by Worth, Dan
Steven looked up to see Haines standing over him, the spare pistol in his right hand and a look of grim satisfaction on his haggard face.
‘Should have checked me for weapons too, asshole,’ said Haines to the fallen body of his former commanding officer. ‘You always were vain and sloppy, even after they put that thing in your head. Come on, son. Let’s get you out of here.’
He helped Steven to his feet as gunshots and the cries of men and women echoed down the stairs from the floor above.
Chapter 59
As she was dragged feet first from the ledge and into the open void that lay inside the empty shell of the Shaper home-world, Katherine saw Steelscale’s body ripped apart by the Singularity in a shower of dark blood. She heard herself screaming, heard Rekkid’s cry of terror and dismay at the death of their friend.
They floated, weightless, in the vacuum. The entire planet was coming apart around them. From the impact points where the beam had sliced through the planet, great cracks, hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres long were starting to spread across the inner surface as the planet shuddered from further shocks. The Singularity itself was now an irregular, wildly gyrating, amorphous shape that glowed with a hellish light. Swarms of motes like the ones that had covered Steelscale were rushing out towards them, and they were helpless to do anything to avoid them. The things started to land on their suits, grabbing hold with their tiny legs and resisting any attempt to dislodge them. Tens, hundreds and then thousands of the things started to land on the two struggling archaeologists, coating their suits with a blanket of bodies.
The horde were closing fast. Gunderson’s men held their fire until the massed, charging figures started up the long slope, now denuded of trees, and then opened fire. Heavy weapons opened up first, striking hard into the first ranks of the enemy, scattering bodies and fountains of blood and earth as shells and energy beams hit home.
There were thousands of them, a vast army of enslaved beings from across the galaxy, a sea of unfamiliar peoples that had been horribly altered by the technology of the Shapers. They moved as one as a mob of melded flesh and disfiguring technology, pounding forward on varying numbers of legs. The uneven rhythm of their charge thundered through the earth.
They came ever closer. The marines took aim, squinting down the sights of rail rifles and lasers, keeping shotguns and grenades ready. Then they let fly with a storm of fire into the heart of the enemy.
The Arkari fleet charged headlong into the portal, and emerged on the other side, guns blazing. The dreadnoughts emerged first of all, their massive flanks erupting with fire as the Shapers rushed in to engage the newly arrived threat and the great vessels began to orientate themselves to bring their main armaments, gigantic spatial distortion cannons running along their centrelines, to bear on the Shaper home-world. Squadrons of destroyers swooped in along their flanks, breaking off to engage individual Shaper vessels that threatened the larger ships, whilst squadrons of smaller ships dove into the chaos of battle like flocks of brilliant birds.
The Shapers, realising the severity of the threat and what was occurring, directed thousands of vessels, both Shaper and enslaved, to engage the Arkari. There were already many hundreds of vessels in the space surrounding the home-world, and many more were quickly re-directed to intercept the invaders. They charged headlong towards the ships flooding out of the wormhole from Arkari space.
Aboard the Sword of Reckoning, Beklide watched the battle unfold. She stood, surrounded by holographic data displays and gave orders quickly to her crew and to the ship. The dreadnought was already engaging three Shaper destroyers, which it quickly swatted away with its heavy armaments, but dozens more were incoming as the vessel came about to fire its main gun. As the weapons of the massive vessel hammered the incoming foes with deadly fire, it took aim at the planet before it.
A tunnel of twisted space hammered into the Shaper home-world, cracking it still further, even as more dreadnoughts took up firing positions and the battle escalated all around. Flanking formations of hundreds of Arkari ships were fanning outwards, countering the Shaper thrusts towards the dreadnought force, as a storm of fire erupted and ships began to die on both sides in their dozens. The Shapers had been caught by surprise, and the Arkari vessels were hungry for the kill. Spearhead formations charged straight at the enemy, decimating their ranks with their furious attacks as the Shapers struggled to repel them. Ships duelled and struggled, manoeuvring hard around one another as two of the galaxy’s mightiest fleets went head to head. Where once the Shapers had sprung such a surprise upon the Arkari, now the tables were turned against them, and the Arkaris' fighting spirit was fuelled with their furious desire for revenge.
