by Kyle Larson
“Back to Earth Navy. The last communication we monitored said the Uranian Corsairs and Earth Navy would get to Venus about the same time. If they can arrest the Colonel maybe they can get him to order off the Wanderers attack.” The Colonel’s compliance seemed unlikely to Captain Ali, but the least they could do was get him off the bridge of the Monarch.
Ali went back into her workstation to monitor the Empress. According to her sensors, the super-cannon was a motley piece of machinery. It looked like it’d been constructed hastily and she was surprised that much power could be safely channeled through the structure. Most electro-cannons would ignite from that much power. The power it harnessed was terrifying and the demonstration couldn’t have been bolder. Ali realized the glaciers were the historic Voido field. The super-cannon would have the power to take out ships and Ali realized that many people could die today, even if two fleets of ships attacked the Empress.
Holloway couldn’t think about any of it, but she had a sense from how quiet Captain Ali became that things were dire. From what she could tell, there were six hackers on the bridge actively trying to break her encryption. It was only a matter of time before they did, so she needed to slow them down. The first bump she would throw in their way would no doubt give up that she was in the system. Once that happened, it would be a race.
Each keystroke from the hackers came up on Holloway’s screen. The easiest roadblock to throw in front of the hackers would be to rewrite what they had done before. She could see all of the commands they had entered, as well as the decryption programs they’d put into the Monarch, so she simply went ahead and started deleting them. Holloway scrolled up and just started deleting large sections of command protocol. Over and over, she erased all the commands that would undo her codes and encryption, but it gave her a glimpse into how talented the hackers were. Suddenly, an alert came up on the screen, that their codes were failing, and it was an alert the hackers could see as well.
They knew she was in the system. Since they’d watched her before, they’d recognized her style of coding and encryption. They were skilled enough to recognize her programming. As software evolved through humanity, code and programming became a diverse language that was relative to each individual programmer. Since most of the grunt work code was done by machines, there were actually only a few programmers in the Nine Kingdoms, which made their code distinguishable. There wasn’t a chance they wouldn’t recognize it was her. Holloway was one of the most famous programmers and coders in the Nine Kingdoms.
“Okay, buckle up. They know what I’m doing,” Holloway said.
“Hurry, Holloway. I know you are, but this is going to get ugly if the Monarch starts to fire on the planet, too,” Captain Ali said.
Holloway flexed her fingers and returned to tapping frantically. There was one, last option Holloway could resort to, but it would put the two of them and the Monarch in great danger. She could shut down all the power in the reactor, thus taking the central core offline and rendering the Monarch helpless. The only problem with that is that now the Monarch was in Venusian gravity and would be pulled toward the planet. From the speed at which the hackers worked, Holloway realized this last option might be the only option she had.
“They haven’t responded to any attempts for communication,” an Empress officer’s voice informed Aren through the speaker of her headset. They were tying to make contact with the Monarch. “It appeared they were charging their weapons, but may have suffered a power surge.”
“Can they hear us if we broadcast?” Aren said.
“Yes, ma’am, as long as it’s an unencrypted transmission,” the officer said.
“Put me through to them,” Aren said.
“You’re live.”
“Captain Ali, this is Commander Aren Sellwood of the Empress and I speak for the Wanderers. Stand down all of your weapons and engage in a standard orbit around Venus. Prepare to be boarded by one of our ships and to surrender your crew. You and your people will not be harmed, but if you fire on us we will turn this cannon on you and I will not be able to guarantee your safety.”
There was silence, just as her communication with Tendai had gone.
“Ma’am, I can confirm the Monarch has received the transmission, but there is no link established for them to respond,” the officer said. It’s possible she had listened to the exchange between Tendai and Aren, intending to save her commander any embarrassment from waiting for a response that may never come.
