by Ivan Kal
“I still don’t see how life could break apart the dimensional barriers,” Tomas said. “The amount of Sha that we are using is nothing compared to how much there is in the universe.”
Seo-yun sighed. “How many people are there in the Josanti League?” he asked Levisomaerni.
The Partenai tilted her head. “Two and a half quadrillion.”
Anessa turned to stare at the Partenai in shock.
“Don’t be shocked,” Seo-yun said. “The Rimward Alliance will break that number in about a hundred years.”
The room was speechless, and so Seo-yun continued. “And can you imagine how many races are there in the galaxy? How many people? Countless—and each of them takes just a bit of Sha away. This means that most Sha in the galaxy gets pulled toward inner star systems, where there is the most life, which thins the layers of the border further away. And those thinner layers are being pressed down from the other side by other dimensions, enough so that a bit of their dimension seeps through…enough for us to detect and then push through. Each time we travel, we worsen the state of the border. And how many ships pass in and out of hyperspace and trans-space every moment?”
“So,” Tomas said somberly, “you are saying that our universe will be what exactly?”
“Eventually, our universe will merge with those other dimensions, which will be a violent event as the three natures find a new balance. I doubt that anything that we know and understand will survive.”
“How long?” Tomas asked.
“A million years? A billion? Who knows? It will take time, but it will happen.”
“But we have time? We can figure out a way to repair it?” Tomas asked.
“The damage is already done. Even if we were to disappear tomorrow, it would only slow the degradation.”
“But why would then the Enlightened want to kill us all?”
“Who knows? It would certainly give them more time. Perhaps they already have a way to fix it…a way that might even require our deaths,” Seo-yun said.
“They consider this their burden,” Adrian spoke. “The People did this, and they feel responsible.”
“They are, but we are here now. I don’t really want to die for something that might happen so far in the future that most of the races living now might have died out by then,” Tomas said resolutely.
Adrian released a long breath. “So we now know at least why they want to kill us all. Now all we have to do is figure out how to stop them, and then figure out a better way to fix that.”
“No problem, right?” Seo-yun asked with a smile.
“No problem at all,” Adrian returned.
EPILOGUE
Year 715 of the Empire — Enlightened territory
Loranis stood on board her Living-ship Mindseer and watched through the opening the workers down below in the hollowed-out planet. Messages from Doranis and Aranis had been surprising; she had felt Ullax die and had been preparing for their plans. Still, the new developments were intriguing. There were people in the galaxy that could match them, and the AI had sided with the Enlightened. Still, she was particularly interested in the telepath who Doranis seemed to hate so much. Lurker of the Depths: a name that Loranis would remember. It had been a long time since she had met an equal to her telepathic powers.
Still, Aranis wanted the relays on their way as soon as possible. And Loranis would oblige—she needed only to make a few last-minute arrangements and then assemble large enough forces to protect them. They did not have enough of them to be able to lose any.
The Conduit was finished. It only needed to be transported, a thing that Aranis would overseer personally. It was his task after all. He was the only one of them with the skill set to achieve what they needed. Aranis had always excelled at Sha manipulation.
She turned around and walked to her seat. A Created, one of the Overseer breed, approached her.
“Ready everyone,” Loranis said. “We are leaving very soon.”
“Of course, master.”
Loranis wondered what it would be like once they accomplished their goal, how she would feel. She had spent so long in the pursuit of fixing their mistakes that she couldn’t imagine any other type of life.
She put those thoughts aside. There would be time for that later—after they had won.
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Universe on Fire Book 1 – Broken Stars and Eternal Path Book 1 – Eternal Soul
EXCERPT FROM MY SCI FI/FANTASY SERIES
UNIVERSE ON FIRE—BROKEN STARS
Kane Reinhart’s hands flew over the controls in front of him as he adjusted the sensors of his mech-frame, even as he used his mind to fly. His mech-frame—codenamed the Leviathan—accelerated and he took care to keep his trajectory straight. The faint and brief blip on his sensor board made him suspect that his opponents were hiding in the planet’s ring. A good strategy, especially since he had noticed the blip only because he had been expecting something like this. But then he knew his opponents very well. Then two signatures showed up on his board, coming up on his six from the belt. Two fighters at almost max acceleration. Soon they would be right on top of him and he would be in range of their weapons. That would be bad, he knew the pilots and they would not miss such a chance. The mech-frame’s specs were overall worse than those of their fighters in most areas, and he did not want to be caught between the two of them.
He watched them closely, waiting. And then just as the fighters came within range of their missiles they fired. Four missiles, two from each fighter, left their launchers and started closing the distance between them. Kane maneuvered, making it harder for them to lock on with their other weapons. He waited for the right moment, keeping his thrust at max, then as the missiles got close enough he pressed the trigger, firing the countermeasures from the Leviathan’s back. The missiles suddenly changed directions as the large fist-sized orbs that were the countermeasures pointed their lasers directly at the missiles’ guidance and tracking sensors and made them swerve to the side.
