Nullifier (Fire and Rust Book 6)

by Anthony James

  GRIFFIN> I’ll bear that in mind.

  “The control entity is listening to our conversation. We don’t want to crash into that rift in case you hadn’t guessed,” said Griffin.

  “The chasm has widened by a couple of klicks in the last few minutes, sir,” said Dominguez. “The rate is increasing.”

  “This is screwed up,” said Jackson.

  “I know what you mean,” said Griffin, not taking his eyes from the forward sensor feed.

  The view outside was the most bizarre he’d seen. Dominion’s surface was breaking up so fast that it seemed like a wall of moving rock, extending out of sight around the curvature, rose into the heavens where it slowly broke up and dispersed. Meanwhile below, a carpet of Sekar waited like supplicants for the arrival of their god. Whatever came to greet them, it wasn’t bringing peace and joy.

  The second wave of spaceships joined with the Nullifier. They merged with the pattern and the invisible sphere within which the fleet operated grew to accommodate them.

  “Sixty more coming up,” said Dominguez.

  “And a hundred after those,” added Shelton.

  Griffin watched anxiously. The Nullifier’s control entity had mentioned a decay burst and he’d hunted through the databanks for specifics. Unfortunately, the Hantisar didn’t have too many of those specifics for him to examine. The only certainty was that it took a big Sekar to unleash a decay burst. When it came to range and other limitations, the Hantisar knew nothing.

  “When are we planning to act, sir?” asked Jackson.

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. Sometimes it’s best to wait until the moment feels right.”

  “A trick I was never too good at, sir. I’m glad you’re the one making the decision.”

  Gradually, the rest of the Hantisar fleet completed their propulsion warmup and lifted off to join with the others.

  “We could use the fleet to wipe out a few million of these ground Sekar,” said Jackson. “These assholes can’t have infinite numbers.”

  “We do not know that,” said Isental. He hadn’t spoken for a while and watched proceedings from his seat at one of the front row consoles.

  “Makes sense they don’t, sir,” said Jackson. “There’s no such thing as infinite.”

  “A discussion for later,” said the Fangrin in tones that strongly discouraged further argument. Lieutenant Jackson got the message.

  “We’re going to hold off deploying tharniol weapons, Lieutenant,” said Griffin, figuring that everyone deserved an explanation. “The control entity told us that tharniol weakens the fabric between our universe and where the Sekar live. Looking at the size of that rift over there, I don’t think we want to unravel any more stitches.”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ll attempt to close the rift – that’s our primary and, until I say otherwise, only goal.”

  “Sir, I’ve detected another fracture running across the facility,” said Dominguez. “Holy crap, that’s a big one.”

  Dominguez wasn’t prone to exaggeration. This new chasm ran perpendicular to the main rift and it widened at a tremendous rate. Within seconds, it was a thousand meters across and showed no sign of slowing. At one end, it joined the main rift, while the other was out of sensor sight.

  “It missed one of the landing strips by twenty klicks, sir,” said Shelton.

  “There’s a rift down there,” said Dominguez. “Judging from the seismic activity, another few cracks are about to appear.”

  Suddenly, the edges of this new chasm began to fragment and the pieces were launched into the air by the same unseen force. Many of these rocks crunched into the Hantisar warships flying above.

  “Damage report!” yelled Griffin.

  GRIFFIN> Increase distance. Tell every spaceship to move further from the surface rifts.

  NULLIFIER> Their battle computers are programmed to act accordingly.

  The control entity was right - the intertwining pattern of movement was disrupted by the warships accelerating away from the rift. Not for the first time Griffin cursed his lack of experience with the Hantisar technology. He didn’t know how much autonomy the unmanned spaceships were granted by their programming, leaving him guessing or wasting time passing on useless orders to the Nullifier’s control entity.

  “No losses, sir,” said Dominguez. “Two suffered major damage and lots of others with minor.”

  “Another crack formed,” said Shelton. “Make that two.”

