by Worth, Dan
Isaacs tried desperate manoeuvres to shake the things off, weaving the car violently from side to side, and up and down, even flipping the vehicle briefly upside down, to the consternation of his passengers in an attempt to dislodge the creatures. They were cutting their way into the car’s systems now. Creatures clinging to the underside of the vehicle were gnawing with those razor sharp mandibles at power lines and couplings, working their way into the guts of the car’s engines. Isaacs felt the vehicle start to die. The weight of the creatures was already dragging the vehicle down, and now as its systems started to fail, Isaacs fought to control it.
More Shaper craft were hitting the plain behind them, punching through the clouds lit by the first fingers of early morning light and slamming home into the rolling fields all around the city in clouds of dust and debris. Ahead, the way was clear. The car sagged, the engine note falling and changing from a constant roar to an irregular sputter. Steven and Anna were still firing at the beetle things, which were now trying to clamber inside the stricken vehicle, reaching towards them with questing limbs. Their chittering was growing louder.
They were reaching the edge of the fields. The fringes of the jungle were visible as a darker mass in the half light. Isaacs grappled with the controls, struggling to keep the car aloft, but he was fighting a losing battle against gravity. The car sank lower and lower, and the tree-tops were rushing by close enough to touch.
‘Hang on!’ Isaacs heard himself shout as branches reached up to claim the speeding car and it pitched over, plunging down into the greenery and the darkness within.
Isaacs came to and groaned. He was upside down, and the seatbelts still holding him into his seat were cutting into his shoulders. There was the sound of gunfire, then hands grabbing him, releasing him and pulling him free from the wrecked vehicle. He was still groggy. There was a figure standing over him and another seated on the ground to his right. The standing figure held a gun.
‘Cal? You okay? Cal, it’s Steven.’
‘Sure. I’m fine... I... Where’s Anna?’
‘She’s right beside you. A little shaken up, but she’s okay. Listen, the crash saved our arses. Most of the Shaper creatures were knocked off and killed by the impact or were swept off by the vegetation as we hit. I took care of the survivors, but we need to move now, before more arrive to look for us here. Can you both walk?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ Isaacs rose unsteadily to his feet. He reached down and helped Anna. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure, yeah. Hitting a tree at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour was an experience I won’t forget in hurry. Thank god for that car having the latest in crash safety fields.’
‘Hey, I only let Steven steal the best cars. Right?’ said Isaacs, trying a few cautious steps.
‘Right,’ said Steven. ‘Enough chit chat. I’ve got a fix on our position. Hopefully the dense undergrowth will mask our presence a bit. Let’s move.’
They scrambled desperately through the jungle, sticking to the lowest levels of the tree covered ravines where the dense vegetation grew thickest and dripped with moisture from the morning dew. Fear drove them onwards through the difficult terrain, fear of the things that hunted them.
Behind them, towards the city, more landing craft thumped to earth and disgorged their cargoes as the city was consumed by the Shapers. A swarm of things descended upon the wreck of the car, the vehicle already grabbed in the embrace of fast growing vines. The enslaved creatures searched the area for clues, but the jungle made tracking the bio-signs of the humans difficult amidst the abundant plants and animals that confused their sensors with heat traces, conspired to fill their olfactory detectors with strange hormonal secretions and perfumes and filled the air with a blanketing cacophony of sounds. The chittering creatures fanned out, sweeping the area with sensor cluster eyes as they tried to penetrate the forest depths.
Steven, Isaacs and Anna stuck to the heaviest cover, hoping against the odds that the tangles of moist vegetation, closely packed trees and overhanging cliffs would confound their foe. For hours they ran and slithered amidst the muck, becoming caked in slime until the stink of rotting vegetation that hung heavy in the air permeated everything, mingling with the sweat that poured off them as they fled.
The bloated Achernar star had climbed high into the sky by the time the three bedraggled figures emerged from the jungle and crept cautiously towards the concealed entrance of the Hidden Hand base. A fourth figure emerged from the rocks ahead of them, dressed in camouflage fatigues and gripping a long barrelled rail rifle.
