“You didn’t answer my question.”
“We get a few shifters each year. But never within our walls. Always out in the open. And usually alone. They feel compelled to leave and seek solitude before the shift occurs. The ones who try to get back inside our cities in their wyvern shape, tend to be the ones we’re forced to kill.”
“That sounds like your people don’t know they can shift.”
“In the main, they don’t. And don’t want to know. My people, as in those of us who’re tall, are in the minority, and of us, only knights know about shifters and Wyverns. Part of our job is to keep new shifters away from the cities, and guide them to places like here. We try not to kill them, but it’s our short brethren who man the rail guns.”
“How do you guide them without being killed?”
“We have our skills.”
Which told me nothing at all.
We were interrupted by a rumble sound, and a major vibration through the floor.
“That didn’t feel good,” I remarked.
Willow looked concerned, but it was Sim who now looked worried.
“The plants just destroyed the entrance we came in through. About a hundred meters of tunnels collapsed. A lot of people have been buried, although quite a few shifted immediately, and dug themselves out.”
“We better go help.”
I was thinking more of the two AI’s having the strength to lend than anything else. Willow and I rose, and the four of us hurried back the way we’d come. At the collapse point though, we found large clawed hands pulling rubble out faster than even Gor could, with others carrying away the larger rocks and walling material, while unshifted people were shoveling dirt and taking it away.
A man came up to Willow.
“Your presence is required. Please follow me.”
We were led to another exit, which came out inside a forest, the entrance hidden by a high branch canopy. As far as I could see, wyverns were forming up into groups. Lasencion, back looking like a man, was waiting for us.
“You were right,” he said to me. “The devils in orbit saw us streaming out of our main entrance, and rained fire down on it. When it only caused us to scatter, they fired on the area behind the entrance, and caused a cave-in.”
“It was lucky your people were not hit,” I commented.
“Not hit? Of course we were hit. But energy weapons just piss us off.”
He looked serious. And I saw Sim having a light bulb moment. It took me a few seconds to catch up, but now I understood why the rail guns. High speed solid shot could punch through the scales, where the energy pulse would just bounce off. Hence energy weapons not being developed here. And fire of course would do very little at all to them. Probably tickle if anything.
“What can we do to help?” asked Willow.
“At the other entrance? Nothing. We’ll have lost some who didn’t shift in time, but we’ll have everyone dug out very quickly. This is something we prepare for. Cave-ins caused by earth movement, not attacks from space. No, we need you to make sure your people won’t fire on us if we come to their rescue.”
“So you see a need now?”
“I always saw a need.” He sounded grumpy now, and looked at me, as if only I needed the answer. “But damned if I’m going to show that to the likes of Willow here.”
“So why admit it now?” I asked.
“Because we’ve had some of the city folk already fire on some of our shifted people when they went to help and were closer than we are. We lost several to solid shot before we withdrew. I’m not going to let that affect anything, but before we go in range of their guns again, she needs to tell them to stop firing on us.”
“I can do that,” she said.
I wasn’t so sure she’d succeed in changing minds, but she seemed to be.
“Then we better go. The sooner we can make attacking the plants safe, the sooner we can attack. In the meantime, I’m having our people stage where they can’t easily be detected from orbit.”
Unless his people had a neutral heat profile, they would be detected from orbit. The question in my mind was if the plants would destroy a forest to take out food. So far, we’d seen no evidence the plants regarded other plants as expendable, or more so than their own were. On the whole, on planets where animal life had been removed, the plant ecosystems were mainly preserved. It was a risk though, but there were not many alternatives. It all came down to how good the Trixone sensors were at picking out individual animal signs.
Lasencion looked at me.
“You can fly with me.”
“Sorry, what?”
He stepped away, and shifted again. Give an elephant a dragon shaped head with large sharp teeth, scales, claws on all four limbs, wings, and a long tail, and you’d have something the wyvern would sneer at. He was bigger, and definitely nastier. A paw slid in my direction.
“Get on.”
The voice was louder now, and deeper, but still his. I stepped up, and he practically threw me onto his back behind his head. In midair, my suit shifted to full protection mode, and stayed that way until I had a grip on something solid behind his head. Even so, the suit still remained as gloves, over my actual other gloves, so now my hands looked like they were wearing heavy duty work gloves instead of skin coloured dress gloves.
Willow mounted another wyvern the same way I had, but Sim and Gor simply walked up the tails and backs of theirs. Gor actually smirked at me.
Wings beat, and the four wyvern laboriously lifted off, staying just above the ground weaving around the tree trunks, until we came to a clearing. I can’t say we then shot up into the air, because we didn’t. Labored beating took us above tree height, but it was clear the wyvern couldn’t fly particularly high.
My musing was interrupted by a light show above us. A shield had appeared over the four wyvern, showing multiple hits coming down from orbit. I was amazed to find it holding off the shots with ease, and how much it looked like the way the city shields worked.
