Black Swarm

by Ivan Kal

  Their ship was slowly moving through the system with its stealth systems activated. They were close to the star now, and would soon be forced to leave stealth and make a run for the access point. There would be no point trying to keep the stealth systems on when their shields would be flaring brightly as they moved through the corona. The Enlightened had some defenses outside of the star in orbit above the access point, and they hoped that they had none inside the access point. The Chang’e was a powerful ship, and it could take on the smaller Enlightened ships, but they were hoping that there would be no need.

  “The stealth systems will become ineffective shortly, Sentinels,” their navigations officer reported.

  Meifeng nodded. “Get ready to go full thrust toward the access point, and to disable stealth.”

  They all watched in silence as the ship neared the point, and then they were there. “Do it now,” Meifeng ordered.

  The Chang’e dropped its stealth and rushed forward, plunging into the star. Their sensors had far smaller range inside the corona, but so far there had been no response from the ships outside. They hoped that they wouldn’t be noticed.

  Quickly, they reached the access point, and out in the distance they could see the shield and the ring—and two Enlightened ships moving inside of it.

  “Damn,” Clara said. “They did leave some ships inside.” She knew that they would’ve probably already commed the ships outside of the star. They likely wouldn’t get down inside, as combat there was nearly impossible, but now the Enlightened would have been warned to expect something.

  “Ready weapons,” Clara said. They might not be able to fight inside the star, but once they entered the shield, it would be another story entirely.

  The two Enlightened ships readied themselves as well, and then the Chang’e was through the shield. The Enlightened opened fire immediately and the Chang’e’s shields, already strained from passing through the star, flared. The Chang’e returned fire immediately, the crew firing without waiting to be ordered to do so.

  “Begin the unlocking sequence!” Meifeng ordered.

  The Chang’e was rushing toward the ring as the two Enlightened battleship-sized vessels fired. The Sentinel ship was in the same weight class, but it was outnumbered. Soon, one of the Enlightened beams punched through and rocked the ship.

  “Unlocking sequence complete, Sol sequence entered!”

  The Chang’e moved closer to the gate all the way firing on the two battleships. Darkness blossomed between the ring as it activated—and then the bow of a massive ship appeared. A few moments later, the first ship was through, followed by many more. The Sovereign at the head fired two beams at the Enlightened ships and smashed through their shields, obliterating them.

  Immediately, Clara turned to their sensor officer. “Send all of our scans of the system to the flagship, and get us into position over the ring.”

  The Sentinels would not be fighting in this engagement, as it was not their job. Instead, they parked above the ring, and watched as thousands of ships passed through every moment and just kept going, exiting the shield and then up out of the star. There were ships here that neither Clara nor Meifeng recognized, massive battleships, beautifully crafted winged ships that looked more like pieces of art than weapons of war.

  And then came the monstrous shapes that were like beasts in space.

  “Those are the Krashinar, right?” Clara asked in awe.

  “Must be,” the sensor officer confirmed. “They are not showing on our battle maps the same as the other ships; we don’t have a link with them, but they are marked as friendly.”

  Meifeng studied the strange ships as they passed and exited the access point’s shields. Her Sha was not the most powerful in the Empire, but she was near the top if one didn’t count the masters like Adrian and his daughter. Through it, she could feel something from those ships—the great beasts, she was certain. She had heard about them, but had never actually seen even records of them.

  “They sing,” Meifeng said.

  “What?” Clara asked.

  “The Krashinar beasts. It is beautiful,” Meifeng said. She felt sad that she would not see them in combat, but there was no way that she was going to risk their ship up there. She knew that the system was about to turn into a true battlefield.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Johanna watched as her Sovereign destroyed the two Enlightened battleships as if they were nothing. The Enlightened had powerful ships, but the strength of a Sovereign was leagues above any mere battleship.

  “Fleet Master, we are getting data from the Sentinel ship—their scans of the system,” her sensor officer reported.

  “Send it to my c-board,” Johanna said as she quickly gave out orders and had the ten other Sovereigns in the Empire’s fleet that had passed through the access point so far move up next to the Remembrance, while her dreadnoughts and battleships filled in the gaps and protected the carriers and cruisers behind them. She assembled a small force and ordered it up to secure a beachhead in the star’s orbit.

  She glanced at the new data and saw the clearer picture of the system. The Enlightened siege was pushing the Orna hard—they had surrounded the gas giant where most of the Orna stations were. The defenses across the system had been destroyed, and those around the planet were the only ones left other than several Orna fleets, numbering around eighty thousand ships at this point.

  Johanna adjusted her battle plan according to the new information and sent it out to the other ships. Her task force surfaced, and was immediately under assault by the Enlightened ships in orbit. There were several thousand battleships with cruiser escorts, which unleashed a impressive display of firepower, but her Sovereigns were soaking most of the fire.

