New Light

by Ben Johnston

  Inside the sliprealm, the black rain instantly evaporated. All around, an all-encompassing light grew, dissolving the silver-lined shadows, rendering everything sheer white.

  Outside the sliprealm, on every Vectan spaceship, at the same time, every sliplight interactor unit suddenly cracked.

  This caused a chain reaction in every single Vectan craft equipped with a sliplight interactor.

  All at once, in the smoky skies across a million embattled and bleeding Union worlds, every attacking Vectan battleship that was in orbit, in combat, in the air, or in the sliprealm, suddenly and violently exploded.

  In one unforgettable moment, across thousands and thousands of burning Union worlds, the dark skies all grew bright with the bursting light of thousands and thousands of artificial suns. Immediately following the incredible sky flash, in a final revenge, from out of the skies came Vectan battleship remains, huge chunks of debris that fell spinning and rolling, trailing smoke and glittering material as they came down to impact onto the already smouldering surfaces of these planets.

  A million blackened Union skies rained with the deadly, burning remains of Vectan battleships. As these large, falling sections of spaceships impacted, demolishing blocks of buildings and shattering swathes of countryside, from higher up in the atmosphere and from space the largest of the burning or glowing wreckage began to deorbit.

  Huge and burning above the highest clouds, the falling hulks of the spaceliners broke apart as they came sinking down through the atmosphere. The big messy sections splashed cataclysmically into the planets surfaces, devastating oceans and the landscape, destroying mountain ranges, blasting huge craters into swathes of countryside, completely obliterating the least fortunate towns, cities, and islands.

  Through the storm of destruction all around them, the Towers shined like suns. Massive remnants of the great deorbiting Vectan battleships smashed into the blinding Towers only to disintegrate against their great shining surfaces like dirty ice in a white-hot furnace. The Shadow Sword, the gigantic sword shadow ship piercing the first Tower, had transformed from being a pure black shadow. The sword was now shining sun-bright. The dark ship had become a gigantic, blinding blade shining with the same sunlight as the mighty Towers themselves.

  Then, the blinding shine of the Towers and of the great sword that was driven through the one, ceased.

  The Towers instantly returned to their neutral gray. The massive structures appeared exactly the same as they had before, except for the horizon-spanning sword that now pierced the first Tower. But the leviathan sword was no longer a black shadow. It was now a pure, golden blade run through the first great, gray Tower of the School, forever fused. Forever a part of the Tower.

  The skies were still dark with smoke, but now that the terrible onslaught had gone, the chaotic storm of sound and light was replaced with a suffering silence, a quiet symphony of low rumbles from fires underscored by the deep subsonics of mountainous spaceship hulks falling over.

  Chapter 56

  On planet Vectus In the heart of the Vectan Central Command building, spread-out evenly among the top Generals, worked ten thousand communicators. Each communicator spoke into a small device on their desk, a single, bright green light shining up to illuminate their face. A high ranking communicator ran up to the young, raven-haired advisor who stood on a walkway above it all, observing.

  “Chair Advisor, the first Tower has been pierced by the shadowship! Reports are coming in that the ship has gone clean through the Tower!”

  The communicator bowed, turned, then ran off. Jonas watched the runner for a moment before turning to face the empty space next to him. He blinked at the empty space.

  Where Jonas was staring, a sliplight fissure opened up, and Alexander walked through wearing a protective, clear plastic suit. The fissure closed.

  Jonas’ mouth twitched. “General Glatchez. You’ve returned.”

  Alexander removed his plastic bubble helmet from his blonde head and bowed. “Advisor. The attack is complete and I and the other soldiers are worldstepping back to the Command Center as ordered.”

  The new general motioned around the large space of the Vectan war room. All throughout the great space, shadow-black fissures were opening up in the air before vanishing to leave behind soldiers wearing clear plastic suits. The tall, blonde general smiled, cradling his bubble helmet in his arm. “This will be an utter victory, honorable Advisor.”

  Suddenly Alexander stopped smiling. Jonas looked at the blonde man curiously. The blonde man seemed to be emitting a rushing sound. Alexander looked down at the round sliplight device on his chest. “The sound is coming out of the sliplight thing.”

  All around the war room, the soldiers who were wearing plastic suits looked down at the noisy sliplight devices on their chests. All at once, with deafening, sharp bangs, the sliplight devices on the suits of Alexander and the hundred other sliplight soldiers exploded, blasting fist-sized holes into their chests, killing them all instantly.

  Medics ran to the fallen soldiers around the war room. Red alarm lights shined as shouters yelled out alert protocols.