‘Took your time,’ said Maria. ‘Lucky it was me on watch. Some of others are getting jumpy after what just happened out there.’
‘You saw the landing?’ gasped Isaacs, struggling for breath, wild eyed and dripping with sweat.
‘Uh huh. I reckon it’s time we got outa here.’
‘Not yet,’ said Steven. ‘You still have the secure comm?’
‘Sure. What do you think we are: careless?’
‘I need to use it now. I need to warn Command about what’s happening here, before everything we hold dear is annihilated.’
‘Better come inside,’ said Maria as two more Hidden Hand emerged from their hiding place equipped with guns and scanning devices. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ Maria added and let out a low whistle. ‘Jesus, Isaacs. You look like shit.’
‘Nice to see you too, Maria,’ said Isaacs, as he submitted to the scanning. As Maria got to work he looked upwards into the sky and saw the ring clutched in the grip of the massive Shaper ship. High above the atmosphere, it gleamed in the sunlight as light glinted also from the multitude of ships that surrounded it and continued to stream out of it.
Chapter 49
Under its own power at last, the Executioner Cannon floated free. It was a strange and ungainly looking thing, long and fluted for much of its length, then swelling to bulbous reactors that clustered around its end like over-ripe fruit at the end of a slender branch. It manoeuvred itself into position slowly, fins and rills sculling against space time. Those fins had been adapted from the wings that powered Arkari destroyers through space and were of a similar size, yet were dwarfed by the two thousand kilometre long weapon, appearing as tiny, waving nubs by comparison.
The cannon finally came to rest in its firing position. Sculling fins fine tuned its aim. In front of it, its target lay waiting: the Arkari constructed portal floating at the Lagrange point between the twin suns of the Orakkan system.
Beklide paced the bridge of the Sword of Reckoning as her busy crew hurried to and fro. The ship was one of hundreds now gathering in the Orakkan system, not only naval vessels preparing for the coming assault and here to witness the test firing of the new weapon, but also those carrying selected members of the Meritarch Council. The Arkari were still nervous about using their neural links to effect tele-presence at remote locations and, although it was a trivial matter to view the event from elsewhere in the sphere, where dignitaries were required or chose to attend they must do so in person.
Beklide cast her eye over the holographic data displays that floated free at the front of the bridge, surrounding a main display that currently depicted the cannon hanging in front of the portal, the scene bathed in the light from the binary suns and annotated with icons. Everything seemed to be in order, though there was something strangely obscene about the sight of the gun and the portal. At first she put it down to some odd, sexual connotation, but then decided that the sight of a gun theoretically capable of destroying worlds was simply deeply unsettling in itself.
‘I don’t think I ever asked where the design for this weapon came from,’ said Beklide, addressing the ship. ‘What sort of thinking led us to design such a terrible thing?’
‘We didn’t design it,’ replied the ship. ‘We only modified an original design to suit our technology. I did some digging: the schematics for this weapon were stolen by our agents from the archives of the Esacir Bubble City Farrianas. They, in turn, had discovered it in
the ruins of a long dead world during a rare exploratory mission towards the galactic rim. Apparently, the device was originally known as the World Breaker. The original was much smaller, only a hundredth of the size, but our energy generation and spatial distortion technologies are not up to the task of constructing such a compact device. There is some evidence in the records that we have subsequently uncovered of such devices being deployed by the Shapers in the war against the Progenitors. Whether any were ever actually used is unknown. Certainly we have not encountered such devices among current Shaper forces. Perhaps those among them who possessed the knowledge of their construction have been eliminated, victims of their internecine conflicts following the defeat of the Progenitors. Some have suggested that the weapons bear the hallmarks of Progenitor construction and were merely stolen by the Shapers to be used against them.’
