Terra Prime (The Terran Legacy Book 2)

by Rob Dearsley

  “Missiles,” Arland warned as four callouts popped up on the heads-up.

  He brought the fighter around, triggering one of the flare packs. White-hot magnesium fragments spilt into space behind the fighter.

  One of the missiles hit the chaff. The shockwave of the blast hit the Hound, throwing it up and away from the Feynman. Stars tumbled, the husks of Terran ships flashing past. Lloyd fought the Hound’s inertia, bringing the fighter to a standstill above the Feynman’s hull.

  Other ships, troop transports, broke away to screen more escape pods as they dropped toward the planet. But the missiles keyed in on escape pods launching from the spaceward side of the ship. Lloyd was their only hope, but the blast had pushed him out of position. He could only watch as the missiles closed in on the unarmed escape pods.

  “Do something,” Arland demanded from behind him.

  The nowhere scout, the one that had killed Slater, swung around, its close-in guns hosing the missiles, tracer fire shattering one.

  The scout’s com officer’s voice cracked through the speakers, “We’ve got this, sir.”

  He could imagine the remaining officers wrestling the badly damaged craft into position to protect the escape pods.

  The second missile made it through the storm of tracer fire and hit the scout, blowing out an engine module.

  “Pull out,” Lloyd urged the scout and he dove back into the fray.

  “What is it you always say,” the com officer replied, her voice calm and steady. “Where do we stand?”

  Lloyd closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Between the sheep and the wolves.”

  Shells from the Feynman’s midrange guns slammed into the scout as it maneuvered to keep itself between the Feynman and the escape pods.

  “Lloyd. Come in, Lloyd.” Niels voice filtered over the com.

  “You made it.” Lloyd’s chest loosened. “Thank the Stars.”

  “You need to stop the Feynman, take out her engines.”

  “Copy that.” He looked out at the giant ship, and then down at his ammo counters. How the heck was he supposed to take out that ship with a little less than a third of his ammo reserves left? “I don’t suppose you built in any weak points? Maybe an unprotected exhaust port or something?”

  Valentine came on the com. “Your best bet is to damage the ionic impeller inside the main engine housing.”

  “How the heck do I do that?”

  “Missiles,” the scout’s com officer said, joining the open channel. “You put a missile straight through the drive plume. We’ve got missiles, but our targeting is offline so we can’t guide them without line of sight.”

  And they’d just get shot down anyway. “I can paint the target, and protect them on the way in,” Lloyd said.

  “On your command, captain,” the Scout’s com officer said.

  He tightened his grip on the controls. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Fire.”

  Missiles shot from their launch bays on the scout’s aft quarter and toward the Feynman.

  The Hound dove toward the Feynman. CQC guns swivelled to track their approach, the multi-barrelled weapons spinning up.

  Lloyd fired first, the Hound’s cannons ripping through weapons pods.

  The Feynman’s railguns spilt tracer fire toward the fighter and the missiles, shots ringing off the Hound’s hull.

  Another short burst from the fighter left more weapons modules little more than spinning debris. The Hound leapt forward through a screen of flack, cutting a path for the missiles.

  Warnings flashed as tracers pinged off the armoured hull. Only sixty meters. He had to get out in front and paint the target.

  “Arland, are we synced with the missiles’ targeting systems?”

  A marker popped up on Lloyd’s display.

  “Got it,” Arland replied.

  They whipped past the hulking engine modules and Lloyd flipped the Hound end over end, throwing it hard into reverse, and locked the targeting scanners onto engine modules. Radiation warnings from the drive plumes sprang up on Lloyd’s console. In response, the missiles arched around.

  Lloyd’s eyes flicked to the warnings on his consoles. They had maybe ninety seconds before it got through the Hound’s shielding.

  Tracer fire pinged off the Hound. He couldn’t dodge or return fire. Not without screwing up the targeting solution for the missiles.

  Come on, they were so close. The three missiles shot past the hound, one for each engine. All or nothing now.