  Suddenly, the whole visible area of the planet started breaking up. To Griffin, it seemed like Dominion had been struck by a weapon capable of shattering its crust – a weapon with destructive powers beyond imagining.

  “How much of the fleet is left down there?” he asked.

  “188 in total, sir.”

  A fissure opened beneath the second airstrip and Griffin watched several Hantisar spaceships tumble into the depths. Smaller cracks sprouted and grew, becoming as large as the parent. They claimed more of the fleet, while other spaceships escaped the Sekars’ wrath. Grey shapes rose above the chaos, their propulsions on maximum boost. Rocks of all sizes joined them in the hunt for escape, and soon it was difficult to identify the ships amongst the madness.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, sir,” said Jackson.

  “Or act,” said Griffin.

  “We’ve got another 861 spaceships with us,” said Dominguez.

  This was the moment. The bulk of the Hantisar fleet had escaped the surface and it was too late for any which remained. Dominion was breaking apart and Griffin didn’t know what the outcome would be for the planet.

  “Just one world amongst trillions,” he told himself.

  He passed instructions to the control entity. At the same time, he flew the Nullifier higher, to avoid the eruption of stone. With hardly a delay, the Hantisar fleet came with him whilst executing evasive maneuvers. The alien ships were impressively agile and they threaded their way between the rocks, suffering only minor impacts.

  “We’re going to have a real job getting through to the main rift, sir,” said Dominguez. “Even if we fly to a couple of thousand klicks altitude and come down the middle, it’s going to be a hard ask without our shield taking a battering. The ships coming with us don’t have shields.”

  “We have to get through those rocks somehow and I’m not willing to saturate the area with tharniol,” said Griffin. “Let’s have a look from altitude first.”

  Soon, the Nullifier was high above the ground facility. The ejected rocks were more dispersed, allowing a clearer view into the rift, but they also collided more frequently which made it harder for Griffin to avoid them. Consequently, he had little concentration spare and he felt cold sweat beading on his forehead.

  “Nothing new to see down there, sir,” said Shelton. “Darkness.”

  “I wasn’t expecting anything else, Lieutenant.”

  A gap suddenly formed where two immense boulders crashed into each other and deflected. Through this gap, Griffin saw a two-hundred-meter sphere of pure black emerging from the rift. For a moment, it hung in the air motionless. An instant later, it had accelerated to an enormous velocity. It passed straight through the rain of stones and detonated in a ten-klick cloud of blackness which engulfed two Hantisar warships and a massive boulder, thirty klicks from the Nullifier.

  The cloud faded as quickly as it appeared. The boulder and the two spaceships were gone and the only debris was two rectangular structures of metal, which soon ran out of momentum and began the long drift towards Dominion.

  “Decay burst,” said Jackson. “It knocked out those warships as easy as that.”

  “Leaving only the tharniol containment units from inside their hulls,” said Griffin, realizing why the metal structures had survived.

  A second decay burst appeared above the rift and then a third. The Hantisar battle computers began executing a series of brutally sharp turns, accompanied by savage acceleration. Many of the warships crashed through the stones, favoring hull damage
over certain destruction from the decay burst.

  The second decay burst failed to find a target, but the third took out a battleship. A moment later, it felt to Griffin as though the sky was full of black spheres, which detonated everywhere, taking out rocks and spaceships alike.

  Worse was to come. At the main chasm’s widest point, the rift beneath it bulged outwards like a fist pushing against an opaque sheet of thick plastic. The bulge was dozens of klicks in diameter and whatever was causing it strained for long seconds.

  “I think it’s coming,” said Shelton.

  “I think you’re right, Lieutenant.”

  With a deep breath, Griffin aimed the Nullifier at the rift far below.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Flying through the storm of rocks and detonating energies from the decay burst was an experience which took everything from Griffin and left him doubting it was enough. He banked hard left and right, slowed and then accelerated in order to avoid what obstacles he could. The life support module ran at one hundred percent and the lap belt wasn’t able to hold him steady. He planted his right foot hard against the floor at side of his seat and used it to brace himself against the lateral forces.

