Storming Heaven

by Nuttall, Christopher

  He looked back at the shape of the Killer starship and the invisible power surges surrounding it. “I don’t think that that will be very long at all.”

  ***

  “Damn it, Cindy,” Professor Lawton barked. “Can’t you get us a lick of power?”

  Cindy winced, inwardly, fighting the urge to cry. The only reason she’d been assigned to the University of Chin’s contribution to the research program was that Professor Lawton, who was one of the foremost experts on matter-conversion theory outside the Technical Faction, couldn’t be relied upon to look after himself, let alone three other scientists and a horde of admiring graduate students. Cindy, who had hopes of going into advanced drive theory herself, had been selected on the entirely reasonable grounds – to a university administrator – that she knew how to fly the University’s small research craft and wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about flying too close to a possible threat. Docked, as they were, on the side of the Killer starship, she suspected that that final qualification was more of a sick joke than anything else.

  “The system is completely drained,” she said, finally. She ran her hands over the touch-sensitive console, but it was only for effect. Nothing happened. “I don’t know how, but we’ve been completely drained of power.”

  She ignored their protests as she continued to study the problem. The tiny starship had no quantum tap, but it did have two fusion reactors – guaranteed for at least fifty years service – and enough battery power to get them home from anywhere in the galaxy, as well as numerous tiny power sources for the emergency systems. The entire starship shouldn’t have been drained completely of power, yet it was unquestionably what had happened. The spacesuits and environmental gear had suffered the same fate. She didn’t want to think about what might have happened to anyone caught outside when disaster had struck.

  “But what are we going to do?” One of the others asked. She was a fellow student and sounded as if she was on the verge of panic. “What happens when we run out of air?”

  “We die,” Cindy said, just to shut them up. She peered out of the viewport towards the horizon, looking for signs of power. The other starships mated to the Killer starship hull weren’t moving, or showing signs of life. She picked up a pair of visual enhancers and peered through them, but not entirely to her surprise she couldn’t see anything, even a trace of other living human beings. Somewhere in the distance, a spacesuit was drifting towards the Killer ship…

  ”Hellfire,” she said, angrily. It was the obvious question and she hadn’t even thought to ask it – where, without power, was the gravity coming from? The answer was obvious; they were being held down by a gravity field generated by the Killer starship, which meant that somehow the starship had been powered up. Had it drained their power and used it to refuel itself? “Everyone; get back to your seats and strap in, now!”

  She ignored their protests as she watched the hull of the Killer ship. Once, when she’d been considering archaeology as her career, she’d attended a dig on an icy world, where she’d seen bioluminescent creatures swimming under the ice. She was reminded of that now as she saw lights flaring into existence under the hull material; cold, strangely ominous lights, somehow sending chills down her spine. She looked up towards the stars, towards the great disc of the galaxy laid out in front of her, and grasped for the first time how far they were from home. If the power had failed on a system-wide basis, hundreds of thousands of humans were about to die.

  The ship quivered slightly. At first, she wondered if their power had somehow been magically restored, but when she checked, she realised that everything was still dead. The Killer ship itself was shaking as the lights grew brighter, preparing to…what? Open a wormhole and escape, or devastate the entire system before departing? The lights seemed to shimmer under the hull material, irresistibly drawing her attention towards their formation, and then concentrated underneath one of the other ships. There was an explosion, chillingly silent in the darkness of space, and the starship disintegrated. The lights flared under the hull, racing towards the next starship, and a moment later that one exploded as well. Scientific platforms, monitoring stations and research ships; they all disintegrated, one by one. Cindy knew that it was just a matter of time before they died as well.

  Professor Lawton couldn’t see. He didn’t understand. “What’s happening, girl?”

  Cindy didn’t reply. The lights were drawing closer. Two more starships exploded in bursts of light, and then finally the lights raced towards her ship. She shook her head, remembering all the students who had wondered if there was a way to make peaceful contact with the Killers, and closed her eyes. An instant later, it was all over.

  ***

  The Killer was young and unformed, yet it could draw on the race memory of its parent, the Killer Paula Handley had killed, and use it to understand what was going on. It was mildly surprised that it had even been born at all, but with the death of its parent the starship mentality had acted to bring forth another controlling mind. It slid into position, gazing out at the universe through eyes that were both young and very old, and felt its mind expand. The presence of the little mites inside its hull was a danger and it reached out to trap them, preventing them from causing any further harm. Somehow, it knew that the mites, the vermin, had killed its parent.

  It had no sense of parental loyalties - the Killers had never developed that emotion, lacking the equipment to understand it – but it was coldly angry at the mites. As its mind expanded to study the universe, it became aware of other mites; some neutralised by the starship’s mentality, others hanging back, watching as the starship started to power up. They had docked their tiny ships on its hull, the Killer realised, and in a flash of anger it started to wipe them out. The hull absorbed the force of the blasts effortlessly.

