by Worth, Dan
They were on the top floor of the parking garage now. It was open to the sky, had fewer vehicles parked on it than the lower levels and was ringed by a flimsy metal barrier. Above, a police AG cruiser hovered like an expectant predator.
‘Fuck!’ said Anna peering upwards out of the side window.
‘Seen it,’ said Isaacs as he brought the car around and then, speeding between the lines of cars, pushed the throttle to its limit. There was a throaty roar from the engines at the rear as it leapt forward like a wild animal let off the chain. Gun fire started to rain down from the open side-door of the police cruiser overhead, striking the concrete around the speeding vehicle and scoring a couple of hits. Isaacs threw the vehicle sideways into a jinking shimmy and then pulled back on the controls, boosting the car into the air and barely clearing the barrier around the edge of the building.
The car soared into the sky, its turbo-powered customised engine howling as Isaacs launched it like a guided missile from the rooftop. Bullets spat from the police cruiser as it came about in pursuit. As the car cleared the rooftop, Isaacs pushed the nose downwards into a steep dive towards the street below as rounds buzzed overhead. A split second before the vehicle was due to plough into the road, he yanked the nose upwards and let the car bounce back up as its AG systems compensated against its rapid descent to avoid a collision with the ground. The car powered forwards, pressing them into their seats before Isaacs executed a tight turn whilst continuing to accelerate, an action that pulled the vehicle ninety degrees to the left and down an adjoining street that led eastwards.
‘Jesus! Are out of your fucking mind?’ cried Anna. ‘You almost got us killed!’
‘Yeah, almost...’ said Isaacs, reducing the car’s altitude to only a few metres. Road vehicles and startled pedestrians whipped by below. ‘That cruiser’s still following us, I take it?’
‘You bet,’ replied Steven grimly. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw its flashing blue lights. ‘Any thoughts on losing them?’
An elevated maglev line flashed past overheard, causing all inside the car to involuntarily flinch.
‘One or two,’ Isaacs replied and thrust the car’s throttle to full, aiming it straight down the main highway into the heart of the city’s financial district.
The first of the Shaper craft breached the mouth of the wormhole above Orinoco. A squadron of destroyers was first to arrive - sleek, shining predators that spread out from their point of arrival to guard the entrance like a pack of guard dogs sniffing for danger. Larger craft began to arrive next: lumbering superdestroyers arrived in convoy and likewise assumed defensive stations, then more destroyers and shoals of smaller attack craft that swarmed in the space around their larger parents as the existing Shaper craft in the system greeted their newly arrived comrades with exultant messages of welcome.
With the portal now opened, a more direct communication link to the Singularity had been established, the tens of thousands of light years to the galactic core circumvented at a stroke. Now the Singularity could impose its will more directly and forcefully. This world would be crushed beneath the heel of the Shapers. Its inhabitants, some of which had already been made their servants, would all now be made part of their great galaxy spanning machine. They were little more than grist for the mill, raw materials to be gathered up and used to fuel the Shapers’ ever expanding, near limitless forces. There would be no parley, no negotiations, and no hope but to submit utterly to the Singularity’s will.
With their beach-head secured, the Shapers began to deploy their landing force. Vast and bulbous craft began to emerge from the portal now like a stream of gigantic, engorged seed pods. Their segmented flanks gleamed in the light from the Achernar star as they emerged and then started to turn their blunt, armoured prows towards the forested moon below.
Squeezing between two skyscrapers at breakneck speed, Isaacs flipped the car onto its right hand side and threaded it deftly between the two towering glass and steel edifices outlined in lights against the early morning gloom. He wrenched the controls the other way and pulled the vehicle into a stomach churning climb to the left around a third tower and then accelerated again across the rooftops of a series of lower office buildings, dodging communication arrays and cooling systems as the craft skimmed mere metres away from the structures.
‘That thing still behind us?’ said Isaacs.
‘Yep, he’s closing in, in fact,’ Steven replied. ‘And I can see the lights of others moving in to join the hunt.’