Then he used his mind to move, using the spell that allowed him to control the mech-frame’s movements. He cut his main thrust, and used his maneuvering thrusters to turn around just as he pushed a slider to the left of him down, in order to decrease the distance of the spell he prepared to trigger. Then as soon as he was pointed toward the fighters coming up on him, he triggered the teleportation spell. His mech-frame was suddenly several hundred meters behind the fighters. There was no sensation as he disappeared and appeared almost instantly, but he knew that the pilots of the fighters would’ve seen the faint blue flash as he used the spell to “blink” across space, as they called it.
Leviathan was still hurling through space, his previous momentum still carrying over and now taking him toward the fighters’ backs. They were faster than him, but they weren’t fast enough to get out of range so quickly. He swiftly turned his mech-frame back around, now facing the fighters. He targeted one of them with the rail-gun turret mounted on one of his mech-frame’s forearms, and he fired even as he launched missiles from the shoulder-mounted launchers. Eight missiles flew out toward the fighters. His laser struck one of the fighters and it disappeared from his sensors, and he saw it move aside on the monitors in front of him that projected the outside. The missiles sped toward the other fighter, and just a few moments later the fighter disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving the missiles flying aimlessly on their previous course.
Kane tsked to himself and sent the shutdown code from the board in front of him to the missiles, shutting them down. His sensors searched for the fighter on its previous course, knowin
g it could only blink in the direction it was pointed to, just like the mech-frames. Finding it was simple, and adjusting the slider Kane blinked forward as well.
He came out just on top of the fighter, but its pilot had known that Kane was coming, and she had maneuvered her fighter around and was facing toward him waiting as its former momentum carried it backward. He had nearly no time to react before the fighter fired on the mech-frame with its weapons. But he was piloting a mech-frame, and that came with its own advantages over the fighter. The mental spellscript that gave him control of the mech-frame’s maneuvering allowed him to react nearly instantaneously. His thrusters fired and he slid to the side just as the fighter started firing, and he brought his own weapons to bear and fired. It was over in seconds.
Kane grimaced in annoyance as he read the damage list that the computer was showing him. He had destroyed the fighter, but his mech-frame had been so damaged that he would certainly be unable to get back to base. Or rather, he would’ve been unable, had this not been a mock battle.
His comm came to life and the voice of Lieutenant Commander Wang Shu Jiang came through.
“Damn, I almost had you there,” she said with amusement in her voice.
“You might as well have. If this was a real battle I doubt that I would’ve survived you for long.”
“You certainly would be dead if you had been piloting a Havoc,” she said with just a tad of envy. “I would give anything to have the mech-frame’s control spellscript for my fighter.”
“They might still figure it out,” Kane told her, even though he doubted it. The laws of magic were strange but they couldn’t be changed. And the spellscript laid down in the mech-frame required a person with magic to operate it. And none of the Havoc fighter pilots had magic. “Comm the shuttle crew, tell them that they are free to recover the blank missiles. And we should get back to the base.” He checked his sensors and noted that the beacons were still active. They couldn’t leave Earth tech in Ethorria, even though it was doubtful that the Ethorrians could find and recover it in the orbit of the planet. But then again, they did have a much greater mastery of magic than humans did. And they were very interested in getting their hands on any Earth technology.
“Right away, Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Jiang said.
He turned the Leviathan toward the planet and set a course.
***
A while later, Kane shut down the Leviathan’s systems and opened the cockpit. A section of its chest slid open and he climbed out into a large hangar. People were moving around securing the mech-frame in its berth and moving in to replace its power cells and do tests. All around the hangar, techs and magi-techs could be seen running around working on the fighters and the other three mech-frames. Kane climbed down the stairs that the support crew attached to his unit. Once down on the ground he turned his eyes to the mech-frame, taking its massive form in.
It was a large machine, almost twenty-eight meters tall, wide and bulky. The plates covering it were made mostly out of kotarium and a few of its alloys. Kotarium being a metal not present on Earth, but abundant on Ethorria. A metal that was widely considered useless by the Ethorrians. They preferred materials that had magical properties, and kotarium had none. It was however the strongest metal humankind had ever come in contact with. It was uniquely suited for building spaceships. And as the Ethorrians cared little about it, they could obtain it relatively cheaply. The hull was also covered in a special obfuscation nanite-mesh that could be activated to make the vehicle harder to see on scanners. The composition of the hull gave the mech-frame a silvery color tinted with just a bit of green, but if the nanite-mesh—or silent mode— was activated it turned all black. It was an impressive weapon.
