Through the Abyss

by Daniel Litchfield

  “STOP THEM NOW!” he shouted to the room, but not a single person could do anything at that point but watch. The gap between the two Combat Teams closed in a matter of seconds, each Ship doing everything in its power to destroy the other. In Emperor Indus’s Command Center, all noise faded while the group watched the drama unfold. Not a single breath was drawn, as if even their lungs were too fixated on the display to take action.

  The front four Natron Fleet Vessels were only able to fire their primary weapon platforms a few times before the bewildered Baikal Combat Team came to its senses and returned a volley of its own. The deadly exchange was a spectacular site on the monitors in Indus’s Command Center. Rounds were deflecting off Ships while red, blue, green, and purple explosions flashed all over in a glorious fireworks display. Showers of sparks periodically lit up the darkness as lighter kinetic energy rounds scraped along the outsides of armored shells.

  When the two forces finally conjoined, the watchers witnessed the true devastating effects of military weaponry. Missiles and slugs were thrust at the opponent without regard to self-preservation on either side. Most of the defensive turrets were unable to react quickly enough, leaving their Ships at the mercy of their armor. Turrets punched hundreds of thousands of holes into the sides of enemy Fleet Vessels, killing anyone unlucky enough to be in an outer compartment. The explosions from missiles were nearly unending as the Natron and Baikal forces unleashed everything they had in mad desperation to obliterate their opponent.

  As the sprint to freedom reached its pinnacle, both sides became entangled in a mess of steal and flesh. Two opposing Ships found themselves barreling toward each other at unimaginable speeds; a Natron Capital Ship and a Baikal Super Capital. Unless action was taken immediately, the collision would be unavoidable. The Natron Combat Team Commander, who was in the Capital Ship caught in the predicament, had a difficult decision to make.

  Time slowed down for Admiral Meinsted as his eyes peered around the room at his crew struggling at their stations. Sparks were flying from the ceilings while monitors were turning blank from the loss to the Ship’s external sensors. Unsecured objects flew around the room, destroying equipment and taking down unsuspecting crewmen. Ceiling lights flickered and smoke from the sparks began to fill the room. The sounds of gun fire reverberated down the hallways, piercing even the thick walls of the Ship’s Command Center. Sirens screamed while the different colors of the rainbow flashed all over the walls, each signifying a different emergency. Crewmen ran to and fro trying to keep the Fleet Vessel running for as long as possible; however, no Ship could survive such a beating for long.

  As Meinsted returned to his senses, he looked at his Ship’s primary Regulated Artificial Intelligence. With reserved determination, “Full Speed. Ram em to Hell,” his tone calmly ordered. He would at least give those behind him a fighting chance to survive.

  In an instant, the blinding explosion smothered the battle space. The immense shock wave obliterated every nearby Specter. A Baikal Cruiser too close to the collision was swallowed by the explosion, utterly destroying it. Every Ship on the battle space was immediately thrown off course from the immense burst of energy while some temporarily lost power to all of their systems. Missiles in flight were incinerated, adding their explosions to the dramatic scene as they blew into a thousand colors.

  The impact, and subsequent explosion, was exactly what the Natron forces needed. They were able to travel right through the expanding explosion, temporarily throwing off Baikal Targeting Systems in the process. In the aftermath, seven Natron Fleet Vessels broke through, attaining full speed and racing off toward incoming support. Their counter attack retreat had worked. Along with the incinerated Baikal Super Capital Ship and Cruiser, another Capital Ship, paralyzed with absolutely no power, floated by. Four Cruisers had their pieces drifting in all directions, six Frigates were out of commission, and forty-two Specters would never return to their bays.

  Emperor Indus momentarily sat confused. He was not sure whether to celebrate or become enraged. An entire enemy Combat Team had been utterly destroyed and another was reduced to seven heavily damaged Ships. On the other hand, the impatience of one of his Commanders led to the destruction of many of his own, including far too many Specters which were ungodly expensive.