‘Shit, it’s only a matter of time before they start vectoring military craft towards our position,’ said Isaacs.
As if to illustrate the urgency of their situation, the cruiser began to fire on them again, the shots missing the car, but buzzing by dangerously close to the speeding vehicle and striking the rooftops beneath them.
‘Got anything that can take down a police cruiser?’ said Anna hopefully.
‘What, you think I have a guided missile hidden under my coat? No, I don’t,’ Steven replied ruefully.
‘What about that EMP gun thing you used earlier?’
‘That? It won’t do any permanent damage, and the range is pretty limited, ten or fifteen metres at best,’ Steven replied.
‘What if you aimed it at the craft’s electronics? It might be enough to make the occupants lose control,’ suggested Anna.
‘Yeah, and we have to let them get close enough without them shooting us down,’ said Steven.
‘Well, maybe if they think they can capture us alive. Cal, you think you can pull it off?’
‘What, do the old ‘broken wing’ routine? Sure, yeah, if they’ll fall for it,’ said Isaacs. ‘I think I’ve picked us out a nice escape route out of here anyway...’ he added, eyeing the cockpit’s map display.
‘Good. Okay, do it. Steven, ready with the EMP?’
Isaacs deftly manipulated the controls, making it appear as though the car had suffered some sort of engine fault and was being forced to slow in its wild ride across the city. They were moving away from the forest of skyscrapers now and, against the vertical patterns of light cast into the sky by the buildings, the police cruiser that had given chase could be seen closing in. As they grew closer, a searchlight mounted on the right hand side of the vehicle suddenly blazed into life, more to dazzle the occupants of the suspect vehicle no doubt, than to aid the vision of the things inhabiting the bodies of the officers inside. Aware that the crew of the cruiser could see them clearly now, Isaacs thumped the controls of the car in mock frustration and swore animatedly. Steven readied the EMP gun, keeping it low and out of sight and setting it to maximum output.
The cruiser approached, keeping aft and to the left of the apparently limping car. It was now about thirty metres away. In the open door on its side, the outline of an armoured figure could just be seen hunched over a pintle mounted heavy rail rifle whilst the occupants of the cockpit remained invisible.
‘A little closer...’ muttered Steven. ‘Cal, you ready?’
‘Sure.’
The cruiser edged nearer, lights flashing, spotlight still trained on the car. In the distance, the winking lights of the other approaching craft were starting to converge. In the darkness it was difficult to gauge the range, and Steven had no night vision equipment. The Arkari EMP gun was warm in his tightly clenched hand.
‘On three,’ said Steven as the cruiser came closer still. ‘One... two...’ He whipped the EMP gun out and took aim, firing the device straight at the cockpit of the cruiser. He was surprised by the reaction. The craft suddenly veered away as if flinching in pain.
‘Three! Go, fucking punch it! Go!’
Isaacs did as he was ordered. The car leapt forward with a vicious snarl of its engines, throwing its occupants back against their padded seats and causing Steven to almost drop the gun. Behind them as they sped away, the police cruiser was spiralling downwards in a flat spin towards the ground, bullets firing wildly from its door mounted gun.
‘Jesus, that worked
better than I expected!’ cried Steven over the noise of the engines as they raced away at increasing velocity across the rooftops. ‘I guess those things really don’t like electromagnetic weapons. It must fuck with their systems if it’s strong enough, I guess.’
‘Worth bearing in mind,’ said Anna. ‘Cal, about this escape route...’
‘Coming up, but you won’t like it.’
‘If it gets us out of here, I will.’
‘Not necessarily... put it this way: do you know how often the maglev trains run out of the city?’
‘What? No, I...’ Anna then saw where he was heading. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’
A line of lights that cut across the grid of streets was approaching rapidly; Isaacs brought the speeding car lower then sharply around to the left and lower still, hugging the ground to avoid detection, until the lights raced by on either side in pairs. In the bright pools of illumination, two composite track beds could be clearly seen stretching off into the distance before them. Isaacs started to accelerate the car along it.
