Black Swarm

by Ivan Kal

But the Tar’ferat battleship’s crew did not have the time to ponder on that. The way was clear to the defense weapon, and they opened fire.

  Ion beams accompanied the plasma bolts and slammed into the defense system of the Enlightened. More of their allies joined their fire, and quickly the defense weapon lost its shields. The subsequent fire made quick work of it.

  And just like that, the Great Alliance forces pushed through the defenses and met the enemy’s true main force of bioships. Orders from the Empire’s Fleet Master came in, and every ship focused on taking down as many bioships as possible before the rest of their forces could gather from across the system.

  The Tar’ferat battleship moved in the shadow of a great Sovereign, using it as a shield from the increasingly large amount of firepower heading their way. The two forces met, and space turned to fire as they unleashed all that they had at one another.

  * * *

  Garaam, Dai Sha of the Shara Daim, sat in the command center of her Sovereign, Oath, and watched as their large force smashed into the bioship defenders. This was what she lived for, these battles in space, serving the Shara Daim. She understood her best friend’s need to leave the Shara Daim, as her time leading them had gone past, and she could not be close if her children were to rule—but Garaam couldn’t leave like her. A part of it was because she wanted to stay and protect her best friend’s children, who she now served; but another, bigger part was that she was Shara Daim, a Dai Sha, and she could know no other life than this.

  The Shara Daim Sovereigns followed a different general shape than their Empire counterparts. Instead of the general obelisk shape, theirs looked like a narrow arch, and unlike the Empire’s Sovereign, which only had one massive cannon as their main weapon, the Shara Daim Sovereigns had two, one in each pillar of the arch.

  Garaam ordered their main weapon charged, and the tips of the pillars started to glow as the molecular-disintegration cannons charged. Much more powerful than the version fired by both the other ships in the armada and the bioships, this weapon was similar to the beams fired by Star Guard defense stations.

  The beams reached full charge, and a moment later they unleashed on the enemy bioships, engulfing entire cruisers and wiping them from existence. All that they touched, they turned to death.

  Garaam ordered her Sovereign forward, and the rest of the task force she was assigned to followed behind them. She had ships in her task force from many star nations, and a majority of them were not very advanced. She watched as their weapons fired and barely scratched the bioships’ shields. But they were many, and over time their firepower accumulated—and with the several Sovereigns in her task force, they had enough protection to survive.

  Still, they could not protect them all, and as the bioships returned fire, the less advanced ships died far faster than the others. Their sacrifice was not, however, in vain, as the bioships could not stop the armada, and so it pushed forward.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Doranis touched the minds of his Overseers, and delicately instructed them to do what he wanted. He was pulling his bioships back slowly. Even as other fleets joined the massive battle, he was guiding them deeper into the system. And the enemy was following, emboldened by the success of their attacks. They didn’t understand that the bioships meant little to him; they were tools to be used, and not much more. Sacrificing them was easy if it would achieve for him his goal.

  But as the battle dragged on, Doranis noticed that the enemy armada slowed, instead of pushing as hard as possible, they were hesitating, using their long-range weapons instead of closing the distance. They were still firing their kinetic weapons, forcing him to always break up his formations in order to save his ships. Even with him doing so, however, they were killing many.

  When he saw them change the way they pushed forward, he frowned. He wondered if they had figured out what his plan was, but he was certain that they couldn’t know. He needed them to move, and thinking of ways to accomplish that, he saw only one.

  Taking a deep breath, Doranis plunged into the amplifier and cast his mind across the invading force. They were still keeping their Sha users on the amplifiers, looking at their surroundings and trying to keep their ships safe from him, but as he looked, he still couldn’t see what he was looking for. With every passing moment he became more certain that the Sha-state users were not here.

  Finally, deciding to take a risk, Doranis stood up and bent space before appearing across the system and as far away from the battle as possible. There, small pieces of debris he had compressed into spheres turned slowly in the vacuum. His last attack with them had been surprisingly effective, and he had therefore prepared more of them. This enemy would not be so easily surprised, of course—their Sha users would sense him immediately after he appeared close enough. Still, it would force them to act.

  He reached to the spheres, pulling them all closely together and then bending space, taking them with him. He appeared above the battle, and with an effort of will sent the spheres flying down toward the enemy ships. He didn’t aim carefully, as this was not an attack to destroy, but rather to mislead. He doubted that this would’ve worked with the former goal, not when he knew that they would detect the attack. He felt several minds pass over him, finding him, and he grinned as he tracked them back and smashed into their heads, killing them instantly. But as he had already knew would happen, immediately other minds took their place. He didn’t want to get bogged down into a war of attrition; he had no desire to see if they would run out of Sha users before they managed to tire him out.

  So he bent space again, and appeared next to another already prepared field of spheres. He repeated his prior actions: he came in, sent them flying, and disappeared before their Sha users could try to engage him.

  After another three times of doing so, he returned back to his Living-ship and watched.

