Myra felt hope flourish as the heads and backs of people in front of her seemed to disappear sideways. They were entering a broader passage. Myra squeezed through the gap and into the chamber behind them. Her rifle scraped against the icy ravine wall. Myra glanced to check her weapon, but then she saw where they arrived. Her heart sank.
Somewhere, the narrow passages opened into a small canyon. There, they might find shelter or at least another course to keep running. This place was a dead end. The people who elected her to defend them had followed a ramp into a wide, dry well. The original colonists dug the chamber to store medical and food supplies away from dust and radiation. Engineers removed and reused the wide, top hatch, long ago. Above them now was an open shaft to the surface. Dim stars shone overhead. Myra feared they would soon watch multi-legged monsters use the opening for an easy attack.
Myra hoped the invaders coming through the narrow passage could not communicate with whatever might scuttle the surface near the opening above them. A confused clamor rose from the group and grew louder as more realized they were trapped. Panic grew.
“Quiet! Shhh!” Myra hissed.
Another sounds rose as the clamor died. Rocks and dust rattled from the ravine walls at the entry gap. A rhythmic vibration rolled forward from deeper inside the narrow passage behind her. A vibration from many, scuttling legs. Myra faced the sound. Within the gap she spied a faint glow of the lead monster’s rectangular eyes. It grew brighter as it neared. The invaders had found them. Myra backed down the ramp as her group pressed against one another. Sickle jaws shot from between the wall gap. Myra fired.
The gun blasts echoed so loud in the confined chamber that Myra felt pulses of pain more than sound. Almost to her joy, the bullets mauled the invader. Its turret head blew into pieces as it thrust itself and its jaws forward. Alien grue pitched high and slapped down on Myra’s face. She did not notice the ricochet of bullet and armor fragments. She eased the trigger. The pain stopped. Then more invaders shot from between the walls and over their leader’s corpse. Myra fired again. The blasts overpowered her screams.
Two attackers died. One piece of their riddled armor flew off and cut Myra beneath her eye. The painful blasts stopped, again. But Myra’s fingers bled from squeezing the trigger of the convulsing rifle so tightly. Her magazine was empty. Myra had spared herself and her group for several seconds. Now, she had no bullets.
Myra heard her battle cry over the intense ringing in her damaged ears. She raised the hot, empty riffle as a club. She swung and parried sickle-jaws slashing for her head. Myra backed up and felt hands and arms of the people behind her. Above them, the shaft opening appeared to constrict. More invaders rushed down from the surface. All Myra could do was fight the one in front of her as her people screamed.
As the invader pressed its attack, Myra’s eyes saw a flash of images her enraged mind didn’t process as a black shape dropped behind the invader. Several, successive explosions echoed down the shaft. Dim light glinted of slashing metal. Curved sheets of black swirled out of the sky. Broken waves of alien blood arced across the chamber.
Myra’s invader reared up. Myra thrust out the rifle to thwart the impact. She saw the crisscrossed network of plates protecting its underside. A metal shaft punched through the plating. It was a sword blade. A large one, and not for a sword any hands on Tectus could wield. The sword slid back and vanished. It returned to split the invader. Both halves fell before Myra. She took a breath. She held it and the rifle as the demon looked down at her.
Orbs of yellow locked Myra’s sight as a weird, high-pitched wail assailed her ears. Many behind her covered their ears and looked up, some in horror, others in joyful shock. The invaders were screaming. Bayonets forged in Hell cut through their armor. More demons flew down the shaft and joined the cyclone of wings and blades. Dead invaders and their parts fell among Myra’s stunned people who leapt around to avoid the gruesome cascade. A dusty downdraft buffeted Myra and her group as the demons flew out.
Myra was still starring at the one who killed her attacker. Light in the shaft was low, but the demon’s eyes appeared to glow. They regarded her from a greater height than Myra thought right. The records of other worlds, and perhaps some echo of collective terror of sentient races, described her nightmare savior with black wings holding the sword. It was huge. It had similar body symmetry to hers, with powerful limbs wrapped in a hide of thorns. And its stare. Bright eyes with slashes for irises.
