by Rob Dearsley
Then it happens.
“Loki, do you remember when we talked of ‘Entropy’?”
I remember avoiding the subject. “It is nothing.”
“Look, I need you to be straight with me. Is it safe?”
Oh no. They have found its lingering, necrotic remains. “No,” I answer simply.
“Why won’t you talk about it?”
I can hear the pleading tone in his voice. Either they’ve already found it, or they are close enough that it makes no difference anymore. “In our desperation, we pulled it from the emptiness of the Before, and it destroyed us all. If you have found it, run. Far and fast. That or burn it. It will return you to the dust from which you came.”
On the bridge. Jim tumbles from the chair blinking, shaking his head. His vital signs spike as medics rush to his aid. He brushes them off and looks up.
For a long time after that, Jim does not return. I wonder if my vehemence about the enemy has scared him off.
I catch snippets of conversation, both amongst my crew and on the open communications channels. Something has happened out in the fringes. Something terrible, and it has the Terrans – this mighty Imperium – scared.
I watch as more and more ships are dispatched toward the front never to return. More ships are built to replace them, but they are no longer intelligent, just metal husks run by their human crews. Is this step backwards just the pressure of war, or is there something more?
Then a ship returns, one of the new soul-less ones. Battered and broken, nearly half its crew dead, but it made it back to Prime.
Less than a day later, Jim returns. He looks years older, haggard expression and haunted eyes. He brushes off the medics and technicians to sit in the command chair.
“Loki, we need your help,” he says without any preamble. His voice is rough like he’s been shouting.
“Is it the darkness? I told you, warned you.”
“No, no. Not that,” he says, interrupting me. “It’s our ships, something is turning them against us.”
Something? But not the darkness. Which means it’s something of their own invention. The thought is enough to bring a bitter laugh. Our own mistakes reflected back at me.
“Please,” Jim says. “They’re coming. They mean to wipe us out. We can’t stop them, we only mean to hold them.”
“If you cannot win, why fight?”
“There is still hope. We are sending out colony ships. Blind jumps beyond the fringes of the Imperium where they will never find them. But we need time.” He directs my attention towards three massive ships orbiting on the far side of the planet. “This is the most advanced ship we have left. Please.”
I remember my last corporeal moments. Zyfes touch, her lilting voice as she pushes me into the ascension chamber.
Here and now the Terrans teeter on the edge of the same abyss. But, unlike us, they struggle to endure. They will fight for that last breath, fight until the end.
“I will help you. What do you wish?”
As it turns out I am the vanguard of their defence.
“Ready?” Jim asks, again. The majority of the crew – scientists – have been shipped out and replaced by military men.
“Yes.” The rush of power is heady, the primed weapons bristling across my bow and flanks tingle. Now, I am a warship, and today I will fight.
Jump points open on the periphery of the system. Hundreds of them. No thousands. There are so many ships, and they keep coming. I give up counting somewhere around fifty thousand.
The tide of ships falls upon the defensive fleet in a roar of weapons fire, and battle is joined.
I dive into combat, firing railguns and missiles into the charging ships. They shatter, spilling oxygen and crew into space, but this does little to deter the rest of the fleet.
Beside me, a heavy cruiser, all bulky armour plate and stubby CQC guns, blazes into the midst of the attacking ships. The enemy’s lead units are practically vaporised under the barrage.
No time to cheer this small victory. Both fleets stall and the fight descends into a grinding maul of ships. The larger attacking fleet pushes in-system. A quick check shows them coming from all sides.
I spare a moment to check on the colony ships. They are spooling up their jump drives. Shuttles skip between them and the surface. The Terrans will keep loading people until the last possible moment. For every fifteen minutes we can hold, another hundred people can be saved. At least that’s what the Terran estimates say.
Weapons fire screams past. Tracer shells ping off my hull, but like all the Terran ships I am heavily armoured. I return fire, lances of plasma cutting through armour plate.
Why do you serve them? They should burn. The voice slithers into my mind. There is something pervasive about it.
They are alive, I reply. They are mine!
They should burn, they must burn. We will burn back the darkness.
The darkness? Oh no. These ships have encountered the Entropic Force, and it has driven them mad.
We have clarity. They don’t deserve you, your help. Let them burn.
I move to cover a damaged ship, spilling out a screen of flack and tracer fire into oncoming missiles the size of small buildings. The Terrans do like to build things big.
The concussive force of the detonation tosses ships aside, leaving a gaping hole in the battlefield. I am pushed down, toward the planet.
They trapped you. Locked you away in a shell, forced to fight and die at their whims.
They are alive!
And they’re my creations – my children – and I don’t want to see them end like this.
I scan through the network looking for the ship broadcasting this signal. If I can stop the ringleaders maybe, just maybe, the other ships would be biddable.
The defensive perimeter, the last frontline in this war, contracts around the planet. A quick check shows the Colony ships are nearly ready to go.
Burn them.
Finally, I find the command ship, bearing an X designation, sitting toward the back of the fleet. There is no way to reach it. No matter how I work it.
All that is left is to fight and hope that somewhere, somehow this thing they call humanity – my creations – can endure.
