Rise of Aen

by Damian Shishkin

  So instead of reaching down and pulling, Aen concentrated on creating a large oar. Once again his heart began to race and after a few minutes the waves began to break on an unseen object. With a slight smile of gratification, he began to move the oar through the water in a giant circle. Slowly, the invisible object began to do as he thought and a slight circle began to appear. His thought—maybe too hopeful—was to use a whirlpool to displace the water down to the sea floor to lessen the pressure on the ship. The air crackled around him as the amount of energy he was exerting was monumental, the whirlpool grew to mythical proportions, but soon it slowed in growth as it reached a mere five hundred feet deep. Aen pushed for a moment longer before giving up in frustration; the laws of nature had beaten him once more!

  He let go with his mind and the water continued its swirling motion as the momentum slowly died off. Aen began to frantically think of another solution. With a glace upwards, he knew that time was running out on the sensor blackout created by the enemy. He closed his eyes and calmed himself; wild ideas popped forth and he tried to validate them before tossing them aside in his mind. Over and over he mulled, finally giving in to desperation and his last resort plan.

  “Caretaker,” he spoke as he tapped his ear communicator. “I need you to run scenarios on what it would take to get the jump engines to fire and then plot a course to the nearest uninhabited land mass to land the ship; I will be there shortly to get it under way.”

  “The reactor is dead, Aen; there has been no fusion reaction in her furnace for over a thousand years. All scenarios result in the same, with no reactor activity there are no jump possibilities.” Even through the static, Aen could hear the annoyance in the AI’s voice. “Besides, even if we did have a functional reactor doing a jump in atmosphere is risky and not allowed by Imperial shipping laws 1187 and 953...”

  “This isn’t Imperial space,” Aen interrupted, “And we are out of options and time! Send power to the reactor room and get me the plotted solution by the time I arrive.” He tapped the receiver in his ear to terminate the line and swore under his breath. Sometimes it took creative thinking to get things done and a machine was incapable of doing so. The solution to the reactor problem was plainly apparent as he stared at his reflection in the water below—it was him. It had always been him. Within his chest burned a star and if he could harness it he could, well, power the Amarra to do anything! Without a sound, Aen blinked away from view; he had set things in motion now and rushed off to finish them. Soon the world would be at war, and within the Amarra lay the arms they needed to defend themselves.

  —

  An ancient tomb, that’s what the reactor room brought to mind, as Aen emerged from the shadows. A foot of water covered the metal floor; obviously the result of one of the hull breaches. Few of the many lights were lit, giving the room that familiar horror movie look. The smell of stagnant water permeated everything around him, causing him to gag after his first few breaths of air. Time had not been kind to this part of the ship. Mother Nature had imposed herself on this alien landscape.

  Sloshing through the water, he made his way to the rear of the room, which housed one massive reactor with a smaller one flanking either side. He climbed the steps up to the control area and read the bold white warnings scripted in Lyarran dialect. The two smaller reactors were the drive units that normally ran powered to the ship’s sub-light engines and every day running functions. From within one, a bluish glow was being emitted, a result of his power input to the alien system. The word “small” was the wrong word to use, as the flanking reactors were easily a full story tall and over a hundred meters wide each. The left one hummed rhythmically as it powered the ship’s minor systems, allowing Caretaker to go about his business. Aen felt a slight vibration in the water that increased as he climbed the stairs to the center reactor.

  Turning his attention to the centerpiece of the room, Aen began to look over what very well could be his sarcophagus if this went wrong. The main jump engine reactor stood prominently and dwarfed the rest of the room. At three stories tall, it was built into both the floor and the roof, and was obviously a main structural part of the compartment. Large and rectangular, its front was round and transparent—if the engine was running, it would have lit the room with brilliant light. It was off to the right of the front cap that Aen found the access door.

  “Do you read me?” he asked, tapping the control panel microphone.

  “Loud and clear with a slight echo,” replied Caretaker. “I don’t suppose there is anything I can say to dissuade you on your new course of action?”

  “If only there was another choice, but time just isn’t on our side,” Aen sighed as he punched in the codes to open the reactor access hatch. With a dull clunk that echoed around the room to add to the wonderful ambiance. “Once inside I won’t be able to hear you, so do you remember my instructions?”

  “Of course I do! Start the drive sequence once sufficient reaction has been achieved, complete jump and land on stable ground before sending out your message to the good general. Then we launch the drones to deliver the weapons to the selected sites. Once that has been completed I will reprogram the drones for combat and establish a defensive perimeter around the Amarra.”

  Aen sighed again, this time with relief. This next task would push him beyond anything he thought his body could take. Slowly and methodically, he began to take apart his armour and set it in one of the shelves near the reactor; he wasn’t going to need it where he was going and if he wore it he was sure it would disintegrate.

  Once stripped down, Aen hesitantly entered the chamber and slid down the sloped side. The cavernous interior was spherical—the shape better contained and sustained a fusion reaction on the scale needed to power the engines—and he slipped down the smooth surface before coming to rest at the bottom. Looking upwards, he saw the entrance hatch close and felt the mechanism lock it tight. He was truly cut off from everything, alone in the dark with the raging monster inside him. Aen climbed to his feet and closed his eyes as he readied himself to begin.