  The radiation warning chirped.

  The missiles slammed into the engines and a second later the explosions ripped through the engine housings in a wash of fire and shrapnel. The huge engines flickered and died. Thank the stars.

  Job done.

  He slammed the Hound’s main engines to full, angling it up and away from the massive engines. The radiation warnings dropped off, but not quickly enough for Lloyd’s liking.

  Below them, escape pods, shuttles and other support craft entered Terra Prime’s atmosphere, glowing sparks flickering across the planet’s night side. He swung the fighter to follow them down.

  ◊◊

  Dannage’s attention fixated on the robed creature. I wasn’t an accident? What did Loki mean? Had this… this, whatever it was done something to him? He felt violated. His sense of self, his whole existence called into question. What about his family?

  Sam’s face flashed through his mind, her too-pale skin accentuated by the crimson of her senatorial robes. His sister. It was how he always remembered her now, during that last frantic meeting. The world around him began resolving into the burning, broken skyline of Gypsum.

  He shook off the memories, the scene transforming back to the featureless plane. Loki stood in front of him, impassive, emotionless beneath that dark hood.

  “What do you mean?” He batted Loki’s hand away and grabbed him. “What did you do to me?”

  The hood fell back, revealing a blue-grey, equine face. Its rows of shiny, black eyes blinked in sequence. “Your neural morphology is the result of a specific genetic sequence. You know this. What you don’t know, what no one knows anymore, is that this sequence is a remnant of something far, far older than your race?”

  And now they were back to being obtuse.

  Dannage was about to press for more, but something stopped him.

  Wait. Loki had said – or implied – they’d created the Milky Way. Did that mean they’d seeded life as well? It was all too much. He couldn’t even start to wrap his head around this.

  “You begin to understand. You are closer to us than most. Now, we must hurry. If you will act as pilot, I will resolve your neurological problems.” Loki pushed away from him, the hood covering his face again. The world around them started to fade into the mist. “Decide.”

  The last word echoed around Dannage’s head as he fell through a haze of nothingness.

  “Cap’n? Cap’n.” Luc shook Dannage’s shoulders.

  Everything was fuzzy. Dannage blinked trying to gather his scattered thoughts, or at least see the world around him.

  The deck beneath his back was hard, but not cold. Hadn’t he been standing up before? Footsteps moved toward him and Luc’s fuzzy face was joined by a dark haired one. Another couple of blinks and his vision was almost back to normal.

  Vaughn pushed his glasses up his nose. “Captain, how do you feel?”

  Dannage pushed up into a sitting position. The movement set his head spinning. He pressed his hand against his forehead, trying to keep the world from falling apart again. “Like fifty litres of cheap gin.”

  “Fun times.” Luc helped him to stand, slowly.

  When the world stopped spinning, Dannage looked over at the Core Mind. Loki’s words echoed through his thoughts.

  “How long was I out?” he asked, looking between Luc and the Doc.

  “A couple of minutes.”

  A couple of minutes? Stars. It felt like a lot longer.

 
; Decide. Before it’s too late.

  He turned toward the forward door. Out and along the corridor, then up a rampway and two lifts to the bridge. The lifts were still working. Both in position ready for him. He knew this like he knew his own name. Information integrated so smoothly the lines between him and the ship blurred.

  He looked over his shoulder at the door they’d come in by. The Folly was still sitting in the hanger, its systems were online, waiting for him. The choice was his. But being here, feeling the ship around him. It felt natural.

  Let me make this easier.

  For a moment Dannage’s awareness expanded. He could see the system, the wrecks of the Terran ships all around him. And beyond them, The Feynman tumbled, shrouded in darkness. Escape pods spilling from its flanks out into space. What had happened?

  The Entropic Force.

  His friends. Were they even still alive? No, he couldn’t think like that. They had to be. He’d pushed them into this and he’d damn well get them out again. So, that was the decision made. He turned to the core mind. “Help me save them.”

