by S. W. Ahmed
“Not to worry, my friend. I wasn’t thinking of putting you in harm’s way like that, not just yet anyway.” Zorina chuckled. “It just so happens that we have a solution to your dilemma. But first, I need you to promise me something.”
Chapter 41
Jinser-Shosa did make the promise, but only after a lot of arguing and numerous attempted charges at both Marc and Zorina. In the end, Zorina made Jinser-Shosa realize that the challenge ahead was far too big to waste time fretting over old grudges the Phyrax had towards the Aftar and Mendoken. After all, it was the Unghans who had instigated the current wars, not the Aftar or Mendoken, and their agenda couldn’t be allowed to succeed. She explained that the only way to defeat the Starguzzlers was to eradicate them across the entire Glaessan, not just in the Federation. Destroying only the ones in the Federation would result in more of them continuously coming into the Federation from other parts of the galaxy and wreaking more havoc. Jinser-Shosa therefore had to give Zorina its word that if she provided the Phyrax with the means to find a way to destroy the Starguzzlers, the Phyrax would in turn help the Volona, Mendoken and Aftar destroy the Starguzzlers in their sections of the galaxy.
With that, Zorina and Marc went back into the scout ship and brought forward the container housing the infant Starguzzler.
“Here you go!” Zorina said. “Analyze away.”
Jinser-Shosa’s first reaction, once it realized there was an infant Starguzzler inside, was to lunge at the container and destroy it. But Zorina quickly convinced the Phyrax not to, explaining how samples of the Starguzzler could be taken to perform tests and find a potential vulnerability.
Marc was amazed at how impulsive Jinser-Shosa was. It seemed to always react first and think later. If the Phyrax were like this in general, that certainly explained why they didn’t function as a community and chose to live such independent, individual lives. They would all end up killing each other if they spent too much time together.
Jinser-Shosa picked up the container and flew off without another word.
The two friends waited, and waited. They could hear strange noises in the distance, like saws buzzing and metal chains clanking against each other, followed by wailing sirens and howling winds. Then all was quiet. Finally a flash of brilliant light appeared ahead, followed by a loud thud.
A few minutes later, the Phyrax returned. Parts of its face and body seemed to be covered with ash, and one of its limbs was blown away.
Marc was about to open his mouth to ask what had happened and if Jinser-Shosa needed help, but Zorina quickly motioned to him to keep quiet.
“What news?” she asked.
Jinser-Shosa’s limb magically began growing back as it spoke, and its voice gave no indications of pain. “Well, I took a look at that mini-monster. And fortunately it is no more!” It laughed. “I have to say, it felt wonderful to destroy that thing!”
“But not before you…?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, the reason you brought it here. I think we may have something. But it will be risky.”
“Pray, tell us.”
“I will, but along the way.”
“To…?”
“Phyra-Roidax, where we can try out my theory for real.”
Every Phyrax’s home was also an interstellar ship, and Phyraxes simply called them homeships. The vast, irregularly shaped gas formation that constituted a Phyrax’s typical homeship had an invisible, impenetrable seal around its perimeter, allowing it to travel through the vacuum of space without losing its structural integrity. A number of kilasic engines were usually anchored right in the heart of the homeship, controlled by a series of instruments that randomly floated around within the perimeter.
Phyraxes, in keeping with their hermit lifestyles, generally traveled alone. Although each homeship had plenty of empty space inside to hold a decent population, Phyraxes preferred total solitude. Even in battle, every Phyrax charged ahead with its own homeship. There was no coordinated army or leadership that gave the orders. Somehow, however, the Phyrax as a species were always very successful in battle. Their enemies attributed this phenomenon to a number of factors, including their individual bravery, their ability to innovate under the harshest of circumstances, as well as their unbending spirit of adventure and burning desire to conquer.
It was an exception for Jinser-Shosa, therefore, to be traveling with guests on board its homeship, and it made no secret of its displeasure in having to do so. Both Marc and Zorina remained quiet during the barrage of insults and threats of destruction they kept receiving. Marc was definitely getting quite used to the Phyrax’s irrational behavior by now, and tried hard not to take the harsh words personally.
