by Kyle Mata
Roux climbed on top of a table. “Everyone, get to your ships and go! Warn everyone about the Rae! We must unite in the name of humanity, in the name of survival! Tell your fleets and your armies to prepare for war!”
Everyone began to scatter and run. “Karr, let’s help cover the evacuation,” Thomas said, running after everyone, while still holding Theron’s sword. Karr was about to run off, but he turned first.
“Are you okay, Daena?” He asked.
“I’m okay, Karr. Thank you.” Daena said. “Go help everyone else now, big guy.”
Karr’s helmet betrayed no emotion, but he smiled ever so slightly, and she knew it.
Within minutes, the ballroom had emptied. Chairs and tables had been flipped and bloodied. If not for the bodies, it would have looked as though there had been a wild party. All that remained were Daena, Roux and Theron.
Theron ran over to Daena and looked her up and down. His armor as clean and unscathed as it was when he entered. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
Daena just stared at the man.
“Daena, you have to understand, it was for the greater good. You wouldn’t sacrifice everyone here for yourself, would you? You wouldn’t be so selfish?”
Daena continued to stare at him. Her face was devoid of emotion.
“I was merely being logical, Dae. Throwing myself at them would have been fruitless suicide. I needed the time to think of a plan. I needed to distract them.”
“Karr did it,” She said coldly.
“That Shadowri brute? He got lucky, is what happened. It’s fortunate he didn’t get us all killed.”
Daena started to walk toward the door and gestured for Roux to join her with a head tilt.
“You fought hard, Theron. I see why you were promoted to Arch Knight,” She said, gesturing up and down at his shiny armor. “Your order is full of brave warriors.” She looked at the fallen Knights who gave their lives in everyone’s defense. “You are not one of them.”
“I was doing what was right for everyone.” At this, Daena stopped and faced him once more.
“You were doing what was right for you. You’re a coward.”
“How dare you?!” Theron raised an open palm high and brought it down to slap her hard across the face, but before he could land such an assault, Daena wound back and punched him hard in the jaw. Theron Aznable fell like a sack of grendori roots, knocked out cold.
“Let’s go, Roux.” She pulled off the necklace he had given her and dropped it unceremoniously on his unconscious face.
“I would’ve killed him,” Roux said matter-of-factly as they made their way toward the Athena’s Owl.
“Well, the night is still young.”
CHAPTER 23
DEATH OF A WORLD
The Nyrotsi first, fourth, eleventh, and twelfth fleets sat dormant around the gas giant Xe. Technically, when two or more Nyrotsi fleets were all together, they became one fleet and took the ranking number as their title. Xe was the only planet that orbited around the star in the system. The next nearest solar system was the Gold system, which was where Vurumon could be found.
Admiral Majex paced back and forth on the bridge. He knew something was going to go wrong at the conference; it was just a matter of when. But his recon team on the ground disguised as Coalition diplomats were reporting back regularly every thirty minutes with no issues. He knew Tavington was plotting something, but what?
“Sir, the recon team has gone dark. They missed their last check in by thirty seconds and counting, and they are not sending or receiving a signal.” His intelligence officer reported.
“Hail Admirals Masamune, Dineen, and Kane, and put them on screen, if you would.” Majex said, ceasing his pacing so he could face the forward viewscreen. Within seconds, the Admirals of the fourth, eleventh, and twelfth fleets were on screen.
“Ladies and Gentleman. I’m taking the Dawn’s Grip and the Tiger Lily as escort to Vurumon. Admiral Masamune, I’m leaving the first fleet in your capable hands. Prepare to warp in at my command.”
“Yes, Admiral Majex.” They replied. Saeko Masamune gave a small bow of respect.
“Take us to Vurumon.” The Dawn’s Grip and her companion battlecruiser Tiger Lily entered a short warp-jump.
Upon arriving at the KON planet, the Dawn’s Grip and the Tiger Lily immediately had hundreds of ships in orbit pop up on the strategic display. Not a single ship in the entire flotilla thought about getting in the way of the Dawn’s Grip as it passed through. Several fleet Vice Admirals actually commed Majex and welcomed him to the blockade.
