Through the Abyss

by Daniel Litchfield

  Realizing that Sentago wasn’t going to respond, Lesos’s tone drastically shifted from speaking to a friend to one of speaking to a pawn on a chess board. “I am done giving you advice as a friend. I am your Emperor. Listen carefully. You will quietly and calmly gather my Staff and get yourselves on that shuttle. You WILL get to my son before those monsters pounce and you WILL do a better job of protecting him than me. My family is going to need you now more than ever.”

  Admiral Sentago opened his mouth to object but was interrupted before he could utter a single syllable. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left Sentago. It’s just that simple. As someone who has lived with far too many regrets, this definitely will not be one of them. Now, get to Broye. I will not ask twice.”

  Admiral Sentago nodded his head in affirmation and grabbed the Emperor’s hand, “It’s been an honor Sir.” The Admiral turned around and silently left the Bridge in shame.

  “Godspeed Admiral,” Lesos whispered in return.

  Just as Emperor Lesos started studying the holographic image of Guide and Deliver on the data display, along with the other four Cruisers maneuvering around it, the first Baikal Super Capital came within view on the projection. It was then that the display came to life. Immediately, it started showing possible maneuver routes to establish critical buffer zones as well as potential enemy courses of action. Unfortunately, the scarlet tinted chart paths, which represented a maneuver to safety, were nonexistent. The only glimmer of hope for anyone watching was seeing the tiny shuttle make it out of the bay and into a jump sequence.

  Guide and Deliver’s Regulated Artificial Intelligence program, GD32, appeared next to Emperor Lesos. Changing his uniform at will, GD32 appeared this time as the holographic image of a seasoned aviator still in flight gear. “Sir, I was unable to position us away from that last Super. In less than four minutes, they will have us completely cut off and out of time.”

  Regulated Artificial Intelligence programs were the closest things to AI that humans allowed themselves to create without putting themselves in danger. Still controllable, RAIs were critical to every aspect of Military equipment. After surviving a brutal attack by multiple Fleet Vessel Artificial Intelligences who assumed absolute control of their Ships and began eradicating human life indiscriminately in the name of stopping the spread of disease, humans unwisely decided that they could no longer trust any form of Artificial Intelligence. AI was immediately labeled as the human race’s number one threat and anyone found harboring any form of Artificial Intelligence was to be put to death, regardless of the individual’s title or rank.

  Lesos nodded his head to indicate that he was listening but waited for the program to continue speaking. Noticing the lack of response, GD32 spoke. “They somehow managed to immediately pin point THIS Cruiser Sir; clearly looking for you and knowing you would be here.” As if the words were the Baikal attackers's cue…

  THUD! ... THUNK! A large concussive blast that could’ve meant only one thing rocked Guide and Deliver, sending shivers of foreboding down the Emperor’s spine.

  “Sir, Preserve 13 just took a direct impact from that Super Capital’s main battery!” the Executive Officer shouted in dismay. Chunks of the obliterated Cruiser could be seen on the data display drifting apart from a cloud of near vaporized elements.

  “So that’s what you want to talk about. So be it,” Lesos thought to himself, the words sounding distant and unfamiliar in his head.

  Outside his petrified mind space, the Executive Officer asked in a spitfire of questions that were filled to the brim with anger and fear. “Doesn’t he know you’re here? What will the Huron Empire do when they find out? Will they come to our Aid?” Lesos took a deep breath and calmed his mind, for the next few moments would be his last.

  “We are in uncharted territory. All we can do now is hope that they had their fun and that they actually came with something to say,” He finally answered, wanting to say so much more but knowing better.

  BOOM! The Bridge once again shook, except this time from physical contact; and the sound of it wreaked of bad news.

  “GD32, damage assessment!” Lesos bellowed.

  The localized round hitting Guide and Deliver quickly answered the Executive Officer’s questions of whether or not a Fleet Vessel holding a defenseless Emperor would be purposefully targeted. “Sir, we took a direct hit! No critical damage to the hull has occurred, but I am getting some weird feedback. Give…” GD32’s voice exclaimed over the chaos.