I shift to join the last, tattered remnants of our force, holding the line above the colony ships. Planetary weapons batteries rip into the enemy fleet. But it’s too little, and far too late. One by one they fall silent under the barrage of the enemy fleet.
The remains of the Terran Navy stand hull to hull above the colony ships, spilling tracer and flack fire out in a screen. It is all we can do; all we have left.
One of the colony ships jumps.
At least some of the humans will survive. It buoys me to know that this life at least stands a chance. It seems like the rest of the fleet feels the same and we push back, shredding the advancing ships, giving them a moment of pause.
We don’t have time to push the advantage before they’re on us again.
It is a losing battle. Like our last stand against the darkness. Zyfes’ face flashes through my mind. The images come as vivid as if it were yesterday.
Her smile. The touch of her hands in mine. The fear in her eyes as she was torn away and consumed by darkness.
I let out another volley of plasma fire, diverting power from unnecessary systems, to keep firing. Safety warnings flash, but I keep firing. Pouring all my loss, fear and rage into that barrage. For the first time in a long time, I feel present, feel real.
I am Lloshi, the last of the Alphar. We made this galaxy, gave it life, and I will be damned if I am going to see it end like this.
Power relays burn out. I reroute and keep firing, even through the pain.
The second colony ship jumps.
One by one, the plasma cannons burn – flares of sharp, white-hot pain – and go out. I rout more power to the remaining ones carving up advancing ships. Only two other human controlled ships remain. A barrage of tracer shells slams into me. Armour t
ears away. I tumble aside. More tracers. The pain overwhelms me and for a moment I am blind, trying to process. I don’t see the incoming missile until it is too late.
Nothing for it. I brace myself for the end. Hopefully, I will get to see Zyfes again. To hold her again.
The last ship, a stocky cruiser, originally equipped with the oversized missiles, rolls above, taking the impact square on.
The ship breaks apart, white-hot shrapnel plunging down toward us. I try to block it, to shield the last colony ship, but I’m too far away. I cannot make it. It is not going to make it. It-
In a wink of blue light, the final colony ship jumps away.
Humanity endures.
For now, at least.
Twenty-Six
(SDF Loki, Terran System)
Dannage wiped tears from his eyes. He’d experienced Loki’s story, felt its pain, its loss, as though it were his own. Arland’s face flashed through his mind, falling into darkness.
“How did you survive?” he asked, or thought. He wasn’t quite sure.
Loki, the hooded form, stepped from the shadows. “The ship was badly damaged, left drifting. Lost amongst all the other wreckage.”
Alone for all those centuries. Dannage couldn’t imagine what it would have been like. It would have driven him mad.
Loki shrugged. “What’s a few centuries, when stacked atop thousands more?”
Dannage shook his head. The more time they spent together, the more human Loki seemed.
“Anyway, what do we do now? You said we can stop the darkness.”
“Yes. The Terran rebels were right about one thing. We need to burn it. It’s born of the infinite nothing of the Before. Our acts of creation are anathema to it.”
Images clicked in Dannage’s mind. “You want to make the sun go supernova? Destroy the system?”
Loki cocked his head. “You know of this stratagem?”
Dannage laughed, remembering Pyrite. “I have some experience with it. But what about my brain?”
“The conditioning has already begun. I cannot restructure your neurology – the Terran equipment was a brute force approach anyway – you will still be able to hear the link, but it will be by your choice.”
Dannage nodded, pulling back. It felt like a compromise, where the Terran neural-thingy had been a solution.
“Some choices are ones we have to live with.”
He shot Loki a questioning look.
“As you saw my memories, I saw yours. You did what you did to save her, but there are always consequences. We should move quickly if we want to save your friends.”
◊◊
G-forces pinned Hale to the side-wall of the escape pod as it executed another evasive turn. Despite the Scout Cruiser and Lloyd’s best efforts, the Feynman’s guns continued to swat escape pods from the sky. Beside her, Hutch worked the controls with a ferocious intensity.
Valentine, Ellis, Fyffe, Jenna and Niels were crammed into the bottom of the escape pod, pinned by the acceleration.
The pod went through another turn and the pressure levelled off. Jenna climbed up to peer out of the small porthole. “I think we’re clear.”
“Let’s just hope the darkness doesn’t have the long-range weapons yet,” Niels said. His face looked tight and drawn.
“Don’t tempt fate,” Hutch replied, closing his eyes and leaning back against the curved side wall of the escape pod.
“Guys, we have a problem,” Jenna said from her perch.
“What?” Niels moved up alongside her, pressing against her in the confines of the escape pod.
“We’re on the wrong side of the Feynman,” Jenna said, twisting around to face them. “We’re heading out into space rather than toward the planet.”
“Can’t we just loop around?” Ellis asked.
Hutch checked the readouts on the console. “Even if we wanted to try and run the gauntlet past the Feynman again, the evasive manoeuvres burned through too much of our fuel. We couldn’t make the turn with enough left to land safely.”
“So, what do we do,” Fyffe said, fear creeping into her voice. “Just wait until we run out of air and die?”