Cue the aha moment.
Thirty Two
We landed in a clearing out of eyesight of the wall.
A ten minute run, leaving Lasencion and the others behind, had us back on the inside of the wall again. Willow led us onto the top of the wall itself, and told the commander there to cease fire.
“Sorry Knight Colonel,” he said. “King’s direct orders. We keep firing until all these invaders are dead.”
“We have help coming, and I don’t want them fired on by mistake.”
“The king’s been told the fire monsters are taking advantage of the situation to attack as well.”
She sighed. I didn’t blame her. I would have as well. She looked around until she found someone she recognized, and made a follow us motion with her head. He sighed, put his weapons down, and followed her. We followed both of them.
Willow led us back up to the throne room. Nothing much had changed, although the mood was more serious. The king still looked like a fop pretending to be a soldier. He’d even added a short sword to his side. His wife kept having to shift to avoid being swiped by the scabbard.
“Ah, Knight Colonel. You have returned. Where have you been?”
“Seeking help, majesty.”
“And have you found us help?”
“I have.”
“Will they relieve our siege?”
“They will.”
There was a short silence. The king appeared to be waiting for more, and Willow wasn’t volunteering any more.
“When?” he finally asked.
“When you stop firing the guns, majesty.”
“And why would we stop what is working?”
“Working? Hardly, majesty. At best we have a standoff, which will end as soon as we run out of ammunition and fire accelerant. I withdrew our knights from the field so as to avoid them being killed accidently by our own fire. Allies would have us give them the same courtesy.”
“So what of reports of the fire monsters attacking other cities?”
“Good. We need their fire out in the field where it can do some good.”
“You would use these monsters against our enemy?”
“I would, majesty.”
“And how would you stop them turning on us afterwards?”
“They won’t.”
There was a longer silence, filled with disbelieving faces.
“And how would you know that?” he asked, in a voice which suggested he was thinking treason.
“Because I know who and what they really are.”
“And who or what are they?”
“They are you, majesty. And all those who share your height.”
The laughter boomed through the room.
Willow looked behind her at the man who’d come in with us, who now looked quite uncomfortable. He stepped back a few paces, and shifted.
The laughter stopped, and screaming began.
He shifted back again, and the screaming stopped.
“What is this?” demanded the king.
“This is what you truly are, majesty. You are all a species of Wyvern. All of you are capable of changing your shape, but ignorance and fear has stopped you doing so for centuries.”
“Rubbish!” he cried.
“Majesty?” said the guard inside the door.
“Yes guardsman?”
The guard shifted, damaging the doorway in the process. This time there was a shocked silence, presumably because he was a familiar face. The guard shifted back again.
“What is this?” demanded the king.
“You have many among you who know they can shift,” said Willow, “but choose not to. Those who shift and want to be able to whenever they like, leave and live elsewhere. Those who choose not to shift stay here. Now is the time for those who can shift to fight in their wyvern form, without the fear and hatred of the past.”
She looked around the room.
“Now is the time for you to be what you truly are.”
I was surprised to see a few nods. The king wasn’t one of them though. Willow turned back to him.
“Majesty, you can give in to fear and hatred and perish, or you can embrace the reality of your people and survive. It is your choice, although many will fight anyway.”
“How many?”
“All of you can shift. But perhaps only five percent ever have before. Those will choose to fight if I command them.”
“If you command them?”
“Yes, majesty. The Knights main role is nurturing those who shift the first time and helping them adapt and choose where they live. We don’t lose people being killed by monsters, as everyone thinks. We lose people who choose to live a different way, the wyvern shifter life, and leave to do so.”
“And those who attack us?”
“You’ve never been attacked. Those you killed were all in puberty and confused as to what was happening to them. Many just wanted back within the safety of the walls.”
“I find it hard to believe.”
A man stood up at the back, and I recognized him as one of the nodders. His face was scarred. He moved to the middle of the floor with all eyes watching him, and shifted. His wyvern form was also badly scarred. The king stared at him, and looked back at Willow, with the wyvern shifting back into the scarred man, who retook his seat without saying anything.
“Believe it, majesty. Many of the scarred among us didn’t have hunting accidents. They were nearly killed by their own. And yet, they chose to return and live here anyway.”
He looked at me.
“Do you believe any of this?”
“Yes. While this is the first we’ve come across actual shifters, let alone a form of dragon, there are two things which back this up. Three actually. First, the tigers still cringe when dragons are mentioned, even though they believe you extinct. Second, our mythology is full of stories about dragon kind, and beings who change shape. Thirdly, I’ve fought against dragons myself in another realm. Oh, and fourthly, this is real. I’ve seen a man change into a wyvern, touched the wyvern, flown on the back of the wyvern, and talked to the man within while flying the wyvern. To deny the wyvern is to deny reality.”
He didn’t respond.
“And besides,” I went on. “My people never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“What’s a horse?” asked someone behind us.