With its powerful engines, Jinser-Shosa’s homeship lifted effortlessly out of Devoreef’s atmosphere and headed out into space. The Mendoken scout ship that Marc and Zorina had arrived on was still inside, securely parked in one of the lower corners of the homeship’s belly. The two of them joined Jinser-Shosa near a set of windows and controls on one edge of the ship, keeping a clear distance behind the Phyrax so as not to encroach upon its sense of space. Phyraxes generally needed a lot of space for themselves, since they tended to aimlessly fly about a lot. The controls kept flying about randomly as well, and had to be followed wherever they went.
The maximum speed this homeship could reach was close to 200,000 times the speed of light, allowing it to travel to the neighboring Phyra-Roidax system in just under a half hour. When the homeship arrived at its destination, its sensors indicated that the local scene was far from pretty. A miniaturized rendering of the star system showed that 3 of its planets and 10 of its moons were no more. They had just been blown away and completely erased from the map.
Jinser-Shosa cursed away. “You murderous, brainless blobs of hot air! Just you wait, your time is coming!”
“Their time is coming,” Marc thought. He certainly hoped so anyway. He had absolutely no idea what Jinser-Shosa was planning to do. Along the way, it had abruptly decided not to tell him or Zorina anything, just because it hadn’t felt like doing so.
The culprits were spotted just outside Phyra-Roidax, four of them, happily sucking plasma from the star’s core. Phyra-Roidax was a small star, far smaller than the supergiant Phyra-Keldax and significantly smaller than Earth’s Sun as well. At the rate it was losing its gas to these Starguzzlers, it didn’t have too long to live.
As the homeship approached the star, several surviving Phyrax homeships were spotted nearby, bravely trying to bombard the Starguzzlers with the weapons at their disposal. It was all to no avail, of course. All shots fired just disappeared inside the Starguzzlers’ bodies with no effect, probably attenuated to nothingness by the dense plasma layers. The Starguzzlers weren’t even paying any attention to the attackers, well aware that nothing and nobody was powerful enough to harm them.
“Those fools!” Jinser-Shosa shouted. “They have no idea what they’re up against.” It immediately made contact with the other Phyraxes, telling them to stop firing and to pull away. This homeship was going in with a plan, and it needed no help.
“You are sure about what you’re doing, right?” Zorina asked.
Jinser-Shosa turned from the ship’s controls and leaped towards Zorina. “You doubt me after all these years of knowing me?”
“No! I, ah, don’t doubt you. I just want to make sure you’ve taken everything into account. We’re only going to get one chance at this. And if we fail, then all is lost.”
“Hmph! In that case, stop bothering me and let me make sure I get it right!” The Phyrax went back to making adjustments to the ship’s controls.
After several minutes, Jinser-Shosa finally spoke with its raspy voice. “If you must know, I’m planning to fly the homeship directly inside one of those heinous beasts!”
Marc jumped in surprise, and had to try extra hard to keep his mouth shut.
“What!” Zorina exclaimed. “That’s your plan?”
“Well, yeah! What else did you think I ha
d in mind?”
“But that’s suicide! We’ll surely be vaporized the moment we collide with it!”
“Hah! To the contrary, my friend. Your years as Chief Imperial Defender have definitely made you too cautious. We’ll fly right through its surface and into its heart. The tests I did on your sample showed that the surface has only a very thin protective shell. Those Starguzzlers seem to mostly maintain their spherical shapes by nothing more than their own gravitational pull. Kind of surprising that so powerful and sophisticated a weapon has so rudimentary a defense mechanism!”
“Probably because their creators knew that nobody would be daft enough to try to fly into one! Wouldn’t the heat and radiation instantly kill us? It would be like flying into a burning sun!”
Jinser-Shosa laughed. “Nothing this homeship won’t be able to handle. All Phyrax homeships are built from the same basic ingredients found in stars and gas giants. Besides, my homeship was specially designed to fly into the cores of stars. Or did you forget what my favorite hobby was?”
Zorina nodded cautiously. “Will the homeship protect Marc and me too? Our bodies and suits are clearly not made for that kind of temperature or radioactivity.”