Jenna was looking out the porthole again, her face pressed against the glass. “What about one of the Terran ships?”
If Dannage were around, he could pick them up in the Folly. Yes. That would work.
“Can we make it to the shipyards?” Hale asked.
Hutch worked the console for a moment. “Yeah, we should have just enough fuel as long as we can stay ballistic most of the way.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Valentine said. “Any signs of other pods?”
Hutch tapped at the small console. “I’m not detecting anything.”
Niles leaned forward. “Put me on wide-band.”
Hutch worked his console. “Best I can do. Not sure how far it’ll reach though.”
Niels voice shifted to an announcer’s tone. “Any escape pods unable to reach the surface rendezvous at the shipyards.”
As they closed on the station Hutch switched out with Hale. They couldn’t use the docking pad the Folly had used, but there was a docking port nearby that they could mate with. Hale inspected the controls warily. Connecting to a docking port was tricky at the best of times, but doing it with naff all fuel, and nothing more than cramped touchscreen controls, was a nightmare.
Unfortunately, Hale was the best-qualified pilot, so it was all on her.
She brought the navigation controls up on the console and started slowing the escape pod, spinning it to dock with the ship’s airlock.
The side of the ship loomed closer. The distance counted down in the corner of the screen. A touch to the left. Small fragments of debris pinged against the escape pod. Down a touch, and swivel clockwise. Nearly there.
Down a bit more. The fuel gage flashed. No choice, now. It had to be right.
The pod thumped against the side of the Terran station. Hutch engaged the magnetic clamps with a larger thump that rang through the pod and up Hale’s arms.
Hutch punched another control and the pod doors opened, revealing the scarred, dented doors. He pulled a door jack from a small compartment by the door and passed it to Hale. “Would you mind doing the honours?”
Hale squeezed past the one-armed marine and started working the flat ends of the jack into the seam of the doors.
As she worked, Hale cast an eye over the doors, a faded serial number sat on the bottom of the door. She paused to brush her hand over the door. The Imperium, faded and battered, but still here, hanging on. Or more than hanging on. Beyond these doors lay a functional Imperial base.
The seam gave, throwing Hale forward as the doors parted.
Air hissed, pushing loose strands of her hair back.
“Here.” Hutch passed her a pair of air testers.
Hale cracked the clear plastic tubes and pushed them through the gap in the door. The chemicals within the testers turned a murky green.
She passed them back to Hutch.
“Looks breathable to me.” He passed them off to Niels, who nodded in agreement.
Hale let out a breath, relaxing against the doors for a moment. Then she started working the crank to pry the doors further apart. The doors pushed back. Seized, dried up hydraulics groaned and crunched as she forced the crank.
Beyond the doors, lights flickered on, casting harsh brilliance across the airlock chamber. The layout matched every other imperial airlock Hale had seen, ranks of emergency space suits to her right and the control consoles on the left.
Fyffe moved past her into the airlock and started working at the controls as the rest of them filed out into the antechamber.
The inner doors hissed open with the soft breeze of equalizing air-pressure. Ellis and Hutch led out into the empty corridor, as lights flicked on in the high, vaulted ceiling. After all the time she’d been spending on SDF ships and stations, it felt odd to be in a Terran scale facility. Hale rolled her shoulders and stretched out her neck enjoyin
g the head-room.
“What about the Turned?” Valentine asked as he followed them into the hallway.
“We didn’t see any signs of fighting before,” Hutch said. “But stay sharp, guys.”
Footsteps echoed through the ship. Hale snapped her head up, catching herself on a doorframe. She cocked her head trying to pick out the source of the sound, but it bounced around, coming at her from all directions. Damn.
◊◊
The Wolfhound fighter pulled away from the now drifting bulk of the Feynman. It had been close, but the Plasma-Cruiser should stop just short of the jump point. Arland flicked her console to the scanner readings. The fighter’s scanner suit wasn’t as versatile as the one on the Folly, but she could still track the escape pods. Those that survived anyway.
Most of the escape pods dove for the planet’s surface, but several spun off into the wreckage further out. Hopefully, they’d rendezvous with Niels rather than spinning off into deep space, out of control. Floating tombs for the people on board.
She wondered how many of the crew survived. Was Hale in one of those escape pods dropping through Terra Prime’s atmosphere like a falling star? The Terran woman was tough as old boots, if anyone could find a way to survive, it was her.
Lloyd swung the fighter around to follow the escape pods and shuttles down, making sure to stay clear of the Feynman’s weapon arcs.
“What now?” she asked. What could they possibly do? The Feynman and her point-to-point drive was the only way out of the system and back to Colonised Space. They had to find a way to retake it.
“Stars know,” Lloyd said, never taking his eyes off the heads-up display. “Hook up with the others and see what we’ve got left. Hopefully Niels or one of the command staff will have a plan.”
“Hopefully…” she replied as they entered the atmosphere. Flickers of red plasma licking over the fighter as it plunged through the upper atmosphere bleeding off speed at an alarming rate. The force of the sharp deceleration pulled Arland against her flight harness. The straps bit into her shoulders and waist.