As she watched the titanic battle unfold all around them, the ship alerted Beklide.
‘Meritarch, I am detected ship wrecks in high orbit around the Shaper home-world.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ said Beklide. ‘But I have a battle to fight.’
She watched as the other dreadnoughts started to fire, battering the Shaper world still further as squadrons of enemy ships dove towards them and raked their flanks with fire.
‘One of the vessels is of an unknown type, the other is an Arkari ship,’ the ship continued. ‘About fifty percent of the hull has been completely destroyed. Meritarch, it’s the Shining Glory.’
‘Mentith!’ cried Beklide.
‘I’m getting a signal,’ said the ship.
Laser fire washed off the armour of Cox and his marine guards as Chen and the others opened fire with their Navy issue pistols with little effect. The heavy armour had been designed specifically for boarding actions, and it was almost invulnerable to the effects of small calibre weapons fire.
‘Are you finished?’ said Cox, stepping forward on magnetised boots that kept his feet fixed to the deck. ‘Now, Admiral Chen, I feel that is important for you to know that you are going to die here. But it will not be the quick death that you had hoped for. You will consider your comrades such as the young, deceased ensign over there,’ he said pointing at Goldstein’s body, ‘to be the lucky ones. First, I will torture your surviving comrades to death and I will make you watch, and then the Shapers are going to come here, and they will dissect you. Alive, I might add. They have ways of making sure that you survive and remain conscious for far longer than is usual. You have lost, Admiral Chen. You were offered the chance to aid us, and you refused. Your fleet is destroyed and very soon we will burn your home-world to ashes and enslave your pitiful race. You have caused me pain and frustration and you have defied us to the very end and you must pay the price for your ingratitude and disobedience.’
‘Have you finished?’ said McManus. ‘Like the sound of your own voice, don’t you? Why don’t you do us all a favour and just fuck off?’
Cox didn’t say a word. One of the marines stepped forward and punched McManus heavily in the gut. As McManus doubled over, the armoured marine kneed him in the face with a spray of blood that hung in the air in the weightless environment, then picking him up bodily, he slammed McManus against the bulkhead.
‘Got anything you’d like to add to that, Admiral Chen?’ said Cox. ‘I’d ask you to mind your language and warn you that it’d be worse for you if you don’t, but well, that isn’t really possible.’
‘I thought Shapers didn’t exact revenge,’ said Chen. ‘I thought that you were perfect and rational beings without pity and not driven by the passions of biological, ‘inferior’ creatures like me.’
‘Rage has its uses, I’ve found. I have been experimenting with the possibilities.’
‘How long have you been inside Admiral Cox’s mind? How long were you operating more or less independently, able to make your own judgements and decisions at the end of a very long communications link? You looked inside his head and you liked what you found in there, and you got a taste for those emotions of his, didn’t you, without your precious machine god to tell you what to do all the time?’
‘Silence
!’
‘Admiral Cox was an angry and resentful man, jealous of the success of others. He hated Haines, I know that much, so I don’t doubt he that hated me when I beat him in battle, didn’t he?’
‘Pain!’ yelled Cox, stepping forward. ‘You will know pain, Admiral Chen! As I have, thanks to you! Have you seen someone thrown into hard vacuum? Have you ever wondered what it feels like, to feel your blood boiling inside you, your lungs rupturing, your eyeballs swelling, every part of your body on fire from pain as you choke your last!?’
‘I’ve seen enough death from vacuum exposure,’ said Chen. ‘It’s a pity that you seem to have survived it.’
‘It takes far more than vacuum to kill us, Admiral Chen,’ said Cox. ‘We cannot truly die. We are one. We are mere scattered fragments of a greater consciousness that stretches across this galaxy.’
