Francescan War Chronicles 1: Space Knight Denxeiter

by C. K. Pershing

  A fleet of over 100 large enemy ships appeared followed by a massive ship at least five miles long. It looked like a bloated scaly slug and millions of tiny tentacles writhed all over its surface. Scores of insects started to emerge from pores in the skin that made up the ship’s surface. In the back of Feln’s mind, he was glad that if Aaltskog wouldn’t have to witness this and that she died believing they were victorious.

  The enemy had so many ships, and the Francescans were so badly outnumbered, that the insects alone could probably destroy them. Feln absently lifted Denxeiter up and away from the hangar doors and they duly closed, preparing for battle. He closed his eyes and waited for the barrage of firepower that would obliterate the last vestige of the Francescan fleet. But before anybody on either side could fire, there was a bright flash of light and suddenly the Francescans were surrounded by more of their own.

  The rescue fleet had arrived.

  And what a fleet it was. Feln didn't know what to expect, but he certainly didn’t expect anything like what he saw. There were about 50 cruisers of varying classes, the same number of corvettes, and three fleet carriers.

  As formidable as that force was, what made the rescue fleet truly spectacular was the presence of twenty royal super battleships twice the size of the heavy alien battleships. Unlike regular Francescan ships, the royal ships were white with gold crests and gilded features. Massive murals depicting previous Francescan battles were placed at various points on their hulls. They were all deadly works of art. They were also much more powerful than a standard Francescan super battleship.

  A super heavy Hyper Battle Machine carrier sent from the Space Knight Academy itself had arrived and immediately launched three Hyper Battle Machines that quickly assumed a defensive formation around Denxeiter. A super heavy carrier had five Hyper Battle Machine bays and Feln wondered where the other two Machines were.

  But most amazing of all was the royal flagship Weiß Speer. There were two other royal flagships more powerful than the Weiß Speer, but it was safe to say that aside from those ships, she was the most powerful ship in the Francescan Star Empire. At over seven miles long and bristling with weaponry, she was more than capable of destroying many enemies on her own. As one of the three Francescan Royal Ultra Battleships, she was also armed with two Black Hole Cannons and a Planet Smasher gun. This single ship alone was probably capable of destroying the enemy fleet. Feln realized he had tears in his eyes again, but this time at how happy he was to see such a beautiful sight.

  Just then, he heard Aaltskog say, “Did they get here in time?”

  Feln jumped back out of his chair and ran back to Aaltskog, pulling her into a deep embrace. “You’re okay! Oh my God, I was so worried I lost you!”

  Aaltskog reached up to touch Feln’s face. “You almost did lose me.”

  “Alright, we’re never doing that Resonance thing again, you hear me?”

  “Yeah, and I might not argue that point. But it wasn’t what we were doing that got me. Just as we were getting to the end of the Resonance, I could feel that new enemy fleet coming. I don’t know how, I just, well…felt it. I knew our fleet wasn’t gonna make it in time at their current rate of jump calculations, so I tried to bring them here while I still had some time in the Resonance left.”

  “Bring them? You somehow jumped a fleet like that here?”

  “Yeah, scary huh?” she said. At Feln’s shocked expression, she broke out in ragged laughter. “Nah, I didn't bring the actual fleet. What I mean is that I sent my consciousness to them to help guide them here. On their end, it probably just looked like their nav computers suddenly got a speed boost, but it was actually me.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I really don’t know. I think I managed to use the Resonance to send my consciousness to them by following our communications link with them. But since my body was here, it was like I was at two places at once. So I just made myself whole again, and tah-dah, here I am. With the fleet.”

  “Being in two places at once actually does make sense,” Feln said, thinking about the room with the imprinted Space Knights and Aaltskog. “But I’ll tell you about it later. For now…” He kissed her deeply and her tongue never tasted so sweet against his as it did then. He also tasted the blood from her mouth, but he didn’t care.

  They quickly stopped when a large golden window trimmed with intricate designs appeared on Feln’s screen. He hurriedly buckled himself back in as a stunningly handsome man with rich black hair and a white uniform appeared on the screen.