  The system was under the influence of a skim-nullifying field, so skim missiles were useless, but Johanna ordered her ships to fire kinetic weapons. She was either going to hurt the enemy force greatly or force it to shift position. She took a moment to study the Enlightened ships. Her mind was connected to her c-board via her implant, and so it took barely a fraction of a moment. The ships all looked similar: like an elongated teardrop with tails trailing behind them. The scans indicated that the ships were biological in nature, and they looked like it. Their hull had a kind of bark-like appearance to it, dark brown and rough, with gnarled extensions that were their weapon systems. But the ships did have technological parts, illustrated by the rings connected to the base of the tails and stripes of ceramic-looking material along the bioships’ lengths, which were covered in weapon systems. The battleships had several rings around their lengths, while the cruisers had only one.

  Her kinetic attack reached the enemy. Most had moved out of the way, breaking their formation in the process, but other ships were either too slow or unable to move due to the damage her ships had done as they were climbing out of the sun. The kinetic weapons destroyed or damaged a quarter of the enemy ships. Soon, more weapons filled the vacuum of space, and the Enlightened ships were all destroyed.

  She put her ships in formation in orbit, and waited as more ships rose from the sun. She organized the various fleets into a massive formation and set a course toward the Enlightened besieging the planet. They were too deep into the system to reach the hyperspace barrier, and so the Enlightened elected to fight. She saw the back end of their force assemble into a defensive wall formation as they watched her force surge toward them. The AI’s machine ships moved above the formation, seemingly to stay out of the conflict. According to the data she received from the Sentinels, Johanna knew that they had not even been involved in the conflict, but had only served to keep the skim-nullifying field on. Johanna made sure that her people kept a close watch on the nullifiers, as she didn’t want to be blindsided by the enemy bringing them down and firing their missiles.

  As they closed the distance, Johanna had her ships fire their regular missiles. After the nullifiers proved to be used in many operations, the Fleet had decided to put regular missiles back into their s
hips. The missiles flew toward the enemy, but at such a distance and given their relatively slow speed, they could take them down relatively easily. Johanna grimaced—this was one of the reasons why they had stopped using such missiles in the first place. The quantity of salvos necessary to break through had become truly insane, as proven by just how few of her missiles had managed to get through and hit the Enlightened ships.

  She shook her head and aborted the orders for more salvos to be fired, deciding to wait until they closed the range further.

  Then she noticed the enemy ships moving into familiar formations. The Enlightened ships behind their first line of defense formed rings with their tails, and Johanna immediately sent out orders to her force to begin evasive maneuvers.

  Even with advance warning, the Enlightened weapon hurt. Entire ships had pieces ripped from them as the Enlightened bent space and pulled them to their rings. Johanna cursed, but there was nothing that she could do. Her ships capable of firing extreme long-range weapons did so, and every now and then knocked the Enlightened ships’ shields and then burned through their hulls, wounding them. She was surprised to see that the ships seemed to bleed in space—it was a much different sight than what happened in any other battle she had fought in. She had read about it in the reports, but seeing it was something different.

  Before long, the range closed, and the battle began in truth.

  * * *

  The Old Scar led its great beast Araxi into battle. The Enlightened ships glowed faintly to its sight as it looked through Araxi’s eyes. The Old Scar could feel the life in them, both the beings inside and the ships themselves. They were not as vibrant to its senses as the Krashinar beasts were, indicating to the Old Scar that they had no true sentience themselves. The smaller signatures of the beings inside the ships were similar, but their glows were not like those of other races. They were harsh, yet dull at the same time.

  The Old Scar did not know how to explain it, nor did it care to. Araxi emptied its charging sacs and beams of incredible power lashed out at the Enlightened ships, scoring wounds on their hides through their shields. The weapon ignored their shields in its entirety—a Krashinar weapon that most of the others in the Great Alliance had no access to. It was why the Krashinar had done the most damage so far to the Enlightened. The Great Alliance had the numerical advantage, and the Rimward Alliance’s Fleet Killer vessels were truly incredible in their actions. In fact, some of the Krashinar great beasts could now be classified the same, as the Krashinar had, with some help from the Empire, allowed their great beasts to grow past their previous sizes, and had added newer weapons systems.

  Araxi was now a match for any of the Empire’s Sovereigns or the Nomad Fleet’s Titans, even more so. The only ship or beast that was Araxi’s greater was its progeny, Moirai, and that was because her ability to use the Sha in a much greater capacity alongside her handler, Adrian. The Six had seen this happen, and after the Old Scar had returned from the battle in the control system they had inquired about them doing something similar.

  So Araxi had been silently upgraded as well; not by much, and nowhere near the level of Moirai, but enough that it was now far more powerful than it used to be. Old Scar had been upgraded alongside it as well. It hadn’t accepted it immediately—such genetic alteration outside of the womb was not the Krashinar way—but the arguments of the Six had won in the end.

  Now the Old Scar allowed its mind to spread to the Enlightened bioships using Araxi’s senses. It found the enemies’ minds deep in one of the battleships, and it guided Araxi’s attention to them and gave it an order. Araxi unfurled its newly expanded telepathic might and slammed it through the Sha into the Enlightened battleship. It was not the precise and elegant thing that Moirai and Adrian were capable of; it was instead a demonstration of pure power, and nothing else. Araxi’s mind crushed their minds under its weight and they died from the strain. The battleship was left floating in space, useless without its handlers.

