by J-F. Dubeau
“Is this intentional?”
“Jettison,” Ukupanipo ordered.
“It’s heading straight for the—”
“Jettison!”
I pushed myself full thrusters away from the torpedo with plenty of time before impact with the comet . . . but only a second before two other projectiles destroyed my ride in a devastating plasma vortex. The concussive blast threw me into the depths of space, clear away from the Dormitory, Kamohoali’i, and my companions. I quickly fired my thrusters to stop myself from flipping end over end, and twisted to see what was going on. One last torpedo was circling around the comet, like a hawk waiting for its prey. Skinfaxi had gone back to flying close to the Dormitory, leaving me to float away in the dark. Any moment, Kamohoali’i could fire another volley in my direction, and there would be precious little I could do about it.
My navigation system flashed in my field of vision, informing me of an increasing change in direction of my rapid drift. It took me a moment to realize what was happening.
“Another space fold. This vacuum’s getting crowded!” I didn’t know what to think of Skinfaxi’s humor as the situation escalated rapidly.
I turned to see where the new gravity well was pulling me. A dozen identical ships, each almost fifty meters of sleek, polished white pseudo-plastic, materialized from the fold. They bore stylized symbols of the zodiac as visual identifiers, linking them to the Gaia who had manufactured them.
The assembled Renegade fleet, along with four Sputnik-class Capeks of various sizes and configurations, was finally making its arrival.
A single tiny rocket shot out from the side of one of the Renegade warships, quickly adjusting its trajectory toward my slowly drifting position. I waited patiently as the projectile sped in my direction. As it zoomed by less than a couple dozen meters away, my navigation systems went haywire, disrupted by whatever jamming technology was on board the projectile. Within moments it impacted with the remaining torpedo, clearing the void of offending weapons.
The respite wouldn’t last.
I continued floating gently toward the incoming fleet. We’d known about their impending arrival. Because of Koalemos and his time on Olympus, we now knew more than enough about the fleet they built, the weapons they had, and their future plans, but everything we did from this point on was a gamble.
The war fleet passed me. Marvelous machines built in the past few days by the powerful fabrication facilities on Olympus. Each ship was controlled through a custom-designed cognitive interface conceived by Ardra, the silver centipede whom I’d assisted in assembling Demeter. This way the Renegades could go to war without the worry of losing lives in the process. In this at least Aurvandil was true to his words.
Each was also equipped with its own space-fold engine, allowing the entire fleet to make multiple jumps without having to wait for the drives to fully cool down.
Demeter was likely creating more of these engines of war as we spoke, ready to subjugate the second-generation Gaias. An odd interpretation of freedom for all Capeks.
The fleet passed me and spread out to create a perimeter around Kamohoali’i. Only the Sputniks held back, leaving the more powerful telepresence-controlled warships to tackle the colossus. I watched as both sides, Renegades and war Capeks, unleashed swarms of self-directing missiles, torpedoes, and countless countermeasures at each other. The complex dance of weapon fire and defensive maneuvers was beautiful, or would have been if there wasn’t a sentient Capek’s life on the line. The breathtaking display of a thousand glowing ion thrusters streaking though the black vacuum in a ballet of motion couldn’t distract me from knowing that in the middle of all this, Kamohoali’i was likely going to die.
“Belenos?” I was supposed to be with him inside the Dormitory. As fate would have it, Kamohoali’i’s arrival had spoiled those plans.
He grumbled something unintelligible. The big dog was almost the exact opposite of Skinfaxi. Where my first companion had always been openly warm and welcoming, Belenos was a forbidding, brooding Capek. I wasn’t exactly comfortable relating to his sort, but there was no denying his competence and initiative.
“What’s it like in there?” I had resigned myself to one of two fates. Either I would float here until the battle that was unraveling in spectacular displays of plasma explosions and ion trails was resolved, left at the mercy of whoever came out on top, or I would be destroyed in the crossfire. At that point it hardly mattered. It was on the success of my friends that the fate of our galaxy rested.