“We’ll give the ground team a few more minutes to report. If we don’t hear from them, send the Nightfang,” Majex ordered as he continued to pace about the bridge.
“Sir!” The radar officer said suddenly. “I’m picking up a massive warp distortion.”
“The Rae fleet, possibly?”
“Well… it could be sir, but this appears to be just one distortion, and it is larger than the planet itself.”
“What does that mean?” Majex asked, looking at the distortion. On the opposite side of the planet there was something very big incoming. “Is that infernal machine correct? Could it be broken?”
“I just calibrated it myself a few hours ago, sir. Everything was in working order.” Majex was already back in his seat. He opened a comm channel to the entire fleet, including the Coalition, Mason, Fordian, and all other independent ships.
“All ships, this is fleet Admiral Aidmen Majex. Break formation and form around these new coordinates, immediately!” His crew got to work dispatching orders and coordinates to the entire hodge-podge fleet. He also relayed an image from the warp-detector to all ships; despite it being a classified prototype, now was not the time to be keeping secrets from new allies.
Everyone who had ever captained a ship in space in the past thirty years knew who the great Admiral Majex was. Hundreds of ships began to move away from the unknown incoming object.
Thomas was doing his best to corral and herd the diplomats and galactic leaders to their ships, but the panicked mob was likely to do more damage to itself than the Rae would. An Arch Knight of the Order of the Nebula came running into the marble street with a legion at his back.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“The Rae have breached the compound—everyone is evacuating.”
“Noble legion, escort everyone to their ships, move!” The Knights dispatched and began helping the panicked people to their ships when there were sudden cries of panic. A few people looked upward and pointed; Thomas looked, too. Streaks of light, like meteorites, zipped through the sky. They were drop pods, but whatever was ejecting them seemed to be cloaked with some highly-advanced technology. Thomas barely saw a shimmer of it.
The pods hit the ground and their doors shot off with explosive force. A snarling Rakju leapt out of each one.
“Knights, to battle! Engage the enemy!” The Arch Knight cried as she charged off toward the nearest alien. Thomas’ pistol was empty; one can only conceal so much ammo in a dress uniform. But he did still have Theron’s sword. As he charged at one of the Rakju that was about to maul a Mason tier one, all he could do was think back on the swordsmanship class he was forced to take at the Academy. Back then, he could not think of a time he would ever need to use a sword; but as he sliced the Rakju along the torso with perfect form, saving the Mason’s life, he could not have been more thankful for such a class.
Roux and Daena made it to the main street and wished they hadn’t left the ballroom. Rakju were tearing across the land, trying to find humans to kill. Daena tried her comm unit in her ear, but it was still jammed. Roux and Daena ducked off the road and hid behind a large Bluewood tree. A pair of Rakju were lurking along the road, sniffing into the air.
“I’m going to run toward the main city. When they chase me, get to the Owl.” Daena whispered.
“That’s a horrible plan, Logos! You can’t outrun them,” Roux whispered back angrily.
&
nbsp; “I also can’t fly the ship. Good luck!” Daena kicked off her high heels and dashed toward the city. The two Rakju immediately gave chase. Roux cursed to herself, then ran off toward the landing pads. Several ships had already begun lifting off into orbit.
The beasts were gaining on Daena quickly. She wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was and immediately regretted trying to be the hero. One Rakju leapt forward and slashed at her back, tearing a piece off her dress. She cursed and dashed into the woods, dodging between trees. She figured the trees between her and the monsters would help, but she had no idea where she was headed.
There was gunfire behind her and the sound of claws against fallen leaves was replaced by two thuds. She turned and found the two Rakju had died very close to her. Karr ran up to her with a smoking barrel on his MAGE rifle.
“I’ll take deeds over sweet words any day,” Daena said.
“What?”
“Never mind, let’s get out of here.”
He handed her his LT sidearm, and they began heading back toward the landing pads.
As Thomas cut down a third Rakju, he saw Roux running down the road toward him. She was being chased by a Rakju herself.
