by George Tome
“Sigia? But… isn’t it surrounded?” exclaimed Kirk’an, stunned by the order. “They have planetoids nearby! They’ll blow us to dust in one hit!” he added gloomily.
“We have a plan. You’ll get the next instructions when you’re close to orbit.”
The cadet tried to look assured, although they could easily read the fear in his eyes.
“Please keep the contact with us… err… the situation is volatile, and we don’t want to lose the link before telling you the next step.”
“Acknowledged the order!” said Kirk’an dryly, ending the conversation.
The bracelet bearer felt equally upset by the change. How could they protect their precious cargo in the midst of the enemy blockade? The fleet command was mad!
There was another pause. This time, when the memories came back, their ship arrived close to Sigia, and Gill saw the home planet on the display wall. A big yellow star was shining on the left, and a small, reddish one became visible in the upper-right corner, at a greater distance. The second star revolved around the first one just like a normal planet.
The ship’s bridge roared back to life. Some of the soldiers were surrounded by strange combat equipment whose purpose Gill didn’t know and couldn’t read in the common memory. The commander gazed worriedly at the myriads of stars close to the destination, then activated a golden bracelet on his arm—maybe the same one that killed Tadeo and was about to bury him alive, too, thought Gill with a cold shiver in his tail.
Around the central table, six cockpits emerged from the floor, and six Sigians jumped inside. The display walls opened, allowing him to see a number of coves. Each of them had a black chair made of an unidentified material and was closed by two independent semidoors. The upper one didn’t seem to be more than a head cushion to block possible impact shocks, while the lower one had several displays and even a gelatinous sphere, smaller in size but otherwise similar to the one on the navigation table in the middle of the bridge.
Several soldiers rushed into the coves and closed both doors after them. Fighting modules, he thought, finding the information in his shared memory. If they had to abandon the ship, they could easily run away with their flying battle cockpits.
The Sigian-Gill stepped into one of the empty recesses, but he didn’t close the doors. His anxiety grew when he realized he couldn’t recognize the star map. The grays must have messed up the space-time continuum around the Sigian worlds. No wonder he couldn’t find the known constellations. They faced such insidious and deceptive enemies that even the celestial bodies became their friends and allies.
In fact, the Sigian-Gill knew all too well the meaning of the new constellations. It quickly became obvious to the others that the new stars were not what they appeared to be because they all began to move to their left, splitting from the real ones. Kirk’an shouted an order, and a soldier pushed his arms inside the jelly sphere.
With a guttural exclamation, one of the soldiers showed them another cluster of stars. A second fleet? the ominous thought struck the bracelet bearer. As if rushing to answer him, they started to form a giant funnel in front of their ship, a trap seemingly folding the very fabric of space to block their escape.
What evil tidings linked their enemies to the most basic laws of the universe, allowing them to access its unending energy? What resources did they gather to be able to display such an overwhelming show of power? The Sigian-Gill became more and more convinced that it wasn’t just a mere calculus, a problem of numbers and weight, that crushed them today at the Sigian gates. His presentiment was that the invaders somehow mastered the swells of space and maybe even time. They had a secret larger than the pathetic technological level they could reach under their own power. They opened the dam of matter and energy, turning them into a force impossible to defeat.
The Sigian-Gill took a deep breath, filling with burning rage. The ark is lost anyway. The only thing that matters now is to bring a rich harvest with us to the river of shadows.
Gill wasn’t sure if the thought belonged to the Sigian or if it was his because the ritual words about the “river of shadows” resembled the Antyran customs. But it hardly mattered; he felt the last traces of anxiety melting away, and a blind determination to fight like no Sigian had fought before rose in its place. He felt the accuracy growing inside his arms, his muscle power expanding tenfold. Before death would have a chance to see his shadow, he would move incredibly fast; his ganglions would estimate and command everything, dozens of times faster than usual. Come on! I can’t wait to crush you already! he shouted in his mind, gazing at the enemy fleet growing inexorably in front of them, fatter and hungrier with every passing moment.