  Lieutenants Dominguez and Shelton did what they could to provide early warning, but with so much happening, Griffin relied as much on instinct as he did the input from his sensor officers.

  “Incoming - dead ahead!” said Dominguez.

  “I see it,” said Griffin, throwing the Nullifier left and down.

  The battleship skimmed across a ten-billion-ton chunk of rock travelling at fifteen klicks per second. Behind it was another, this one smaller and less regular. Griffin adjusted the Nullifier’s trajectory and once more avoided it by what seemed like a hair’s breadth.

  “That second rock took out four of our fleet, sir,” said Shelton. “Damn.”

  A row of three immense boulders came next and Griffin thought he was on course to avoid them. A fourth boulder, unseen until the last second, smashed into two of the others from underneath, knocking them onto new trajectories. Griffin swore and banked into the path of more rocks.

  “Ah shit,” said Dominguez.

  A decay burst went off so near that it obscured the view from the front sensor arrays for a split second. When the darkness went, the rocks were gone with it, leaving Griffin shaking with anger and relief.

  “Four hundred klicks to the rift,” said Shelton.

  “Is the emitter ready, Lieutenant Kroll?”

  “It’s waiting on your command.”

  What Griffin couldn’t entirely avoid was the countless smaller stones, which cascaded against the Nullifier’s energy shield. Each impact increased the drain on the propulsion system and while the vantrium drive coped with most of the spikes, some of the larger impacts diverted enough power that they affected maneuverability.

  “Three hundred klicks to the rift,” said Shelton.

  “We’re losing too many warships, sir,” said Jackson. “If we hold fire for much longer, there’ll be nothing left that can shoot these rocks.”

  “We’ve lost three battleships in the last five seconds,” said Dominguez. “Plus a dozen others.”

  Griffin was torn. He wanted to unleash wave upon wave of tharniol missiles and gauss slugs into the wall of rock and the rift below. Somehow, he knew it would be a bad idea. A Sekar more powerful than anything seen in the universe was knocking on the door and Griffin didn’t want to be responsible for turning the handle and letting it in.

  “We’re holding fire,” he repeated.

  “High altitude explosions won’t hit the rift, sir,” Jackson persisted.

  “Tharniol particles will fall inside.”

  “They might drive the Sekar away.”

  “Enough! We’re using the emitter first!”

  “250 klicks to the rift.”

  The attrition continued and the quantity of decay burst spheres increased. The control entity believed that numbers would be essential to the success of the attack and Griffin saw that it was correct. Each decay burst was aimed randomly amongst the Hantisar warships and so far the Nullifier hadn’t been directly targeted.

  As the range decreased, the obstacles became more numerous. Dominion’s surface poured upwards and the chasm’s edges became further and further apart. The tributary rifts grew at a similar pace and Griffin asked himself if - once the surface was gone - would they be facing a single, vast spherical rift through which billions or trillions of Sekar might gain access to this universe. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  The extraneous thought didn’t affect Griffin’s ability to pilot the spaceship. His focus didn’t waver and he entered a zone of absolute calm. Dangers appeared before him and he avoided them, almost like he was beyond reaction and into a place where he was operating two seconds in the future and able to bring that knowledge into the present and act upon it.

  “Two hundred klicks to the rift.”

  As if the Sekar on the other side recognized the incoming threat, the number of decay burst spheres increased fivefold. They flew from the rift and exploded amongst the fleet. A series of three rapid detonations to the Nullifier’s portside wiped out ten or more Hantisar spaceships, along with thousands of rocks.

  The spheres were too many and travelled too fast to escape and the Nullifier was caught at the extremes of one blast. Every sensor array turned black, Lieutenant Kroll cursed loudly and the Nullifier’s controls become unresponsive.

  “Report!” Griffin ordered.

  “Our shield held, sir, but the propulsion output went through the roof to maintain it. Then the output dropped to twenty percent and now it’s climbing again.”

  “How long until it’s at one hundred percent?”

  “The recovery isn’t linear. A minute maybe.”

  “What about the emitter?”