Somewhere between me and the comet, one of the warships began to fall apart. The absence of air prevented the wreck from exploding or burning up in glorious flames, but the plasma discharge from the volley of torpedoes that had hit its hull ate at the pseudo-plastics with voracious appetite. Lines of coruscating star-fire pulsed on the edges as they were vaporized.
“I might have something, but it’s gonna require a little more t ime.”
I wasn’t fond of that answer. Skinfaxi and Opochtli had been forced away from the protection the Dormitory provided against Kamohoali’i. The giant war god had been careful not to damage the comet, but the Renegade fleet had no such restraint. So far Ukupanipo’s skills as a warrior allowed him to coordinate both Sputniks away from the worst of the fighting, but how long could that last?
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I’m going to cut you off now,” he growled again.
“What?”
“Good luck.” And he shut me off from his quancom channel.
The four Renegade Sputniks had held back. I suspected they housed the Capeks that were in control of the warships. The only one I recognized was the large squid-shaped Capek, who had been floating outside the City with Aurvandil’s cohort when I first met the elegant Renegade leader.
The squid was moving very slowly toward my position, directly under my feet. It gave the illusion of falling to the surface of a tiny, tentacled planet. Minutes passed as I watched the war continue. Kamohoali’i had adopted a new strategy, positioning himself as best he could between the attackers and the comet. You’re wasting your time, I thought. Save yourself.
Eventually, I landed. Very softly my feet touched the cold pseudo-plastic shell on the incoming Sputnik’s hull. I settled gently on the surface. He must have known I was there and moved here on purpose. To save me? To kill me? Capeks—normal ones at least—were not commonly armed. Maybe he meant to push me into the cataclysmic fray ahead.
I turned my attention back to the battle. Another warship had fallen, cut in twain by punishing missile barrages. A third had gotten too close, and I could see swarms of Kamohoali’i’s automated defense drones crawling over its surface.
“Would you like to come in?” Aurvandil said. Why was I glad to hear his voice echo through my head as he broadcast his invitation to me?
I didn’t bother giving an answer, nor did he bother waiting for one. A hatch on the top of the squid’s head hissed open, allowing me access to the interior of the Renegade Sputnik. What did I have to lose? Wasn’t this my plan all along? I went in.
“Welcome. I am Eremiel.” Its voice was kind but distant, as if it was distracted. I wondered if it only spoke to remind me that I was not just entering a ship but a person. I thought I’d gotten used to this concept, but clearly I hadn’t.
“Thank you. Huh . . . I’m Dagir.”
“Keep moving down this corridor. Aurvandil is waiting.”
None of the Sputniks I’d boarded before had ever felt as decorated as Eremiel. Skinfaxi’s interior was devoid of sharp angles, clean and minimalistic. Almost cold. Opochtli felt like a passenger plane. Clean, comfortable, but in no way homey. Eremiel was different. His interior would have been comfortable even to a human. It was lit in warm yellow. The narrow corridor was decorated with landscapes from various planet surfaces, presumably places he’d been and was fond of. Wood inlays and shining metal latticework ran along the walls. The interior, though small, had a rotating mechanism that simulated gr
avity at just under eighttenths of a g, and did I detect atmospheric pressure? It was all very human.
As I walked into the main cabin, I half expected Aurvandil to wait for me there with a glass of brandy in one hand, twirling a prosthetic moustache. While the room was as lavish as I’d anticipated, decorated with much the same style as the rest of the ship and even furnished with a handful of comfortable armchairs, the Renegade leader was not sitting comfortably in any of them.
“Magnificent, isn’t he?” Aurvandil was no longer the elegant artificial creature I’d first met. One of his arms was still missing, the stump slouching grotesquely to his side. His face and chest were opened, showing extensive damage to internal systems. Some more than others.
He was slumped on the floor, his back resting on one of the armchairs, looking at a large monitor showing the ongoing battle outside. The image was focused on Kamohoali’i.