As they drew closer to the funnel, the fleet chasing them from Ariga broke the distortion front and settled into a compact wall of ships, three layers deep. They weren’t afraid anymore of losing them—more so as the Sigian destroyer also slowed down to win more time.
The Sigian-Gill watched the forming of the strange barrier in disbelief, finally deciding that he never saw a bigger absurdity in his entire life. It was total nonsense from a military perspective—such a crowded pack couldn’t avoid, say, a wave of nukes launched in its direction. It seemed, though, that the prospect of losing some ships didn’t concern them at all. The enemies just wanted to cut off their retreat, although the Sigian-Gill doubted that any formation—no matter how smartly arranged—could really stop their destroyer from crossing it if Kirk’an gave the order to turn back.
Three of the lights in the funnel in front of them were shining much brighter than the others—and not because they were closer.
“Their second fleet has left the orbit and is coming your way,” said the cadet. “Three planetoids joined them.”
Kirk’an pointed at the brightest light in the center of the screen.
“We can’t avoid this one,” he exclaimed, barely holding his anger in check.
“Keep the course unchanged,” ordered the cadet.
The star began to take shape, turning into a ship of apocalyptic proportions. It soon looked like an asymmetric V pointing at them, its left arm much shorter than the other one. This was the type of ship Gill saw when he first connected to the bracelet. It wasn’t jumping yet, and soon it covered most of the display wall. The Sigian-Gill couldn’t help but wonder what was in the commander’s beard to bring them here.
As if the metal enormity wasn’t enough to take them out in one hit, hundreds of attackers followed in its wake. The silvery silhouettes flowed in their direction like a swollen river.
Suddenly, the planetoid stopped. The whole gray fleet jumped to the right, toward one of the rivers of light coming in their direction. Even some fixed points—which Gill could have sworn were stars—rushed in the same direction.
The giant was shaking, trying hard to turn back. Normally it would have turned in an instant, but now it was moving with obvious difficulty.
“Why don’t they attack us?” a plump Sigian exclaimed.
Kirk’an shook his head, astounded.
“It’s damaged! I saw something like this in the battle of Pomagro,” he said. “When the big engines are hit, it starts shaking like this.”
“But how…” babbled the previous speaker.
He swallowed his last words because the planetoid finally turned its back to them, and the view left them speechless: the back armor was horribly twisted, steaming abundantly from huge holes opened deep in its structure. The two jump engines on the longer arm were heavily damaged, the space around them whirling in hundreds of chaotic streams. Every few seconds, powerful eruptions burst out of the glowing cores, pulling along the nearby space and blending it in spiral distortions thousands of feet long. The six smaller engines on the shorter arm, although apparently unscathed, seemed unable to stabilize the behemoth.
“Our fleet has left the orbit!” exclaimed Kirk’an, horrified, grabbing his temples in his hands. He pointed at a river of lights coming in their direction.
The hulky
silhouette of the planetoid was hiding the nearby ships, but even from that distance, they could see that the farthest ones were golden, not gray. The bracelet bearer screamed in his kyi: Who’s defending Sigia now? And then he realized the ghastly answer: They abandoned the planet to help us!
“I don’t get it,” exclaimed one of the Sigians. “How did they depolarize it so fast?”
“Antimatter. Probably all our fleet reserves.”
They arrived near the wounded giant and entered its range of fire. But the monster didn’t shoot at them; its rear lenses were most likely smashed to bits. In the front, however, the battle commenced. Flashes of light and orange flames burst forth around the edges of the planetoid. Sometimes, they glimpsed golden arrows moving with lightning speed, betraying the frenzied assault of the Sigian fleet.
“No time to fight,” exclaimed Kirk’an regretfully, checking if they were still followed by the weird escort.
The ships were there, but the unexpected attack had thrown their plan in disarray. The wall began to lose cohesion as the grays prepared to meet the Sigian fleet, which they had no way to avoid.
