Victory at all costs (Spinward Book 3)

by Rupert Segar

  The guardian ships were outnumbered ten to one. In the desperate and disorganised battle only one entity was keeping count. The Ship observed to itself that the casualties were in the same rough proportion, ten imperial ships destroyed or disabled for every guardian ship hit. Despite the overwhelming number of Kargol warships, the battle was on a knife edge.

  +

  “They’re kamikaze pilots, just committing suicide in the hope of taking us with them,” said Carole Porter, looking at the strategic holograph portraying the battle.

  “The Kargol ships are laying random minefields but they’re hitting more of their own ships than ours,” said Yelena.

  The two women were sat at the circular table in the control cabin of the Ship. Also present was Sy Chang’s hologram. In front of them was a three layered cone, a holographic representation of the battle taking place all around them. Art King sat trance like in the pilot’s chair. His widgets were engaged and his consciousness was inside the Ship’s simulacrum, where he could monitor every aspect of the fight. The red pod called Mr Angry hovered at table height next to Sy.

  “Interestingly, the sensors detect an absence of any crew on board about a third of the fleet.”

  “Are they using autonomous AIs? They wouldn’t dare,” said Gill.

  “I think it is something else,” said Mr Angry. “Let me show you.”

  The Ship switched to a close up of a Nemesis Class warship. The one kilometre long vessel was venting flames and gasses from its prow.

  “One of our explorer ships was rammed and is currently jammed amidships inside the enemy ship.”

  “Are the crew alive?” asked Gill.

  “They are enveloped in an emergency inertia field,” said a holosphere that had just popped into existence. “I am endeavouring to contact the on-board Sentinel but I am getting no response.”

  “Can’t we help?” asked the hologram of Sy Chang. The former guardian captain’s limbless body was encased in a casket in the medical bay from where, via a sheath of cables, she too had access to the Ship’s simulacrum. “We could use a tractor beam to release them.”

  “The two ships are at the centre of the battlefield, Sy” said Art, his head tilted back and his eyes closed as he viewed the battle via the simulacrum. “We would have to fight our way through scores of enemy warships.”

  “Are we just being voyeurs; looking on as our colleague die?” said Yelena.

  “No,” said Art, “the ship has found something important.”

  The holo projection floating above the circular table showed a cutaway image of part of the insides of the imperial vessel. The guardian vessel was shown as a glowing ellipsoid, like a maggot in an apple. The projection zoomed in to an empty control room. A scree of numbers and words ran round the rim of the conical 3-D image.

  “The Nemesis class warship has lost its defensive screens and there is a general loss of powe,” said the holosphere. “So my sensor beams can penetrate the vessel, even from this remote distance.”

  “Ship, get on with it,” said Art.

  “In short, there are no humans on board. There is no atmosphere.”

  “They’re using AIs, the bastards,” said Gill.

  “No. Look closer,” said Art

  The projection zoomed further in to show the command desk. On the top of the strategic board was a shiny cylinder, the width of a dinner plate and 40 millimetres thick. Wires and cables spread out from the flat bottom of the metallic cylinder, connecting it to nearly every station around the command desk.

  “There are traces of an organic organism or organisms within the device,” said Mr Angry.

  “Is it a casket head?” asked Gill. “No offense, Sy.”

  “None taken,” said Sy’s hologram. “No, from its dimensions it’s too small to hold a human brain.”

  “Given our latest intelligence, I think we can deduce what’s in the box,” said Art.

  “Spiders!” said Yelena and Carole together.

  “Whatever it is, it appears to have detected my sensor beam,” said the striped ball.

  The cone shaped holo projection floating above the circular table switched to an exterior view of the crippled imperial warship. A series of blasts wrecked the vessel, then the hologram flared white as the warship and guardian vessel were both vaporised.

  +

  “We are losing the battle,” said the head hanging below the bloated stomach of the Brood King.

  “Our numerical superiority will win out,” said the Emperor.

  “Our losses match our numbers, there’s no certainty of victory. I must take other measures.”

