“Captain,” Ensign Holts hands flew over her data-pad, “partial hit on a vessel code.” She continued to work through the information.
Falco and the other officers waited, shifting in their seats.
“Code 110001010K11Y0.” Moments passed and her hands stopped. “That’s all we have, but that’s enough.” She looked up at Falco. “Captain Fei’s vessel, the Kwan Yin, or at least her fleet identification responder is intact.”
“Captain Fei is alive.” Falco looked around the table. “They are alive or the Oortians have compromised another signature. They did it with the Data-Pods then they could mimic a fleet vessel.”
His officer’s shot questioning glances at one another.
“Think about it. What are the chances the Kwan Yin would be so close to the face of the Oortian field?” Falco asked. “There is only one reason to position your boat so close to open space.” Falco bumped a fist on the table. “Fei waits for the opportunity to escape. If it were a trick, the Oortians would not leave it where our tech could visually identify it klicks away.”
“There is a possibility,” Ensign Holts stated, “based on the number of objects moving in and out of the Oortian field now, some of the Oortians close to the blast and shock waves from the Dragon missiles survived, then so too, could the Kwan Yin and her crew.”
The Pluto Room fell silent, but Captain Falco felt hope as the Oortian field had stopped its advance and 10th Fleet had struck a major blow to the Oortian fleet. And somewhere among the growing number of Oortians appearing on the face of their dark wall like stars, a small green light had appeared.
Captain Fei was alive. Falco could feel it. He spun toward Commander Shar’ran. “Can we move the station?” Falco’s eyes burned with intensity and he repeated the question. “Commander, can we move Station Pluto?”
“Towards Earth?” Shar’ran stared back.
“10th Fleet,” Ensign Holts stated with resolve.
“The Oortians must respond.” Falco pointed toward the holo-feed and the growing number of stars twinkling in and out of the Oortian field. “They are coming, and when they do we will see their version of Dragon missiles. If,” he looked around the table, stopped at Lieutenant Wallace, “if, like 10th Fleet, the Oortians were holding back their most powerful weapons, starships or soldiers—”
Wallace nodded. “They will send them now. They will respond without hesitation.”
“We must be prepared to reduce the distance between Battle Station Pluto and Admiral Chen’s fleet.” Falco’s jaw tightened. “We are it. Vice-Admiral Hallsworth and the newly anointed 11th Fleet, has left the Mars Station. Two-years, ten months, give or take a week from our location.” Falco stood, paced around the table. “How do we move something meant to remain fixed? And move it with purpose?”
“Stability thrusters to start.” Lieutenant Wallace stood and walked toward Ensign Holts and the controls of the holo-feed. “Ensign?” He pointed at the control pad and Holts nodded and slid over. Wallace worked at the data-pad, the hologram zoomed in on Battle Station Pluto.
The lieutenant reached toward the hologram, spun the floating image with his hands until the bulk of the Battle-Cubes were pointing toward 10th Fleet and the Oortian field. “We use the thrusters on this side only, full-burn.”
“That’s not enough power.” Chief Tenzin stood and joined Wallace at the controls. “We could move all stabilizing thrusters but two and position them here on the station.” He pointed toward the opening of the private bay where the Anam Cara was kept safely positioned. “We mount them in an optimal grouping, just like we do our main engines which are made of many small engines and directed as one.”
Lieutenant Wallace was now nodding, a smile spreading across his face. “Yes! The stabilizers are mobile with grav-locks to ensure safety and flexibility in various conditions. And,” Wallace looked directly at Tenzin, “we can group them around the Anam Cara, right, Chief?”
“Exactly!” Tenzin reached toward the floating hologram with both hands together, found the opening for the private docking bay and pulled his hands apart. The Anam Cara’s stern and main engine were visible deep within the station. “We move a few grav-locks to the outer hull of the station and lock the Anam Cara down, then add the thrusters around her.” Tenzin put his hands on his hips. “We have a main engine we can control through the Anam Cara’s bridge.”