Something else was entering the bridge behind Cox. Chen saw a point of bright movement at first, and then more joined it, before a cloud of glittering motes appeared through the damaged doorway and hung in the air before her. In the boiling swarm of tiny creatures, Chen fancied that she could glimpse a face leering back at her.
‘Shit, it’s one of them!’ cried McManus in terror, his face bloody where the Marine had struck him. She heard Singh uttering a string of curses to her left, O’Rourke sobbed. Chen stood her ground.
‘So, you’ve finally plucked up the courage to face me yourself, have you? Instead of enslaving others to do your dirty work,’ she snapped, trying to suppress the fear that she now felt as she looked at the thing, knowing that she had nothing to lose. ‘Well it’s about time, you fucking cowards!’
Why do you resist? said the Shaper inside her mind. We want only peace. We want only perfection. Let us help you.
‘Because I’d rather be free in an imperfect universe than enslaved in a perfect one, that’s why,’ she replied. ‘You don’t understand us at all, do you? We won’t stop fighting you, ever! You’ll have to dig us out from under every rock in this galaxy and annihilate every human, every Arkari, every K’Soth and every other sentient species before we give in! You couldn’t exterminate the Progenitors entirely, so what makes you think that you can exterminate us?’
We can reduce your non-compliant numbers to acceptable and manageable levels.
‘I’d rather die than serve you.’
So be it. You are, as you say, free to choose. It is ironic that your so-called liberty has condemned you. We now possess the knowledge to complete our domination of this galaxy. All will bow to our will, and then the rest of this universe will follow. It is necessary. It is the only way.
‘So disappointing, Admiral Chen,’ said Cox. ‘And after they gave you a last chance as well. Very well. I hope you realise that you’ve condemned your comrades also. I hope that the sight of them being torn apart before your eyes gives you a chance to reflect upon your decision.’
With that, the Shaper rushed forward to embrace her.
The entire city had woken up, and it was charging headlong towards the Assembly House. The streets were filled with the enslaved as a mob of thousands descended upon the building. Isaacs, Anna, and Maria watched in horror from their vantage point, hovering above.
‘Shit, we have to get them out of there!’ yelled Maria, over the comm. ‘Baldwin, come in damn it!’
The Profit Margin and the Unholy Matrimony were still raking the landing pad with fire, torching the last of the enslaved that had ventured out there.
‘Never mind that, we’ve got problems of our own,’ said Isaacs, eyeing his instruments. ‘Contacts, five of them, inbound from the upper atmosphere at speed. Looks like Shaper vessels to me.’
‘We can’t just leave them!’ said Anna.
‘Oh, well perhaps you’d like to hang around here and get shot down?’ said Isaacs. ‘Those Shaper craft will be here any second and we have the trigger device for the warhead the assault teams planted. We need to retreat, now!’
‘And leave them to die?’
‘They’re probably already dead,’ Isaacs replied.
‘Damn it, you don’t know that!’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ he replied angrily and pushed the throttle to full.
Steven staggered on with Haines supporting him. He could barely walk, the pain from his wound was so intense. He was certain that the bullet was lodged somewhere in his shoulder blade. He could feel something grating every time he moved. It was agony. No one was answering on the comm. not Baldwin, not either of the ships. It was as if something was jamming them. Either that, or they were all dead. He could only pick up static. It gave him a very bad feeling indeed.
‘Come on, son,’ said Haines. ‘Let’s get you up these stairs.’
‘Some rescue, huh?’ replied Steven, and then gritted his teeth as he forced himself to climb, the older man supporting him. ‘Thought I’d be carrying you out, not the other way around.’
‘You came for me and put a gun in my hand. I can handle the rest,’ Haines replied. ‘You did good, son. I thought I was going to die in that fucking rat hole, reeking of my own piss with only those assholes Morgan and Cox for company.’
‘Cox, where is he?’ said Steven, wincing.