  “We are nearly ready to jump to hyper flight, my liege,” said Garth. “All vessels are nearing the 95 million kilometre mark.”

  “Belay that order,” said the head, coughing up blue liquid.

  “Aye, sir, maintaining sub-light speed,” replied Garth.

  The colonel was working at one end of the cluttered command desk. With some reluctance he had wiped the surface using the ragged remains of the jacket of one of the spiders’ victims. Garth attempted to conceal his distaste at touching and swiping control pad surfaces that were smeared with blood and gore. He knew had he still been infected by spider spores he would have felt an overwhelming delirium at being in the presence of the Brood King. All he felt now was overwhelming revulsion and hatred along with a drop of caution. I must bide my time, he said to himself, the opportunity to act will come.

  “Peter, check the virteron cables and the antibaryon sequencer. Run both now,” gurgled the head hanging underneath the spider.

  The ragged Peter jumped from point to point his head swinging left and right while the Brood King wrestled with a clutch of levers and knobs. The umbrella like transmitter turned sunward, pointing towards Marylebone, the only planet in the system.

  “Good, we are still in range,” said the Brood King’s mouthpiece. “Firing, now. Garth tell your ships to be ready for hyper drive.”

  The giant vid screen above the control desk switched to a picture of the gateway hanging in space above Marylebone. The portal spat out a milky stream which tore away bending towards the sun.

  “Garth, annihilation is but minutes away. Take the Orion and the rest of your fleet into the Upper Realm. Now, having eradicated the enemy at our rear, we go to wreak havoc on Fair Isles.”

  +++

  “I am detecting a virteron ray impregnated with antibaryons energising the portal,” said the striped holosphere.

  “What is it that coming out of the gateway as a result?” asked Art. He was in the Ship’s simulacrum where could see a long line of particles painted white and blue streaming from the distant Orion flagship to the portal above Marylebone. A denser stream of greenish particles being emitted by the portal. Art knew the colours were largely arbitrary, as the information scrolling underneath the image said the stream of particles was invisible. The rest of the data he found confusing.

  “It is an organised flood of antibaryons held together with neutrons,” said the metallic man standing in the simulacrum. His long metal fingers traced the stream. “The avalanche of particles is heading past us, towards the sun.”

  The silver metaled man who represented the Ship seemed to stare for a minute as the green tinged stream reached the system’s sun. He touched the sun and it turned into a cutaway version revealing the core, radiative and convection zones, the chromosphere and the photosphere. The metal man tilted his head.

  “What sort of antibaryons are they?” asked Sy Chang, whose image looked like her younger self but had gemstones for eyes.

  “Sy, they are mostly antiprotons. At the moment they are rendered harmless by being sheathed in neutrons.”

  “But what happens when they reach the sun’s core?” said Art. “We’re talking millions of degrees C.”

  “It already has. At the core there is a temperature of 15 million degrees and a pressure of 35 billion atmospheres, Terran standard,” said the metal man.

  He was stari
ng at the cutaway model of the sun’s core. Art knew the Ship was reading and reviewing everything it its capacious library about solar mechanics and baryons. The silver man jumped up and turned to Art and Sy.

  “The sun will go super nova! It may have already happened. I am strengthening our shields. Sending messages to all on line Sentinels. Preparing for shock wave.

  Art found his consciousness wrenched out of the simulacrum. He was sitting back in the pilot’s seat. He heard the click of his widgets disconnecting. Opening his eyes, Art saw the cabin filling with an inertia dampening field; everywhere in the air there were tiny wisps of curled gold turning softly in the air. In the corner of his eye he could see Mr Angry retreating towards his egg box nest. He tried to turn his head so he could see Yelena but every part of his body was gripped by a soft unyielding force.

  The Ship whispered to Art over his sub-cutaneous comms link.

  “The shock wave is approaching.”