  In the blackness, Aen rose until he reached the center of the chamber. For a brief moment, he hung there silently with nothing happening. Aen reached deep inside and willed his heart to explode with power—to rage like a sun at the heart of a solar system! In an instant, it responded, throwing massive amounts of energy outwards and engulfed his body in seconds; Aen ceased to exist and was replaced by a blazing being of light. Magnetic prominences reached outward from him, only to snap back and burst forth flares of plasma. His skin burned away as the power tore from his heart. Like dust in the wind, the recognizable parts of his body simply blew away in a solar wind. The once dark and dormant reactor core was now struggling to contain more power than it was ever designed to contain!

  In the control room, Caretaker frantically keyed in offline systems to best divert the output of power. Within seconds, the entire starship had full power and was operating at more output then she was ever designed to. Once the power was diverted, the key sequence was punched in and the long anchored vessel began to shimmy in its watery grave. Sea life began to quickly retreat from the area as vibrations shook the sea floor to the scale of a minor earthquake. From the reactor room, a gravity bubble encased the Amarra as it began the jump sequence. The water that surrounded it was pushed away violently as the bubble surrounded the vessel and the sea floor beneath was thrust down causing tremors and shock waves spread out for miles.

  Once encased, the ship rose from its long slumber and came clear of the sand and rock which had long held it in a blanketed embrace as the hull moaned and creaked with the effort. The very depths of the ocean were lit up with an unnatural light and the ship at the center began to shimmer as the local marine life vegan to flee from the area. Bolts of electricity danced from the bubble inwards; striking the Amarra’s hull and caressing it before dissipating completely. First this event started out with the odd strike, but as the se
conds ticked by it increased until the ship was barely visible in the storm of lightning. Then, as if it couldn’t get any more breathtaking, an explosion of energy occurred at the epicenter of the bubble and it collapsed on itself in an instant; the Amarra was gone and the water rushed in to fill the void.

  Total darkness returned slowly to the depths, but the bedrock was still glowing brilliantly as it was cooled by the sea which sought to reclaim its dark serenity. The cataclysm below created a massive new crater and let loose tidal waves on the ocean surface. Magnetic resonance left behind by the jump would scar the planet`s EM field for the rest of time, the main reason that inner atmosphere jumps were prohibited by Imperial law. This section of the ocean would be nearly impossible to navigate in the future. The move had been done in sheer desperation for the survival of the planet but the consequences would scar the Earth for eternity.

  Lyarran Vessel Dark Light, Uncharted Space -

  Four Months and Nine Days until Arrival

  “The sensors show what?” Lyxia was in shock. She had turned in for the night to rest as the daily grind of staring at the nothingness of jump space. Her ship, the Dark Light, was hurtling towards Terra Sol using the faster-than-light travel known as jumping. Huge gravity distortion bubbles were created by massive fusion reactors to essentially warp the universe around the ship itself. Defying all logic, the ship became a single point in time and space as the rest of the matter was flung past it at astronomical speeds. And travelling at faster than light meant there was none to see; it was dark and lonely and took its toll on each and every being on the cruiser.

  But now she had been awakened from her much needed rest with perplexing news. The Empire had scattered a network of probes and sensors throughout the known galaxy to gather and transmit data in real time across her reaches. Ships in jump space would often drop out randomly to tap into the data stream, much as in the way a submarine would surface to receive orders and updates. The Dark Light had just done one of these drop-outs and what they learned shook them all to the core.

  “Terra Sol sensors recorded a jump in atmosphere, four kilometers below the ocean surface, to be exact. I’ve checked and rechecked the data for validity before resuming course.” Lyxia’s top lieutenant Onai looked slightly scared to continue her thoughts, but after a moment hesitation she did. “Why would anyone do that? It’s beyond insane!”

  Lyxia grabbed the data pad from her and began to study it. The Husk Harvester had entered the solar system and was just about to pass the outmost planetary body called “Pluto” by the humans.

  “What is our timeline for arrival?” she asked quietly.

  “We have lost a bit of time with some drop-outs; maybe eighty-six days out; maybe more.”

  Eighty six days. Lyxia wondered what would be left of this beautiful planet by the time they arrived. History had not been kind to races enslaved by the Husk and most had fallen rather quickly when they arrived.

  “What of the Empress and her armed escorts; how far behind us are they?” Lyxia braced herself. Given the fuss the Guild would make about the Empress rushing out to the rim to face an age old enemy, she doubted they would even arrive to see the hull of the Dark Light still burning from the suicide mission they were on.

  “At last reported, they were to arrive three to four days after us.” Onai let loose a sigh of frustration. “We are going to die out there, aren’t we Council?” she asked with a resolution in her gaze.

  “Maybe we are; and if we do, we will die gloriously and the gods will be pleased. But I have to think that we will triumph.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of this.” Lyxia waved the data pad in front of her long-time friend. “Because I believe this to be the work of the Harbinger the prophets heralded; the power it would take to jump a ship that has been dead for two thousand years is beyond measure and I think it is something the Husk haven’t accounted for. Not only does this creature possess a Lyarran vessel with a full armory, but he has an unorthodox way of doing things. The Husk are in for the fight of their lives and I believe they might very well be on the defensive when we arrive. Either way, my friend, in eighty-six days we will be a part of history.”

