by Worth, Dan
Frustration? How could he be frustrated? He was a perfect machine, a shard of the greater Shaper mind. Emotions were an imperfection - a flawed, biological response. He cursed the feeble body he inhabited, cursed the vain and pompous man whose mind he had devoured in order to claim it. Casting a disgusted look at the still visibly trembling Admiral Morgan he stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him, leaving Morgan alone with the swirling cloud of silver motes which now began to slowly disperse.
Chapter 28
Maranos turned slowly in the display screen that formed one wall of Beklide’s quarters, sunlight glinting off the polar ocean and highlighting the swirling colours of the vast dune seas that banded the planet’s tropical regions. Beklide’s eye was drawn to a cluster of distant lights denoting the position of the Commonwealth frigate Talavera, which had been hailing them regularly since it arrived in the system earlier that day, curious as to what the Arkari were up to in a Commonwealth policed system. The Arkari had so far not responded. Beklide may have been head of the Arkari Navy, but she still had her orders from the Meritarch Council, orders that she did not agree with. The humans were not to be contacted, were to be kept at arm’s length. The infection was to be contained.
That the Arkari should shun their allies in their moment of need seemed monstrous to Beklide. She had protested otherwise and to no effect. The other members of the Council were afraid to the point of paranoia, and though a member herself, she must accede to their majority vote. Nevertheless, under Beklide’s command, the Arkari Navy was preparing itself for a counter-strike against the Shapers. Their investigations of the ancient Progenitor device within the planet below were almost complete. Arkari scientists and technicians, and a horde of drones under the direction of the Sword of Reckoning’s AI had swarmed all over the inside of the vast machines, scrutinising their workings and completing the gaps in their knowledge. Even now she could see the lights of shuttles rising from the surface below as the teams returned to their waiting craft. Soon, the Arkari would begin to construct their own device, and then the Shapers would feel their wrath.
Beklide cleared a portion of the screen and called up again the schematics that the Sword of Reckoning had found buried in the Navy’s archives. The Arkari Sphere’s hypercom network had been restored in recent days, the last remaining Shaper viruses purged from its nodes and interstices, and although the Arkari remained cautious and were avoiding the use of implants and avatars to communicate with one another, basic functionality of the system had been regained. Under Beklide’s orders, the Sword of Reckoning had searched the vast data storehouses of the Navy for details of any weapons that never left the experimental stage or were abandoned for reasons unrelated to the technical difficulties involved in their construction. She was searching for weapons that had never been developed because the conscience of the Arkari would not allow it, because the weapons in question were too dangerous and too terrible to contemplate.
It was true that the main gun of her ship, the Sword of Reckoning, could be utilised to collapse a star or planet by engineering a singularity, but such a process took time, time which they would not have were they to launch an attack against the heart of the Shapers’ dominion. What she needed was something capable of annihilating a world at a stroke.
The ship had trawled through a catalogue of doomsday weapons that had never seen the light of day: virus bombs designed to liquefy the populations of entire planets in mere hours, super-heavy anti-matter delivery systems, seismic bombs, mass drivers capable of lobbing asteroids the size of continents, systems composed of millions of independently targeting warheads designed to home in on the inhabitants of a world and kill them all individually and simultaneously. All were rejected out of hand for one reason or another. Some were ineffective against machine based life, others took too long to deploy, some contained technology that whilst feasible, was unproven and could not be relied upon.
Eventually, Beklide was presented with the ideal solution: the Executioner Cannon. It contained proven technology, it could reasonably be expected to be relied upon, and it could be deployed quickly. Designed as the ultimate deterrent, it had never been built. Essentially it was a vastly upscaled version of the spatial distortion cannons that were standard armament aboard Arkari warships and a larger version of which formed the main gun of the dreadnought within which she now sat. The Executioner Cannon was many orders of magnitude larger still. Judging from the schematics, the Sword of Reckoning, itself two hundred kilometres from bow to stern, could have sat within the mouth of the Executioner Cannon’s barrel, the barrel itself extending for over two thousand kilometres. It was a long and fluted thing, which gradually flared out into a cluster of bulbous reactors and enormous energy capacitors, its appearance resembling an oversized musical instrument of bizarre design.
The cannon had never been constructed, partially because the Arkari could not abide the thought of possessing such an excessively destructive weapon when the enemies they faced could be easily dealt with using their existing armaments, and partially because its sheer size and enormous mass presented technical problems when it was considered how to actually move the thing into position for its deployment against an enemy target. The large amounts of super-dense materials required in the construction of the device’s firing chamber and barrel resulted in a final displacement equalling that of a small planetoid.
However, Beklide had hit upon an idea: combined with the wormhole portal, the problem of moving the device could be circumvented. The cannon could remain in place and fire into the wormhole, whilst the portal could be used to change the location and angle of the wormhole exit and thus be used to aim the cannon from within the safety of Arkari controlled space. The cannon could be charged beforehand, then a wormhole opened and the cannon fired, and then the fleet would pour through amidst the confusion caused by such a devastating and sudden attack. The Shapers would receive a taste of their own medicine.
