The following morning, sixteen silver suited figures stood before the blackened gateway. The original team had been augmented by seven volunteers.
“No disrespect, but you new boys and girls, stick by your partners. The suits should keep you secure mais ne pas to take unnecessary risk,” said Anton, pressing the button at his collar allowing the silver material of his suit to flow up and over his head.
Anton and one of the women on his team stepped up to the black faced gateway. Anton swiped at his controller and the portal came back to life. The lower lip dropped down and the pair passed through.
The silver suited figures lined up in pairs, waiting to jump. As each couple disappeared, the portal became a grey disc floating above the roasted soil. Each new pair had to use a controller to make sure the portal was pointed towards Danube before setting off.
As the last couple emerged on the occupied planet a pitch battle was in progress. Actually, all the action was one sided. Every type of laser and grenade were being fired and thrown at the guardians. There were two ion cannon blasting at the silver suited figures but to no effect. The Ship had provided the guardian fighters with suits made from the same sort of mirrored screen it used itself.
“My friends, let me demonstrate why you should never fire a canon at a man in a silver suit,” said Anton seemingly oblivious to the torrent of energy being focused on him by both cannons. Indifferent to the cracking of electrical arks, he swiped his controller. His suit seemed to swirl around him like liquid mercury flowing on a plate. A mass of silver seemed to pool on his chest forming two minimally concave mirrors. Part of the ion beams were reflected back at the cannons with predictable results. Both emplacements blew up.
“That is ‘ow la Ship does it!”
With the ion beams gone most of what remained was sporadic laser fire but that had no effect at all on the silver suited warriors. A flux grenade landed at the feet of one of the new recruits.
“Do not move,” said her more experienced partner as the bomb went off. The silver suits expanded outward absorbing the energy and momentum of the explosion. The two nearest figures, the novice and her partner, looked as if they were trapped inside two giant wobbling jellies.
Two groups of troopers began running away. Four of the silver suited warriors pointed their left hands at their retreating backs. This time rays with a greenish tinge swept over the enemy soldiers. As one, they all collapsed unconscious, twitching slightly, but alive.
Anton pressed his collar and the silvered field flowed away from his head and face.
“Here is another, ‘ow you say, gizmo from le Ship.” He pulled out his controller and swiped the pad aiming the device at the gateway. “Hello, Boston. Anton here. Danube is secure. Please send through some voyageurs to take charge of the prisoners, over.”
“Boston here. Well done guys,” came a crystal clear voice from the controller. “Voyageurs coming through shortly. Over and out.”
Anton dabbed the pad on the controller and turned to face the other silver suited warriors.
“A hand held tachyon comms unit allows us to talk through les portal. We can also use it for surveillance, which is the next job. Who wants to volunteer to go through to Zander Prime for just un petite visit?”
Chapter 22: War in Space