‘Maybe we will never know,’ said Beklide. ‘What matters is that we have this technology in our possession, and I intend to use it against the enemy. We shall proceed with the test. All craft stand by. Confirm that the target body and the space around it are clear of traffic up to the safe distance limits established.’
‘Confirmed,’ said the ship.
‘Commence portal activation.’
‘Portal activation commencing.’
In the photospheres of the twin suns, rings of super-dense materials began to turn, funnelling the incandescent plasma from the stars upwards into great, questing tornados of heat and light. Stretching upwards at the speed of light, they plunged into the receiving apertures on either side of the portal, feeding it with surging torrents of energy. The portal came alive. Nodes around its circumference began to pulse with energy as the charge built, and then the great device activated. A two dimensional membrane of space time appeared within the ring, a membrane which stretched and twisted, elongated until it formed a tunnel light years in length. Now the portal formed a window into a different part of Arkari space. A new set of stars was visible within the portal and a planet too, an unremarkable, lifeless ball of rock in interstellar space that had been cast out of the system that had formed it long ago and had wandered the tracts along the Arkari Sphere’s eastern border ever since. Now those wanderings were about to end in a violent death.
Beklide breathed a sigh of satisfaction at the portal’s successful activation. The reverse engineering of the sabotaged Maranos device had been a particularly difficult task, one which her technicians and scientists had risen to. She was pleased to see that their efforts had not been in vain. It was time for the next stage.
‘The wormhole portal is operating within expected parameters,’ reported the ship.
‘Good,’ said Beklide. ‘Commence firing of the Executioner Cannon.’
‘The Executioner Cannon is fully charged,’ said the ship. ‘Executioner Cannon preparing to fire. Please stand by. Firing.’
The Executioner Cannon was a spatial distortion weapon, but it was so much more than that. Its ability to distort space time was so extreme that it tore the very fabric of reality apart, unleashing terrible natural forces from adjacent dimensions. A beam of primordial energy, ripped from the very fabric of the universe and wrapped within a directed hyper-dimensional whirlpool of distorted reality, vomited forth from the mouth of the cannon. As it passed through the open mouth of the portal, even the super-dense material of the ring threatened to buckle under the strain as the extreme tidal forces unleashed tugged at it, narrowing the throat of the wormhole until it was almost choked shut, the portal’s systems almost overloading to keep it open. The beam continued and struck the planet.
Beklide had not thought it possible that a planet could shatter like that, but as she watched, the target body began to fragment. It was as if she were watching a piece of pottery come apart in slow motion, the shards flying away from one another at what appeared to be a leisurely pace, but which in reality was a speed of thousands of kilometres an hour, the broken pieces themselves being the size of continents. As they separated, the molten innards of the planet began to spill out, glowing chunks that spread gradually, revealing the white hot core. There was a gasp from the assembled bridge crew as the planet broke up.
Alarms began to sound on the bridge of the Sword of Reckoning, data points on the cannon’s systems display were highlighted and the weapon shut down. Through the portal, the remains of the shattered rogue planet continued to spread outwards, great lumps of glowing magma flying out into the void.
‘Test firing complete, target destroyed,’ said the ship. ‘Reactors three through seven shut down automatically due to overload. No damage to the device, but we will need to examine the data gathered during the test to eliminate the fault.’
Beklide was transfixed by the sight of the dying planet. She felt a mixture of elation and horror at the power that they now held in their hands.
‘Do it,’ she said simply. ‘We don’t have a lot of time.’
Chapter 50
‘Sir, I have ordered both my crews and those of the Nahabe ships seconded to my command to examine their sensors and logs. After two days, our conclusion is still the same: we believe that the Shapers are aware of our methods of detection and have found a way to hide from us.’
‘And this is your final assessment, Admiral Chen?’ said Admiral Cartwright over the encrypted hypercom channel. The sound and image quality was poor, because of the bandwidth restrictions imposed by the additional layers of encryption employed by the Navy in an attempt to prevent the Shapers from eavesdropping on their transmissions.