The king finally smiled.
Thirty Three
In the later part of the afternoon, we did it all again.
By the time I woke up, Chaos had us parked in another empty system. She’d spent the time messaging with Jane to create a plan for Ralnor space, and had fabricated replacement missiles. The two of them had designed a second magazine for the new missiles, and Chaos had already completed it. Moving the missiles between the magazines wasn’t as fast as they would have liked, but by the time the new magazine was filled from the fabricators, we’d not be running out so quickly in the future. The ship lost a bit more of its now fairly limited storage capacity, but it was a trade I was happy with.
Nut followed me back to the bridge this time, and jumped to the top of his console tree, where he flopped down, and looked at me with his head upside down. I’m not sure he’d adapted to Chaos yet, but she made no move to pat him, and he seemed quite happy she didn’t.
Chaos brought up the extended navmap, showing a lot more of the core galaxy than before. Jane was expanding it rapidly, but all the same, only our local chunk was really visible. What was visible, showed several major incursions into Ralnor space that no-one had known about. Or if the roos had known, they hadn't told us.
With no further orders, and Jon not even on the navmap again, Chaos took us to the end of the nearer incursion, bypassing the backup fleets for now. We came out of the last jump behind the Trixone fleet, above a planet with an outnumbered local militia fleet about to commit suicide.
When we left a short time later, the species of wallaby, a roo cousin, were already talking to our diplomats on Terminus. Their fleet had only taken minimal casualties, and they were taking care of the few plants to make it to the surface themselves, after accepting our warnings and advice.
Chaos worked our way back along the incursion path, and we left destroyed fleets behind us in each system. We were going by the letter of Jon’s orders, but the spirit was being very flexible. Technically if you took out half of a fleet, then jumped to the next system and took out half of them, the ones you left behind didn’t now exceed the limit of my orders, and so we simply went back and finished them off.
Thus we leapfrogged around until the entire incursion corridor was clear of trees, and littered with debris. Five minute break for a drink, cat pat, and a quick face wash, and we did the same thing with the next incursion.
This time we were well and truly too late for the indigenous, and I took it upon myself to issue some payback.
During the next break, I pondered just how overpowered this ship now was, compared to when we’d arrived in the core. It was gratifying to finally be able to be the aggressor, instead of fighting defensive actions hoping to minimize our own losses. Of course, we’d had few due to suit tech and mages, but it could have been a lot worse.
The truly frightening thing was though, in spite of how powerful this ship was, the navmap now showed thousands of ships moving relentlessly towards where the Keerah and Ralnor rearguard actions were taking place, and all our blocking forces waited. Only major defensive positions were holding, and even these were being hard pressed. The Keerah and Ralnor were buying these positions with ships and crews, which Jon was moving forward as fast as he could.
But when you looked at the map overall, the Trixone were a tidal wave, come to sweep all aside. It was nothing but chaos rising. And one ship was never going to beat them. Overpowered as it might seem, the danger was dropping into a situation where the guns were waiting for you, and enough of them hit all at once to lose a shield.
I knew damned well I was walking a thin line between a cavalry raid, and a suicide mission.<
br />
Before we headed back out into Trixone space again, I sent Jon an update, and thoughts along those lines. He probably realized it much better than I did, but we needed help. Big time help. But while that was easy to say, I had no answer as to where to find it.
Even if we built more titans, and Jon gave me one, we still wouldn’t be able to stop this tide. Ten thousand light years is a long way, and so far, we had no idea what was going on along most of it. I could guess based on what I could see. And bleak was the only word for the picture.
Still, there was work to do.
By the time we’d stopped for dinner, the Trixone had lost another two shipyards, and a staging area.
I went to bed feeling not only exhausted, but scared at how up shit creek the galaxy was, in spite of what we were achieving.
After I woke up soaked and shivering from a nightmare where Chaos was ambushed and we crashed into a mountain on a planet somewhere with an orange tinged yellow sun, I managed to get some proper sleep.
Thirty Four
I managed to get some sleep.
Quality, rather an quantity, but in spite of waking from a nightmare where a small pink triangle was surfing a tidal wave before being swamped, I rose feeling refreshed enough for the fight ahead. A bathroom visit, long drink, and a snack, and I was ready to rumble.
Sim had found a way to recharge our guns, so we were good to go. She’d also taken advantage of our new flying friends to send them to Scimitar for a load of more guns. As there were now a lot of wyvern flying around all over the planet, the fire from orbit was ineffective, and those hit seemed to shrug the shots off. So as we formed up with the lead company of knights, they were mostly carrying the same gun I was.
The first thing I noticed was a substantial increase in the number of heavy weapons being used by the plants. They still weren’t getting to the walls any better, but the walls themselves were now pitted in a lot of places, as if they were trying to blow a hole through. Good luck with that one, but points for trying. They’d need to bring down a cruiser gun to do that kind of damage.
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 15