by Worth, Dan
The streets of Gagat’s Colony were quiet now. The internal day/night cycle was coming around to its simulated dawn. The last of the night’s revellers were staggering back to their abodes in the pale morning light as Isaacs, Anna and Steven picked their way quickly through streets strewn with litter, broken glass and the occasional patch of vomit as they headed for the docking bay containing the Profit Margin.
Eventually, sweating and out of breath, they arrived back at the bay and found the ship exactly as Isaacs and Anna had left it, with the addition of a large AG pallet holding a small shipping crate that had been parked in front of the craft. The Hyrdian that had checked their documents upon arrival ambled over as they entered.
‘Ah, I took the liberty of acquiring a small shipment of Cloudfrond for us,’ said Steven. ‘It’s all I could get at such short notice and at this hour, but it’s the good stuff, so you should be able to get a good price for it. It’s certainly enough to convince anyone as to the purpose of our journey. I called in a favour or two around here to get it.’
‘From who?’
‘Like I said, I have a few friends around here.’
The Hyrdian security guard handed Steven an electronic key to the crate in exchange for a look at his ID and then, once Isaacs had lowered the Profit Margin’s cargo ramp, helped them load the crate onto the ship. His task complete, the burly alien looked at the three humans and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Hope you have pleasant stay here. Go so soon?’
‘Yeah, we’ve got urgent business elsewhere,’ said Isaacs. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘Hmm. Anything to do with those warships heading this way?’
‘Let’s just say we’d rather avoid their attentions.’
‘You and everybody else here. But you only ones awake, I think. Always trouble here... I go now.’ He sighed and stomped off down the ramp.
With the cargo aboard and the ship secured they made ready for departure. Isaacs was already on the comm. to traffic control requesting clearance as Anna spun up the main engines and Steven went aft to man the turrets. With clearance granted, Isaacs began manoeuvring the ship around within the cramped confines of the docking bay and its esoteric collection of ships. All the while, time was ticking away and the renegade warships were coming ever closer.
With the ship lined up with the bay doors for departure, Isaacs gripped the controls tightly, preparing himself for the storm force winds outside that would toss the ship around as soon as they exited Gagat’s Colony. The seconds ticked away before he received the go signal and the bay doors began to open with agonising slowness.
‘I forgot to ask,’ said Isaacs to Steven over the comm. ‘What do you think the Shapers want with anti-matter. You think they’re building warheads?’
‘Could be,’ Steven replied. ‘Perhaps they want to take revenge on Earth or on Admiral Chen for what happened to them. We have to report this.’
‘That isn’t exactly a comforting thought,’ Isaacs replied. The bay doors were now fully open and he gunned the engines, powering the Profit Margin out of the docking bay and into the storm clouds outside. Immediately a down draft caught the craft, pushing her into a dive. Isaacs recovered the ship and brought the nose upwards, angling it towards the sky and bringing the engines to full power. It was then that he saw it; a long, pale, jagged shape formed from interlocking shards that hung above the swirling clouds like a tear in the sky.
‘Shaper vessel, dead ahead!’ cried Anna.
‘Oh, fuck me! How come nobody saw that before we launched!?’ cried Isaacs, pulling the Profit Margin’s nose away from pointing at the looming enemy ship and back down to level.
‘It must have just emerged from hyperspace as we undocked!’ cried Anna. ‘There was nothing on sensors until a second ago. God, look at the size of that thing! How the hell is it managing to fly inside the atmosphere? How did it manage to jump in so close to the planet?’
‘Beats me,’ replied Isaacs, fighting with the ship to maintain a steady course. ‘But I don’t think that the usual rules apply to Shaper ships, do they? Where are the renegade human ships?’
‘Still a few minutes out from the planet and closing fast,’ Anna replied.
‘Then we need to make a rapid exit, don’t we?’ Isaacs replied, and pushed the throttles to full.