The sword moved again, but only touched Myra’s forehead and then lifted her rifle. She took it as a salute. It was. The demon noted she had fought despite certain death. The power set against the natives was overwhelming. But they resisted and did not bow to fear. Even in their own conquests, courage against greater power was something all demons respected, and Solok was the commander of the entire horde. He chose to find and battle the Isons, because they looked a greater challenge than the other soldiers that attacked this small, solo world. Just as quickly as he killed a platoon of the armored monsters from the ravine and the one attacking Myra, he leapt to the top of the shaft and was gone.
Myra breathed. She was grateful to be alive. She had no clue why the demons saved them. She hoped they would destroy the invaders and leave. Yet, she looked ahead of her and thought of one other favor to ask the demons. It would be nice if they cleared the enemy’s ravaged bodies before she and the others began their trek back out.
Captain Navor braced herself inside her interface tube as her entire warship shook from impact. She thought commands to turn her ship and face its surviving shields toward the incoming fire. Her ships silver bow cut through drifts of slag that were the hulls of her allies moments ago. They had encircled the rogue world with a ring of reactor-driven spearheads and exotic gunships. Their warheads and energy weapons stood ready to fire by confident, battle-tested crews. Then the massive ship appeared and attacked. Before its next fusillade turned Navor to slag, her sensors and viewport revealed a rapidly approaching crimson inferno. All plans went to Hell.
“Hellship!” That word was screamed and translated on all communication bands. “We are under attack by Hell!”
The surviving fleet left orbit to return fire. Ships took formations to envelop their most feared enemy. Their salvos died against the aegis of hellfire, but they continued to fire in continuous waves in anticipation of a full counter-attack led by the fleet’s most powerful ship, the Sword Wing.
The wingless demon Proxis stood alone on the bridge of the hellship. The Ship Master had authority to engage the diverse armada as he wished. Proxis observed the incoming flood of data from the vast fleet. He noted each warship’s design with interest before calculating the next salvos to vaporize their formations. The most massive ship held its position at the lone world’s equator on the opposite hemisphere. Proxis imagined firing the main weapons through the planet to strike it. But this would anger his General, who now engaged another enemy on its surface.
CHAPTER FOUR
Many worlds and stranger realms had witnessed Hell’s war approach them. Some focused their resources to create fleets, armies, and weapons. Examples of them lay in shattered pieces around the null field that the marauder fleet detected from orbit. Smoke from shattered aircraft and armored vehicles curled quickly in Tectus’ thin air. The minds of machines and biological pilots had traveled between stars to perish on a world with no sun. What they attacked had arrived in the same moments as their fleet, but was no ally. Their enemy held a desolate plain near New Poledoris. This triple invader crushed the reconnaissance force as sport while it waited for its true foe.
To counter Hell, some species recreated life with technology, forces of nature, and physics transcending spacetime. The planet Sol-Zjaun sought to stop the Generals by creating their equals. Three of their Titans fought Ursuhr. He destroyed them. But they were not the only ones of their kind. Three others saw the vacuum created by Hell’s civil war. Each Titan had a basic, bipedal, shockingly human shape. Except they had no neck and
their heads were crested spheres with an iris-like corona forming a huge eye that hovered over the center of their bodies. Exotic alloys encased all three Titans. Their armor crested as half domes of fused bands that capped their shoulders. Characteristics of their energies flowed in crucible-like gaps between their shoulder domes and below their eye-spheres.
The center, Phase Titan appeared as a transparent mirage as it flowed between physical, energetic, and other states of existence. To its left, a spectrum of visible color flared as a nimbus around the Light Titan. Its armor looked cut from gold-tinted ice or glass. A constant swirl of white starbeams appeared to suspend its crested eye-sphere over its torso. The Ethereal Titan was clad in dark, purple armor. An eternal scene played between its shoulders where black waves perpetually swallowed a banded galaxy that defied logic, perception, and time by never sinking, completely. The image appeared to always begin and never end, but never as a looped image.