  +++

  The term super nova was not technically correct because the sun in the Marylebone system was neither massive nor a dwarf. However, the star’s reaction to the stimulation caused by a stream of antiprotons was similar to, though much less dramatic than, a super nova. Nevertheless, the result was cataclysmic for the space ships battling in orbit around the system’s only planet.

  Most vessels’ sensors were blinded by the initial shell shock of intense sunlight. Several years’ output of photons was given up as the photosphere exploded. So, the ships’ crews were trying to tackle rapid overheating and the complete lack of sensory input moments before the blast wave arrived. Most of the remaining guardian vessels used inverted flux fields to become point singularities. Imperial warships put all available power into their defensive shields.

  The expanding sphere of incandescent destruction singed of Marylebone, burning away the atmosphere and cauterised the surface of the planet. Oceans and mountains disappeared in seconds. The coruscating ions dissolved the inverse flux fields surrounding most of the guardian vessels. The strengthened shields protecting the imperial warships were ripped away. All the ships and their crews were reduced to molecules and atoms. Every craft in orbit was destroyed, every vessel except one.

  The Ship was surrounded by five concentric shells of defence. Instead of trying to run from the sun, the ship had pointed its prow directly at the source of the cosmic explosion. Less than one hundredth of one percent of the sun’s mass had been ejected from the photosphere but that was enough to form a shock wave of compressed gasses that had the quality of dense metal. The Ship’s outer defence field pushed its nose forward; elongating the forward facing cone until it was less than pencil thin at the front.

  When the blast wave first arrived, travelling at one hundredth the speed of light, the outmost defensive field attempted to push the condensed gases either side. The field trembled then collapsed but was almost instantly replaced by the field below. That field began to grow, it’s nose elongating as it penetrated the storm. Field after field collapsed until the final defence was left. The storm was lessening; the gasses were less dense. Then the gravity wave struck the Ship.

  Chapter 30: The Brooding Dark

  Flakes of snow were driven across beams of light by the wind sweeping across the Isle of Hope. Zeeann looked up to the sky as was disappointed to see only a dark grey canopy from horizon to horizon. Her body’s chronometer told her it was three hours before dawn. She hoped they would see the sun. For the previous two days the sky had been dark. It was summertime on Fair Isles but the season had turned to winter; the result of the removal of the sun from the heavens along with every other star in the galaxy.

  “We’re cold, mother,” said Calli.

  “Put on some more clothes and run about a bit,” said Zeeann.

  Asclepius, Zeeann’s father, emerged from the back of the shuttle. He remained stopped in the area illuminated by the lights of small spacecraft. He was shaking his head.

  “I am no cosmologist,” he said, “but it seems that once again a barrier of almost infinite distance has been wrapped around the planet.”

  “Could it be a form of defence, grandfather?” asked Kimo.

  Zeeann’s only male child was nearly as tall as his grandfather but his shoulders and chest were broader and stronger. Kimo, with his large eyes not quite as wide apart as a Creator’s, looked squarely at his grandfather, and tilted his head.

  “I do not know, my child. We are now at a point in time where all is new to me.”

  Marcus and Lara, emerged from the back of the shuttle. Fifteen years earlier, the Human couple had chanced upon the Creator family when they were exploring the Isle of Hope. The inhabitants of Fair Isles had been discouraged from landing on Hope by a psychotic field resonator that imbued feelings of anxiety in anyone coming near the shores. Unfortunately, the mechanism that generated the field along with a disruptor that hid the aliens from distant view, had failed after decades of use. Among the general population of Fair Isle, superstition and irrational fear surrounded the Isle of Hope. Marcus and Laura had been the first Humans to venture onto the island in a generation. After their encounter with Zeeann and her children, they befriended the family, adopting their cause with passion.

  “We’re picking up a huge amount of encoded comms from guardian vessels in orbit above us,” said Lara.

  “The shuttle’s deciphered some of it,” said Marcus. “An imperial fleet, even bigger than the last one, was approaching Fair Isles.”

  “The final battle is about to begin,” said Asclepius. “Kimo, go and get your sisters. We need to leave now.”