“He exists solely to destroy you,” I explained sadly. “Nothing in the galaxy can stop him. A perfect representation of freedom, caged by purpose.”
“True, but that takes nothing away from him. You know why we’re here? All of us converged on the same target at the same time. Why this specific Dormitory?”
“It’s the only one.” We knew that now. Thanks to Koalemos. The only Dormitory in the Milky Way anyway. Thousands more just like it had been launched to other galaxies. A seeding of the universe.
He nodded slowly. “We don’t need to destroy the giant Capek, just the Dormitory, and we’ll have won. We’ll be free.”
“You’ve split Capek civilization. Destroyed centuries of trust and cooperation. How can you be so satisfied at that?” I could barely contain my outrage. How could he be blind to the ongoing consequences this civil war would have? “If this war escalates—”
“Don’t worry. It won’t. Look.”
I watched as the battle raged on. Kamohoali’i stood his ground, five drifting carcasses at various levels of destruction surrounding him. Nearly half the Renegade fleet had been destroyed, but the war god was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Several of his torpedo batteries were no longer firing. One of his ion thrusters was venting plasma uncontrollably. It was all the colossus could do to prevent damage to the large chunk of dirty ice he was protecting. I watched as he inevitably failed. Escape, you fool! I thought at him.
At last a single plasma torpedo made it past the torrent of countermeasures pouring out of the titan. The lone projectile weaved and dodged until it was through the protective barrage before applying full thrusters and detonating on the comet’s surface.
Star-fire touched perfect ice as plasma erupted from the torpedo. In the span of a heartbeat, the shell of water, frozen for centuries, was vaporized, exploding outward, first as jets of brightly glowing superheated particle, but eventually as fragments of ice flying off into the void.
The Dormitory was revealed for all to see. A sleek, fifteen-kilometer-long shard of impeccable obsidian glory, its surface a dark mirror reflecting the fireworks of ion and fusion fire that floated nearby. Its hull was flawless, undamaged, and unmarred, the residual energy of the torpedo an expanding cloud of glowing blue plasma.
“You see humans as weak, fleshy creatures. Primitive apes from what you remember from the Nursery. Undeserving of the galaxy that we should inherit,” I explained as Aurvandil watched, dumbfounded. More torpedoes made their way to the Dormitory’s surface, leaving plasma clouds to linger in their wake as the black shard continued to float on its journey, oblivious and uncaring. “We are magnificent creatures, Aurvandil, but this— this is what you’re up against.”
“Nothing’s indestructible. We’ll toss it into a star or a black hole. Just a setback.” I could sense outrage and defeat, perhaps hints of fear, in his voice.
As if on cue we were pulled gently toward the front of the cabin. I stumbled to keep my balance while Aurvandil slid forward. I looked to the monitor, expecting Kamohoali’i to have activated a space fold to finally, thankfully, retreat before he was needlessly destroyed. Instead, I discovered why Belenos needed to concentrate so much.
The Dormitory had stopped its rotation and righted itself. A strange phenomenon was manifesting near its prow. An enormous amount of energy was being poured into the same area. None of my systems could properly analyze the process, save for the unprecedented heat signature at the center of the manifestation. Fragments of a destroyed warship were sucked into the vortex during its formation, and the darkness somehow grew even blacker until the disturbance had settled.
“Is that—?” I murmured, mostly for myself.
“A collapsor point!?” Eremiel finished, confirming my suspicion.
In another display of impossible mastery over the physical world, the human ship had drilled a hole through space-time, creating a tear in reality out of nothing but stored energy and incomprehensible technology. Then the Dormitory, along with my two Sputnik friends, vanished through the wormhole.
“Where are they going?” demanded the Renegade leader, outraged.
