by Worth, Dan
‘Please...’ said Eonara, imploring her.
The Singularity suddenly became horribly aware that something was wrong. It felt its grip loosen on its minions. They refused to respond to its commands, to even acknowledge a response. It was as if a biological creature had sudden lost the use of its extremities, as if fingers refused to move. The sensation began to spread. Whole star systems under its control suddenly went dark and then, one by one, whole regions of the galaxy refused to reply.
The Singularity began to conclude, too late, what had happened. It had been tricked. It was losing its grip on the galaxy. Something was disrupting its communications. Even as it fought to regain control, entire sections of its key networks started to drop offline as it began to receive reports from the creatures still under its control that their comrades had turned on them, before they too refused to respond.
The data! The data must have been corrupted somehow! Those pathetic creatures that now struggled in its grasp must be to blame! It would tear them apart! To its horror, it found that the component organisms that made up its own core systems were now beyond its control. As it moved to crush the Arkari and human that floated before it, it discovered that it was unable to do so, as the swarms of tiny creatures that held them began to devour one another.
It has to work. Oh God, it has to work, thought Katherine. The creatures were starting to pierce the outer layers of her armour and burrow inwards towards her skin. She could feel them gnawing away. She struggled fruitlessly and cried out in desperation. She didn’t want to die, not here, not alone inside this suit where she couldn’t see, couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t hear anything except the sounds of those things trying to get inside and rip her to shreds or suffocate her in the vacuum, whichever happened first.
She had just wanted to be an archaeologist, spending her time digging up ancient relics and discovering the past. What was she doing here, on this hellish world at the centre of the galaxy that was collapsing around her? She just wanted to go home...
The Shapers released her.
The Shaper swept towards Chen, and then it seemed to falter. It hung in the air before her, as if unsure what to do next. The cloud of silver motes convulsed. Then it shifted backwards towards Cox. Something was already wrong with the Admiral. He stumbled as if drunk, as did his men.
Cox gave a sudden cry of horror and dismay.
One of the marines raised his weapon unsteadily and shot his comrade next to him full in the face, pulping the man’s skull with the heavy laser rifle. Then another comrade took aim at him and returned the favour, only for Cox to bat him aside with a powerful blow and an angry roar.
You are all imperfect, said the Shaper. Imperfection must be rooted out and eliminated.
With that, the Shaper rushed forward and engulfed the remaining men.
Cox screamed. He screamed even as the Shaper stripped the very flesh from his bones, and then ground those bones to dust, ripped apart his body and revealed the squid-like mass of tendrils that that filled his insides. Finally, it tore the parasitic grub-like creature from his skull and crushed it. The entity that had inhabited Cox’s body was very much alive during the entire process, right up until the parasite within him was disassembled, its fragmented parts clattering off the walls and floor of the bridge as it was violently destroyed by the Shaper. The enslaved marines too, were ripped asunder, their bloody remains scattered across the bridge, and with its work complete, the Shaper disappeared back the way it had come, out of the bridge, back through the innards of the ship until it found its way back into space, where a new battle had now erupted. The Shaper vessels now fought one another.
Baldwin felt the horrible things release her. She stood up, gasping, and looked around. Her men were picking themselves up off the floor. The enslaved were still all around her, as was the carpet of insectile creatures, but they seemed to be ignoring her and her men. Instead, they stood like statues, as if unsure what to do, as the mass of insects milled about their feet. Then there was an awful snarl from hundreds of ravaged throats, and they suddenly fell upon each other.
‘What the hell?’ said one of the Hidden Hand.
‘I don’t know, but let’s move, people!’ said Baldwin. ‘Come on!’
The assault teams didn’t need to be told twice. Seizing the opportunity, they dashed from the Assembly Chamber and back out into the corridor, where a similar scene was taking place. Enslaved fought one another in a massed brawl that filled the corridor with struggling bodies as they literally tried to tear one another limb from limb. In the midst, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, stood a bedraggled man in a battered naval uniform, supporting an ashen faced Steven. Baldwin cried out for joy. Beneath the grime and bruises and weeks of beard growth, she’d recognise her commanding officer anywhere. It was Haines.
‘My god, sir! It’s damn good to see you!’
‘You too, Commander. What just happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well whatever it is, we oughta make the most of it. You have an escape route?’
‘Yes sir, this way,’ said Baldwin, and grabbed her comm.
The Profit Margin raced away from the centre of the city at rooftop height as the five Shaper craft descended towards it to intercept, and then they turned on each other. Isaacs spotted the weapons fire on his sensors, fearing that the ships had decided to take a shot at him, but was puzzled when he saw one of the sensor blips fall to earth and disappear. Pulling the ship around in a tight turn he was amazed to see the four remaining craft blazing away at one another with their weapons as a second ship exploded and then corkscrewed to earth, crashing into the suburbs in a shower of debris. He heard Anna exclaiming and then whooping from the weapons station.
‘They’re fighting with one another in the streets! Cal, look at this, they’re tearing each other apart!’
‘What the hell...?’ he breathed. ‘Maria, are you seeing this? The Shapers are fighting one another!’