Aren cut the transmission and focused on her next target: the Drosa Islands. It was not only a treasure to the Venusians, but to the Nine Kingdoms. The islands were considered one of the most beautiful places in the Nine Kingdoms. Venusians were only allowed limited visits to them, but this time of year it was the monsoon, so no one would be there. The destruction of the Drosa Islands would be a lesson to Venusians that there was no more time for leisure in the war they would be fighting to give freedom to the Nine Kingdoms.
“Ma’am, we’re picking up a series of incoming…objects,” an officer’s voice said in her headset, just as she was about to fire the super-cannon and turn the islands to ash.
“Objects?” Aren said as she swiped to the sensors. There were hundreds of blips on their sensor readout, but none of them were identified as ships or torpedoes and they moved much faster than either possibly could. The speed of the objects is what confused the sensors of the ship from being able to identify them. They were headed right for the Empress and had just left the atmosphere of the planet. “Can we get a visual on them?”
“Coming through now, ma’am,” the officer said.
A video feed displayed hundreds of humans, covered in stone armor and helmets, speeding towards the Empress. Aren clenched her teeth in anger. Each human held a staff and they flew in a perfect formation, but as soon as they were clear of the atmosphere, they scattered. It would be impossible for the super-cannon to target them, and very difficult for most the electro-cannons on the Empress and the other ships. Then, she noticed that the Venusians wore no thruster packs. It didn’t take Aren long to figure out this was what the Colonel and Riz knew about the Gravity Warriors of Venus that she didn’t.
“Launch the star divers!” Aren shouted. “All ships! Launch the star divers and take them out!”
The star divers launched from every bay of the Empress and the other nine Wanderer ships. Their electro-cannons fired rapidly and Aren watched the video feed to see her star divers take on the Gravity Warriors. She toggled the feed around to try and keep track of the Gravity Warriors, but it was difficult. A human body was so small compared to the ships and the vast darkness of space. There was no thruster trail to follow. Aren wasn’t even going to take the time to consider how it was possible the Gravity Warriors could fly, but she realized it was going to take a lot more than melting glaciers and dusting mountains to defeat Venus.
Aren caught a view of one Gravity Warrior and kept the feed fixed on them. She’d noticed two star divers had picked up the Gravity Warrior and pursued them. The Gravity Warrior had them flying in circles, but it didn’t take the pilots long to unleash their cannons. The electro-blasts weren’t a problem at all for the Gravity Warrior, as they simply spun their staff in the rapid motions of a windmill and the swinging of a baseball bat, knocking the electro-blasts into nothing.
As Aren watched this in horror, a Gravity Warrior came into frame headed directly at the camera. Since the feed was enhanced, this meant the Gravity Warrior was headed for the sensor array. Within seconds, the Gravity Warrior violently smashed their staff into the lens of the camera and the feed cut off. A notification appeared that the sensor array had gone offline. This would make it impossible for Aren to accurately fire the weapon at the planet. She could fire the super-cannon, but she’d be shooting blind.
Several other alerts went off on her screen.
“Ma’am, we’ve just suffered over two-hundred simultaneous hull breaches in our hangars. The unidentified––”
“––
Gravity Warriors! It’s the blasted Gravity Warriors!” Aren shouted. “Get security down there immediately. Prepare all of our torpedoes and start firing them. Get the other ships targeting them. Electro-blasts are useless against them.”
“Ma’am, all ships have reported the loss of their sensor arrays. None of our ships have targeting controls.”
Aren slammed her fist into the screen and then scrolled back to the super-cannon controls. All ideas of freedom vanished from her mind and Aren remembered how desperate and defeated she felt after the battle in the Antioch Belt. That terrible desire to hurt those who would defy her came on very strong. She could fire the cannon, but it was not likely pointed at the Drosa Islands anymore. The movement of the planet could have fixed a city or another area with a population in the eye of the super-cannon. If Aren fired, there was a real chance people on the planet below would die.