  BOOM!

  “me a second to… What?! HOW?! Sir, we just lost our….” GD32 suddenly started to dematerialize while his image contorted with what appeared to be lightning bolts coursing through his ever-shifting image. His voice sounded like shattered glass melting, cooling, and shattering again and again on a never ending cycle. Pure shock was written all over the Executive Officer’s face, his brain becoming temporarily paralyzed from the sheer confusion of what he was actually seeing.

  “Can anyone tell me what’s going on here?!” Emperor Lesos yelled over the unfolding turmoil. The Bridge’s Chief Engineer quickly rushed over to the Emperor. “Sir, the Central Diagnostic Unit was just taken out by a precise strike. Somehow, it broke clean through!”

  Lesos’s Senior Noncommissioned Officer looked directly at his Emperor with wide eyes, “You do know that’s theoretically impossible, right?” Matching the stare, Lesos gave the “what am I supposed to do?” shrug before responding to the Engineer. “Can I get some sort of prognosis please?”

  Ironically, the engineer gave the same shrug as he spoke. “Essentially Sir, they just ripped out our spinal cord. With GD32 and his sub system taken out, Guide and Deliver will not be able to function normally or even communicate. What’s more, with them gone, Guide and Deliver can no longer appropriately allocate energy or information to areas that need it. Essentially Sir, we will start to lose power on an exponential level until only the life support systems are left.”

  The remark about losing communications hit the Natron Emperor’s subconscious like a fist ramming into his stomach. “Please tell me I’m wrong. Please tell me I’m wrong,” Lesos nervously chanted in his mind space as he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.

  “Leading Operative Vimy, or anyone else for that matter, please tell me we managed to send an alert to Emperor Carpathian while we had the opportunity,” Lesos exclaimed with apprehension. He was mentally kicking himself for being foolish enough not to issue the command the moment the Baikal Ships arrived.

  Vimy, a man of few words despite being the Ship’s Senior Noncommissioned Officer, looked at his Emperor with a broadened stare, “I sent an updated situation report up the Chain of Command on my end Sir. But, uh, Sir? I was under the impression that only the Senior Ranking Officer within a cluster of Fleet Vessels had the authority to issue a Series One Alpha or Series One Bravo Distress Call to an outside agency.”

  Knowing the entire crew was looking to him for strength and guidance, Lesos successfully fought the urge to scream out in frustration and guilt. “No, you’re right. No one to blame for that except me,” A forced smile found its way onto the emperor’s face.

  Leading Operative Vimy immediately answered, hoping to bolster his leader’s resolve. “Sir, no one is looking to blame anyone here except for that demon attacking us. And I can promise you this, there is not a single member of my crew who will not go down without attempting to make them pay for it first.”

  “Well, the crew is about to get the chance to put those words of yours to the test. See to it that they’re properly prepared.” Lesos replied, effectively telling the Senior NCO to leave the Bridge and prepare the Ship.

  Just as Vimy had made a couple steps toward the exit, Lesos caught his attention, “One last thing!”

  “Sir?”

  “Chances are, we are about to host a foreign Emperor,” Lesos then gave a scandalous smile, “Make sure the crew knows every possible way to offend a Baikal Royal.” Vimy returned the childish grin. “
Shoot first, then salute. Got it Sir!” Before his Emperor could respond, Vimy about faced and escaped the Bridge.

  Emperor Lesos turned back toward the data display and prayed for a miracle. The three remaining Cruisers were now floating aimlessly after receiving heavier hitting rounds like Guide and Deliver. Desperately needing hours, it would be only seconds later that the blood bath began. Like a bored apex predator playing with its victim, the gargantuan Fleet Vessels slowly and methodically tore apart the Cruisers. Guide and Protect, the Cruiser furthest from Lesos’s, was the first Ship in the enemy's crosshairs.