“Who? What?” Jinser-Shosa seemed to hesitate. “Oh, yes, yes, it should. You’re inside the homeship, after all. In any case, do you have a better idea?”
Zorina was silent.
“We’ll simply take out its central neural network,” Jinser-Shosa continued. “Without the core energy and sentience that holds it together, the whole thing will collapse. That will set off a chain reaction, resulting in a massive explosion in the end. Given the vast gas and energy reserves it has, you can only imagine the fireworks we will witness.” It laughed again. “That’s how I destroyed the sample you brought. Very gladly too, I might add!”
“You, ah, sure that we won’t get caught in the explosion ourselves, right?” Zorina asked. “We’ll get out in time?”
“What? Oh, yes, yes. Good point. I forgot about that.”
Not knowing what else to do, Marc closed his eyes and prayed. As insane as this whole plan was, his instincts were somehow telling him that he could trust Jinser-Shosa. And given how far his instincts had gotten him already, he could only hope they wouldn’t fail him now.
The Starguzzlers seemed to take no notice of Jinser-Shosa’s approaching homeship. They were too busy sucking plasma out of the star, and obviously did not feel threatened by something as insignificant as a miniscule cloud. And even if they did, as Zorina explained to Jinser-Shosa, they would never be able to aim directly at something that small anyway.
“Gas-thirsty fiends!” Jinser-Shosa exclaimed, speeding up the ship as it neared the surface of the nearest Starguzzler. “They’ll get what they deserve!”
All Marc could see through the windows now was the Starguzzler’s massive body, covering the entire horizon like a planet he was about to land on. But this was no planet. The shining white, almost transparent body made that painfully clear. The dancing sparkle within was so close now that its bright red haze would blind anyone who stared at it directly.
He braced himself for impact. All he ended up feeling, however, was a slight tremor emanating through the homeship’s chassis. Jinser-Shosa had evidently been right – the protective shell around the Starguzzler really was very thin. The ship had entered the Starguzzler’s body without encountering any resistance, and seemed to be holding fine as it headed straight for the core.
Through the ship’s windows, Marc could see nothing but a white glow outside, with the red sparkle ahead coming ever closer. “Perhaps this won’t be so bad,” he thought.
But he was wrong. After having traveled well into the Starguzzler’s body, the homeship suddenly came to a stop. It began shaking, first softly, and then violently.
Jinser-Shosa seemed far from happy as it analyzed the data on a couple of displays nearby. “Hmph! The Starguzzler has realized we’ve entered its body, and is trying to get rid of us. It’s trying to dissolve us with waves of high energy radiation.”
“We’ll hold, right?” Zorina asked.
“Hold, yes, but not indefinitely. These waves are not letting us move forward.”
“So we’re stuck?”
“Seems so! That leaves us with only one option. Not one I particularly like, though. I was hoping to get much closer to the center.”
Jinser-Shosa began firing freezer missiles towards the red sparkle. The freezer missile, a weapon as deadly to gaseous life forms as a thermonuclear bomb was to beings made of solid mass, instantly lowered the temperature of the surface it came into contact with to absolute zero. The gaseous target would condense, freeze and die within seconds.
The problem here, however, was that the homeship was still quite far from the core, and the density of the Starguzzler’s body was very high. The missiles were also made of a very light material. The chances of any one of them making it all the way to its target was very slim.
The shaking began to get more violent, and warnings of cracks forming in the homeship’s perimeter seal appeared on the displays. Jinser-Shosa cursed away and fired missile after missile, but every one of them came to a stop before reaching the sparkle.
“We’ve got to give the missiles more thrust!” Jinser-Shosa shouted, and abruptly flew off into the depths of the homeship.
More reports of growing cracks were coming in. Sirens were wailing across the homeship now.
Marc stared at the homeship’s controls and felt totally helpless. He knew nothing about this ship, nothing about how to get it out of the jam it was in. Zorina didn’t seem to either. They were both completely at Jinser-Shosa’s mercy.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Zorina said reassuringly. “I know Jinser-Shosa seems thoughtless and reckless. But through all their thoughtlessness and recklessness, Phyraxes have a remarkable knack for survival and ultimate triumph. You’ll be amazed at what they can do under the most ominous of circumstances.”