Vastly powerful on their own, and perhaps corrupted by their strength, they looked to become not merely an equal to Generals, but a ruler to rival the Dark Urge. But first, the Titans of Phase, Ethereal, and Light powers needed to face the last, known General. They acquired a weapon certain to boost their odds of victory. There was no better a weapon to do so than one forged in Hell.
The Titans found it adrift in space. It was lost, there, after another epic battle to add to its long history. Objects from Hell were some of the strangest to exist. The Titans’ recovered weapon was odd even to them. It spoke.
“He comes. Be ready.”
The Titans recognized the voice emanating from deep within black metal. It entered their minds, and they replied in unison. “We were born for war. As were you.”
“Yes. What you hold is archaic in form, but transcendent in fabrication, and devastating in the right grasp.”
“We possess such a grasp.” The Titans answered, and then paused in three-fold thought. “You are not the spirit of the steel? Not the voice of the weapon?”
There was a pause in words, but the Titans understood the reply from the voice was laughter.
“No. I am not.” The recomposed voice continued.
“Are you the presence in the starlight?” The question came from the three Titans’ united mind.
The Ethereal Titan separated for a moment to communicate its independent idea. “No. It is not.”
The voice paused to consider this presence in starlight that the Titans mentioned, and then continued. “I am neither star nor steel. The black alloy’s resonance allows our clearer communication. However, it is fascinating that creatures such as you, born from extraordinary technology, still see things in a superstitious manner.”
“We acquired the weapon. Then you spoke to us. Where is the superstition?”
“Point taken. But I am not the dread weapon’s spirit or programming. I simply share a history with it. In a sense.”
“Did you wield it?” The Titans interest reverberated through all three minds.
“No. No! Mine was to be—such thoughts make me angry!” The sudden rage rippled from the voice’s mind, just as in a child’s tantrum. The return to calm was as swift. “I digress. Today you can abate that anger. Destroy the one who comes. Then, take this world from the ants that beset it.”
“There are now three forces engaged.” The Titans observed. “The invaders. The colonists. And now Hell.”
“And you, Titans. Find victory today and I will guide you to greater power.” The voice promised. “All others are fools. Parasites. They live on and fight over what they believe is merely a rogue planet. Together we can plunder its true wealth, so deeply hidden. I posses the power to unlock what lies hidden on this world.”
“We will take greater power,” The Titans countered. “With, or without you.”
The voice paused. “Be warned, I do not take well to betrayal.”
“You are not the weapon, so we do not care.” The Titans answered in unity. “It is we who fight. Now, as he comes, it is you who leaves.”
There was a snap in all three minds as the voice cut communications in evident anger.
Their attention quickly focused on what flew towards them. It was not another force of impotent machines. It was a massive fireball. It struck and sundered the null field the Titans projected. The fireball hit the surface. Warcraft wreckage launched upward. Crust compacted over eons exploded and incinerated into plasma. Dust and debris rode the edge of the shockwave. It crackled as ionized dust against the force fields of each Titan. The fireball expanded into a high-speed dome of heat and arcane energies that swept across the plane. Instead of dissipating, its waves halted and reversed.
Tremors still rolled across the planet’s geologically narrow surface of accreted crust layers. Myra felt the sway as she guided her people from the ravine. The Hull creaked and swayed as the mass of people surrounding it steadied themselves. The city’s force field arced as its reactors rolled from the seismic waves.
As the tremors eased, the Titans heard another voice utter one word, as if spoken on a sunbeam. “Doom.”
No matter who spoke, one factor was clear from the shockwaves and the fireball’s infusion back into its living source: Anguhr had arrived. For less than one second he stood at the center of the impact crater. He resembled a powerfully built, human male. Yet the tallest of all humans never dominated the landscape. All Generals' gigantic size came from the Dark Urge's ego. As Hell towered above all in power, her military leaders towered above all armies.