  CRACK!

  “How is this showing your might?” Emperor Lesos fumed to himself, feeling genuinely helpless and vulnerable for the first time in his life.

  THUD! Guide and Protect was now unrecognizable.

  Adding insult to injury was the Bridge unknowingly forcing the entire crew to sit ringside and watch the sheer destructive force of their future fate. With the Bridge still managing to hang on to precious energy, its tracking systems followed their standard operating procedures and focused in on the destruction while simultaneously projecting it on the data display and monitors throughout the control room.

  POP! A last round from a Super Capital’s primary cannon obliterated the remains.

  THRACK! CRACK! CRACK! BOOM! Provider 11 was suddenly ripped into four sections after a flurry of missile explosions. Crates of food, emergency response housing units, containers filled with medicine, and human souls, floating lifeless in their frozen graves, littered the monitors.

  VVRROOMM! Guide and Deliver was rocked again by a violent blast that nearly threw Emperor Lesos out of his seat.

  It took a few moments for his brain to register what had just happened as he looked at the monitors in dismay. In a twisted sore of beauty, the biggest of the Baikal Ships fired its primary cannon straight through Provider 12, length wise. One shot was all it took. The impact left a tubular debris field and looked as if the Ship had gone into a jump sequence yet left its skin behind by accident. More astounding to Lesos was the fact that not even a single fragment of the interior of Provider 12 was getting recognized by the Bridge’s diagnostics systems. The Cruiser’s insides were either vaporized or sent to another dimension.

  “How is that possible? WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?” Emperor Lesos cried out.

  A voice quickly rose above the torrent of frantic conversations, “Sir, that came from Dawn of Creation!” The Baikal Empire’s premier Flagship was now moving directly toward Guide and Deliver after it had tested out its new toy.

  Guide and Deliver was completely dwarfed by the Baikal Flagship. Not just one, but two large cannons firing 1,300 pounds worth of Tungsten and highly volatile anti-francium shells were positioned facing the front. A countless array of defensive turrets were strategically placed on all sides of the Flagship, each of them able to fire both kinetic and heat energy rounds at unprecedented rates. Long range missile ports dotted the surface while shorter range missiles were chained together like bullet links and force fed into turrets. Designed to fend off single crew fighters, the machine gun missile turrets criss crossed the surface, ensuring at least three of them could aim at every square inch within a spherical surface area of roughly 6 million square miles.

  The Flagship had a large globular center sandwiched between what looked like two halves of a single, standard cut diamond. The cutlet half was the bow with the bulge turning into the face making up the stern and primary engine exhausts. Its shape enabled its designers to maximize the large surface areas for mounting a wide variety of different weapon platforms. Moreover, the design made it harder for enemy fighters and Frigates to gain an advantage by maneuvering in front of or behind the Ship; a Fleet Vessel’s two most vulnerable regions. Dawn of Creation’s exterior all but eliminated that disadvantage with its thousands of different angles.

  Powered by a Helium 3 and Deuterium fusion reactor connected to two anti-particle colliders, the Flagship was nearly self-sustaining during times of peace when engine demand was minimal. Its only weakness, however, was its size. The gigantic Flagship required an immense amount of pre-stored energy to jump; and making quick, precise movements was taxing on the Ship due to its astronomical mass. Dawn of Creation’s designers recognized the warning signs of having a huge, slow moving target. Instead of finding ways to improve maneuverability and agility, they simply added in more offensive and defensive platforms along with fifty-foot-thick armor in most areas.

  Feeling invincible inside his fortress Ship, Emperor Indus relished every moment of sweet revenge. The worry of repercussions never crossed his scheming mind. His actions went beyond breaking multiple Galactic Group laws. They were a literal spit on the treaty that had held the Galactic Group together for the last forty thousand years.