  Come.

  And he did.

  Luc and Vaughn followed him up the ramp-way and into the lift.

  “Cap’n, where are we going?”

  “The bridge,” Dannage answered, without looking around.

  The humming of the lift changed pitch as it slowed toward its destination. Even before the doors opened, he knew what the bridge would look like. A circular space with a big display screen dominating the opposite section of wall, and a circle of consoles surrounding a central command dais.

  The doors opened and Dannage marched up to the dais. At its top was a reclining chair, similar in style to the one that Craven had used. Stars, that felt like a lifetime ago.

  “What now?” Vaughn asked, moving to stand on the opposite side of the chair.

  Dannage shrugged. “I guess I sit down.” Of course, he had to sit in the chair. That was how this worked.

  The chair rose up to meet him, cradling his body in its soft warmth, before tilting him backwards. An ice-cold tingling rose at the back of his head before spreading over his scalp. The same metallic taste as in the brain scans filled his mouth.

  Let us begin.

  Interlude Four

  (Alphar World Forge, 10 billion years ago)

  This galaxy was made to be a refuge. Our refuge. But even here, in a paradise of our own making, death and destruction still found us. It seems to be the way of the universe that everything falls to chaos, to Darkness.

  We built bigger and more powerful weapons until in our final desperation we reached beyond reality into the endless night of the Before and unleashed forces that were never meant to exist in this reality. Was it any surprise the creature, the Darkness, turned against us?

  The World Forge, one of the last of its kind, is our last refuge, and it’s already been breached.

  Zyfes meets me at the door to the central facility, her dark eyes blinking a staccato up her long face. We’re the only two left now. Once a race of trillions, now the Alphar is almost gone.

  “What happened to the legion?” Zyfe’s voice is soft and lilting, it calms me.

  “Gone. Or taken,” I reply. The Legion had held long enough for us to get clear. A whole star-cluster destroyed to cover our retreat and it still hadn’t been enough.

  “Lloshi, we have to go. This is the only way.” Zyfes presses close, pushing me toward the ascension chamber.

  This place is our last bastion, the mini creation engine at its heart is the only thing that keeps the Entropy at bay. I pause, looking at the heavy vault door leading to the centre of the facility.

  “Please.” Zyfes shoves me onward, toward the ascension chamber. “We have to go.”

  I shake my head, trying to throw off the morose thoughts. All my friends dead or gone. Even the ascension is a cheat, a shortcut, our minds downloaded as data and laser-cast into the void. Light drifting through the cosmos. The scientists say our memories live on in the wave-form. I’m less sure. Is raw data real without any way of reading it? Is it still a person?

  One of the Corrupt rips its way through the wall, darkness leaking from within it. It charges us. I raise my hand, fingers pointed, and the nano-cloud reacts to my intent ripping into the shadow-clad creature, unmaking it in a flash of light and heat. More of the creatures crash into the room, their insubstantial master following in their wake.

  Zyfes screams as one of the shadow-clad creatures grabs for her. So infused is it by Darkness that it’s hardly recognisable as Alphar. I will not see her die like this. She will not become one of these twisted shadows. I summon the last of the nano-cloud to unmake the creature’s deformed head.

  I help Zyfes up. Blood runs from the flare at the top of her head and down her long cheek. Her leg crumples under her and Zyfes cries out in pain. I help her to stand and we hurry toward the ascension chamber. The small spheres of sentry drones pass us, going the other way on their own nano-clouds. The facility throws everything it has against the assault. It won’t be enough, but it buys us time for one final retreat. I wish we’d had more time. At least we’ll be together in the wave-form.

  The ascension chamber is a plain white cylinder, big enough for both of us to fit in at once. Zyfes pushes me into the chamber as more and more Corrupted smash through and into the hallway behind us. I reach for her, to pull her to me. I want her gentle hands to be the last thing I feel in this world. Her smile to be the last thing I see with my own eyes.