  Jonas stared down at the dead lightmaker on the floor with the hole in his chest, then turned, walking to the overlook. Down below on the floor of the war room, across the thousands of cubicles of communicators, a wave of red swept across the green lights on the communicators’ desks.

  A General sprinted up to Jonas. “Chair Advisor!”

  “Yes, General.”

  “We have a problem.”

  Jonas was still staring down at the thousands of red lights on the war room floor. “I can see that, General. What exactly is going on?”

  “Advisor, we have lost contact with all points in the fleet.”

  “You’ve lost contact with how many points?”

  “All of them, honorable Chair Advisor.”

  “Check again.”

  “Advisor, sir, the report is confirmed, all sliplight-enabled ships are down. They just. The report states that they all just explosively disintegrated.”

  Jonas glanced down at the dead lightmaker below him, staring at the bloodless hole blown clean through his chest. The ground shook.

  Leaving the confused war room behind, ignoring urgent calls from the generals, Jonas climbed to the rooftop of the Vectan command building. From there he could see across the sharp glass and metal city. In the distance, a huge column of thick black smoke rose from the tall, gleaming spires of the Academy.

  Jonas took a shuttle directly to the Academy. On arrival he found medics and injured near the smoking remains of a large building. He stopped a passing doctor. “What happened?”

  The doctor, looking annoyed at Jonas before recognizing the advisor and then bowing, waved his arm at a line of people sitting against a wall. “They say there was a dark flash, then a wall of pure light. The light blinded these ones.” The doctor then motioned to the smoking remains. “Then the light apparently took the entire facility down.”

  The doctor turned and walked away. Jonas saw a man in a white jacket with several multicolored bands running down the arm. “You, head lumist, why has the entire building come down?”

  The white-bearded man bowed. “All light-based materials were vaporized, advisor. We believe that there was a conversion explosion. When stored lipetrol converted to standard petrol. But we still don’t know what that thing is down in the bottom of the crater.”

  Jonas narrowed his eyes at the head lumist. “What ‘thing’?”

  Jonas was escorted through smoke and past burning rubble, down to the bottom of the crater. There, surrounded by people wearing white coats and Vectan soldiers, floated a pitch-black, sheer shadow of a sphere.

  Jonas made his way through the circle of white-coated lumists, photists, and soldiers, and approached the flat-black circle. The sphere of nothing floated above the bare dirt at roughly eye level.

  One of the white jackets spoke. “Advisor, if you get too close to it, lumical and photical phenomenon cea
se to work. It cancels out powerlight or something, so be careful that you don’t have any lumical based explosives on you. And also, your clothes. You should be careful to make sure that…”

  Jonas took another step towards the floating black sphere. Suddenly the buttons on the front of his jacket disintegrated in a dull glow. Then the laces on his boots did the same, as did the boot’s actual threading. Without laces or threading, the boots simply fell apart. His jacket swung open.

  Jonas took a step back in his stockings, leaving the remnants of his boots on the ground before him. His emerald eyes were bonded to the sheer black circle of nothing floating before him. “Now that is interesting.”

  Chapter 57

  Anniya’s eyes glowed with gold, then faded back to their normal hazel. They reflected not silver shadows anymore, but the soft white of the countless intricate lines of the floor and walls of the inverted Tower thirteen in which she stood. She took her hands off the glowing pedestal. Looked at them.

  She looked around her, a grin on her face. “Spirit! I’m not dead!” She looked down to the ground at the shiny little fox. He was no longer shining golden with bright white eyes. The lightfox had returned to having gentle, luminous, sapphire eyes and a shiny, almost metallic, coat.

  Anniya held out her hand and made a mirror. Her eyes looked normal. She grinned. “And I don’t have the sliplight in me anymore!”

  She drew in a breath then exhaled. “And this is the normal world! We’re in the normal Tower Thirteen.” She glanced upwards at the unreal sky above and scratched her head, giving a single laugh. “As if Tower Thirteen is normal.”

  When Anniya walked out of the Library of the School, she beheld before her a huge, smoking, shattered glass and twisted metal hill that was a large section of a Vectan attack cruiser.

  Sharp smells burnt her nose and distant roars of jet engines sounded. Mouth agape, she stared up. The sky was dark. The Tower valley forest around the Library was ablaze. Anniya saw, through the smoke above, a massive blue glow from the crystal engines of a great ship. It appeared to be a Union ship, with an orange underside. It descended through the clouds and smoke, showing a distinct Union symbol. The giant craft put its landing gear down between the smouldering, burnt-out trees of the Tower Valley’s forest, coming to a rest next to the giant hill-sized piece of smoking Vectan debris. The big Union craft was just slightly larger than the debris itself.