They began to streak away across the cloud tops, the ship’s speed building constantly as she bounced between updrafts, downdrafts and crosswinds in a now supersonic rollercoaster ride. Isaacs held the ship’s controls in a death grip as the view outside shook violently and the crew’s stomachs also lurched accordingly. A faint glow was beginning to build around the limits of the shield envelope as the ship’s speed increased from the resulting atmospheric friction. Isaacs was trying to keep the nose pointing vaguely upwards, so that they could escape the planet’s atmosphere.
‘The enemy ship’s descending!’ cried Anna. ‘It looks like she’s heading toward Gagat’s Colony!’
‘Those poor bastards...’ muttered Isaacs, staring straight ahead as he fought with the controls in order keep the ship straight. Something broke loose and clanged down in the cargo bay.
‘I knew it,’ commented Steven. ‘I knew that those idiots in the Syndicate had an anti-matter containment unit hidden on the station somewhere. They must be trying to seize it.’
‘Well they’re gonna pay for it now!’ cried Isaacs. ‘Believe me, you do not want to be there when the Shapers attack! They don’t stand a chance...’ He had a flashback to the desperate defence of Port Royal: hordes of enslaved monsters spilling from the Shaper ship that had rammed the pirate base. Anita disappearing under a wave of flesh and snarling, leaping forms.
The Shaper vessel was descending almost vertically through the atmosphere now, its massive armoured nose pointing straight down towards Gagat’s Colony. Anna could see it magnified through the aft cameras, shrouded in layers of cloud. It looked like a vast sea creature descending to nibble at the tips of the spires that rose from the main plate structure of the Colony. She pictured all the people she had seen aboard last night, all the late night drinkers still blissfully asleep in their beds, unaware that a tide of mutilated, enslaved beings was about to be unleashed upon them, and she suppressed a shudder. Lost within her vision of the nightmare unfolding she failed to register the weapon lock-on warning for a few seconds, until its warbling tone finally roused her. The Shaper ship had decided to deal with them too, decided to swat them out of the sky like a troublesome fly.
‘Shaper vessel is locked on and powering weapons!’ she heard herself cry.
‘For God’s sake, jump!’ cried Steven.
‘We’re too low!’ cried Isaacs. ‘The planet’s gravity well is still too steep!’
‘Jump, or we’re all dead!’ Steven barked back. ‘Do it!
‘Don’t fucking well give me orders!’ snarled Isaacs and hit the jump drive controls. The ship lurched. There was a teeth jarring jolt, and the Profit Margin vanished in a collapsing vortex of atmosphere.
Chapter 22
The perpetual dusk of the sky above the holy city of Marantis, on the planet Maranos in the Fulan system was scattered with moving points of light. In streets below, the native Dendratha paused in their daily chores and looked upwards, fearfully, at this ominous occurrence. For over two years they had laboured to rebuild their shattered city, cruelly levelled as two interstellar superpowers had fought over the morsel of their world, eager to seize the technological wonders concealed beneath its crust. The Dendratha understood little of galactic politics and war and knew little of the galaxy outside of their own world. They were a peaceful, technologically primitive people who had been slowly eking out a largely agrarian civilisation for tens of thousands of years before the wider galactic community, in the shape of the Commonwealth and the K’Soth, had made themselves known, with disastrous results. The humans had come and had brought technology and trade and unwanted interference. The K’Soth had come and had brought death.
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br /> The War in Heaven had begun here, that much every Dendratha knew. They had seen the great skyships duelling above them, seen them burst and die and fall to earth, cowered when the K’Soth invaders had struck their most holy city, killing thousands and then rampaged through its blessed streets, looting and killing and feeding, only to be massacred in turn by the humans.
The slaughter had brought forth demons from the earth, horrific beings of metal that had swarmed from the netherworld to slay the sinners. Only Maran had saved them. The worldgod of the Dendratha had brought forth His angels to do battle and had eventually defeated the diabolical hordes with a wave of His divine hand. The Dendratha had given thanks for their deliverance, and had then set out burying their dead and rebuilding their devastated city.