‘Yes sir. No Commonwealth or Nahabe vessel detected any of the forces that attacked General Shale’s units on the surface, nor the vessels that launched the surprise attack on my ships before they moved against us and revealed themselves. We believe that the Shapers have learnt that we are tracking them via their communications networks and have learnt to go quiet for periods in order to avoid detection.’
‘I see,’ Cartwright replied, his tone indicating that he remained sceptical.
‘Sir, during the fighting, my ship was boarded by a Shaper organism and we know that it attempted to access our systems. Though my crew repelled the boarding action, it is possible that they may have learnt of our methods, or perhaps someone on the research teams has been compromised, or perhaps they simply deduced for themselves how we were able to track them.’
‘Perhaps. But we have no definite proof. Perhaps our sensors simply don’t work as well as we had hoped? My forces in the Chittagong system have not encountered such tactics, although the battle to secure the system was hard fought.’
‘I understand that Colonel Igawa was killed during the fighting.’
‘Yes, alas. He died a hero, fighting to secure the anti-matter facility from those creatures. He’ll be buried with full military honours back home. What’s left of him... In any case, the facility is now in our hands and we have secured the stocks of anti-matter warheads as well as resuming production. The Nemesis class vessels will be re-armed shortly at an undisclosed location in deep space. All things considered, Admiral Chen, these combined operations have been a success. My only regret is that we lost so many good ships in the process and, it seems, a great number of the population of the planet Valparaiso.’
‘They had been enslaved before we arrived, sir.’
‘I know, I know...’ Cartwright shook his head, sadly. ‘Despite the heavy cost, your mission was successful and I must congratulate you on that at least, Admiral Chen. The data that we are getting from the modified array secured by Colonel Gunderson’s men is proving to be very interesting. Admiral Hawkwood is already planning our next move. The primary target for our efforts will probably be that dreadnought in orbit above Orinoco in the Achernar system.’
‘Yes sir, that was my estimation as well. The Nemesis class vessels are about the only thing we have that are capable of taking on a vessel of that size, unless the Arkari are willing to come out of their shell and actually help us.’
‘No progress on that front,
I fear. But we do have useful intel. on the vessel in question. Your man Harris managed to get a close look at the thing and sent us what he could. Intel. have been poring over it for some time now. We’re not sure that it’s a warship at all. Intel. have theorised that it may be a construction vessel of some kind. The monitoring arrays have picked up periodic energy fluctuations from the craft and other vessels seem to be tending it. The anti-matter transports that both you and Agent Harris reported in Shaper hands have been converging on that ship.’
‘So what is it building? A weapon?’
‘Perhaps. We simply don’t know. In any case, it would seem logical to deal with it as soon as possible, and I believe that Hawkwood is anxious to decapitate Morgan’s regime. We will be moving fleet assets into position for a strike. Admiral Chen, I expect your forces to be a part of that. There are far fewer Shaper vessels in enemy held systems than we had feared.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘It’s time we took back Achernar, ousted that puppet Morgan and put him on trial for his treachery.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, sir, but I believe we should be cautious. I still think that the Shapers could be playing us on a grand scale.’
‘We must work with what we know, Admiral, but I will pass your theories up the chain of command. For now, maintain station in Santiago and await further orders. Cartwright out.’
Chen let out a long sigh of exasperation. Even after taking Valparaiso against such odds, it still seemed to stick in Cartwright’s craw to actually acknowledge her success. Sometimes he reminded her of her own mother, she reflected wryly. He rarely offered a word of praise, only insistence that she should do better next time. Worse though, was that Cartwright didn’t seem to be taking her seriously when it came to the matter of the Shapers evading sensor detection. She could tell from his expression that he didn’t buy the story, largely because he hadn’t experienced the phenomenon for himself, and because the modified array that she had overseen the capture of on the planet below appeared to be clearly showing Shaper vessels in the renegade systems. Chen didn’t buy it at all. The enemy was up to something. She could feel it, and that giant ship had something to do with it.