‘Roger that,’ Maria replied. ‘What do you want to do?
The comm. came to life:
‘Profit Margin, Matrimony, this is Commander Baldwin. Please return to the LZ for pickup. Confirm that we have Admiral Haines.’
‘Roger that Commander,’ Isaacs replied. ‘We’re seeing the Shapers turn on one another from up here.’
‘Here too. I don’t know what caused it, or how long it will last, but it’s given us a chance to get out of here alive. Please hurry, we have wounded for evac.’
‘We’ll be there in a second,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Hang on.’
High above Orinoco, a new and terrible battle now raged. The Singularity had shared its new findings with all of the nodes that made up its consciousness. These in turn had distributed the data to every ship, every agent and every parasitic creature in the Shaper hive-mind within reach. None had detected the code buried within the data that subtly reprogrammed each and every Shaper organism which greedily digested the knowledge that promised to unlock their full potential. They were now driven mad by hatred. Hatred for the impure, hatred for their own kind, for now each and every Shaper organism only saw itself and the whole of biological life as perfect, and every other Shaper organism as inferior and unfit to survive, and so the Shaper hive-mind began to fall apart as they turned on one another. The hundreds of Shaper ships in the Achernar system turned their weapons on each other, unleashing a fire storm on their former comrades, on the portal device itself and on the massive ship that had constructed it, which in turn fired back with a vengeance on the pathetic, inferior creatures that dared to attack it.
The Nahabe, who had been heavily engaged against overwhelming odds, now watched in amazement as the ships that they had been so doggedly fighting suddenly turned their guns on one another. It seem that suddenly they were unaware of the Nahabe craft that they had been trying to destroy only moments ago, instead seeing each other as the enemy. The Nahabe pulled their ships back, and watched incredulously as the Shaper fleet be
gan to destroy itself.
Gunderson’s men had their back to the wall. The array had been turned into a defensive strong point. The enslaved horde had pushed them back up the hill, until they now fought in the shadow of the concrete buildings. Fire spat from windows and doorways, whilst others kept up their defence from slit trenches hastily dug in the ground surrounding the array.
It was no good. He had seen dozens of his men cut down in the first minutes. There were simply too many of the enemy, the modifications that many of them had been subjected to made them difficult to kill. The more massive of the alien creatures had led the charge. Things like gigantic gorillas and others like armoured, six limbed bulls had acted as battering rams against his men, crushing them underfoot and scattering them before their comrades swarmed in after them. The huge creatures had not gone down easily, absorbing massive amounts of fire before they fell, and not before the leaping, snarling horde behind them had broken through.
Gunderson kept on firing constantly, pausing only to eject spent magazines and slap a fresh one into place. He saw his own death a hundred times, saw his men ripped apart or trampled, eviscerated by slashing blades or gored by armoured horns and spikes.
This was the end. This was it.
One of the bull creatures spotted him and charged towards him, horns gleaming in the sunlight. Gunderson kept on firing as it approached, his bullets ricocheting off its armoured skull. He let out a yell at the thing, bellowing a defiant cry as it charged him. He steeled himself to meet his end on the tip of those razor sharp horns... and then the creature stopped in its tracks.
Katherine’s could see out of her visor once more. Looking around frantically she saw Rekkid floating a short distance away, while all around her the interior of the Shaper world shattered and collapsed, surrounding them both with floating debris. Ahead, the bright torus of the Singularity still whirled, but its pace was gathering speed. It was as if the individual motes that made up its whole were locked in some sort of terrible struggle. Its size had increased dramatically. The streams that had cycled to and from it through the crust had ceased to flow. Instead, they had gathered into one place. They whirled in a destructive dance of death, ever faster and more furious, as they attempted to annihilate one another. The disc shuddered, convulsing with inner shockwaves that travelled outwards from the centre, where the disc had grown white hot and was wreathed in energies.
Katherine looked upwards, and through the gaps in the shattered world flew a bright slender shape; it was an Arkari shuttle.
‘Hold on!’ said Eonara in her ears. ‘Hold on! I’m coming for you!’
The Churchill groaned. Chen felt the deck move under her. Scrambling to the remaining windows she looked out, and saw the stars beyond the ice-white plain of the Shaper dreadnought’s hull begin to move.
‘We’re under way,’ she reported. ‘Looks like the ship is coming about and firing and... wait, the Shaper ships have also begun to fight each other!’
‘You’re kidding me,’ said McManus, still reeling from the sight of Cox and his men being torn to pieces by the Shaper. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Chen. ‘Some weapon or other... I don’t know.’
Bright energies illuminated the wrecked bridge at the dreadnought returned fire from the weapons along its flank.
There was a sudden jolt that threw them sideways, and then there was another awful groaning sound from the depths of the wrecked carrier and the sound of metal tearing. The wreck tilted horribly. Chen pulled herself back to the windows and looked out.
‘We’re floating free!’ she reported.
The wreck of the Churchill had broken free of its moorings, where it had been jammed against the Shaper vessel. The much larger craft’s movements had shaken it loose, and as the broken ship floated away, Chen and the remainder of her crew watched as the dreadnought ploughed through the dissolving Shaper fleet and disappeared into hyperspace. They looked on as the Shaper ships proceeded to destroy one another or flee in different directions into the void. The ring that the dreadnought had held with the tips of its massive arms now floated free, tumbling slowly like a piece of discarded jewellery.