“Still, we can’t miss the chance,” he continued with a murderous glare in his eyes. “Load the charges!”
A shout of joy erupted on the bridge. Everyone felt that running from the battle without firing a single shot at the enemy was truly a sacrilege.
When they approached the planetoid, the tall Sigian pressed his hands inside the distortion jelly and started to play with the space. At about the same time, the first wave of glowing green strings flooded their display walls, but before long, the defenders skillfully hunted them down.
The gray wall coming from behind had all but disappeared. Some tried in vain to engage them while the bulk charged the golden fleet in a desperate attempt to rescue the wounded planetoid—the only one capable of taking out their destroyer in one blow—that is, if its lenses survived the onslaught.
The biggest challenge of the grays was to block the golden arrows from getting behind the planetoid and attacking its propulsion. They even tried a couple of times to ram the Sigians, but they never succeeded.
Gill’s destroyer was in an ideal position to hit the wounded giant, and the best thing was that the enemy didn’t expect them to fight instead of running away in the darkness of space.
“The navigation engines,” ordered Kirk’an. “Take out the one at the top,” he said, pointing toward the intense light that spawned most of the space aberrations.
Gill couldn’t understand how the Sigians followed their way under fire; he only saw a maddening carousel of stripes, fluorescent lines, and colorful sparks running in all directions. The sphere handler stretched the jelly from inside out, as if he was swimming in a whirling river. A bright-yellow, highly irregular shape appeared in the center of the display wall.
“The engine’s right ahead! Launch the charges?” asked a soldier from a transparent floor cockpit.
“Get a little closer,” replied Kirk’an, grinning broadly.
“This is madness,” exclaimed the soldier, more to himself, gazing worriedly at the sensors.
Dozens of alarms started to scream, a sure sign that the radiations coming from the giant engine were more than a match for their protections.
“The shields are about to fail!” shouted the soldier.
“Fire!” Kirk’an finally gave the order.
A salvo of fluorescent orange stripes gushed from the destroyer’s belly, spearing the fiery furnace. The planetoid had no chance of avoiding them. The sphere handler frantically pushed the space, and the ship jumped backward. Despite this, the blast shock wave hit them so violently that the god of the bracelet landed on the floor with a loud thud, followed by two other soldiers who didn’t take the elementary measure of locking their cockpit doors. The commander didn’t budge a bit, his automagnetic suit holding his feet firmly anchored to the floor.
Shortly after that, the unbelievable violence of the engine explosion caught them. A sea of fire surrounded their ship, and for a brief moment, it seemed that the whole planetoid was blowing away. The blast tore off huge chunks from the longer arm, spreading them it all directions. Ice and gases flared out of the craters while the monster quickly spun out of control.
The golden ships pressed on with their attack, deciding to finish it off. Soon, they reached the top of the dorsal armor and launched a wave of bombs through its holes. The huge blasts of the Sigian bombs were followed by strings of internal explosions.
Kirk’an gave another order, and the destroyer left the battlefield. Some grays followed them in a desperate attempt to block their escape, but the Sigians nearby attacked with such ferocity that they had to abandon the hopeless idea. Anyway, as long as the grays were unable to fold a very large distortion front, they had no chance of keeping pace with the destroyer.
Behind them, the battle raged with renewed fury. The grays, despite their overwhelming numbers, started to crumble under the vicious assault. For a while, it seemed that the Sigians were about to win, but every moment, more and more grays reached the battlefield, opening fire as they arrived.
The destroyer was running away from the battle at full speed when a huge explosion ripped the sky. The dying giant had just ended its active service in the enemy fleet, throwing millions of fragments—some as large as a warship—in all directions.
Around the wreckage, the survivors were playing their deadly game. The grays launched wave after wave of tightly packed nukes, trying to guess where the yellow stripes would materialize. Sometimes, well-aimed Sigian charges found their marks, smashing the gray vessels into bits.