‘Oh no...’ said Anna. ‘Oh no no no, Cal...’
‘Piece of cake,’ said Isaacs. ‘Outbound trains are on the right hand side, right? Right?’
‘I think so...’ said Steven, a little uncertainly.
‘So we keep to the right hand side and make sure we’re going faster than any trains behind us.’
There was a patch of darkness ahead, a dark throat lit with dim lights where the line plunged into the earth to be carried underneath Bolivar City’s well-to-do suburbs.
‘I don’t find that terribly reassuring,’ said Anna. ‘Especially as the trains can go faster than we can...’
‘True, but let’s see those police cruisers follow us now,’ said Isaacs. ‘This ought to confuse them. Hang on.’
They had no time to protest. A heartbeat later, the car shot forward into the mouth of the railway tunnel.
The vast, heavily laden landing craft, the shining plates of their bulbous bodies pulsing gently, began their long fall to the moon below. As they fell, the plates of the flattened noses of their teardrop shaped hulls locked into place as powerful shields prepared for their descent.
Behind them, a torrent of craft was beginning to emerge from the portal. There were hundreds of craft from dozens of unknown alien civilizations across the galaxy that had been chained to the yoke of Shaper domination. Some had joined willingly, worshipping the Shapers as gods that would lead them to new horizons and sacrificing themselves on the bloody altar of war, offering themselves up as hosts or subjects to be changed irrevocably by the Shapers’ laboratories. Such a fate, humanity had rejected. Such a paradise had been offered and cast aside. Even those among the humans who professed an alliance could not be trusted. The Shapers had seen into the heart of Morgan and his kind and knew their declaration of loyalty to be false, knew that their loyalty was born out of selfish motives of self preservation, not slavish devotion. Humanity would be become like the other cannon fodder, like the crews of the ships which were herded into battle and the shock troops that filled the landing craft who were little more than mindless, expendable slaves. There would be no subtlety of tactics now. Here was the iron fist that would smash humanity, the hammer blow that would end millions of years of natural evolution and bring humanity into a new era, one where their changes would be wrought not by nature, but by the laboratories of the Shapers.
The bellies of the falling craft were laden with hordes of such pitiful things as well as swarms of Shaper creatures eager to devour this world, eager to burrow into the minds of its inhabitants and render their bodies into tools for the Singularity’s purpose: domination of all sentient life in the galaxy.
Below the falling craft, the outline of Bolivar City sketched in lights could be seen hugging the coast, growing ever larger. As they entered the upper atmosphere of Orinoco, the shields of the bulbous ships began to glow.
The car shot along in strobing light and darkness like a bullet down the barrel of gun. The equidistantly spaced lights along the tunnel walls streamed past on both sides, the tunnel itself leading into the distance in a perfectly straight line. Isaacs pushed the throttle as far as it would go, powering the car ever faster along the maglev track.
‘One thing has occurred to me...’ said Steven slowly. ‘If another train comes the other way at speed, the shockwave will likely slam us into the tunnel wall...’
‘Let’s worry about that if it happens shall we?’ said Isaacs, tersely. ‘At least no-one appears to be following us,’ he added, glancing in the rear-view mirror for a split second.
‘Yeah, let’s hope they never saw us enter the tunnel, or else we could find a welcoming party waiting for us at the other end,’ said Anna, grimly. ‘Is it much further to the exit?’
‘Not far,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Just a little longer and then we’re clear.’
They flew onwards in silence for what seemed like an eternity, the tunnel lights whipping by on either side, the sound of the car’s engines reverberating from the walls, and then suddenly they were clear and racing along in the open air. They breathed a sigh of relief as Isaacs pulled the car off the railway track and then skimmed low, parallel to its course. They were clear of the city now and were racing through the flat fertile plains to the east that had largely been given over to farmland.
‘Anything?’ said Isaacs. ‘Are we being followed?’