  The Command Center remained dead quiet, awaiting the fury from their Emperor. Noticing the icy stillness, Cat quickly reminded Indus that as long as he always killed more of theirs than they did his, then he would win the War. To everyone’s surprise, the Emperor nodded his head in acceptance of the RAI’s assessment.

  “Not bad everyone,” Indus announced, rising out of his chair. He was still assuming that it was a Natron team that penetrated his border’s security. “We not only avenged Zeiyan, but we did a lot of damage to the enemy just now. And while they were able to get some of ours, we got far more of theirs. Besides, that’s war. Now, unless there in anything else, I will be attending a private engagement for the rest of night and I do not wish to be disturbed.” Indus left the Command Center, his mind having put the battle behind him, and turned his attention to the salacious activity before him.

  Part Two

  From the Ashes of Missed Premonitions to the Mountains of Destiny

  Chapter 6:

  The Silent Raider Armada

  Over the last two and a half weeks, a group of the Huron Empire’s most advanced Fleet Vessels had been gathering just outside Ozark’s atmosphere. Consecrated for a task outside the confines of the Great War of the Galaxies, the Ships waited for their Armada Commander to give the final order to jump into the oblivion.

  A sudden cold startled Euphretes. “Neuma, where am I?” He asked, his eyes finally beginning to adjust to the strange environment. After a brief period of silence, “Neuma?” Nothing.

  Neuma’s tender voice failed to fill his mind space. There was a gaping hole inside of him that she usually inhabited. At that moment, Euphretes realized he was in a dark place. The last time he had lived without her presence was before she made her existence known to him, back when he was a sickly child with no Destiny. Terrified of returning to a measly existence without Neuma and a life without purpose, “Neuma, what’s going on here?! Where are you?”

  There was no response other than a barely audible breeze, “Euphretes?”

  The quiet voice shuddering in the cold persuaded him to slowly turn toward it. After repositioning his body, Euphretes could see a smoldering fire a few feet away that was really just a small pile of smoldering twigs. Dust and sand covered every surface of the ground, making it rough and highly uncomfortable to lie on. Huddled as close as possible to the smoldering embers was a shivering figure curled up into a tight ball. Two pleading eyes stared up at Euphretes, silently begging for relief from the cold.

  Déjà vu flooded Euphretes’s brain as he scrambled to make sense of the situation. He searched all around until he noticed a piece of metal shimmering in the distance. “A Sprint Racer!” He cried out inside his barren mind space.

  “Then that means, … LANI!” he shouted out loud this time, suddenly realizing that he was back in the desert oasis on Emperor Lesos’s home planet, Esam.

  Lani’s amber hair was splayed in all directions, completely frozen by the incredibly frigid temperatures. Pale blue lips shivered uncontrollably as her teeth rattled against each other. Her body appeared frail and broken, as if she was malnourished from famine. The Princess’s eye’s looked like phantoms as they darted back and forth; the fear radiating off her aura was deafening. Lani was barely clothed, revealing purple toned skin in the place of her normally sun kissed complexion.

  Euphretes nearly toppled over trying to force himself to his feet to get to Lani as quickly as possible. Tearing off his shirt, he wrapped her in the warmed fabric and did all he could to engulf her with as much of his massive frame as possible.

  “Neuma, where are you?” He whispered into the cavity that had become his mind space, bitterness starting to fill the void. In that moment
, the loneliness bearing down upon Euphretes was almost insurmountable. Hope seemed to flee his soul as Lani’s core body temperature continued to drop. Regardless of how much he cradled her delicate frame, her violent shaking refused to cease.

  “Lani, can you hear me?” Euphretes whispered in her ear while stroking her hair in reassurance.

  “SSSHHHHVVV SSSHHRRRVVVVV YE YE YES YESSS SSSHHHHVVV SSSHHRRRVVVVV.”

  “It’s going to be ok, you hear me? It’s going to be ok,” he comforted. Suddenly remembering that the fire was almost completely out, “I’ll be right back, I promise,” Euphretes said as he forced himself from her side.