  * * *

  Johanna’s force was now fully engaged with the Enlightened bioships. She watched as slowly but surely they were gaining ground. Her force outnumbered the entire Enlightened force in the system, and the number of bioships she was currently engaged with wasn’t even their full number. A few fleets were still traveling across the system attempting to join their formation in time. All except for one: a fleet containing the Living-ship of one of the three.

  She didn’t know why they had yet to see the Enlightened take the field, but she had her Sha users on the lookout, and she ordered her force to slow down its advance. She didn’t like not knowing things, and the reason why the Enlightened hadn’t joined the battle was bothering her. She supposed that he was worried that Adrian and the others were with them, but if what they knew was correct, he would be able to tell.

  Then she received word through her c-board that an enemy Sha user had been felt above her fleet’s position, and every telepath moved as agreed. Alone, none of them stood a chance against the Enlightened, but together they were formidable. Before they could engage and attack him, however, the Enlightened had killed three Sha users by breaking their minds, and then disappeared. Johanna had a moment to wonder about a being whose power was so great that it could break a living being’s mind in an instant before their sensors detected fast-moving kinetic objects moving toward their force.

  Johanna recognized the move as the same one the Enlightened had used against the Josanti League, and sent out orders for an adjustment of their formations to allow the spheres to pass through without hitting any ship. But then more kinetic spheres were detected, attacking from every side at the same time.

  Johanna took a moment to study their trajectories and speeds, and shook her head. It was going to be easy enough to evade them, and so she sent out orders. The Enlightened had thought that sending kinetic objects from several directions would be enough to take them unprepared, but their AIs were very good at fighting such threats—the Empire had been using kinetic weapons for a long time, after all.

  Johanna watched carefully over her c-board, keeping an eye out for any sign of the En
lightened.

  * * *

  Doranis allowed himself a small grin which showed his wickedly sharp teeth. His plan had worked. The enemy force adjusted their trajectories and formations, allowing his spheres to pass through unopposed. It was actually an impressive bit of calculation, but ultimately it was playing right into his hand. The enemy had seen his spheres, and assumed that they were the same as the ones he had used before.

  It was perfect.

  Doranis waited for the spheres to enter the enemy formations, waited for them to be in the best possible positions—and then he reached with his power to them. The enemy Sha users noticed, and some tried to prevent him from doing what he intended, even if they didn’t know what that was. But they were weak and untrained, and with a slight exertion of his will Doranis grabbed the spheres.

  He reached inside to the containment field he had placed just inside the solid surface of the spheres, and removed it. With no containment, the antimatter inside came into contact with the matter of the surface.

  And fire blossomed in space.

  * * *

  Johanna had barely an instant of forewarning, as her Sha users reported the Enlightened was attempting to do something. A moment later, the spheres passing through her formations exploded violently, and the pure white fire of antimatter explosions quickly expanded.

  Her ships were caught in it. In the first instant, thousands of the closest ones simply disappeared. One of the Empire’s Sovereigns was close to a few hundred of the spheres, and when they exploded it was engulfed. She saw on the c-board’s holo as its shields flared brightly for a moment before they collapsed.

  All across her formation, her ships died.

  * * *

  Garaam nearly fell out of her chair as her Sovereign was rocked by a terrible explosion. Her sensors went haywire, and the shaking threatened to tear her ship apart. But then it stopped, and her warship was still there. Damage reports came in, and she read through them quickly as the sensors came back on-line and she saw what had happened to their assembled force.

  They’d lost a large piece of their force, but the majority was still there. The problem was that their formations were in shambles, and the bioships were taking advantage of that by executing an counter attack. Ships began to die, and Garaam ordered her Sovereign forward to shield them from the heaviest of weapons fire.

  Quickly, Johanna’s orders came back in, reestablishing order. The formations closed, and the bioships’ attack was stopped.

  The Enlightened had dealt them a good blow, but this battle was nowhere near over. Reinvigorated by the desire for revenge, the armada surged forward.

  * * *

  Doranis grinned as his plan continued to work, and the enemy pursued his bioships with great vigor. He kept sending orders to the Overseers, making sure that his forces slowly retreated, even with the reinforcements reaching them and adding to their numbers.

  Soon, the battle had shifted position, and they were deep into the system, nowhere near the hyperspace barrier.

  Now, there would be no escape.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Loranis’s Living-ship exited the access point and entered the system. Immediately, Doranis reached out, feeling her arrival. He sent her a portion of his memories, bringing her up to speed with everything that happened.

  “I see that you need my help,” Loranis sent back, tingeing her words with amusement.

  “I can defeat them, but I am not willing to sacrifice so many of our forces. It is better that we be smart about this,” Doranis responded.

  “And your plan?” she asked.

  Doranis sent her his thoughts, and immediately she understood.

  “You seem to have prepared well for this,” she commented.

  “Of course. I knew that they would come for me here eventually,” Doranis said proudly.