It wasn’t a battle anymore: the Sigians were all doomed, and they knew it. Despite this, none of them tried to break off but fought valiantly to take as many enemies with them as possible.
The closest of the two planetoids arrived at the battle. This was the ship Gill saw when he first connected to the bracelet. The scattered charges launched at it ended up vaporized by the formidable defenses; meanwhile, its lenses fired green rays of huge intensity at the golden fleet. Almost every successful hit blasted a Sigian vessel into oblivion.
Despite the grays’ overwhelming power, for each ship they destroyed, they lost at least five. The battlefield filled with fragments of armor, ship frames, splinters, and colorful ice fragments sucked out of the broken tanks.
Next, the grays tried to disable the largest Sigian vessel—a color stripe much brighter than the others but just as agile—the fleet node. An old Sigian surrounded by troops appeared on the screens: the fleet commander.
“My brave soldiers,” the commander shouted, “we fought many battles together, but now the time has come to say good-bye. Whoever wants to surrender, feel free to do it. As for the rest of us, let’s show our enemies how the Sigians face their ending! Let’s charge once more, for the night’s coming!”
The Sigians on Gill’s destroyer pressed their right fists over their mouths and blew guttural choeee sounds in his direction, after which the transmission ended. The node stopped jumping and turned toward the closest planetoid, even though the latter focused all available lenses on its bow. The impact depolarized both ships, and the Sigian node broke in half, its aft section drifting apart to join the smoldering wrecks floating around. Other Sigians jumped on their commander’s footsteps.
The slaughter was quickly over. Thousands and thousands of survivors escaped from the twisted carcasses, flying toward the desert planet to join the fighting on the ground. The battle scene became a huge graveyard, stuffed with myriads of fragments, some still burning violently, fed by the oxygen that escaped from the broken tanks. From time to time, a wreck exploded, blasting a shock wave of gases and metal shards through the surrounding debris.
The young cadet of the fleet command appeared on the screen.
“Your way is free,” he exclaimed, half relieved, half terrified for the irreparable loss of their small fleet. “We’ve made it!”
“How’s the situation the
re?” asked Kirk’an.
“Bad,” the cadet answered bitterly, “and soon, it’s going to be all over.”
“Can we have some images?”
A large city appeared on a display wall. It was none other than Sigia, the Sigian capital, spread between two large mountain plateaus in the middle of the desert. Some high-altitude clouds rolled on the dark sky.
To everyone’s horror, they could see that the battle for the city had already begun. Thousands of lenses mounted on the buildings and in the canyons fired relentlessly at the sky, hitting the clouds with green beams.
And then they saw the huge bombers descending from the dense mist. Their sphere-shaped bows spilled hundreds of bright-orange hologuided bombs, able to smell their prey with deadly accuracy. The bombs plowed the canyons and the city itself, silencing the orbital defenses.
The general chaos deepened when hundreds of thousands of flying vessels took off to avoid the bombing. They ran—but to where? No friendly city awaited them anymore. The blackness of space swallowed them one by one. In the distance, far from the city’s batteries, rows of fat transport ships descended from the clouds to unload the enemy troops. The horizon became red from the heavy fighting carried out across the planet.
The Sigians on the destroyer’s bridge stood speechless. They were witnessing the moment they most feared, the end of their civilization. The Sigian-Gill caught his head in his hands, a useless attempt to fight the pain.
“Close the contact, we saw enough!” Kirk’an told them abruptly. “We have to carry on with our mission!”
The transmission ended. An orange dot, which held everyone’s gaze, was all that was left on the display.
They were alone. For the first time, they were truly alone, the kind of loneliness that only the last members of a vanished world may experience. Their civilization was no more, and they had to rebirth it from the ashes of its defeat.
“Change the course,” the commander ordered, pointing at the holographic map of the quadrant. “If they triangulated us, they’ll send a whole fleet this way.”