“Thomas!” She cried.
“Duck!” He yelled back. She dropped to the ground and he threw the sword. It caught the Rakju in the face, causing it to fall backward from the force of the throw. Thomas caught up and pulled the sword out of its dying body, giving it a rough twist on retrieval. “I always got in trouble for that move in class,” Thomas said, as he offered her a hand up.
“The one day I don’t pack a firearm—the one day.” Roux berated herself, as a passing Knight tossed her a repeater rifle.
“Every armed citizen helps.” The Knight called over her shoulder as she continued to run. Roux caught it and smiled.
“Well, let’s go get the Owl, shall we?” She said as she chambered a round in the weapon with a loud clack.
Suddenly, comms came back. Thomas immediately commed Karr.
“Karr? Location?”
“Headed to the Owl.”
“Powa. We are, as well, and we’re close. We’ll have her warmed up and ready to go as soon as you get here.”
“Copy.”
The fleets in atmosphere over Vurumon were oblivious to any mishaps on the surface until comms returned and they were all barraged at once with sudden cries for reports and pick-ups. The Rae had either planted a team on the surface prior to the ceremony, or they had snuck a stealth vessel through the Hadrian’s Wall maneuver. The Hadrian’s Wall maneuver was a resource intensive blockade tactic used by the Nyrotsi fleet that required nine or more battle groups and was used to prevent travel to and from a planet.
That last few ships had just moved out of the impending impact zone when the intelligence operative on the ground finally reported back to the Dawn’s Grip.
“Sir! Tavington is dead—he was blackmailed into helping the Rae, and he committed suicide. Then a small Rae assault team ambushed us at the ceremony; we were saved by a Shadowri. A Mason woman barked orders for human unification that everyone seemed to follow out of necessity. I’m currently evading enemy forces to—oh no…” There was gunfire and heavy breathing, as though the operative were running and shooting. “Okay, threat eliminated. I’ll be back in just a moment, sir. Reina has already made it back to the ship and AGH—” There were cries of pain and more gunfire was heard. Then there was only static.
“Corporal? Corporal Gray!” The intelligence officer slammed his fist down on the console.
“Tell Sergeant Reina to return immediately,” Majex said.
“Sir! Incoming—” There was an incredibly bright flash of light and suddenly an ENTIRE PLANET appeared out of nowhere, right where the warp distortion had been, and it slammed into Vurumon with immeasurable force.
Majex had never seen how the Nomen appeared before—no one had. It was impossible to predict where and when one might appear. Those on Gigantia who had seen it were vaporized on impact. But what was more important was the fact that he had just witnessed the collision of two planets.
As half of Vurumon was immediately reduced to rubble, some of the fragments of the planet shot outward and snatched a few unfortunate ships out of the sky, like a bullet hitting a bumble bee.
“All ships get to a safe distance from the planet! Collect your passengers and jump to warp, post-haste!” Majex called to the fleet. The pilots of the Dawn’s Grip and Tiger Lily immediately got to work putting the engines and reactors to their limits. As a stray planetary fragment shot toward the Tiger Lily, the battlecruiser’s mass-driver cannons turned and fired, blasting the chunk into harmless dust, mere meters before impact.
As diplomatic and VIP shuttles found their way to their respective ships, swathes of the flotilla began to warp-jump out in every imaginable direction.
Thomas and Roux clambered aboard the Athena’s Owl and Roux was up the ladder and starting the engines faster than Thomas imagined anyone in an evening dress could ever move. He remained at the ramp with the Knight rifle awaiting the rest of his team when suddenly the entire planet was rocked. He flew down the ramp and onto the landing pad. Had the Athena’s Owl not been magnetically held in place by the landing gear, a feature allowing the rocket to attach to rotating stations, the entire ship would have likely fallen off the pad and down the nearby scenic cliff, as several other ships had.