Anguhr's armor as a fusion of styles culled from history lost long ago and recalled only as abstractions by Hell's mad queen. Sections of medieval plate armor covered his chest and shoulders and fused with Hoplite-style sections from his abdomen down. His exposed skin was as hard as the black alloy of his armor and rippled with energy like heat coursed over molten steel. His smooth helmet covered most of his face with no adornments. His burning stare was far worse than any image of a savage creature interpreted in steel.
Anguhr’s double-bladed axe was still somewhere in space. He came for another weapon that also carried personal significance. For now, he had fashioned spare beams from his ship into a flaming, brutal war club. His burning eyes locked on the black weapon thrust into the ground before the Titans. It was the massive sword used by his mother, Azuhr, the First. His father, the ruling Khan Sargon, saw its wide blade devastate his forces before it was stayed by their unexpected love. Azuhr lost the sword in her final battle that took her and Sargon. Much later, it was again lost by her son. Azuhr had named him Azarak. The Dark Urge reforged him and renamed him Anguhr, the Destroyer.
The Titans did not know the history of the hell-spawned family. They would not have time to learn it. The last, known General charged from across the plain.
The Titans had almost no time to perform the act they learned that amplified their three forms into a single, more powerful Titan. The Titans of ethereal forces and light stepped into the phase Titan. A scarlet surge of plasma radiated as all three merged into one, larger Fire Titan. Crimson gauntlets grasped the black sword’s grip and brought up the blade to block Anguhr’s club. Another shockwave struck the plain as the weapons collided.
The club and blade collided several times. The strength of the Fire Titan and General was nearly equal. Through the parries it became obvious Azuhr’s sword was the superior weapon. Shards of hellship beams fell from the club’s flaming mass. However, Anguhr was the more experienced fighter. The Fire Titan quickly found itself backing away from Anguhr’s attack. Then he did something that surprised his crimson opponent. He ducked.
The sword swung and struck nothing. The Fire Titan planted its feet to halt a spin. Anguhr sprang up and struck their exposed side. The blow staggered the Titan and loosened its grasp. Anguhr struck the sword blade. It fell from the Titan’s grasp. Anguhr thrust his body into the Fire Titan to knock it backward. He threw the club at the Titan and snatched up the sword as his giant, red foe dodged his club. Anguhr gripped the sword and without s
avoring his victory raised it to cleave his opponent. The blade slashed down.
The Fire Titan flashed from existence as its three constituents beings split into their individual selves. The sword cut through the centered Phase Titan who was as insubstantial as the air. It attempted to alter Anguhr’s phase. Anguhr grimaced as his body vibrated from the assault. A new fireball exploded as the General radiated his internal fires to expel the waves wracking his form.
All four giants tumbled to the ground and caused another tremor. Anguhr stood with the sword as the Light Titan rose to its knees. It focused its power into a beam to cut through Anguhr. The white ray instead hit the sword blade as Anguhr deflected it at the rising Ethereal Titan. The strike caused the purple giant to roll backward. Anguhr charged at the Ethereal Titan. It bolted upright to face him as another ray missed and cut through air behind him. The General threw Azuhr’s sword. It completed one revolution in flight as the Phase Titan recovered and radiated waves to envelop its ethereal sibling. The blade again cut through the newly insubstantial Titan and kept sailing across the surface.
Anguhr grunted in annoyance and charged through the still insubstantial Ethereal Titan to chase after the sword. After a few strides, the universe disappeared. All Anguhr could see was pure white. The Light Titan had flooded his sight with the entire spectrum. Anguhr was blind.
Any damage to Anguhr’s eyes would heal, quickly. Until then, he didn’t need one sense to detect his foe. Personal combat was the art of motion and reaction, even for the gigantic practitioner. An object moving through an intense field of light deflected photons analogous to a shark thrashing in a dark ocean. A diver might not see the shark but could feel the movement of the water. This could give a sense of direction, and the diver might fathom the shark’s direction. With arcane senses, the blinded Anguhr could feel the angle of photons against its skin. He could sense his predators.
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