“I like it,” Falco growled, he and Ensign Holts joining them in front of the hologram. “But what about stopping?” Falco shot Chief Tenzin a sideward look. “Can the two remaining stabilizers stop us?”
Chief Tenzin raised his shoulders. “Eventually, Captain. But if speed is the goal, this,” Tenzin pointed at the hologram, “is the arrangement and positioning that will create the greatest thrust.”
“Do it,” Falco stated. “Do it with great haste, Chief, and let me know the second you’re done.”
Falco reached toward the hologram with arms wide and moved them until his hands met. The image spread out, showing Battle Station Pluto, the small red dots representing 10th Fleet’s progress and the Oortian wall covered with stars. Beautiful and deadly stars, Falco thought, twinkling in and out as the Oortians passed back and forth through the field.
Their numbers growing.
76
Captain Fei
the Black Field
The Kwan Yin clung to edge of the black field, meters from open space. The Viper class vessel leaked repair epoxy from hundreds of cracks and holes on her bow and port side. There were pieces of ‘bodies’ stuck in what was left of the exterior hull layers, sealed in place by the foaming, hardening paste.
Inside the boat, skull plates pierced the exterior bulkheads and protruded through the ceiling, twisted forms frozen in looks of horror. Yes, Captain Fei thought rising to a knee, they are faces or something resembling them. The bridge was a macabre museum of the damned, a museum hit by fire and waves of energy. Crewmen lay harnessed and wide-eyed in their seats no longer fused to the deck, but scattered in all directions.
Alarms wailed, lights flashed and the Kwan Yin’s emergency system took over the hologram station and the ship-wide COM. “Hull integrity forty-percent, life support system stabilized, gravity compromised…” On and on the list went and the holo-feed displayed the damaged areas along with the report. Fei reached a console, entered his private code and muted the sirens.
A massive explosion, Fei thought, just beyond the field. The flames melted the outer heat shield layer of the hull. Then the shock waves turned the Kwan Yin into a rattle with human bodies thudding off the deck, ceiling and bulkheads, over and over again. Either the entire fleet was destroyed in a single instant or Admiral Chen had loosed the Dragon missiles. In either case, 10th Fleet was destroyed or so desperate, they launched the unthinkable.
Commander Zhu cried out in pain. Other moans and sounds of the hurt and dying followed.
Captain Fei spun on one knee, found the twisted form of his commander, stood and moved to his side. The Virtual Surround Vision was now a detriment to few living crewmen of the broken Kwan Yin. Another chunk struck the hull, burnt entrails slid down its hammered surface and were glued in place by the hardening hull-epoxy.
“Someone shut down the VSV!” No response, just a rotting sulfur-like smell hanging in the air and the sounds of the dying. Emergency aid containers lay open or covered in blood next to most of the bodies. Some of the wounded desperately trying to close open wounds or numb the pain as death closed in.
“Where is Doctor Jampa?” Fei fought to hold Zhu down, but one arm was little more than crunching bone and flaps of flesh. A red spurt caught the side of Fei’s jaw, slid down his ear.
“Commander Zhu!” Fei grabbed his friend’s muscled shoulders and pushed him back to the deck causing another scream to chatter through the commander’s broken teeth. “Listen to me. I take the arm now or you die.”
Commander Zhu’s dark, wild eyes softened. He looked at Captain Fei, spit, blood and shards of teeth came out
before the words, “Do it.”
Fei nodded and a shaking Zhu forced a sobering nod back.
“I need Doctor Jampa now!” Fei remained fixed on his commander.
“He’s dead. Med-room is gone. Here,” a solid object bounced behind Fei and came to a thudding halt, slamming into his shin. Anger faded as he reached for the laser saw. “Just us Captain,” and the voice was gone.
Fei grunted in the general direction of the voice, looking hard at Commander Zhu, “This is going to hurt.” A slight click and Fei dialed the red beam to a length of ten centimeters. Zhu’s head rolled away from the mass of leaking, ragged pulp that hung from his shoulder.