  “It’s not going to fire at maximum, sir. A discharge now would knock out the shield and leave hardly anything left to power the spaceship. We really don’t want to take a second hit.”

  Griffin snarled in anger. The Hantisar fleet didn’t have an answer to the decay bursts other than to keep going and hope to avoid complete annihilation. The quantity of rocks was such that it was impossible to keep track of each sphere, turning the game into one of luck, not skill.

  NULLIFIER> This is a Sekar-Prime we face. We may be unable to defeat it.

  GRIFFIN> When did you come to this realization?

  NULLIFIER> A moment before I warned you.

  GRIFFIN> What can a Sekar-Prime do that makes it more dangerous than a Sekar-Major?

  NULLIFIER> I have no data.

  GRIFFIN> We’re going to make sure it stays where it belongs.

  He dropped his link to the control entity and observed the ongoing chaos. A few klicks to starboard, a piece of the planet’s crust, fifteen hundred meters across, crashed into a group of Hantisar light cruisers. Elsewhere, an even larger piece disintegrated when it was caught in several overlapping decay bursts.

  The Nullifier entered a still-expanding sphere of disintegrated stone and the tiny pieces bombarded the energy shield, producing a hesitation on its recharge gauge. A moment later, the battleship emerged into a surprisingly clear area, where the view of the rift was almost unimpeded.

  “One hundred klicks to the rift,” said Shelton. “We shouldn’t have to worry too much about the surface debris now.”

  “Still too far to drop the rift bombs,” said Jackson. “Unless we want to lose them to decay bursts.”

  “At our current rate of approach, we’ll be on for a seventy-five percent discharge from the emitter,” said Kroll.

  The bulge reappeared, ahead of the Nullifier. This time it rose fifty or more klicks above the edges of the chasm. Watching it, Griffin could sense the endless hunger of the enemy as it strained to cross from the Elsewhere.

  “However powerful that thing is, it’s going to be hurt if we hit it with fifty thousand tharniol weapons,” said Jackson. “Surely?”

&
nbsp; “The control entity just told me it’s a Sekar-Prime. If it gets out, we’ll have no choice other than to fire our explosives,” Griffin replied. “Until then, we assume this area of the universe can’t withstand the release of so much tharniol weaponry without leaving it permanently weakened.”

  Even as he said the words, Griffin knew he was guessing. Maybe what he said was the truth or maybe it was bullshit based on a few short conversations with the control entity.

  The clear view of the rift gave the Hantisar fleet a short period of respite from the decay bursts. It wasn’t that the quantity of the spheres reduced, so much that it was easier to avoid them when they could be identified and tracked by a warship’s sensors. The trouble was, the detonations were so huge that even with advance notice, avoiding them involved luck, especially when they came erratically or in clusters.

  The straining against the rift ended, though this time the bulge didn’t disappear entirely, like the fabric was permanently stretched. Almost at once, the pushing resumed, frantically this time.

  “It’s going to happen,” said Shelton.

  “No it isn’t.” Griffin shook his head, as if the strength of his will could somehow shape the outcome.

  “Eighty klicks straight down to the rift and the Sekar-Prime is one hundred klicks ahead.”

  The Hantisar fleet began a rapid levelling out and Griffin did likewise. It was the battleships which carried the rift bombs and they dispersed amongst the other ships in order that a successful decay sphere detonation wouldn’t destroy more than one. The Nullifier was one of the lead ships and Griffin slowed in order that his spaceship wouldn’t be in the frontline.

  From this range, the enormity of the Sekar-Prime’s threat was unmistakable. Almost eight hundred of the Hantisar fleet remained, yet these proud spaceships looked tiny – insignificant – as they flew above the chasm.

  GRIFFIN> Drop the rift bombs. Staggered release.

  NULLIFIER> Order given.

  Griffin had read the spec sheets on the rift bombs a dozen times. Those specifications described the technology behind the hardware, along with a few theoretical maximums and minimums. What they didn’t contain was images of a detonation and Griffin watched anxiously to see the effect.