To the side of the hangar were the Havoc fighters. They too were big, almost twenty meters wide, ten meters long, and eight tall. Clearly designed for space rather than atmosphere, they had four wing-like extensions from the core of the ship which housed their maneuvering thrusters. The core of the fighters was a spherical body that was in the middle with two ‘wings’ on each side, one above the other, set at an angle. The entire half sphere that was the front of the fighter was clear and the cockpit could be seen inside. It was made of some pretty powerful materials and reinforced by magic, but it was still not designed to take any punishment. If a fighter couldn’t move out of the way of an attack, they would most likely die anyway. The inner side of the cockpit was smart glass and various data could be projected on it. But it could also project screens that showed the zoomed in picture from the visual sensors. Their cockpit allowed the pilots to see most anything in front, and the sensors would show them anything outside of their visual range.
The mech-frames by contrast had no clear cockpit, but instead had massive screens that surrounded the pilot once inside and projected what the visual sensors saw. However a mech-frame pilot could ‘see’ through the mech-frame’s ‘eyes’ when using the control spell. But that sight had the same limitation as that of humans, it was not suited for looking at things that were thousands of kilometers away.
The fighters were much more streamlined, their weapons mounted all around the sphere. Racks could be placed on the wings as well for added weapons or ammo, but that slowed them down too much.
The mech-frames’ weapons, on the other hand, could be mounted on the mech-frames themselves, but there were also scaled up versions of handheld weapons. The mech-frames had hands, and could use them in that way as well.
Kane turned around and was immediately accosted by a short, stocky man wearing black coveralls adorned with a single patch—a wrench and a wand crossed on a field of stars, making him a part of the UEF’s magitech department.
“Well?” Chief Gene Randor snapped at Kane.
“The maneuvering thrusters aren’t firing in sync, the spellscript is working fine, it’s the mechanical triggers, and the targeting system is acting up again,” Kane responded.
Chief rumbled a few curses in his beard and marched past Kane toward one of the magi-techs that had just plugged a diagnostic tab into the mech-frame’s access point on one of its legs. Shaking his head, Kane turned and walked away as Chief started ordering the poor magi-tech around.
Kane didn’t manage more than three steps before someone called out to him.
“Commander, a word if you please,” the thickly accented and gravelly voice called from his left. Kane turned and looked at the tall, green-skinned woman. She had quite prominent tusks peeking from her lower jaw, she was wearing an UEF uniform, and even though outwardly she did have vaguely human features, there was no mistaking the fact that she was not.
“Of course, Specialist,” Kane told her. She gestured and led him away toward one of the adjoining rooms.
There were few of her kind in the hangar, and a few more in the compound that surrounded the portal to Earth. They were natives of Ethorria and called themselves the Wanderers. But no human could ever look at them and not be reminded of the fantasy race in the Earth books and stories. Someone had even made the mistake of calling them that name once, which had upset the Wanderers immensely, as it did sound close to what their former name had been. Later they had learned that the Wanderers had done something in the past that had resulted in them losing their homeland and their name. And in Ethorria, names held power.
But the fact that they did look almost exactly like they had been portrayed in human works had sparked quite a debate. In fact, most of the races and wildlife that the human expedition force had encountered when they first stepped through were familiar to them from human myths, legends, and fictional works. The prevailing theory was that the barrier between universes had been thin on Earth and Ethorria, which resulted in some kind of awareness passing through, ingraining itself in people’s subconscious memory. After all, people on Ethorria had stories and myths about things that existed only on Earth. And it was only natural that there were similarities. Ethorria was an alternate version of Earth, one in a parallel universe.
But
while enough awareness passed through for people on both sides to unconsciously imagine what inhabitants of the other side looked like, they got most everything else wrong. The Wanderers for example were nothing like the people of Earth imagined them, but were instead courteous, timid, and preferred to avoid violence.
Specialist O’nga Uhra led him inside the small meeting room and closed the doors behind them.
“What is it?” Kane asked.
O’nga fidgeted for a moment but then took a breath and spoke. “I’ve been asked by your command people to deliver a report, to tell them if in my opinion the battle-golems are ready for deployment.”
Kane’s eyes widened at that. He knew that she meant the mech-frames, as they were based on the Wanderers’ battle-golem spellscript combined with Earth technology, but he had not been aware that the command was looking to actually deploy them. They had been testing and improving on the designs for a decade, the mech-frames were the final incarnation of years of work by the Earth’s best engineers and m-techs, and the Wanderers’ scripters. And the fact that they had asked O’nga for her opinion meant that they were seriously thinking about using them.
“That is…interesting,” Kane said.
“I was hoping to ask for your advice, if it is not too forward of me.”
“It is no problem, Specialist.”
She sighed in relief. Her tribe had been working with UEF for over two decades now, and still the Wanderers worried about offending.
“I have learned much about the way you people do things, but I am still baffled at times. I do not know why your superiors had asked me if I believe the battle-golems are combat ready.” She scratched at her chin as she thought about it again, the confusion clear in her eyes. “I have been telling them from the start that there are no problems with the golem spellscript, nor with any autonomous spellscript we have laid in its frame. Magic and spellscript do not work in the same manner as your technology, there are no bugs or malfunctions possible. If the spellscript is laid down properly, it will always work as intended as long as it is not damaged. And the golems have been capable of battle since the moment we awakened them.”