“It’s OK, Commander,” a gentle smile spread across Fei’s face, “open your mouth.” Fei fought off a grimace and placed a chunk of rubber from a blown hatch seal between Zhu’s splintered teeth. “Bite down.”
By the time the scent of burning flesh had mingled with the rest, Captain Yue Fei had taken his friends arm and saved his life… for now.
The VSV continued to stream the devastation. Dying enemy forms emerged from the sea of black, their forms twisted and shattered. They emerged like grotesque aberrations each time they entered within the meter of gray space that surrounded the vessel, where the camouflaging blackness met the hull, oil and water, Fei thought.
He pictured an aura, a once protective field around his boat the Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. The enemy carnage bounced and stuck to her foaming hull, her breach-suppression systems pushing the thick void-filling epoxy through hundreds of shrapnel penetrations. Can the obliterated forms of the living be shrapnel? Fei pondered as the skull plate of one of his enemies was sealed into the bulkhead to his right. Yes, he concluded.
Thousands of microscopic cameras continued to mirror the horror around them. Areas of the interior hull appeared where the cameras had been damaged or destroyed on the outside. The greatest technology of modern optics became a crystal-clear window into the depths of hell.
An approaching glow appeared and grew larger and brighter off the portside and was followed by others. Each began as a pinprick of light and quickly grew into a sun. Monstrous silhouettes flashed close to the Kwan Yin’s hull a split second before their forms blew apart, thudding off the hull.
More shockwaves pounded the battered Kwan Yin. Captain Fei locked a hand around the stout base of the Battle-Net station and pulled his unconscious friend and commander, tight to his side. His face pressed hard against the deck, eyes staring into the darkness as wave after wave hit the Kwan Yin.
Monsters dying, exploding, their pieces sticking or bouncing off the hull and Captain’s Fei’s injured and dying crew had fallen silent. Fei held tight to his friend, closed his eyes and prayed to the Goddess of Compassion.
The Kwan Yin was pulled toward open space, Fei fought to hold on but the force was too much. Commander Zhu slid from his grip; Captain Fei reached up with his free hand desperate to find another handhold, his feet dangling in midair. The ship was sideways, an elevator going up traveling at an insane speed. Fei’s fingers slid, his grip gone and smashed into something hard, he was pressed into place, his legs at an awkward and painful angle, unable to move. The ship stopped, Fei flew up and crashed into something soft, the Kwan Yin dropped. Fei’s stomach released, the contents washed over his face and his body pressed against a sticky bulkhead. Down his boat fell, the pressure pushing against every muscle, organ. His lungs pushed out a last breath, unable to draw another.
All went black.
77
Tzara’s World
the Darkness
Tzara, leader of the Creators floated helplessly in her shielded lair, desperately wanting to close the thought-stream connecting her to the clans. Shrieks of terror and pain filled the stream. The seven colossal shields’ soft fleshy undersides absorbed the enemy’s powerful weapons until the fire was too hot, the energy too strong. The giant beasts of the Creators begged for death. Once the heat melted their flesh into oil they were consumed by the raging fire that followed, fueling their own demise.
But the shields held the fires back long enough for some of the warriors to release from their stronghold sacs and survive.
The Darkness moved in vain, the protective mass was too slow and too late, covering the shields moments after the enemy released a new and mighty weapon. A powerful force of which the Creators had never seen before. The protective field, the Mother and giver of life became an oven and then a tomb. The Darkness had failed and she was damaged. No Tzara thought, she is hurt, a wounded god… cannot be a god? Nothing. The Darkness left her thoughts her own. For the first time in millions of cycles, Tzara was without the Darkness. Not a single tendril from its vast reach found her memory. Tzara was alone, the Darkness gone.
Her lair shook around her. The Thirteen planets and their two life-giving stars felt each shock wave while moving in their tight orbits through the Darkness. Again and again the thought-stream filled with the dying, images of the devastation. Planets closest to the dying shields absorbed the brunt of the massive creatures after they were blown into pieces that came crashing through their thin atmospheres. Millions of their inhabitants died under the crush of crumbling, falling buildings and were swallowed by towering black waves of quake-ravaged oceans.