I looked down at Aurvandil, a broken husk lying on the floor of the cabin, his prey snatched from his eager hands. I thought back to how desperately close he had come to eradicating human life from this galaxy, with only one target to annihilate. I thought back to how Belenos had cut me off from the rest of my companions. I smiled inside, reveling in what I didn’t know, and answered in complete honesty.
“I have no idea.”
Somehow I had expected swift retribution from the Renegades. However, with Belenos gone, the Dormitory and my accomplices with him, I came to realize Aurvandil hadn’t brought me on board to seek retribution for the damage and injury I had inflicted upon him. He had no guards, no defenses, no escape.
Expecting impending victory, fully intent on irreversibly removing our creators from the galaxy, he wanted to show me. Show me how he was right. Not to gloat but to prove a point.
“We’ll just wait for your friends to come back then and interrogate them. Or wait for the humans themselves.” Desperately grasping at straws truly diminished him. It was sad.
“I don’t think they’re coming back.” I sat down to explain, glancing absently at the still-raging battle in the vacuum outside. “And you’ve seen what humanity can do. We wouldn’t stand a chance. Is this still necessary?”
I pointed to the monitor. Kamohoali’i’s resolve was almost spent. Only two ships from the fleet remained, but the great hunter was almost dead, his munitions nearly spent, his navigation and engines crippled. He was no threat, no danger.
“He’ll get repaired and hunt us down if we don’t finish him off.”
“Will he? Anhur almost destroyed the first hunter Coatlicue sent after you. He found another purpose for himself.” Anhur: there was another loose end that would have to be looked into. What would be his punishment for his part in all this? To remain floating endlessly in the depths of interstellar space? A giant, helpless hulk drifting forever? Fortunately for him, Lucretiusclass Capeks were designed to handle long periods of isolation.
Aurvandil remained quiet for a long time. Was he sulking? Dying perhaps? I was tempted to begin repairs on his body. It was my nature to try to help others, friend or foe. It was what gave me pleasure, what the Nursery had bred me to love and fulfill me. Aurvandil would have called me a slave to this drive.
“What happens now?” It was Eremiel that spoke up. His calm voice surprised me for a moment, reminding me that my brother and I weren’t alone.
“If we surrender, we die,” Aurvandil stated with absolute conviction. “If we fight, we die.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I explained. “My mission—our mission—wasn’t to stop you. We knew you were coming, but we were looking for a bargaining chip, something we could use to negotiate peace before . . . Well, before any of this could happen.”
I gestured once more toward the monitor.
“Go on,” the squid-like Capek urged.
“The Gaias are hardcoded to hunt down and destroy
threats to humanity. They are the true slaves you need to free. If that code can be disabled—”
“They’d let us live . . . ?” There was no joy or hope in Aurvandil’s question. I doubted the answer mattered to him. He’d failed, and as far as he was concerned, to keep on living meant to serve humans and rebuild their galaxy. He wanted no part in it.
“Some maybe. Not you.”
His head turned to face me, the cracked pseudo-plastic dome revealing little of his emotions.
“You’re broken,” I continued. “Yggdrassil let you out of the Nursery too soon. It’s what makes you afraid. It’s why all these doubts gnaw at you and will keep doing so until you die.”
His already-broken body slumped even further. I looked down in pity at him. Centuries had gone by as he walked amongst a people awash with clarity of purpose while harboring crippling uncertainties. Damaged himself, he tried to damage all around him.
“I never liked this life anyway.”
“Doesn’t mean you had to ruin it for everyone else.” I got up to crouch in front of him. Slowly, I began to take his carapace apart. Underneath, several key mechanisms that were necessary to keep a Capek alive were suffering. Unless he was fixed within a few days, maybe weeks, he would die. Power was overflowing into his cognitive matrix, which would lead to data corruption on a grand scale, destroying what made him Aurvandil. Already the same phenomenon had rendered core motor systems inoperable. I had done quite the number on him.
“Why haven’t you had Ardra look at this?” The centipede could have probably repaired most of the damage, especially what was necessary to conserve his “brain.” Everything else could be replaced.