  “Yes, Maam. Every single Vectan craft exploded, apparently at the same time. Everywhere. That’s what the reports are saying.”

  Within moments the dark sky was full of huge, gleaming Union vessels, bright geometric crystal engines gleaming. Smaller dots of light were streaming out of the great bright monsters. The engine and warning lights of ambulances and rescue craft descended like a snow of multicolored sparks, all the craft raining down, racing to the ground below to start their rescue work.

  Anniya sat outside the Library for a long time. She sat there watching until the skies had nearly cleared of rescue craft and the black smoke. She sat there as the sun grew low in the sky and a chaotic, whipping wind picked up.

  Then, turning her head suddenly, she saw a shuttle setting-down silently a short ways off, the setting sun behind it gleaming off the craft. Tom and Christopher got out of the shuttle.

  Anniya grinned widely. “It’s you two! How do you always find me?”

  Christopher held his hands in the air, smiling widely. “We just think of the place where you could cause the most trouble and then go there.”

  She laughed, then pointed her pointer fingers at her eyes. “Check it out. My eyes are all normally again.”

  As they laughed at her once-again-normal eyes, Christopher and Tom saw her gaze begin to wander.

  Tom put his arm around her. “You did it, Anniya. You saved us.”

  Christopher patted her on the back. “Good job, Goldie.” He swept his hand over the destruction. “All that out there. That was caused by them. They did that.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Not you. Got it?”

  Anniya stared back at Christopher through wet eyes, then nodded, and smiled.

  Chapter 58

  Tom laughed. “I guess you have to go stand in front of the Universe and get an award! But before we head over to the park for the ceremony, I wanted to show you something.”

  Tom and Anniya walked through the dark space of Jonathan’s vast office, past the huge mounds of artifacts piled around the large pillars.

  Anniya glanced at the stone pillars. “Hey, Tom. Why are there pillars here? The goldenlight material of the Tower is strong enough to hold the ceiling of this room up. No need for supporting columns.”

  Tom shrugged. “No idea. But they do give you something to pile stuff around.”

  Tom walked around Jonathan’s great desk, to the large cabinet behind it. “OK, so this is what I wanted to show you.” He opened the cabinet and brought out a golden sword.

  “Remember this sword? It was all shadowy and imbued with sliplight - we called it shadowlight. It’s the same thing, whatever.” The young scholar turned the blade over in his hand. “Anyway, the sword wasn’t destroyed when you obliterated the sliplight plane. I think it was because prior to the sword being imbued with sliplight it must have been first imbued with goldenlight. The sword had goldenlight in it first and so was not destroyed when the sliplight plane was destroyed, just like you had goldenlight in you before the sliplight, so it protected you!”

  He shrugged, placing the sword back on the shelf in the cupboard. “Or that’s my best theory at least.” He smiled as he shut the doors and returned to Anniya. “I’m just happy you didn’t blow up when you put the golden seed into the pedestal.” He gave her a friendly smile.

  Anniya smiled under low eyebrows. “Yeah. I’m happy I didn’t blow up, too, Sparky.”

  Rows and squares of countless people, chaotic patchworks of blankets and sheets laid out in the thousands across rolling hills, massive cheers rose up from the great crowd that had come to see Anniya as she stepped out onto the great stage before them.

  Standing before the colorful ocean of people, Jonathan’s white hair shined brightly under the hot noon sun as he leaned forward to speak into the bell of a horn-shaped device. “For her extraordinary acts and for saving the Towers, we award Miss Anniya Hawkins the Union’s highest honor.” Jonathan turned and Anniya bowed as the director clasped the ribbon of a medal around her neck. The applause that rose from the valleys and hills of the audience shook the air.

  Afterwards, taking a platform away from the Towers, Anniya, Tom and Christopher retreated to the woods. When they arrived, Christopher grinned, gazing around at the peaceful forest. “So, this is your park now. Your new treehouse looks nice.”

  “Yeah, the Union named the National Park after me, and they let me live in it now.”

  Tom grinned as they took Anniya’s newly-installed light lift up to her treehouse. They entered the house, Anniya turned on all the lights, and they all walked into the treehouse’s big front room to find Spirit sitting there on the floor.

  Smiling, Anniya held up a shiny medal. “Spirit, for your help, Tom, Chris and I present this medal to you.”

  She stooped down and hung the gleaming medal from the neck of the shiny fox. Spirit sat up straight, closed his glowing sapphire eyes, and pointed his chin to the sky.

  Anniya and Tom jumped up and down as they all clapped and laughed.