  The Old Scar sent its compliments to Araxi and felt the great beast’s pride at a job well done. At this point, the battle’s outcome was no longer in question. The Great Alliance would win. The Enlightened were caught in between two forces and had no way of escaping, or at least the majority of their forces couldn’t. The Old Scar did sense the cold of the machine ships moving away from the battle along with a group of Enlightened bioships. With the nullifiers online and the rest of the Enlightened force keeping the Great Alliance occupied, the Old Scar knew that they had a chance at escaping. It didn’t matter—this was a win, the first against the Enlightened by the Great Alliance.

  Araxi voiced its displeasure at having some of its prey escape, but the Old Scar comforted it with the knowledge that there would be many more enemies to fight soon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Year 716 of the Empire — Josanti League territory

  Doranis growled in displeasure as he saw a massive fleet arrive in system. The Josanti League system had almost entirely fallen under his control, but now the enemy seemed to have managed to gather a force large enough to threaten his own. His Living-ship’s sensors were showing him a fleet that was clearly consisting of several different ship builds—so Doranis assumed that the Josanti League’s allies had finally arrived.

  The forces now gathered against him outnumbered his own. Doranis had brought a fifth of his force into this system, a million ships, while the rest were making assaults elsewhere under the guidance of his best Overseers. Now the enemy had brought half again as much. Coupled with the forces still in the system, and accounting for his losses, Doranis was outnumbered almost two to one. The Josanti League ships were powerful, but his bioships were better. He didn’t know about their allies, but he did not like being outnumbered. His force was spread out over the system, too, while the invaders were in formation.

  He debated momentarily what to do, and then quickly decided on a course of action. He started sending out orders and preparing. He had learned his lesson, and no longer did he control the entirety of his force by himself—he used the more mundane systems to transmit orders and left the rest to the Overseers. With his preparations complete, he bent space and exited outside the ship. Grumbling silently inside his mind for borrowing another thing from the children of Axull Darr, he started gathering the debris from across the system by bending space from their locations to his own. With the Sha state active, he quickly gathered what he thought was enough, and then he set to cutting, compressing, and shaping the debris into humanoid-sized spheres. It took him a while to get as many of them as he wanted, but by the time the outer elements of his force had begun engaging with the enemy forces, he had finished.

  He looked over through the Sha at the approaching enemy force across the system and started marking ships mentally. It started to drain even his mind, but he managed it. Then he bent space and appeared above the enemy force, along with his spheres, at extremely close range. With an effort of will he commanded the Sha to bow, and the spheres shot off toward the enemy ships, accelerating rapidly. His spheres did not reach the same speeds that the children of Axull Darr’s kinetic weapons had, but each of his spheres massed at least half of a ship’s entire mass. The spheres slammed into the enemy—their shields, unable to handle such devastating kinetic power, crumbled, and the spheres utterly annihilated the ships in a violent display of power.

  Immediately Doranis sent a message to his Living-ship, and the Overseer relayed his orders to the machine ships. The skim-nullifying fields were taken down and the ships he had previously ordered to get into position all over the system fired their skim-capable missiles, and then skimmed at a moment’s notice. In the blink of an eye, his entire force had crashed down on the enemy that had come into the system to take it back. Taken off guard, his bioships ripped into the Josanti League vessels and those of their allies, and quickly their formation buckled and fell apart as chaos reigned.

  Doranis bent space and returned to the Devourer. He ordered the machine ships to raise the nullify
ing fields again and then settled back, looking with satisfaction at his handiwork.

  * * *

  Davarstaari, Low Ikasar of the Josanti League, watched his screens in horror and confusion. The Grand Fleet gathered by the Josanti League to defeat the invaders and teach them what it meant to fight a core power was burning around them. Everything was in utter chaos as ships from seven different star nations were intermingled in their desperate attempt to survive and escape. The enemy’s devastating attack, which came out of nowhere, had killed the Grand Fleet’s Grand Admiral, throwing the chain of command into chaos. Then somehow the enemy managed to fire their skim missiles and ambush the Grand Fleet, dealing a precise blow.

  Before the chain of command could be passed down, the skim nullifier was back online, without any of their ships even trying to fire their own missiles. Quickly afterward, they had been savagely attacked from all sides. Davarstaari didn’t know how this had happened—no one did—the command link was in shambles, and everyone was on their own. There was no longer any semblance of unity, of formation, only individual ships trying to fight or escape.

  A chime brought Davarstaari’s attention to the command link, and he stared at it. His world disappeared, leaving only the link. He did not notice his ship shaking as it sustained fire, nor did he see the panel of his navigations officer explode and kill the woman nearly instantly, wounding those sitting close.

  No, the only thing Davarstaari could think was that he was just a Low Ikasar. A lowborn, raised in the outer sectors of the Josanti League. A capable officer to be sure, if he was being modest, but forever bound to stay at this level. When his fleet had been assigned to the Grand Fleet, he had seen a chance to show himself and perhaps even advance from the position that was supposed to be the highest he could ever reach. Serving under a Partenai legend, the great Karsiomi, the blight of heavens—it was more than he had ever dreamed of.