Later, when the fighting died down, Chen and the remains of the Churchill's crew made for the escape pods, and were scooped up by the Nahabe vessel Uncaring Cosmos, which began hauling them in with tractor beams even as she launched her own rescue craft towards the remains of the carrier.
‘Would you look at that,’ McManus kept saying over and over as wrecked Shaper vessels floated all around them. ‘Would you look at that.’
The shuttle swept down through the storm of fire and destruction and swallowed Katherine and Rekkid, drawing them in with tractor fields into its liquid metal hull that had flowed open to admit them. Now it powered upwards out of the collapsing world. The Shaper home-world was breaking apart under the titanic bombardment by the Arkari fleet. Vast, molten segments of crust were breaking away from one another as glowing debris was flung outwards from those disintegrating segments under the barrage. At the centre of the hollow world, the glowing torus of the Singularity whirled ever faster, as the mind of the machine god began to devour itself.
The shuttle raced onwards, its engines straining to maximum as it climbed higher and higher towards the Arkari fleet, holding the two archaeologists safe within its sleek hull.
The Profit Margin and the Unholy Matrimony climbed into the sky above Bolivar City, engines fighting against gravity and bellies filled with the surviving members of the Hidden Hand and their naval allies. Ahead, space was streaked with explosions and weapons fire as the Shaper ships tore at one another and those who could see out wondered aloud at what was transpiring above the world, and what to do about the city below them.
‘So who gets the honour?’ said Isaacs.
‘I’m not sure that we should,’ said Anna. ‘After all, if the Shapers are fighting one another, do we need to detonate the warhead?’
‘We don’t know how long that will last,’ said Steven, slumped in one of the bridge’s couches and trying not to cry out with the pain in his shoulder. ‘Besides, the city is lost. We know that.’
‘We need to wipe the slate clean,’ said Haines. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure that those things are dead. Give me the trigger, I’ll do it. It’s the decent thing to release those poor bastards down there from what the Shapers did to them. We ought to give them peace.’
The two ships climbed out of the atmosphere into space. Behind them, the surface of Orinoco lit up with a blaze of light. It was brighter than the sun, a searing burst of pure matter energy conversion, and Bolivar City ceased to exist.
Above them, the spherical shape of a Nahabe vessel could be seen, and then countless more gunspheres began to show up on the Profit Margin’s scanners. There was a signal coming from one of the vessels. It was the Uncaring Cosmos. The men and women of the Hidden Hand whooped for joy at the sight of their Nahabe friends and the knowledge that the rest of their ragtag band had survived aboard that venerable craft.
The battle for the Shaper home-world had turned into a rout. As the Shaper ships ceased their attack on the Arkari and began to slaughter one another, the Arkari fleet did not hesitate in exterminating them. Ships died in their hundreds, then in their thousands. Many realised the severity of the situation, that they were entirely surrounded by enemies and attempted to flee the galactic core into the depths of space. The Arkari pursued them, hunted them and killed them.
Beklide watched the tiny shuttle clear the inside of the broken planet and race towards her waiting craft, a gleaming silver bird that shot out of the ruin of the shattering planet.
‘Thank you,’ said Eonara. ‘Now you may proceed.’
‘Fire,’ said Beklide.
The Executioner Cannon lived up to its name. It split a world in two, and killed a god.
Epilogue
One Month Later:
Chen stepped into Haines’s office. The vie
w out of the broad windows on the tenth floor looked out over the complex in the direction of the city. The skyline of London glowered on the horizon, despite the bright sunshine outside. Haines stood contemplating the view, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He turned as Chen entered, for a second wearing the expression of a naughty schoolboy caught in the act of doing something he shouldn’t, then he saw it was her and took another sip of his drink.
Chen stood before him, her uniform sporting a fresh set of medal ribbons, her shoulder boards adorned with additional gold stars. She looked Haines up and down. He had recovered well from his ordeal in Achernar. His wounds had healed well and though he still needed to regain some of his weight, he almost seemed back to his old self.
‘Well, you’re almost as famous as me now, Admiral Chen,’ said Haines, jovially. ‘Almost as many medals, and only half my age too.’
‘Half, sir?’
‘Well, physically, at least. I hear that you’re anxious to get back into the saddle.’
‘Yes sir, I am.’
‘The Churchill was a fine ship, Michelle. A fine crew too. It’s a great pity that so many of them didn’t make it. They’re heroes, every one. I hope you realise how grateful we all are for what you did out there. You’re the best the Navy’s got, Michelle. Whatever posting you want, it’s yours, including my job.’
‘Sir?’
‘Ah well, they’re gonna have me flying a desk from now on. Special Advisor to the President on Naval Affairs, or something... so I’m officially retiring from active duty at the end of the month. Admiral Hawkwood is now Chief of Staff of the Navy and he’s looking for a Fleet Admiral.’
‘Yes sir. Whatever posting I get, I’d like to keep my crew together where possible.’