  The title rotating around the border on the screen read: His Imperial Highness, Fleet Admiral of The Francescan Imperial Star Navy, And Heir to The Solemn Seal of The Holy Promise of The Ancients, Crown Prince Gaius Imperius Siegfried Francesca IV.

  Even though the transmission was a general transmission sent to the fleet and the enemy, Feln and Aaltskog still bowed their heads and closed their eyes in submission to the Crown Prince.

  “Attention servants of the Ancient Enemy,” Siegfried IV said in a voice hard as steel, “You have murdered many of our subjects, many of whose bodies you defiled. The fact that you interfered with, and then attacked, two of our fleets is criminal enough, but these additional improprieties are beyond forgiveness. You will immediately surrender and I may allow some of your race to survive in a zoo or as things for our scientists to dissect— whatever the Emperor decides.

  “Otherwise we will hunt down and destroy your entire race and you will only be remembered as monsters mothers tell their children about to scare them when they’re being naughty. I will give you five minutes to decide.” The transmission ended and the screen went black as the Crown Prince was no doubt now conversing with Kesh on a ship-to-ship line on all that happened, while waiting for the enemies’ answer.

  “Good Lord, he frightens me to death and I’m one of the people he’s saving,” Aaltskog said. “Those monsters must be scared senseless.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya,” Feln said. He looked at the Hyper Battle Machines arrayed around Denxeiter. “Hey, have you looked at these guys? They’ve definitely sent along some of the more interesting members of the team.”

  “Yeah, you ain’t kidding,” Aaltskog said.

  To Denxeiter’s right was #61 Xxixxixx, a Hyper Battle Machine slightly taller than Denxeiter that consisted of multiple segmented body parts covered in lightning cannons. Strangely, none of the body parts were actually connected to each other, all being held in place by some unseen force.

  To Denxeiter’s left was #79 Maksinder, a massive robot with a broad chest, flattened head, and four arms. At the end of each arm was a massive fist half the size of Maksinder’s entire body and bigger around than Denxeiter’s chest.

  Oddest of all was in front of Denxeiter, #52 Olok. This was a giant transparent sphere that appeared to be filled with blue gas. Lightning arced through the gas, giving Olok the appearance of a small stormy planet. Four smaller spheres rotated around Olok in crisscrossing orbits. A single red eye emerged from the gas and slid around under the transparent surface, studying the battlefield.

  “Olok, that’s the kind of thing I’m glad I didn't get assigned to,” Feln said. “Those types of Machines are just too weird for me.”

  “Hard to believe they all supposedly start in the same shape before they reach their final forms,” Aaltskog said.

  Feln was about to agree when two windows appeared on his screen, one with Kesh and the other with Siegfried IV. Kesh’s eyes alighted on Aaltskog, seeing she was okay. Siegfried’s eyes did the same. Feln and Aaltskog both bowed their heads with eyes closed. Had they not been strapped into seats in Denxeiter’s cockpit, they’d have been expected to bow.

  “I was just speaking with Admiral Kesh and wanted to thank you for your heroic service during this war and to give my immediate condolences for the loss of your Companion,” Siegfried said. “However, I see that those condolences are no longer necessary. That is a great pleasure.” His smile was genuine and quite striking.
r />   “This humble Companion begs the Crown Prince’s forgiveness in causing him unnecessary concern,” Aaltskog said shyly.

  Siegfried waved his hand, “There’s nothing to forgive, my dear. I will speak with both of you after this battle is over. But for now we’re coming up on the deadline given to those things and I’m genuinely curious to know what they will have to say. Thank you again, both of you. I look forward to getting to know you both personally.”

  They dipped their heads again as his screen went off. Kesh gave a nod to both of them with the closest approximation to an overjoyed smile Feln had ever seen on a Ssalss before his screen also went black.

  The large inter fleet communications window for Siegfried came on again. “It has been five minutes. What is your answer?”

  After a moment, the familiar hum started, but was different than the other times. It didn’t set Feln’s teeth on edge or make the air vibrate as badly.

  “I’ll have you know that we’re well aware of your little tricks and can understand you fully,” Siegfried said over the hum. “Our Psi-Corps has already created a counter measure to your information packet assault thanks to intelligence gathered from your base and transmitted to us by this fleet we have come to rescue. Now cease this stupid noise at once and give us your answer.”