‘Said he had to take care of business and deal with the Navy,’ said Haines. ‘I hope he meets Chen coming the other way.’
‘Good to know,’ Steven replied. ‘I hope she tears him a new one. Let’s hope we don’t encounter any more nasty surprises’
They’d reached the top of the stairs. Haines helped him up the last few steps, and then he felt the Admiral freeze.
‘About those nasty surprises,’ said Haines.
Steven looked up and followed his gaze, just in time to see the enslaved mob batter down the entrance doors at the far end of the corridor. There were sounds of movement behind them too. Whipping his head around, a motion that caused him intense, sudden pain, he saw another crowd of enslaved, some of them sporting gunshot wounds, emerge from the Assembly Chamber where Baldwin and the rest of the assault teams had been headed.
Katherine struggled as the Singularity engulfed her. She could hear Rekkid crying out and caught glimpses of him through the swarm, his thrashing form similarly enrobed in the glittering creatures. The planet was coming apart around them. Great pieces of the crust, half molten, were breaking away under the impact of titanic weapons hitting the surface. Continent sized chunks of rock and the metal structures that the Shapers had covered it with, were being ripped apart. For a split second she could see through one of the newly formed rents in the crust and saw the shapes of dozens of ships fighting with one another, the ripples of weapons fire lighting up the sky.
She could feel the horrible creatures coating her body, feel them biting and tugging at the surface of her suit, trying to pull apart the armour and get at the soft, vulnerable flesh within. They coated her helmet, pressing themselves against the faceplate as they gnawed at it with razor sharp mandibles.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you,’ said a voice. It was Eonara.
‘Eonara!’ cried Katherine. ‘Help us! What’s happening!?’
‘The Arkari Navy has entered the system and is attempting to destroy the planet. I have taken control of your suits, temporarily, and modified their armour plating to maximum levels. It may be enough to hold off the Singularity for a moment longer.’
‘Get us out of here!’
‘I’m working on that. I’m having one or two problems.’
She wanted to scream: ‘Why isn’t it working!? Why isn’t it working!?’ as the Singularity drew them in. The Shapers had devoured the data in the Shaper head, yet so far, nothing had happened, or so it seemed. Perhaps they had failed. Perhaps the Singularity had spotted their ruse and defeated it, and they had given it the key to true universal domination.
‘Rekkid!’ she screamed. ‘Rekkid! Can you hear me!?’
She felt the Shaper organisms redouble their efforts to pry apart her suit.
The ship showed Beklide the wreck.
The Shining Glory had been struck by a terrible force. The entire forward section of the vessel was entirely missing, as if some great creature had taken a bite out of the manta-ray ship. She was surrounded by an expanding cloud of debris that pointed to her own demise as well as the wreck of another vessel of greater size that had been entirely destroyed. Only mere fragments of its golden hull remained and were steadily drifting apart inside a field of superheated gases and still glowing metals.
There was a signal from the Glory. Beklide ordered the Sword of Reckoning to put it through to her.
‘Mentith!’ she cried, not waiting for the speaker to begin.
‘I am sorry, but no,’ said a voice. ‘My name is Eonara. I am an artificial intelligence of Progenitor construction. Mentith was my friend and comrade. I am sorry to report that he is dead.’
‘No...’ said Beklide. She felt numb. She had assumed that Mentith had been killed attempting to prevent the Shaper attack on their home-worlds, but it seemed that he had survived somehow, only to die here at the hands of the enemy. Now that she had it confirmed, it still came as a terrible shock.
‘Please, I have a message of some urgency. You must halt your attempt to destroy the Singularity with your weapons.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you. Please, you have to trust me!’
‘How can I trust you? I have no idea who you are. How do I know that this isn’t some trick of the enemy?’
‘You don’t. Please, only a few moments more.’
‘Meritarch, the Executioner Cannon is recharged and is ready for firing,’ said the ship. The aim has been adjusted. The second shot will attempt to bisect the planet along its polar axis.