Unfortunately, the question of whether or not Aren wanted those deaths on her conscience was nowhere near her. The anger of potential defeat at the hands of the Gravity Warriors overwhelmed her senses. Aren was like an animal cornered that would do anything to evade the one who would capture them. Everything she had planned would come undone completely if the Gravity Warriors were able to disable the super-cannon. Aren was only concerned with beating them now. However this mattered to the cause she claimed to fight for didn’t matter. There would be time later to rationalize the deaths, but Aren didn’t even consider that as she pushed down on the control to fire the super-cannon.
The cannon sputtered out a single blast but then the beam stopped.
“No!” Aren shouted out of fear that she hadn’t been quick enough to fire. She raised Corporal Woad on her communications. “Woad! Get that cannon back online, right now!”
“Commander, there’s been an override!” The corporal shouted back. “There was a power surge and now it’s locked into charging! If we can’t fire the cannon in a minute, the whole thing is going to blow!”
“Override! That’s impossible! From who?”
“We detected a transmission from the Monarch! Someone over there used the Colonel’s codes! They’ve locked out everything! I can’t even disable the power.”
Aren could see below that her bridge crew were locked out of their stations, as well, and it became very clear to her. The Colonel had set her up. Every part of his plan, at least how it related to her, became crystal clear in her head. The design for the weapon had probably come from him. He knew she would need an advantage, so he had her build it. There was no mystery that his hackers were capable of accessing anything, so they’d probably had access to the super-cannon as soon as it was online. The final blow to Aren’s psyche: the Colonel was on the Monarch and had done what she could not. The weapon she’d built was a bomb that would destroy her ship and most likely all the ships near her. Aren and every officer loyal to her, whether that loyalty was blind or not, would be killed in the blast.
This whole time she had been unknowingly carrying out the Colonel’s plan, and now Venus was his for the taking.
“I’ve got all my engineers working to manually sever the power! That’s all we can do–”
Aren cut the transmission, the shock of her realization slowed everything down. She scrolled through the screen to look at all of her ships, covered in Gravity Warriors, who smashed their staffs into the hulls. They were digging through them. They were also frantically trying to dismantle the super-cannon, unaware it was about to detonate.
“Commander Sellwood,” the Colonel’s voice came through her headset. “Thank you for your service to the Wanderers. We appreciate you building the super-cannon and taking down the gravity shield for us. I’ll be taking control from here. Though your treachery will no doubt leave a stain on the Sellwood family name, I’ll make sure your actions here today to help the Wanderers free Venus are well recorded in our history. You will be remembered, Commander Sellwood. Your sacrifice and the sacrifice of all the other traitors you’ve groomed will overshadow your attempts to take power for yourself.”
The Colonel paused, giving Aren the chance to respond. A calmness came over her. The feeling of loss and the inevitable end that was to follow were a relief. There would be no more lying. No more pain, no more war, and no more suffering. Aren could close her eyes and it would all be over, in a matter of seconds. A flash of heat and then darkness.
“The lost princess of Earth says goodbye to the Nine Kingdoms. Take comfort, princess, your death will have a meaning.” The Colonel seemed to say her last words for her.
On those last words, the cannon became a ball of flame that extinguished in less than a second, but the chain reaction blew the Empress and every other ship apart. Ten ships were cut up by the explosion and became hundreds of giant chunks of debris. Gravity Warriors scattered like flies off the hide of giant beasts that tumbled, with many of them being caught in the blast. The Monarch was well out of range, but as soon as the explosion ended, it turned toward the now defenseless planet below.
The battle for Venus began.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KELVIN AND AMELIA stood at the highest point of the Archive in Judur, looking up to the stars. It was night on Venus, but the sky was alight with the Empress and its fleet continuing its assault. The two of them watched in a combination of horror and hopefulness, as they’d just witnessed a few hundred Gravity Warriors take to the sky minutes earlier. It was impossible to tell how the Gravity Warriors fared against the Wanderers, so all they could do was wait.