Steven and Anna peered out of the windows, desperately searching for airborne vehicles tailing them. Anna looked upwards into a sky beginning to lighten on the horizon.
‘Oh god!’ she gasped.
Keeping his hands on the controls, Isaacs craned his neck quickly to see what she had spotted, and saw the huge crystalline shapes falling from the sky onto the plains around them. The huge craft wore haloes of fire from their descent as they plummeted through the clouds, using their propulsion fields to brake rapidly, before they slammed into the ground. One fell into a rice paddy about a kilometre to the left of the car with a thundering crash. Anna saw the shockwave from its crash landing radiate out across the water-logged fields in a ripple of water and uprooted rice plants, then felt the pressure wave buffet the car. Another fell another kilometre away still, crushing a grove of trees.
‘What the fuck are those things!?’ said Isaacs, glancing wildly at the craft.
‘Shaper vessels,’ said Steven.
‘I know that, but what are they?’
‘They’re landing craft,’ said Steven ominously. ‘I’ve seen them before, they... each of those things is laden with thousands, if not millions of Shaper creatures. They’re what the Shapers use when they want to devour a world. When those things open, an army will spill out and take the city.’
‘Take?’
‘Every man, woman and child within Bolivar City will be seized and implanted by the Shapers. Then the outlying towns, then the rest of this moon, then they will use their fresh troops to launch an attack upon other worlds, and their legions will continue to grow. I’ve seen it happen before, on worlds far beyond known space... whole planets turned into charnel houses, whole populations enslaved and... altered.’
Another landing craft smashed down a few hundred metres ahead of the speeding car, throwing up a crater of mud. Isaacs wrenched the controls, feeling the car buck violently in the backwash as it turned away. As they streaked past it, they could see the gleaming crystalline panels begin to shift and move, as the ship started to open like a gigantic flower bud ready to bloom. Isaacs urged the car onwards, speeding away from the craft as more began to fall around them in a cacophony of impacts.
Things were moving inside the opening craft - leaping, deformed things that scrambled clear, and a spreading stain of darkness leaked from the bizarre, crystalline ships and began to engulf the fields. As the dawn light caught its moving mass, it glittered, giving an impression of a shifting carpet of insectile forms.
‘Cal, get us the hell out of here,’ said Steven. ‘Now I know why the enslaved
cops didn’t pursue us. They were just driving us forward like beaters at a hunt. They were driving us forward into this.’
‘No shit,’ Isaacs replied.
Another landing craft thudded down ahead of them and to the left, splintering the railway line with the impact and sending composite and metal debris pinwheeling into the air. It sat at an angle for a moment, propped up by the remains of the concrete embankment, before it too started to open and things began to pour out. Creatures began to move towards the speeding car - altered, predatory things that sprang forward at great speed or propelled themselves through the air on insectile wings. They were things that had been taken by the Shapers from some distant world in the galaxy and remade into living weapons. Steven saw them approaching.
‘Cal, take us higher. They’ve seen us!’ he barked as a swarm of giant beetle-like things swooped in. They were the size of Alsatians, with iridescent carapaces pierced by the grotesque machinery of the Shapers, and mandibles that had been augmented with razor sharp blades. As Isaacs pulled the car higher, out of reach of the leaping things on the ground, the beetle-creatures dove in, attempting to latch on to the cowlings and fairings at the rear of the vehicle.
Steven pulled out his pistol and started firing out of the rear window at the armoured things. They seemed quite resilient to being shot. Though his bullets hit home and black ichor oozed from bullet holes in those shiny carapaces, the chittering things were able to take several hits before they died, even when shot at point blank range into their sensor covered heads. Anna joined in, adding her fire to Steven’s own, but the things had learnt now and were landing on the roof of the vehicle instead. Above the noise of the engines and the howl of the wind, they could be heard scrabbling for purchase on the metal, and then insectile limbs and antennae began to appear at the windows. Steven and Anna continued to fire, knocking some of the creatures off into the night, but more were landing all the time.