Large rifts in the ground opened up and pools of lava began to form as deep dormant pockets of magma were suddenly introduced to the surface. The entire planet was shaking; the mountains in the distance were literally crumbling. Thomas had to scramble to get back up the ramp, and when he looked into the nearby KON encampment, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Entire structures were being swallowed whole by chasms that looked like giant tears in the planet. Trees began to catch fire from the roots upward. The tops of mountains were rushing down to meet the bottoms.
All of a sudden, the planet was collapsing, and he had no idea why. “Thomas! Do you see them?!” Roux yelled frantically from the cockpit, seeing the chaos through the external cameras and the forward viewport. Thomas tried to look around the area for his team, but they were nowhere to be seen.
There was a loud crunch and the landing pad they were on, which was precariously perched over a canyon for aesthetic reasons, broke free and they went sliding downward.
Roux acted quickly; she detached from the sliding pad and slammed the power controls forward. The Athena’s Owl punched forward through a cloud of ash from a newly formed lava pool nearby. Thomas had nearly been tossed off the boarding ramp and into the chasm a second time, but he managed to hold on to a hydraulic lift arm for dear life. As Roux leveled off, changing the direction of the artificial gravity onboard, Thomas fell into the ship. He quickly closed the ramp, so the airspeed wouldn’t snap it off. Without it, the ship would never pressurize for space flight.
“What about Karr and Daena?” He asked as he climbed up the ladder quickly.
“We wouldn’t be able to get to them if we were melting at the bottom of a lava pool, now, would we?!” Roux spat back.
They flew as low as they safely could, and second by second, more and more of the once pristine planet Vurumon vanished as the planet seemingly imploded.
“Karr? Karr, do you read me? Daena? Do you read?!” Thomas called frantically into the ship-mounted comms.
Karr was running forward toward the Knight encampment when a chasm suddenly opened up along with a powerful planet-wide jolt. He tried to stop fast but was unable to and fell headfirst down into the chasm. He dug his free hand and feet into the side of the gaping maw, but the soft fertile dirt of Vurumon just gave way as he tried to slow his descent into the pool of lava forming at the bottom. His HUD was reading dangerous levels of external heat. Daena was watching as one second Karr was running ahead of her, and the next he was gone, as if swallowed up by the planet.
She thought quickly and looked around. She grabbed a thick vine growing on a nearby tre
e. She yanked it free with all her might and cast it into the hole. She began wrapping her end around a trunk when it grew taught. She hoped the vine would hold the Shadowri’s weight, but as quickly as the scar in the planet opened, it slid closed. She tied the vine tightly, with an effective knot she learned during her Defender training, and ran to where the chasm had been and began pulling on the vine.
A black gauntlet punched through the dirt. She dropped the vine and grabbed the armored hand with both of hers. She pulled until he finally started to rise slowly. After a tense struggle with the planet itself, he emerged, covered in dirt, but unharmed.
Lightning crackled in the sky, followed by loud thunder. Vurumon was dying.
“Thanks,” Karr said.
“You owe me one,” Daena replied with a smirk, despite her growing fear. “We need to get off the planet.” They began running toward the landing pads, which were all missing now. The cliff face with all of the landing pads was now completely bare and getting larger as more and more terrain rapidly eroded away.
Karr and Daena had to run away from the shattered encampment and back toward the Grand Hall from which they had come.
“Karr? Karr, do you read me? Daena? Do you read?!” Thomas called frantically over their comm units.
“Thomas, where are you? We could use a pick up right about now!” Daena replied as she ran, dodging debris that was raining down from the nearby mountain.
Karr suddenly changed direction and ran toward an empty patch of land which, judging by the rate of the approaching cliff face, was about to be dissolved within the minute. Daena trusted him, though, and followed.
“Thomas, leave. We will catch up,” Karr said, coming to a stop in the middle of the field outside the grand hall.
“Karr?” Daena called frantically, confused by the Shadowri.
“What do you mean leave? We aren’t going to leave you,” Thomas said. Karr reached forward and seemed to press a button. A small turquoise rectangular ship appeared out of thin air. Karr tapped semi-solid buttons until a ramp slid down. They rushed in as the land corroded under their feet.