  Loranis chuckled to herself, then sent her agreement back to her brother. “Be ready to drop the nullifying field on my mark.”

  With that, she took her force slowly out of the star, and more were coming in behind her. Her Juggernauts were all with her—one thousand of them, to be precise, each the size of a World-ship of the People, but with a hundred times more firepower. Like the enemy’s versions, they were designed to be bastions of war and destruction, but the Enlightened Juggernauts were larger than the enemy’s versions.

  Her force emerged from the surface of the star, led by her Living-ship Mindseer, and Loranis took hold of its amplifier. In a moment, her mind spread across the system and she zeroed in on the enemy force. She found their Sha users, and they noticed her, but in moments she grabbed hold of them all and froze them, locking them in their own minds. She was far better at this than Doranis. She didn’t kill them; that would’ve taken more out of her, and she did not like overextending herself. Keeping them from moving, from acting, was enough.

  Then she fashioned a ball of energy within her mind, and then spread it through her tendrils into the minds of the Sha users on the enemy ships, using them as relays to send it all around each of them. A moment later, a psychic attack struck the entirety of the enemy fleet. Weak and unfocused, it served only as a distraction—but that was its purpose.

  She reached to Doranis and gave him the signal.

  The skim nullifiers were off.

  * * *

  Johanna’s force pursued the enemy. The Enlightened’s attack, while successful, hadn’t been nearly as crippling as she had thought it would be. She had lost tens of thousands of ships—hundreds of thousands, if she counted the damaged ones—but still, a small fraction of her forces. The bioships, now fighting a losing battle, were taking the worst of it.

  Their exchanges were nearly equal, but she had more ships, and already she knew that it was a matter of time before the battle started snowballing in her favor. The Enlightened was an unknown, but they had ways of dealing with him. So far, he had only executed the one attack, running away before her telepaths could attack him. But if he was aware of the danger, he might not even be able to act with his full power—and while his previous attack was successful, that had been her fault for not realizing that the attack was a ploy.

  She would not make the same mistake again.

  Her c-board was suddenly flooded with new contacts and she quickly turned her eyes toward them. Massive ships were rising from the star, led by another Living-ship. Her blood froze as she realized that another Enlightened had just entered the system, and behind it she could see more and more ships coming out of the star.

  In an instant, the entire battle, since the moment they arrived in system up until this very moment, flashed through her mind. She analyzed everything that had happened: the missing Enlightened ships, the signals far out near the black hole. She looked at her c-board and saw their positions.

  And she realized the truth.

  “We lost,” she said, only a moment before a psychic attack slammed into her head.

  * * *

  As the psychic attack assaulted the Great Alliance forces, the skim field was taken down. Immediately all over the system, bioships fired skim missiles. Those that were near the enemy, those that were far away—it didn’t matter. The missiles crossed the distance and slammed into the crippled force. The crews were all suffering from the Enlightened’s psychic attack; it had lasted for only ten seconds, but it took them nearly half a minute to recover. By that time, it was too late. The skim missiles were coming in waves, overwhelming the automated defenses. Tens of thousands of Great Alliance ships died as their ships failed, all before their crews even realized what happened.

  And then a thousand Juggernauts, accompanied by the Living-ship Mindseer and tens of thousands of bioships, arrived and opened fire. A few seconds later, another two thousand Juggernauts along with all the stragglers of the Enlightened force across the system arrived even as portions of the bioships already near the enemy executed quick skim jumps to reposition. Within thirty seconds, the Great Alliance forces were surrounded.

  And before thos
e who did not die in the initial assault could even recover, the skim nullifiers were back on-line.

  The Enlightened force was firing savagely, destroying ships by the thousands. The Great Alliance armada was in shambles, its formations broken. Their Sovereigns, targeted first by the Juggernauts, were burning—many destroyed, others severely damaged. The battle continued, but the victor was no longer in question.

  * * *

  Garaam, Dai Sha of the Shara Daim, opened her eyes. She felt dizzy, and she blinked quickly as she remembered that she was in a battle. The psychic attack that had broken through her mind shield was gone, but on her holos she saw that everything had changed.

  Her Sovereign’s shields, already drained from the antimatter attack, buckled under the strain from the assaults of the entire enemy formation. Her crew had recovered along with her, and were fighting for their ship.

  There was quiet all around her. No one spoke, but instead focused entirely on their tasks. They knew, just as she did, that these were the final moments of their lives. And so they did what any Shara Daim in their place would—they threw caution to the wind as they fought. Her Sovereign burned a swath in the enemy formation, taking down many ships with every passing moment.

  And then a large Enlightened ship appeared. It was larger than her Sovereign, but her crew was not disheartened. Her orders left her mouth, and they followed with a fire in their eyes. Garaam grinned as the ship accelerated, as all the Oath had was put into its drives. The enemy ship did not realize what they were going to do in time.

  Her ship was falling apart under the fire of the Enlightened. One of its pillars broke off and tumbled away. But the Oath kept true.