  The hum died away and a window from the enemy fleet came on screen. Much to Feln’s surprise, five beautiful women appeared. They were visible from the waist up and all five were nude. Their skin was smooth and completely white as chalk, as was their hair. Their eyes were large and red. There was something about those eyes that reminded Feln of those in the stalks of possessed people.

  “Hey is this some kind of visual trick?” Feln asked Aaltskog.

  “No, remember I took their illusion abilities away from them. No…That’s really what they look like.” Aaltskog sounded as amazed as Feln felt.

  “We are the queens of the Union,” the woman in the center said. “How dare you demand our surrender? Our gods have tasked us with the holy mission of destroying you and all the children of their enemies.”

  “You are many things, but ‘holy’ is not one of them,” Siegfried said. “Now tell me, before we destroy you, why are you still following these so called ‘gods’? We know you haven't heard from them in millennia. Would it not have been better to come to an accommodation with us?”

  “An accommodation with creatures meant to be nothing more than our food?” the woman on the right asked with a laugh. “Preposterous!”

  Siegfried’s smile was feral. “What’s preposterous is that a race with such a pathetically weak fleet and comically underpowered weaponry assumes that we are its food.”

  “You assume that just because you have stronger weapons that we are helpless,” the woman on the left said. “That is a mistake. There is something to be said for the power of numbers.”

  The space around the Francescan fleet shimmered and eight more of the massive city ships appeared, each surrounded by many large ships and belching out insects. All of space outside of the sphere of Francescan ships was filled with enemies.

  “We have been watching you for a long time and have been preparing to feed on your puny empire. The day may have come sooner than we thought but—“

  Siegfried turned and nodded to someone out of view on the bridge of the Weiß Speer. The two Black Hole Cannons on either side of the ship’s gleaming white hull fired two small silver streaks at the giant alien ship closest to the Francescan fleet. When the streaks got near the ship, Siegfried snapped his fingers and the streaks exploded into two small black holes. They ripped the alien ship apart and sucked the pieces inside before disappearing, leaving an empty part of space where moments before a ship the size of a small city had been.

  The women were stunned into silence.

  Siegfried laughed. “You say you’ve been watching us. Apparently you haven’t been watching hard enough.” His smile grew more feral, “I tire of this and will no longer accept your surrender. And thank you for bringing me more of you to kill. It shall be a great pleasure.”

  The woman in the center of the group started to angrily say something, but their screen suddenly went black, jammed by the Francescans. The alien ships started to fire. On his screen, Siegfried unsheathed his sword and aimed it toward the enemy fleet. “Francescans, avenge your brothers and sisters. Leave none of these these monsters alive. Attack!”

  Chapter Eight

  A group of the larger Francescan battleships closed around the survivors of the Tannhauser’s fleet to create a protective barrier. Feln watched as all of space lit up with red and green beams.

  The three Hyper Battle Machines that had been guarding Denxeiter launched into action. Feln watched in fascination as Xxixxixx flew into the middle of a group of alien ships and twirled its detached limbs around, firing the lightning cannons on those limbs as it went. Arcs of lightning crashed into the hulls of the ships, easily overcoming their shields and roasting them from the inside out. When finished, the ships were only charred, smoking shells.

  Maksinder used its massive fists to bludgeon any enemy ship that got near it. Even just punching an enemy ship the size of a light cruiser was enough to crush its hull and make the ship explode. Smaller enemies like insects and alien ships similar in size to corvettes were simply grabbed and squeezed until they exploded in a shower of guts. Maksinder’s pilot was incredibly spatially aware because while the Hyper Battle Machine was crushing enemies in front of it, if an enemy tried to attack from behind, another of Maksinder’s four arms would suddenly reach back and destroy the would-be attacker.

  As if reading his mind, Aaltskog said, “I’m pretty sure Maksinder’s Space Knight is a bkilo, so it makes sense about the limbs since bkilo have four arms too.