  +++

  “Unregistered craft, turn back. Do not approach Crete Spaceport,” squawked the voice over the comms unit on Zeeann’s stolen shuttle.

  “I am sending the Ship’s codes,” said Asclepius, his hands either side of a glowing cylinder attached to the forward wall of the passenger cabin.

  “I hope they recognise them,” said Gemi. “It would be a shame if we were blown out of the sky before we can have a go at saving humanity.”

  “I think you’re being a bit presumptuous,” said Calli. “Just because a Creator myth says we will save the galaxy does not mean we will do so.”

  “It is not a myth; it is based on the predictions made using the omniocular. A convulsion about to wreck the galaxy will be averted because of what you are about to do,” said Zeeann.

  “But what are we about to do, mother?” asked Calli. “You have never told us.”

  “That is because I do not know.”

  Zeeann and her three children were silent for more than a Human minute. Their collective apprehensions were interrupted by a squawking voice.

  “Unregistered craft, you have permission to land at Crete Spaceport. Approach vector being transmitted now.”

  +

  As the rear of the shuttle descended to form a ramp down onto the apron, a small woman in a battered bath chair appeared out of the dark travelling at high speed. Suxie Wong, the veteran ex-explorer, was almost catapulted from her chair as it hit the bottom of the ramp. Calli and Gemi, the two Creator sisters rushed forward to prevent the old woman falling forward. As they supported her on either side, Zeeann and Asclepius walked down the ramp to greet her.

  “Suxie Wong, it is my honour to finally meet you in person,” said Zeeann, holding out her hand in Human fashion.

  “Well, I will admit that I was a little disappointed when I learnt that I’d been hoodwinked by a bunch of puppets,” said Suxie, shaking the proffered hand.

  “We apologise for the subterfuge, please, forgive us our frailties,” said Asclepius. “We Creators have been frightened of you Humans for far too long.”

  Asclepius introduced his family along with their adopted aunt and uncle, Lara and Marcus. Suxie Wong raised her eyebrow and gave the two Humans a hard stare.

  “And you kept their secret all these years?” said Suxie.

  “They have served us all,” said Kimo, stepping forward to face Suxie and the gaggle
of officers and officials who had gathered to see the exotic arrivals. “Marcus and Lara have helped with our training and education. Through them we have gained a better understanding of our father’s culture.”

  “I can see Art King’s likeness in your face,” said Suxie. “So, it’s true. You are the three children conceived by Zeeann and Art. But how can you be so grown up?”

  “We went into the past to give my children a chance to be ready for this moment,” said Zeeann. “Now we need you to brief us about the battle beyond the barrier.

  Chapter 31: Revenge of the Spider

  Garth lifted up the visor on his environment suit and leant over the circular table to look at the slumped form of Carole Porter. He was genuinely surprised to see his former lover in the control cabin of the alien ship. He had sent her to be brain wiped and used as a whore in a military recreation centre. Now, amazingly, here she is with my two arch enemies Art King and Yelena Kolowski, he said to himself. I underestimated her abilities outside of the bedroom! The colonel looked round to see his medic marines putting the unconscious pilot and the former chief engineer on stretchers. Another team were strapping two nurses onto stretchers. Garth saw one marine unbolting the casket head that had been stolen from Imperial Valliant. All six traitors would be transferred to Imperial Valliant and taken back to the Brood King on Orion in the Fair Isles system.

  Garth had been surprised the alien ship had survived at all, when all the other vessels in orbit around the smouldering cinder called Marylebone had been completely destroyed. Long range sensors had detected a ship slowly tumbling in space. Garth had been dispatched on board the Valliant along with a quintox flotilla of Nemesis class destroyers. The five massive warships and the former explorer craft edged passively towards the alien vessel. One of the warships used a tractor beam to slow and stop the tumbling of the oval shaped craft. The captain of that ship barely breathed while his beam arrested the angular momentum. He and the other five captains all remembered how this single vessel had defeated the imperial fleet at Chimera One.