  They had held it prisoner, it realised, with another hot flash of anger. They had killed its parent and held it prisoner while it gestated. Only simple ignorance had saved it from being killed before it achieved the critical mass required for sentience. It wanted to carry on the fight, to obliterate every last vermin in the system, but it knew that it was unready for battle. It had not yet attained full merger with the starship mentality. The starship had been so used to its parent that it wasn't ready to merge with a new mind, even a child of the original mind. It needed to escape, yet it would take time to generate enough power to form a wormhole. Reluctantly, it started to prepare to fight. If the mites wanted to destroy it, they would have to struggle to do so.

  As the mites and their tiny ships angled around, the Killer rapidly rescanned the interior of its hull, checking for any mites it might have missed. The mites were so small that many of them had escaped its attention the first time, trying desperately to escape to their little ships – the little ships that no longer existed. It no longer needed to hide, so it reached out through the nanomachines its parent had used to build and maintain the ship and reformed the hull around them. The mites would be moved into smaller and smaller areas until they would be completely neutralised. The Killer was not yet practiced enough to split its awareness safely, but it wasn't a complicated task. All it had to do was seal off all the possible escape routes and prevent the mites from penetrating into the heart of the starship. They would not be allowed to kill it as they had killed its parent.

  The Killer refocused its attention, watching the tiny ships as they closed in on its position, and locked its weapons onto their projected positions. A moment later, as soon as they came into range, it opened fire.

  ***

  “The Killer ship has opened fire,” Falk reported, from his console. They were the only two men left in the command centre. The remainder had been evacuated to the starships and sent out of the system. “They’re concentrating on the Defence Force starships.”

  “Good,” Ellertson said, slowly. The entire system had enough starships to evacuate the entire population – unlike most of the other systems the Killers had attacked – but it was still taking time. Scie
ntists were not inclined to put down their work and run, even with a Killer starship breathing down their necks…and most of them had seen the captured starship as harmless. Ellertson himself had seen the starship as harmless, a mistake that – he suspected – was about to cost him dear. “Tell me…does it know that the Defence Force starships can actually harm it?”

  “I don’t know,” Falk said, after a moment. “When we captured it, it had soaked up the fire of an entire attack wing without taking significant damage. If it had a link to the remainder of the Killer communications system, surely it would have brought other Killer starships here…”

  “Surely,” Ellertson agreed, reluctantly. He couldn’t envisage anyone, even the Killers, leaving a starship in enemy hands if it were within their power to recover it. The researchers had already developed new weapons from the captured ship and had used them to hurt the Killers badly. “Inform Captain Jackson to watch for a chance to disrupt their black hole. If we kill the black hole, we kill the ship.”

  “Aye, sir,” Falk said. He hesitated. “Sir, we have visual confirmation. Every starship docked on the Killer hull has been destroyed. They’re all dead.”

  Ellertson looked over at the Killer starship, slowly shaking itself free of the surrounding platforms and tethers. “Understood,” he said. The Defence Force would understand now. The starships were opening fire, implosion bolts digging into the Killer hull. “Tell Captain Jackson…no, belay that. Let him fight as he sees fit.”

  ***

  The Killer barely noticed the different mite weapons as they opened fire, for the simple reason that its parent hadn’t bothered to collect information on its technology and tactics. It was aware that there were Killers who studied the mites, as if there was anything useful to be learned from the mites, but it had preferred to simply destroy them. The mites represented the greatest threat to their existence and therefore had to be destroyed. Learning about them, as a man might study a particularly venomous species of snake or spider, would only distract from that fundamental task. They had to exterminate the mites to ensure that the mites never threatened the Killers.

  The weapons dug into its hull and it screamed, shocked at the agony, but it wasn’t shocked senseless. Unlike the older Killers, it hadn’t lived with millions of years of effective invulnerability, a universe where nothing short of a supernova or an uncontrolled black hole could harm it. It was shocked, yet it was not surprised, and it continued to return fire. It noted, absently, what the weapons were doing to its hull and concentrated on altering the hull’s spectrum to make the weapons less effective. It also swung its hull around to prevent the other weapons from making a more serious dent in its innards, although it did note that some of the weapons were likely to kill more of the mites than parts of itself. Their blasts were coming very close to where it had stored the prisoners.

  It wouldn’t matter for long, anyway, it decided. It wouldn’t be long before it could open a wormhole and escape, taking its prisoners with it. Perhaps there was something to be said for studying the mites after all. The information would assist the Killers to locate their homes and burn them out, once and for all.

  ***

  “Sir, we’re not inflicting enough damage,” Falk said, grimly. The entire attack wing was surrounding the Killer ship, pouring fire into the damaged sections of the hull, but it wasn't enough to complete its destruction. The Killer starship was just too large to destroy easily and Ellertson refused to order anyone to ram it. Antimatter missiles were merely adding their power to the Killer ship’s power reserves. “They’re…sir, I’m picking up a massive gravity shift! They’re opening a wormhole, right on top of it!”