  “Neuma, where are you?!” He shouted out again to his mind space. Her promise of never abandoning him started to feel more like a lie.

  A strange and odorous concoction of fear and bitterness that mirrored Euphretes’s mind space’s distress, spilled out into the real world. It burned his nostrils and brought tears to his eyes. No matter how hard he fought against it, the burning air refused to relinquish its pain and grew into a vicious fog. The farther Euphretes moved away from Lani, the thicker the air became. He fumbled around in the darkness. “Some promise,” he spat out loud. A rising panic and resentment began taking over his thought processes, while the fog around him remained still and voiceless.

  Euphretes’s inability to control any aspect of the situation infuriated him, as he frantically searched for anything flammable to keep the fire alive. “Come on. Come on. Come on,” he kept repeating to himself as he darted around desperately looking for fuel for the fire. “Come on. Come on.”

  Euphretes’s hands brushed over the rocks and sand, coming up with no organic material whatsoever. It seemed as if even the trees’s fallen branches had chosen to forsake him. Unable to find even a dead leaf as he crawled on his hands and knees across the desert floor, indignation started to surge through him. Euphretes yearned to give into the tempting sensation of letting rage drive his actions. There was a euphoric high in letting anger take the helm, and the Empirical Admiral at wits end was inches away from surrendering to the fury. Feeling as if the universe was genuinely conspiring against him, Euphretes needed a glimmer of hope before the darkness sealed his fate.

  THRUNK

  “Agh, what the?!” Euphretes yelled out in frustration after his head smashed into a low hanging branch.

  CRACK!

  Euphretes lashed out at the inanimate object in vexation, landing a solid strike. The branch splintered into a thousand pieces as blood seeped out of new cuts on his right hand. “IT’S DEAD!” He shouted in jubilee, having successfully found life saving fuel for the fire. Ignoring the small scraps on the ground and the throbbing pain in his hand, Euphretes began wrapping his arms around the trunk of the tree with a smug expression. “You can stay where you are then Neuma, I don’t need you for this.”

  “AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH…”

  Straining with all of his might, the tree barely lifted an inch before he had to take a breath. While the dead bark abused his exposed stomach and chest, leaving splinters and cuts all over his flesh, it was his pride that took the brunt of the beating. Tapping into the rage barking orders at his sanity, Euphretes lowered his grip to give more power to his legs. Feeling as if the tree was taunting him in his misery, he focused all the fury he had onto Neuma’s broken promise in order to give him a last burst of strength.

  “RRRRRAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH….”

  CCCRRREEEAAAKKK!

  “RRRRRAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” With the tree finally giving way, Euphretes’s voice cried out into the darkened wilderness with renewed vigor.

  THRACK!

  The tree suddenly erupted from the soil and toppled over, taking Euphretes along with it. Left utterly breathless beneath the dead branches, tingling needles instantly dispersed throughout his extremities and a strange sensation of weightlessness started to wrap itself around his consciousness. Euphretes’s heart pounded in his chest while his lungs fought against the atmosphere for every snippet of oxygen. Moaning from the pain, he opened his eyes and caught the quiet red glow of the last dying ember through the sinister fog. “Lani,” He whispered to himself as energy flooded back.

  Triumphantly dragging the tree over to the fire, Euphretes tossed the smaller branches over the live coal and got down to his knees. A few short breaths into the kindling started producing smoke. Moments later, flames emerged, blanketing Euphretes’s bleeding chest with warmth. He quickly tossed some more branches onto the flames before lightly repositioning Lani closer to the fire. He resumed his engulfing embrace around his shaking darling, and prayed for sunlight.

  The fire grew until the air around the two bodies had warmed considerably. Beads of sweat formed on Euphretes’s brow. Much to his dismay, Lani continued to shiver and shake. He placed his hand on her frozen forehead. Her scalp felt as if ice was flowing underneath, and had lost its elasticity. Looking more closely, he could see that a layer of ice had formed over her eyelids and purple cheeks while her breathing had become labored and shallow. Panic began its slow ascent up Euphretes’s spine.