An ominous circumstance this undoubtedly was, and its knack for triumph Jinser-Shosa displayed within a few moments. Marc suddenly saw another series of missiles take off in the direction of the core. Seconds later, white flashes appeared inside the red sparkle. All the missiles had hit their target.
Jinser-Shosa returned through the cloudy mist of the homeship’s belly. “Success! Success!” it exclaimed gleefully.
The red sparkle collapsed and vanished, like a sea of water disappearing into a giant whirlpool. The hold on the homeship was instantly gone as well. The ship was free again, but its perimeter seal was about to give in altogether.
“Get us out of here, Jinser-Shosa, now!” Zorina yelled.
Jinser-Shosa reversed the ship’s engines and began pulling it out of the Starguzzler’s body. The hull shook fiercely, but by some miracle seemed to be holding together. On one of the 3D displays, Marc tensely watched the path of the ship as it edged its way towards the surface of the Starguzzler.
But then it happened – the chain reaction. It started off as a small flash at the point where the sparkle had been. The flash disappeared, and was followed by a shockwave that swiftly expanded in all directions. The wave looked like a bright red balloon that was being blown up far too quickly, and it was quickly catching up with the ship.
Jinser-Shosa floated frantically from control to control, trying to get the ship to go as fast as possible. “Come on, baby!” it kept saying. “Give me all you’ve got! Don’t let me down now after all these years!”
Marc watched with horror as the shockwave closed in on the ship. But just as the growing balloon was about to touch the edge of the ship, the ship broke free through the Starguzzler’s outer shell.
“Hoooorrrraaayyy!” Jinser-Shosa howled with excitement.
The homeship, now back in regular space, accelerated as fast as it possibly could to get away. And none too soon, for the Starguzzler, now completely engulfed by the balloon, exploded with a massive burst of energy. The colorful ball of fire that spread across
the night sky would easily be visible up to hundreds of light years away, appearing to the untrained eye as something similar to a supernova.
It took every ounce of thrust in the homeship’s kilasic engines to try to stay ahead of the impact of the explosion. And stay ahead it did, for as fast as the ball of fire was, it couldn’t possibly expand faster than the speed of light. Jinser-Shosa’s ship had already accelerated to speeds beyond that. The other Starguzzlers nearby also scrambled to get away from the explosion as fast as they could.
Albeit its dangers, the plan had worked. Marc, Zorina and Jinser-Shosa were still alive, and the ship they were on, although damaged, was still intact. And, most importantly, the Starguzzler was dead.
Jinser-Shosa sent communiqués to the other Phyraxes in the area, gloating about its accomplishment and giving them detailed instructions on how to destroy the Starguzzlers. It also warned them to fortify the perimeter seals of their homeships, and to increase the range of their freezer missiles before attempting to enter the Starguzzlers’ bodies. Then it began flying happily around Marc and Zorina, and even spoke to Marc for the first time.
“It worked! It worked! What do you think, eh? Am I a genius or what? My name will forever be engraved in Phyrax history!”
Marc glanced at Zorina, who nodded back at him. He then cautiously spoke his first words to the Phyrax. “Yes, you are a genius, a very courageous genius. We are very, very proud of you.”
“I like this individual, Zorina! Why didn’t you introduce me to him before? Now come, let’s have a blast. No pun intended!”
“You did it, Jinser-Shosa!” Zorina said, bobbing her head up and down with delight. “But remember your promise. This is not yet the time to celebrate.”
Chapter 42
The great battle for the survival of the Glaessan had begun. Starguzzlers were appearing all over the galaxy through consars, causing death and destruction everywhere. Entire planets and moons were being blown up, with their big, bright stars consumed and reduced to nothing more than red dwarfs. Countless ships, Mendoken planet destroyers and space stations were being eliminated, none of them any match for the size and firepower of the Starguzzlers. This was by far the greatest threat the galaxy had ever faced.