Having formulated her plan and received approval from the Meritarch Council she had sent heavily encrypted instructions to the Navy’s massive shipyards at Orakkan to begin construction of the device. All other considerations were to be put aside until its completion. At Beklide’s request, the Council had also despatched a fleet of heavy constructor vessels to the system to assist with the building of the portal. These massive civilian craft, normally used for the construction of space borne habitats and other mega-engineering projects, would first harvest asteroids en route and then, having filled their bellies with processed metals, would rendezvous in Orakkan to begin building an Arkari wormhole portal at the Lagrange point between the system’s G class binary.
Everything was to be completed with the utmost secrecy. As a result of Beklide’s commands, thousands of ships were now en route to their various destinations as a sizeable portion of the Arkari fleet converged on the Orakkan system. Eventually, once the portal and cannon were complete, Beklide planned to move a full half of the Navy to the system for the strike. The other half would remain deployed in key systems in case of another Shaper attack.
There was only one problem: they had not yet determined the exact location of their intended target, the Shaper home-world and the Singularity that held sway over their hive-mind. It was known to exist close to the galactic core, and its rough location had been determined but, for the plan to work, its exact position would be required. Some had theorised that the Shaper home-world existed in interstellar space, rather than orbiting a star, but since none of the scouts sent that deep into the core had ever returned, and the Arkaris’ long range hyperspace monitoring arrays lacked the required resolution at such long ranges to pinpoint its position, its precise location remained unknown.
There was a soft chiming sound that roused Beklide from her contemplation of the weapon blueprints in front of her. An icon in the corner of the screen denoted an incoming communication. It was Elinna Turinno, a fellow Meritarch. Beklide accepted the incoming message and Turinno’s pinched expression fill
ed a section of the wall. Symbols along the edge of the image denoted the high level of encryption.
‘Esteemed Member Turinno, to what do I owe the honour?’ said Beklide. Turinno had been a long time political opponent of hers. She and Beklide disagreed on most subjects, though of late, Turinno seemed to be coming round to her way of thinking following Beklide’s successful defence of the home-world. Still, it paid to be cautious.
‘Your colleagues on the Council would like a status update, Fleet Meritarch. Do you yet have everything that you require from the Fulan system?’
‘Yes, even as we speak we are recovering our teams from the surface. We have established much about the workings of the Progenitor portal and have filled most of the gaps in our knowledge. I am of the opinion that it should be feasible to construct our own device, based on the advice of my science staff and AIs.’
‘But you do not know everything?’
‘We have been unable to establish how the Progenitors managed to construct a device that allowed points in both time and space to be connected. We can only assume that the device’s inbuilt programming, or that of the controlling AIs, enabled such a feat, and these are lost to us,’ Beklide replied.
‘Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. The ability to travel into the past or future could prove extremely dangerous when one considers the implications of the causality paradoxes that could result.’
‘Yes indeed. Were we to journey into the past and destroy the Shapers in their infancy...’
‘The effects could be catastrophic for all concerned. The galaxy would be remodelled at a stroke, perhaps not to our favour. The Progenitor Empire might still exist, and we might not.’
‘In any case, we have what we need to begin construction immediately. We do not have a moment to lose. This must take priority. We must strike at the heart of the Shaper’s dominion and destroy that which they refer to as the Singularity. Leaderless, they will lack direction and we might use this tactic to attack other key worlds under their sway. We must act before they move against us again, and before humanity is enslaved.’
‘Ah yes, the humans,’ Turinno replied. Beklide detected the note of distaste in her voice.
‘Our erstwhile allies, Esteemed Member,’ Beklide replied, chiding her.
‘Who have been found wanting and have sided with the enemy. They are corrupt, and vain and the Shapers have used these failings against them.’
‘Are we any better than they?’ Beklide replied. ‘You forget, Esteemed Member, that the Shapers did not seek to enslave our people, they sought to destroy them instead and still seek to do so. Would we have fared any better if the Shapers had attempted to infiltrate our society in such a manner? Vanity and corruption are not failings that are confined to the humans.’
‘Nevertheless, all ties with them shall remain severed until this crisis has passed. We cannot risk our communication networks, our AIs and our people becoming... infested once again. Why, even today a Commonwealth destroyer attempted to cross our borders.’
‘And why was I not informed? So much for the chain of command.’
‘The issue was dealt with locally by civilian border security forces. The CNV Hadrian was turned back in the Irad system, although they stubbornly refused to leave and have repeatedly requested an audience with yourself, or with other members of the Council.’
‘Again, why was I not informed?’ said Beklide, bridling at Turinno’s manner.