  By making an attempt on an Emperor’s life during mutually agreed upon times of peace, Indus essentially forfeited his life in the eyes of the rest of the Galactic Group. The treaty demanded that the third Empire, whether enemy or ally of the aggressor, move to dethrone the traitorous Emperor and never stop until the act was completed. In this case, the neutral side was not only an ally of Emperor Lesos and would go to war with or without the law, but was the only Empire that posed a serious threat to the Baikal Emperor’s dreams of absolute rule.

  Nevertheless, Indus was adamant about dropping in on the Diplomatic Mission to the Casseopian System. A man of quick action and fierce pride, Indus would often act far ahead of any true planning, leaving his Senior Leadership to find the solutions to the problems he created at the last minute. Indus did not accept failure from those he placed in high positions and everyone around him knew it. And while the taste of vengeance for the Muscarin System was a sweet delicacy the Baikal Emperor could hardly wait for, it was evident that something else stirred his unquenchable need to take Lesos out of the playing field.

  “It’s amazing how someone so powerful and smart can be so incredibly stupid and weak. I mean, leaving your Royal Guard behind as a decoy because you honestly thought I wouldn’t find out about this little trip?” Indus taunted in his mind, finding pleasure in the verbal abuse. “Did you think that after I learned about my grievous gaps in intelligence that I wouldn’t fill those areas? Come on Lesos old fool, you’re better than this. It’s like you want to die by my hands.”

  The Baikal Emperor had a strong, confident voice that demanded respect. Although not tall in stature, only about 5’9”, Indus made up for his lack of height in solid mass. Decades of lifting had left him solid and formidable. Charcoal hair fell down to his broad shoulders, perfectly framing the Emperor’s angular and chiseled face. His jaw dropping vermilion eyes that maintained scarlet undertones under certain light were a geneticist’s fantasy. Incredibly smart and clever when he needed to be, Emperor Indus could scheme his way into and out of practically anything. The man was also blindly loyal to what he perceived as tradition, seeing himself more a god than human. Apart from a few close friends, any contrary advice was rarely tolerated.

  Emperor Indus lived lavishly beyond measure while the vast majority of his people were barely afloat in the Empire’s crippled economy. Because of the man’s ambitions, the Baikal civilians lived military centric lifestyles and were obligated to perform a twenty-five-year rotation as a member of the armed forces. In fact, the military’s spending budget was quadrupled the second Indus took the crown. Out of all of the weapons and toys that he built however, Dawn of Creation was one of his all time favorite killing machines.

  Two teams of twenty-one soldiers each awaited Emperor Indus as he made his way across the private bay, which served as the Special Forces staging area as well as the home for all of the Emperor’s luxurious personal space transits. Standing in-between two brand new, highly classified Transports, the groups of super soldiers meant business.

  Each wore a matte black exterior with the same colored armored plates over a sunken gunmetal grey inner protective suit that resembled rough reptilian skin. A netted shroud interwoven with
obsidian and ghost white threading covered their helmets and fell down to their shoulders. All together, the group stood like mythological wraiths; only entering the physical plane to drag a pour human soul back into the oblivion at the beckoning of their Emperor.

  Indus strode across the bay floor and stood before the two teams. “Gentlemen, I don’t have to remind you about what we are about to do. The War, OUR WAR! Begins now!” Not a sound was uttered by the group. “You know your jobs. Now get to your Transports, we’ve got an Emperor literally dying to meet me.” The haunting soldiers glided over to their designated Transports in complete silence, not even the sound of a footstep could be heard.

  Two team leaders stayed behind, recognized only by a splattered streak of red that ran across the front of their shrouds. “You two, don’t make me regret this decision. You,” speaking to the team leader on the right, “You and your team will get me to Emperor Lesos. Dismissed.”

  The soldier nodded and left. Turning his attention to the remaining team leader, “Your team will board second. I don’t care who you have to torture, bribe, or kill to get me the location of their forces, but by the time I’m finishing up with the Emperor you better have those coordinates. Now go!” Indus barked. The team leader barely moved his head in acknowledgement before departing the Emperor’s presence.