Things had been very quiet ever since. The humans, wracked with guilt it seemed, had contributed to the rebuilding effort. The Dendratha had politely accepted their help, although most wished that the curious bipedal creatures would just leave them alone. A few ships still came and went from the lone spaceport in Erais on the coast of the northern polar sea. But most brought academics or researchers – people the locals could safely ignore. Knowledge of what was Out There in the heavens was unsettling for many Dendratha. It was all too large, too unknowable and, judging by their race’s recent experiences at the hands of offworlders, utterly terrifying.
Now it seemed that the skyships had returned en masse. As the points of light grew larger in the sky, the primitive telescopes at the Marantis Monastic University were angled towards them revealing graceful winged shapes that glinted in the light from the twin suns Irrin and Irrinil. It was the Angels of Maran! A great cry went up in the city for the faithful to come to the cathedral and pray and as the multitude gathered at that hallowed place they lifted their heads in devotion and fear. For if Maran had unleashed his angels, those terrible beings of divine wrath, then a truly terrible time must once more be looming.
Beklide reclined in the shuttle that bore her and her six strong body guard from the Sword of Reckoning towards the surface of the planet Maranos that now curved away below them. From here she could see the various colours of the desert sands, the gradual changes in texture wrought by the elements and the ravages of time. It had a savage beauty that was all too rare on the carefully cultivated worlds of the Arkari sphere, worlds of which a great number had now been reduced to ash.
She could see another shuttle in the flight just ahead of them and slightly to starboard, skipping across the upper atmosphere like an impossibly quick silver bird, its nanotech wings constantly shifting as it flew. Its carefree appearance was an illusion. The reason for their visit to this world was deadly serious. This was a world whose name had been stricken from Arkari history at least once and which had narrowly avoided destruction by the very ship she had just left. Maranos lay at the very fulcrum of galactic history. The great wormhole at its core had been used by the Progenitors to flee the galaxy and once to damn a full half of the Arkari race into the darkness of the far future. Now, Beklide hoped, it would be the instrument of their revenge against the Shapers.
A crowd had already gathered at the great cathedral at the heart of Marantis. In a religious fervour born of devotion and fear, the people of the holy city had flocked to its hallowed grounds to pay homage to their god. Cramming the cathedral grounds to their considerable capacity, they thronged outside, abasing themselves before the towering structure in prayer. Bright shapes broke through the cloud floating high above the desert to the west. There were three of them, flying in tight formation. The Angels of Maran had come.
Beklide saw the city growing ever larger below them. It was a warren of jumbled buildings pierced by broad, radial thoroughfares and the gleaming line of the Commonwealth constructed railway snaking in from the deep desert. In the south of the city, a huge area of reconstruction marked where the worst of the fighting during the war between the Commonwealth and the K’Soth Empire had levelled part of the city, whilst at the city’s heart, the cathedral reached skywards like a vast claw. It was a towering structure, many times the height of the other buildings that surrounded it. The broad circular grounds within which it sat were alive with thousands of tiny figures. As they drew closer and began to circle the cathedral she could see that thousands of expectant faces were turned up towards her.
The shuttles came lower still and killed their speed until they were hovering above the crowd like hawks. The crowd parted, leaving a clear space large enough for the three sleek, silver craft to land, which they then did, settling gently onto the dusty earth and folding their wings. Outside there was silence, as the crowd watched and waited for the servants of their god to show themselves in person.
Within a few moments they were rewarded with the sight of a patch of the skin of each shuttles flowing open. Beklide stepped slowly from her craft, flanked by her bodyguards clad in form fitting armour and gripping compact weapons. Technicians, scientists and more soldiers emerged from the remaining two shuttles. There was a gasp of collective awe from the mass of Dendratha who, as one, threw themselves face down in the dust and began praying loudly. Beklide’s translator pendant picked up snatches of the prayers being directed towards her and her party. There was no doubt that these poor, backward people considered the Arkari to be divine, but they were also afraid of them. Beklide had little time for the backward superstitions of less advanced cultures, but in the case of the Dendratha’s fear of the Arkari, their fear was completely rational. The coming of the Arkari to this world had heralded nothing but bad news for these people across the ages, whether they had come as their saviours or their potential destroyers. Their very appearance had become embedded in Dendratha culture as the Angels of Maran, the harbingers of divine retribution. Beklide stood for a moment, the desert winds whipping her long robes, and looked out across the sea of people. She could smell their fear.