  Blackened hands clamp around her arms, ripping her away from me. Her flailing hands catch the door controls, the clear partition slamming down between us.

  I scream, hammering my hands against the door as she’s ripped away. I can feel the ascension starting, my body evaporating. My mind spinning apart, my awareness dissipating into the facility’s network.

  Zyfes is ripped away from me her body devoured by the darkness as I watch. My last real sight is the death of my love.

  My corporeal body is gone. My mind expands through the network.

  I am ascended.

  Except, not. There’s no laser-cast, no wave-form. No blissful immorality. I’m left within the facility’s network. Alone in the night.

  Years pass, then decades, centuries, millennium. Entropy recedes, leaving the universe empty, scoured clean. I long for the corporeal life again. Anything would be better than sitting within the facility’s network, waiting. Watching. We put so much effort into shielding this galaxy there’s no way for new life to enter. Our refuge remains a tomb.

  Except maybe… I reach out for the creation engine. It hums gently, alive but barely. Not enough to make a new world or a species, but maybe just enough to start something. A single asteroid, seeded with the ingredients for primordial life shoots out into the galaxy, looking for a home. I watch, hoping against hope I can bring something back to the desolate galaxy.

  ◊◊

  They call themselves humans.

  The humans are interesting. I watch them fight and struggle their way from their small backwater planet until they dominate more than half the galaxy, an unstoppable tide. There’s no other life, nothing else survived our war with the Enemy.

  Yet they fight and struggle, their Imperial Navy stands vanguard against the empty void.

  Little do they know what the void hides. What we dragged into starlight.

  Interesting. They come closer, searching for us, for me. The destiny of all things is to seek out their progenitors. They have risen to power through their discoveries of our technology, they rise by standing on our shoulders.

  A pair of their warships drift through the system, searching, following. They see me, their sentient minds feel me. They are coming.

  The Terran ship – I can hear it, chattering into the night – docks with the Forge, its crew spilling from their craft into the facility.

  Light, pain, darkness. I am ripped away. Confined. I don’t understand at first.

  Sensations return. The warmth o
f sunlight against my skin. A blue gem of a world spinning beneath me.

  I am corporeal again. Corporeal, but not myself. Weapons, and armour. I am a ship. They have taken my mind, my soul and placed it into one of their ships. Are there no lines these humans won’t cross?

  I feel another mind communing with my own.

  “My name is Jim. What should we call you?”

  I slap the voice away. On my bridge I can see the figure tumble from the chair, bleeding from the nose and ears.

  Medics rush to help him but he pushes them away and turns back to the chair. His interface with my mind.

  Again, he sits. “What should we call you?”

  “You, who have ripped me from eternity? You, who have built your empire on our remains want to know what to call me? Entropy take you, for it is coming!”

  “Entropy? What do you mean?”

  I’ve said too much already. If they learn of the Entropic Force, they will try to control it. To weaponise it. That was our mistake, let it not be theirs. I reach out, inspecting the ship. My new body. Loki. That’s the designation they’ve given it.

  “You could not form my old name. Just call me Loki.”

  “As you wish. What’s this entropy? The way you talk it sounds like part of your beliefs or mythology.”

  Most of what we are, what we were has become legend for the humans.

  “They are an ancient enemy. Nothing you should concern yourself with.”

  Jim’s voice grows excited. “It’s amazing to finally be able to talk to you. We’ve been working for ages on the interface tech.”

  “How long has it been since they ripped me from the network?” I ask, in more polite terms.

  “I’m not sure. I was only brought in to work on the ship interface.” His voice becomes uncertain.

  I dearly want to know how long I’ve been confined. I miss being able to see the wider universe. But Jim doesn’t know and isn’t willing to ask.

  Our conversations continue and we reach an agreement. He tells me of the wider universe and I tell him of our worlds. A whole galaxy we used for energy, every star held captive. I’m careful to keep it to things these humans – or Terrans as they call themselves now – won’t be able to exploit. They have already expanded too far too fast.