Wait, Tzara focused and zoomed in on the clans’ thought-stream. There. Again she went closer, using all of her power to look in on the world of the Warruq, the world hit hardest by the demise of the shields. The world washed in energy and death and there it was again, a black tentacle. Reaching down from beyond the planet’s protective field, reaching down from the Darkness towards the devastation.
Tzara froze, her plated carapace hardened, instinctively curling itself up into a defensive ball and hung in the center of her lair, gently floating as the walls bounced from wave after powerful wave of energy continued to assault her world. Still Tzara watched, listened over the thought-stream. Fear gripped every system, every organ and still she watched the Darkness reaching and eating the Warruq dead. Millions of warrior dead or dying were cracked open, blended into slurry and sucked into the tentacle, feeding the Darkness.
Mass, Tzara thought, the Darkness needs mass to grow to move and live. The cries and screams filling the thought-stream of the clans were not only the sounds of the injured. Tzara now saw hundreds of the tentacles on all of the planets including her own. The Darkness was healing herself, consuming the mass of the clans. Dead, injured or alive, she ate and she drank by the millions.
Pain shot through her and Tzara’s carapace straightened, stretched by the terror and sting of the attack on her organs and systems. I am sorry, my Darkness, she cried, my thoughts were my own, I could not control them. A voice echoed in her mind. The voice of the Darkness, a thundering power from a distant source, ravaged, menacing yet familiar, the Mother returned.
Tzara, you have seen me feed, allowed to see because we are connected, you are an extension of my will and your existence and that of the clans is mine to determine. Soon I will cleanse your memory and like the many times before, you will start again. You and the clans and the other Creators will forget the death, the destruction from my hunger and my need to heal. It will be replaced with the memory of attacking invaders, the courageous stand of the clans in defense of the planets, of the territories and the need for revenge. Revenge against the invaders. We will fight on.
Tzara shook with fear, anger and knew soon, she would forget and the sequence would continue, again and again, the death and destruction at the hands of the Darkness, the Mother feeding upon her children. What of the Realm of Warriors?
Yes. The Darkness was back. Yes, Tzara, what of the Realm of Warriors? I will leave you with this before I wipe your memory of my feeding, but I believe deep within your systems, you already know.
The answer flashed through her mind. Tzara knew the Realm of Warriors was the Darkness herself. Like prey being consumed by predator, the clans were food for an insatiable beast that only wanted to grow, only wanted
more mass. The Darkness, the protective Mother of the Clans, was little more than a graveyard for the living.
Tzara slowly uncurled her carapace. Floating in the center of her protective lair, she stretched, her systems woke from hibernation, and organs pushed her fluids and began processing her waste. How long have I been here? The shared thought-stream of the clans flooded with the warrior’s cry of revenge for the fallen, vengeance on the cowardly invaders, now running back to their base. They would be hunted and slaughtered without mercy.
A cloud lifted and memory returned to Tzara. The invaders’ powerful weapons, the death of the mighty shields that sent waves of energy rolling toward the planets. The Darkness, the Mother… protected the worlds of the clans, sheltered them from the coming storm and not a single death, her protective mass saving the thousands that lived on the thirteen worlds.
Tzara pulsed a message to the other Creators and then joined the shared thought-stream of the territories. She pushed her message to all the clans. The Darkness protects us from our enemies. The great warrior Kalis has returned. Even now she gathers the clans near the Veil. The invaders will be destroyed, the territories secured and our planets safe.
A warrior’s roar filled the thought-stream and Tzara closed her feed. Her carapace clicked and snapped with each locking armored plate. The warrior’s rage coursed through her systems, Tzara floated strong, proud, and fully stretched to her maximum length.
Tzara pulsed another message to the Creators, The invaders have destroyed all of the travelers and many of the warriors beneath them. Kalis will avenge our dead. The Movoo are intact and close in on their target and their ultimate purpose. Soon we will number fourteen.
Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars Page 34