  She dismissed her lieutenant with a nod, Onai’s confidence in the mission restored. Lyxia’s door closed as she reviewed the data once more. Her thoughts turned back to the Council session when he had appeared. Never before had she been so captivated by a being, never before had she been so taken aback by a plea for help. He had looked at her with such passion in his eyes, so much sorrow and pain, and had reached down into her soul and touched her.

  She lay back down on the bed and closed her eyes to rest. As she drifted off to sleep, her dreams were haunted by his eyes—the deep pull of those dark eyes with the ring of blue flame encircling them. Her heart began to yearn for him, for a being she had never met in person. Instead of fighting the feeling, Lyxia fell further into the dark well and lost herself. Feelings of warmth and caring surrounded her in her sleep. Soon she would see the Harbinger and look into those eyes in person; soon she would meet her destiny.

  Groom Lake Military Installation –

  Code Name Area 51, Nevada -

  Four Months and Nine Days until Arrival

  All around the planet everyone and everything felt the reverberations of the Amarra’s awakening—whether it was by feeling the ground shudder or nausea from the Earth’s magnetic field being tampered with. Animals, birds and insects all reacted in near hysterics for an instant; their bodies being more in tune with the planet then humans made the effects of this event more painful to them. For a moment, the peacefulness of the planet was broken by minor chaos. All Earth’s inhabitants knew something had happened, but none knew what it was. When scholars looked back on this day, they would be able to pinpoint that this was the moment that mankind should have known that something dangerous loomed ahead.

  General Patterson was one of the few that knew about this danger, but he too scrambled to figure out what this shockwave of energy was that encircled the globe. Within thirty minutes of the event, the scientists at Groom Lake had pinpointed it to an ordinary and empty part of the Pacific Ocean which raised more questions than it answered. Coupled with the incoming transmission from Aen, he had little doubt this was something he wouldn’t find an answer to until he needed to.

  It was an odd email that his newfound but cautious ally had sent him. There was no “sent from” address with it, only a multitude of adapted strategies and suggestions to put in place before the enemy arrived. Along with this, there was a mention of alien weapons that would be dispersed to his location to better assist in the fight to come along with a “how to” manual for usage of the weapons which he immediately turned his attention to.

  There were no bullets or projectiles to use; these were energy-based weapons with a finite power supply that launched plasma rounds. The schematics were all included so that the scientists could get to work reverse engineering them as to resupply the power cells to the front line and to replicate the weapons—all of which Patterson was unsure would happen in time. Before all this had happened, he had received a similar email containing nothing but coordinates for a telescope and without hesitation they had sent orders out and aimed their military satellites and controlled telescopes at the proposed destination and looked upon death itself: the Husk ship. The sheer size of it astounded and frightened all those in the new Earth Alliance bunker out in Area 51, as the leaders of each country’s military looked on at the true reality of horror.

  The Husk vessel was near to Pluto; and while not technically a planet any longer, it was dwarfed by the massive hulk of the ship passing by it and casting a sinister shadow upon its cold surface. Patterson himself could only imagine what kind of invading army lay within this structure and shuddered to think of what horrors it would unveil when they arrived.

  “We are so fucked,” he muttered, so no one else could hear—altho
ugh others in the room were saying similar things. The task was thought to be difficult enough when they first heard of the alien craft on its way, but now seeing what they were up against it seemed near impossible. How could they ever hope to win against this? Time stood still as all in the war room were paralyzed with this one question. There was nowhere to run or hide from this, and no clear answer to whether or not they would survive.

  Himalayan Mountains, Mount Kailash, Tibet -

  Three Months and Twenty Six Days until Arrival

  It had been more than a month and a half since they had arrived at the monastery, but Sara continued to struggle with her own emotional state after her breakdown at the gates. Reality in a way seemed twisted and her sense of normality was gone. There were no friends to go hang out with, no work to absorb herself in and no Facebook or Twitter to get lost in as time ticked closer to the end. She couldn’t shake the thoughts of all her friends and everyone else she knew dying when the aliens came; her nightmares were full of this and more.

  And just as she seemed to get her feet on solid ground, the solid ground moved like liquid this morning, leaving her just as shaken as before as well as sick to her stomach. But this time, the rest of the little colony felt it as well. A few of the monks even doubled over to throw up on the ground. It was as though, for a second, the entire planet moved awkwardly and shifted. She noticed even the birds were very agitated from this incident as they chirped loudly at anything around them.

  Sara herself simply sat down on a large boulder at the side of the path that jutted out from the mountain beneath as she was unsure if anything else was safe to be on. To her, it was like having vertigo during an earthquake; everything seemed wrong with no explanation why. She remained seated there for over an hour afterwards, waiting for everything to be right again. When the birds had calmed down and the ants resumed their quests in the sand, she too got herself to her feet and walked slowly and carefully to the temple.