‘It was felt at the time that the ship represented a possible threat. Such a gesture could represent an attempt to infiltrate us, or to attack your person. We have quarantined the vessel and are processing the crew individually. If any are found to be carrying Shaper parasites, she will be destroyed and her crew terminated.’
‘And may I remind you, that the humans are our allies? This is madness!’
‘The Council has already voted on the issue.’
‘The Council....’ Beklide choked down the words she was about to utter about her colleagues in whom she had little faith. ‘What did the crew of the Hadrian wish to speak to me about?’
‘Her commanding officer, Captain Macpherson has repeatedly insisted that they are carrying intelligence data about the Shapers that we will find useful. She was unwilling to speak of it any further.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Beklide slowly. ‘If Macpherson and her crew turn out to be clean, I want to hear what she has to say immediately. Do you understand?’
‘Do not presume to give me orders, Beklide,’ Turinno replied waspishly. ‘We are all equals on the Council. Would you have me allow Shaper agents to gain access to your person?’
‘Immediately,’ Beklide repeated. ‘Good day to you, Esteemed Member. I will provide the Council with further updates once I arrive in the Orakkan system to oversee the portal’s construction. Beklide out.’
Turinno looked as though she was about to say something else, but Beklide cut the link all the same and swore under her breath at her colleague’s officious and high handed manner, not to mention her disdain for their human allies. It pained her that the majority of the Council were still in favour of severing all ties with the other races. Indecision had been replaced with extreme paranoia by the Shaper attack on their worlds and while the Commonwealth struggled for its very existence against the Shapers, the Arkari Navy was forced to stand idly by and watch. She had to do something.
‘Ship?’ she said out loud to the cabin. ‘Signal the Talevera. Tell them that we are here on a scientific mission to investigate the de-activated Progenitor portal device and tell them that we have a gift for them.’
‘Yes, at once, and then?’
‘Transmit the schematics for our spatial distortion weaponry, the smaller classes of weapon that might be compatible with existing human vessels.’
‘Meritarch, this goes against Council directives governing the passing of military technology to other species...’
‘Yes, yes. I’m aware of the directives. I’m also aware that said other species need all the help that they can get. Get it done,’ Beklide snapped irritably, and then returned to contemplating the schematics of the terrible world killing weapon before her.
Chapter 29
‘So, Admiral. You completed a test of the prototypes, but whilst you succeeded in testing them, you also lost one of the ships. Would you care to explain how?’
Chen stood before Admiral Cartwright in his office aboard the Trafalgar. She had filed her mission report upon returning to the Delta Pavonis system, and had almost immediately been summoned aboard.
‘It’s all in my report, sir,’ Chen replied.
‘I’ve read your report, Admiral Chen. Now I want to hear it directly from you. What happened out there?’ said Cartwright and pointed an accusing finger at her.
‘Sir. We began tests of the newly modified arrays and found that their range was more limited than we had hoped. We jumped closer to the Constantine, attempting to use the Matsu system’s asteroid belt as cover and we were ambushed by the Shapers. They were using a weapons technology that we haven’t encountered before, sir.’
‘Yes, you described them in your report. Independent, seemingly intelligent drone missiles that double as ship killers and jump inhibitors. Yet you managed to jump into the middle of them.’
‘Yes sir, we failed to detect them beforehand. The Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters has had the crew of the Shadow in the Void go over their raw sensor data. It seems that in an effort to clean up the returns from their hyperspace sensors they mistakenly over compensated and processed out the returns from these smaller craft.’
‘And yet we knew that the technology was untested. Are you attempting to shift the blame for this mishap onto others, Admiral Chen?’
‘No sir. I was in command of the mission. I accept full responsibility for any failings and for the deaths of Captain Trent and the crew of the Dulles.’
‘As you should. Why did you not deploy fighters to sweep the system ahead of you?’
‘Sir, it was my estimation that in the interests of enabling a quick getaway, that we should not deploy fighters owing to the time taken to recover them. In addition, there was little guarantee that they would be able to spot anything that we could not, given that their sensor systems have not yet been modified to detect Shaper vessels. Granted, I could have deployed my fighter wings, and left them behind if necessary, but I feel that it would have been a pointless sacrifice, sir.’
Cartwright sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, gazing at her levelly over the top of them.
‘Very well, Admiral Chen. At least you have the courage to stand by your decisions. As you say, you encountered a new weapon of the enemy’s arsenal, and the test data that you successfully gathered will prove invaluable in fine tuning the design. We have already put the results to use in modifying our deep range monitoring arrays. So, it seems that the sacrifice of the Dulles was not in vain. Soon, we will be able to map the positions of the Shapers in each system, and then we will be ready to take the fight to them.’
He was testing her again, Chen realised. He was both chiding her and congratulating her at the same time and seeing how she’d respond. She wondered if Cartwright treated all the officers under him in this manner, or whether she was a special case.