Amelia was especially conscious about staying out of the way. The two of them watched more Gravity Warriors prepare to take flight, Amelia could tell it had been done before, but that there was an unease amongst them. Their main line of defense –– the gravity shield –– had been brought down, which Amelia assumed was a historical first. Before they could defend their planet, the Empress had been able to decimate parts of their planet they would never be able to rebuild. On top of all of that, the Gravity Warriors wouldn’t be sure if their cities were safe as they flew to take out the super-cannon.
Kelvin, on the other hand, was frustrated they’d not been permitted to join the assault on the Empress. He was trying to fool himself that one of the reasons he wanted to be up there was to try and get in front of Aren. Kelvin believed if he could get face-to-face with her he could at least bring her into custody. There was no doubt in Kelvin’s mind that the Gravity Warriors intended to destroy all of the ships. They weren’t concerned about Wanderer casualties and Kelvin didn’t blame them, but it didn’t change the feeling of dread he thought of his sister's death. Whether or not that fate was deserved, Kelvin couldn’t bring himself to condemn his own flesh and blood to death.
“This is awful,” Kelvin said. There had been few words between Amelia and Kelvin, as their views shifted between the stars and the endless cityscape of Judur. “This is all my fault. If we hadn’t come here Aren wouldn’t have.”
Kelvin’s weary prospect and self-blame were wearing thin on Amelia. She was exhausted from the intense training session they’d had hours ago but was too anxious for sleep. Her mood and mind teetered on the edge of delirium. The stress of uncertainty made it hard to give Kelvin whatever comfort his words had subconsciously requested. She could barely hold on to her own fears and anxieties.
“You need to stop, Kelvin. This isn’t about you and this isn’t about Aren,” Amelia said, in as plain a tone as she could manage. “This is a war that would’ve come to Venus whether we were here or not. What do you think would happen if you flew up there right now and surrendered? Do you think Aren would turn her ships around? Do you think the Gravity Warriors would just fly back down here and everything would end? You are doing your part for good by trying to unite the Nine Kingdoms, but that’s all you can do. Any terrible thing the Wanderers have done…that your sister has done…that’s on them. This isn’t about you anymore. All you can do now is make a choice.”
The words both troubled and comforted Kelvin, as he knew Amelia mea
nt every one of them. And, she was right about the war being bigger than one person or kingdom. As hard as it was to hear, Kelvin knew it was what he needed at that moment. He imagined Teve would’ve told him the same thing.
“Still, I wish we were up there with them,” Kelvin said.
“They need as many people down here to help in case the star divers attack the city. The major cities are being evacuated, but there are still thousands of people that haven’t relocated yet. The battle isn’t going to stay up there, especially since they brought down the gravity shield.”
As they both looked up to the stars again, the brilliant orange glow of the super-cannon suddenly appeared. Panic set in as the glow became brighter. The super-cannon was about to fire at another target. Out of instinct to defend, they both unsheathed their staffs. The rest of the Gravity Warriors were in the situation room with Queen Tendai and King Etho. Suddenly, the glowing beam burst in a blinding flash. The Empress ignited and a series of explosions followed. The moving dots, thousands of meters above Judur in the darkness of night became fireballs. Amelia and Kelvin could hear shouting and footsteps of the Gravity Warriors running onto the balcony.
Kelvin panicked. He didn’t know if he’d just watched his sister die in the explosions and had no idea what happened, and the Gravity Warriors frantic shouts and crowding on the balcony told him they had no idea what’d happened either. As soon as the series of blasts ended and the darkness of the night sky returned, almost all of the Gravity Warriors took flight, which added dozens more to the legion that was already up there.
“The queen will know,” Amelia said as if she read Kelvin’s thoughts and confusions. Amelia would’ve assumed that the Gravity Warriors disabled the super-cannon by triggering some unstable mechanism, but the uncertainty and fear she saw on the departing Gravity Warriors faces suggested this explosion was completely unexpected.