  As he thought about the Bkilo Space Knight, he suddenly remembered the gunship, G-799, and its commander, Vonnen. He looked around until he spotted the little vessel zipping with other gunships that had arrived with the rescue fleet. It was damaged from the earlier battle, but apparently not enough to keep it out of the fight. They were leaving a path of destruction out of proportion to their small size and number.

  “Valisia,” Feln called, “Where are you?”

  Valisia appeared on his screen. “I’m actually behind you.” Feln turned to see Valisia’s Alden receiving new weapons from two Aldens that had come with the rescue fleet. Valisia, who had been looking down at her console as she was arming her new weapons glanced up and saw Aaltskog alive and well. “Aaltskog, you’re okay!”

  “Indeed I am.” Aaltskog grinned.

  “Aw man, I’m so relieved. I mean, I was pretty happy when the Prince arrived, but I was still getting over losing you. But now…” She wiped tears of joy from her eyes. “This is the happiest I’ve felt in a long time.” The two Aldens finished loading her robot with weapons and gave a thumbs up before flying off into battle. “Well, guys, it looks like I’m ready to rejoin the fray,” Valisia said happily. “I’ll see you on the other side of the fight when we win this.”

  “You got it,” Feln said. Valisia gave a quick salute and her screen went off just as her Alden blasted off into the battle.

  In the distance, Feln watched as Olok silently glided between enemy ships and fired a blazing red beam from its eye that sliced the ships up as if they were made of paper. It was an effect similar to the Xeiter Beam, but seemed to be of an even higher intensity. The fact that the eye could travel 360 degrees around Olok’s body meant that it had no blind spots.

  “You know, I’m sad we’re missing out on this,” Feln said. He watched as Olok came to a stop in front of a large alien battleship. The spheres that were orbiting Olok’s body suddenly flew out in different directions and punched holes through the ship, speedily going through one side and out the other until the ship was perforated with hundreds of holes. It exploded soon after and Olok went on its way.

  Aaltskog, who had also been watching the strange Hyper Battle Machine in utter fascination said, “Ye
ah, me too. Well, you’ve still got that gun and Ganxeiter’s sword. We can still use those.”

  “Sounds good, let’s—“

  A window appeared on Feln’s screen with the title: Transmission from Chief Engineer Endro Pren, Francescan Imperial Space Knight Academy Support Officer, I.F.S.K.A. Hephaestus. Endro Pren was an artificial being, but unlike Aaltskog who looked organic, Pren looked robotic. Also, while Aaltskog was modeled after a human, Pren was modeled on one of the insectoid races other than the Bkilo.

  Feln had a hard time keeping them all straight. And for all he knew, Pren could have been an organically born person who transferred their brain into a mechanical body. He smiled amicably and asked, “How may I help you, Chief Engineer?”

  With a pleasant female voice, Pren responded, “Actually, Captain how may I help you? As I’m sure you’re aware, this ship has the capability to repair most of your damage and refit you with weapons.”

  “How much damage can you repair?” Feln asked.

  “Nearly all of it, although the missing arm and part of the torso can only be done by a factory ship. But we can replace Denxeiter’s eye, weapons, shields, cape… really everything else. We can also properly patch all his smaller damages and even give a fresh coat of paint.”

  As Pren talked, Feln watched the Tannhauser use its recharged Wave Blaster to blow apart a large portion of enemy ships before pulling into the line of battle and add its firepower to the fleet’s.

  “How long will all this take?”

  “Approximately a week and a half.”

  “I don’t have time for that! I wanna get in this battle now.”

  “Ah, I see. Of course. In that case, we can give you a new cape with a fully functioning Den Aegis, a new pistol, and four medium attack drones in less than ten minutes.”

  “Perfect, I’ll be right there.”

  “Very good. Please arrive in Hangar Four.”

  “Roger.”

  The Hephaestus was above and behind Denxeiter. As Feln flew up he saw the Weiß Speer taking on three of the gigantic alien super ships by herself. While the Weiß Speer was longer than the enemy vessels, they were bulkier and had more overall mass. But that didn’t seem to matter to Siegfried. In fact, Feln realized that the Weiß Speer’s attendant royal battleships were all assiduously staying out of the fight with their flagship’s enemies and only engaging other ships. Siegfried wanted the largest alien ships for himself.