One figure had not abased itself before the Arkari. A robed Dendratha, clutching an ornamental staff, emerged from the ancient doors of the cathedral and picked its way through the prostrate crowd, coming to a halt before Beklide where it stuck its staff firmly in the ground and stared at her defiantly with small black eyes set into a long, olive green face.
‘I am High Priest Allaniko,’ said the Dendratha in English. Beklide’s translator pendant picked up the human language and translated it into Arkari, though she understood it well enough unaided. ‘Just what do you think you are doing by coming here?’ Allaniko added. ‘Don’t worry. The others can’t understand a word I’m saying. You’d better come inside before this gets out of hand.’
The spacious, vaulted interior of the cathedral was cool, dark and quiet, contrasting sharply with the scene outside. Allaniko led the way, his S shaped body undulating across the tiled floor towards a group of other robed Dendratha clustered around the central dais. Having reached the others of his kind, he turned to face the Arkari once more, fixing them with an angry glare.
‘Now, explain yourselves!’ he barked.
Beklide was a little taken aback. She was surprised that the priest did not seem to be taken in by the religious fervour evident outside.
‘What? You’re surprised by my lack of respect?’ said Allaniko, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I may be a leader of our faith, but I’m not blind to the truth about much of our religion. I know what you are. You’re not servants of God, that’s for certain. We’re not all as ignorant as you offworlders like to think. I was a priest in Erais and Bridgetown before I took up my duties here, so I have had many dealings with humans and other species over the years, hence I have learnt some of the their languages and I like to think I know something of what goes on out there beyond our little world. None of it sounded good. Why can’t you just leave us in peace?’
Beklide sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.
‘High Priest Allaniko, my name is Fleet Meritarch Lorali Beklide. We mean no harm to you or your people. We have come here because we wish to investigate the machines that lie at th
e heart of this world. Many billions of lives out there in the wider galaxy may depend upon our success.’
‘I see. That last time anyone descended into the catacombs beneath this cathedral and tampered with the devices at the heart of our planet the result was that fire and death were rained down upon our people. First, the K’Soth: they came here and they burned everything! Thousands of our people lay dead in the streets and then those monsters came to this cathedral and slaughtered everyone! You can still see the marks on the ancient doors of this holy building where those fiends nailed my predecessor to them, you can still see the bloody stains on the floor where the others were tortured and devoured by those animals! Then afterwards, the meddling of the humans caused the gates within our world to finally open and unspeakable horrors were unleashed from the depths of hell. Your solution, I understand, was to attempt to destroy everything in this system by detonating the very suns that give us life! If Maran had not saved us, you and I would not be having this conversation for I would be a charred cinder in the dust of a murdered world!’
‘I realise that what happened to your people was an unspeakable crime,’ said Beklide. ‘One in which I personally played a part. The beings that came out of the portal were once Arkari, banished by our race many thousands of years ago. It was I who gave the order to destroy this system. I knew what they were capable of, that if allowed to escape they would have wreaked untold havoc across hundreds of systems. I am sorry. It was a calculated move. Sacrifice one world to save many. I am very glad that my ships did not need to carry out those orders.’
‘And yet you have the temerity to come here?’
‘Yes. The events that happened here were engineered by another, more ancient and more powerful race. They are known as the Shapers and they seek to dominate all sentient life in this galaxy. A war is raging at this very moment between the free civilisations out there among the stars and this source of ancient evil. Trillions of lives, thousands, if not millions of worlds are at stake in this part of the galaxy alone, but the secrets held below us in the bowels of this planet may be the salvation of all.’