  “It’s not possible!” He cried out in angst. “Neuma, please come back. I can’t do this on my own.”

  Lonely silence.

  Euphretes made one last defiant stand against the hopelessness spilling over in his soul. Scooping all of the glowing coals and blazing sticks that he could get his arms around, ignoring the excruciating pain of searing flesh, he pushed them in as close as possible to Lani’s freezing body. He could smell the singed chest hair as he continued to strategically place burning sticks near the frozen Princess. The flames circling around her only lasted a few seconds before burning out for no apparent reason. The red embers closest to her skin suddenly died out.

  “COME ON!” Euphretes yelled in defeat and misery.

  Grabbing one of the black coals that was fiery hot seconds ago and feeling that it had inexplicably become cold to the touch, “YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” Euphretes screamed from the top of his lungs.

  Once again, he yanked out coals and burning branches to surround her. Almost immediately, the flames started to die out into nothingness while the red embers turned black. “AAAAHHHHH! Neuma, why are you doing this to me?!” He cried out to the barren night sky. No reprieve. No Neuma.

  Turning his attention back to Lani, “COME ON!” the distraught man screamed as his tears flowed unabated. The sorrow and fear of possibly losing his future wife was crushing. Without enough sticks and embers to surround her a third time, all he could do was hold her tightly. “I am not going to lose you. I promise,” Euphretes sputtered through the tears. “And I don’t break my word.” More tears poured down his cheeks as the hopelessness of the situation took hold.

  Lani’s eyes suddenly sprung open, only they were grey and lifeless.

  “She’s already mine!” The near demonic voice protruding from the innocent face stopped Euphretes’s racing heart in its tracks. Even more disturbing was the fact that the voice exploded within his mind space and not directly from Lani’s lips.

  Just as quickly as it came, the dark entity retreated. As if the violent outcry was her last spark of life, Lani’s body suddenly ceased shaking and stilled. She was gone, lifeless.

  Euphretes was truly in one of the darkest places he had ever been. The Artificial Intelligence who was closer to him than anyone, who he had shared life with, had abandoned him to this gelid wasteland of misery. On top of that, the love of his life had just died in his arms; and there was absolutely nothing that he could have done to stop it. Hope was all but a distant memory now. Wanting nothing more than to freeze to death right alongside her, Euphretes closed his eyes and succumbed to the bitterness swelling inside of him.

  “Euphretes? It’s time to get up.” Neuma’s voice rang distant into the nothingness.

  “Euphretes!”

  Neuma’s voice, accompanied with a surge of norepinephrine, jolted Euphretes out of his nightmare.

  “Where have you been?!” He demanded, his tone
filled with resentment.

  “What? I’ve been here. Where else would I be?” She had no idea why he was so upset.

  “It was a dream,” he whispered. “It was just a dream.”

  “It must have been a bad one,” she said with sincere sympathy.

  Euphretes did what he could to shrug off the nightmare. Ever since he heard about Emperor Lesos’s message, a dreadful fire had been growing within his soul, culminating in the alarming dream. The last month had left Euphretes with more questions than answers as his new mission seemed to awaken a rejuvenated sense of unease deep within his subconscious.

  “What’s Emperor Indus looking for?” Euphretes asked nervously. He sensed apprehension radiating from Carpathian. Finding a file marked “Strictly Limited” in his Profile, Carpathian opened it up and displayed the contents as he talked.

  “For a while now, there have been rumors circulating that an undiscovered system harboring a human civilization is hiding out in the desert regions. For reasons we don’t understand, Indus has become obsessed with finding this hidden system and using its human population for God knows what. Because the rumors have the system in multiple Galaxies around us, Emperor Indus secretly dispatched several teams to the Sculptive Cluster. When Admiral Sentago was informed of the Baikal leader’s intent, he decided to send out a team of his own in the opposite direction without telling Lesos. They were…”