  ”Pull the fleet back,” Ellertson ordered, seeing the wormhole icon flickering into existence. The Killer starship slid forward, firing parting shots at the research platforms and starships as it escaped, and vanished into the wormhole. A second later, the wormhole collapsed to nothingness and disappeared. “Contact Sparta and tell them…”

  He shook his head bitterly. “Tell them that we failed to prevent its escape,” he said. The Admiral would not be happy. “And then get started on rescue efforts. We have a lot of lives to save.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “I hear they lost your toy.” Captain John Raines Johnson said, as the attack wing gathered to support the Lightning. “What do you think of that?

  “I don’t believe it,” Andrew said, shaking his head. If he hadn’t been on the priority list for any updated intelligence regarding the Killers, or their technology, he wouldn’t have heard about it for a few more days, or hours. The civilian scientists at Star’s End – those who had survived – would probably be clogging the communication channels to report to their universities about the missing starship. Hardly anyone would believe it at first. Starships didn’t simply operate on their own – well, human starships didn’t. Perhaps the Killers operated by different rules.

  He pushed the matter out of his mind. “Leave it for the moment,” he said. Whatever happened, the attack wing had its own mission to complete. “Start the countdown; thirty seconds and counting.”

  “Counting,” Captain Johnson agreed. He had a lean and hungry look on his face. He’d survived the Battle – Slaughter – of New Singapore and the chance to tear into the Killers was something he’d always wanted. The implosion bolts had their limits and the more conventional weapons only inflicted tiny amounts of damage, but they were far better than watching Killer starships advancing, shrugging off enough firepower to devastate enough star systems. “We run cover for you; you nip in, destroy their sun, and then we all go back home for victory celebrations.”

  Andrew nodded. The latest reports from the observation starship and its deployed sensor drones had warned that two new Killer starships had arrived in the system, bringing the total up to forty-two, counting the damaged ships from Shiva. The undamaged starships would be targeted first, in hopes of knocking more Killer starships out of the fight, but no one knew how quickly the Killers could repair the damage to their hulls. Some scientists had speculated that it would need a repair facility, others had believed that the starships had limited self-repair capabilities – which the escape of the ship they’d captured rather proved – but no one knew for sure. Andrew had no particular interest in watching the Killers repairing themselves, and then attacking them. Damaged ships would find it harder to strike back.

  And they’d have to stay and fight too, unless they wanted to lose the star system as well. Andrew knew that the Killers had vast powers and thousands of star systems, but the investment they’d put into the system they were about to destroy had to be significant, even by their standards. The loss of the system, with or without the starships, had to hurt, even if no one knew how badly. The same could probably be said for the Killers, in their hunt for human settlements; they couldn’t know how important each settlement actually was. They might hit Sparta, which would cause massive disruption, or they might hit an insignificant little black colony with only a few hundred souls. In this war, both sides were equally blind.

  “Ten seconds,” Captain Johnston said. “See you on the flip side, Andrew.”

  “Good hunting,” Andrew said. Johnston was right; it did feel good to be the hunter for once, rather than the hunted, or the distraction while civilians escaped the combat zone. “Kill one of them for me.”

  The communications channel closed. A moment later, the icons representing a full attack wing – one that hadn’t been involved in any prior skirmishes – vanished from the display as they jumped out. Andrew rather wished that there had been time to amass more ships, but with half the Defence Force still refitting with the new weapons and the other half being sent hopping around the Community on defence missions or preparing counterattacks, it had been hard enough to scrape up a new wing. The sheer scale of the war continued to daunt him. It was hard to grasp how far the distances actually were using the Anderson Drive. Their staging area was over a hundred light years from the Killer system.
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  “They’re gone, sir,” Gary said. His voice was tense. “I am picking up their live feed through the relay stations.”

  Andrew pursed his lips as the brief transmissions echoed through the bridge. He could see the battle on the display, with the starships zooming down at their targets and showing them with implosion bolts as soon as they entered range, ducking and weaving to avoid the return fire. The Killers were no longer ignoring them, he realised; they were wiping out all of the sensor probes within range, along with any human starship that didn’t move fast enough. A single hit was still lethal – the engineers hadn’t been able to fix that problem – and the Killers were in their element. The damaged starships could still fire…and each of their shots was still lethal. It was a very balanced contest.

  “They’re pushing the Killers as hard as they can,” Gary injected, slowly. “The Killer stations are also capable of opening fire.”

  “I wondered about that,” Andrew said. A human installation would have mounted weapons on a shipyard as a matter of course, but the Killers might not bother – after all, what was there that could threaten them? They’d mounted the weapons anyway and human starships died. Whatever the Killers used their installations for, they were still lethal and deadly. “Keep relaying the signal out to Sparta.”