Black Swarm

by Ivan Kal

  “Har, har, har. A wiseass. Of course you had to be a wiseass.” The man rolled his eyes and stepped closer. Morgan fought the instinct to take a step back and instead stayed his ground, trying to project the image of calm confidence as his sensei always told him to do if he ever got cornered with no way out. Not that Morgan thought that it was going to do him any good; one look into the man’s eyes told him that he knew everything there was to know about Morgan. There was a weight behind that gaze, an eternity.

  “Where are we?” Morgan asked.

  “Think of this as a place between life and death,” the man told him.

  “Wait, if I am in between, can I go back?” Morgan asked hurriedly.

  “Not a chance. Well… Okay, that isn’t really true. It is possible for a soul to go back, but not for you.” The man shrugged, almost as if he was saying sorry.

  “What do you mean not possible for me?” Morgan took a step back. This guy is going to eat my soul for sure. Morgan tried to look around to find a way to escape, but the only path available to him was toward the light, and he wasn’t just yet prepared to go there.

  “Oh, don’t be such a wimp. I’m not the reason you can’t go back to your old life. That is your fault. You lack the knowledge and power.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard any credible story of someone coming back to life. Forgive me for not going out of my way to learn how to raise myself from the dead,” Morgan said—and then a thought came to his mind. “Wait, who are you? Are you God?” Morgan asked in a whisper.

  The man tilted his head, seemingly amused. “Sure, from your point of view I might as well be God.”

  One look at that grin and another thought occurred to Morgan. “Oh my god, you are the devil, aren’t you? I knew that I shouldn’t have stolen that piece of bubblegum when I was kid, but Marcus kept pressuring me. Please, it’s not my fault! He made me do it!” Morgan said as he took a step back, his eyes opened wide.

  The man rolled his eyes. “I’m not the devil! Seriously, man, get a hold of yourself.”

  Morgan straightened his posture and tried to compose himself by straightening his clothes. “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool… So you are God, then? Or an angel or something?” Morgan asked, relieved—he really didn’t want to go to hell. He knew that he would just hate the heat.

  “If you mean to ask if am I the God… Well then, the answer is no. I don’t really know for certain if a god really exists. What I do know is that if you go over there toward the light, you will find out. I guess that I am technically a god, little g, but not really… It’s complicated. Also for the purpose of this meeting, you may call me Oxylus,” the man said with a grin.

  Morgan blinked at that. Little g? Then he frowned at the name and the way the man said it. “Is that name supposed to be some kind of a reference or an inside joke?” Morgan asked. “Because if it is, I have no idea what it means.”

  The man closed his eyes and covered his face. “Calm, calm… What do they teach these kids in schools these days…” The man muttered in his hands. Then he finally took a deep breath and looked at Morgan in a way that someone might look at a child. “It doesn’t matter. I just liked the name.”

  Morgan narrowed his eyes. There was a glimmer of something in Oxylus’ eyes, but he had no idea what it meant. “Whatever you say, Oxy.”

  Oxy narrowed his eyes at Morgan but then took another deep breath. Morgan felt something, and then glanced down the tunnel at the bright light. There was something there—something pulling him forward. It was almost as if he could hear a song somewhere in his head, promising things that he couldn’t really understand, as if they were just at the edge of his understanding.

  Then he turned to Oxy as another thought occurred to him. “Wait, are you some kind of a ghost, a ferryman or something like that? Here to take me to the afterlife?” Morgan asked, turning back from the light.

  Oxy grinned at him. “Nope, I’m not a ghost, seeing as I am not dead, unlike you. And I am not here to ferry you to the afterlife. If you want to see what is beyond, all you have to do is walk into the light. I am here to make you an offer before you decide to go through or the light pulls you in.”

  Morgan glanced at the light nervously. “What kind of an offer?”

  “A new life,” Oxy said with a glimmer in his eyes.

  “You can bring me back from the dead?” Morgan asked, surprised, and then immediately felt fearful. He had played enough games to know all about zombies and other crap, and he did not plan on selling his soul or binding himself to some strange dude in a diving suit.

  “Yup, I can give you a new life. And before you ask, I mean new life. I am not going to send you back to your little world and your old life.”

  “Why not?” Morgan asked, just a bit crushed. Already he had started thinking about all the things he would change in his life if he got to go back.

  “Because I gain nothing from you continuing your life on Earth. And let’s face it, you weren’t doing much with your life anyway.”

  For a moment Morgan prepared to deny Oxy’s words, but he stopped himself. The strange god-but-not-god man in a wet suit was right. Morgan hadn’t really done much with his life. He had already repeated a year at college, and would probably drop out by the end of the year. Or rather would have dropped out, had I not died instead.

  “What are you offering, then? And just so you know, I ain’t selling my soul to you, and this better not be some Sauron type of shit where you seduce me and then corrupt my soul!” Morgan told him in what he thought was a resolute tone of voice.

  The man chuckled. “You have nothing to worry about. I don’t want your soul, nor do I want to corrupt and dominate it. All that I am offering is a new life on a new world, a new reality.”

  “Uh… Say what again?”

  “I want to give you a chance to start a new life on another world.”

  Morgan blinked; that did sound appealing. Especially since he was, like, totally dead, and like totally not about to go into a strange singing light. No way in hell or heaven am I stepping through that shit.

  “Why me?” Morgan asked dumbly, as he tried to figure out the answer to the same question. It wasn’t like Morgan was anything special; well, maybe to his grandma, who always said that he was her special little boy, but he was fairly certain that her opinion didn’t matter much to the not-God-dude.

  “Okay, it’s simple really,” Oxylus explained. “I would take you—or rather your soul here,” he said, gesturing at Morgan, “and then I would give you a new body and send you to another realm, my realm. You see, when I was younger I’ve really liked video games similar to what you’ve been playing while you had still been alive. Then, when I had a need to do some experiments, I made a universe from scratch as my playground. A universe that follows the rules similar to those of those kind of games. I would transport you and you can live out your life there. Once you die you will get back here to your tunnel and, well, you can go through there if you like, see what’s on the other side.”

  Morgan blinked slowly as Oxy’s words seeped into his brain. “You are telling me that you, a dude that says he is technically a god, played video games?” he asked incredulously.

  “Of course I did. What? Gods can’t play video games?”

  “No, no, I just didn’t expect it is all. Right on!” Morgan extended his hand for a fist-bump. Oxy just stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Right. For a moment, Morgan wondered if he was imagining all of this, if he was perhaps dreaming—or maybe I’m in a coma. But he knew that he wasn’t. He didn’t know how he knew, but there was something inside of him that told him with no uncertainty that he was no longer living. He was dead, and he was supposed to walk toward the light, and staying where he was would result in him disappearing into nothingness. He pulled his hand back and returned the man’s gaze.

  “So what do you say?” Oxy asked.

  “I feel like there is a lot that you are not telling me,” Morgan said slowly. Something about the
man in front of him frightened Morgan unlike anyone else ever had. More even than that one time when a spider fell on his keyboard and walked over his hand and Morgan screamed like a little girl. Morgan shuddered as he remembered—frickin’ spiders, man.

  “Well, of course I’m not telling you everything. I’m older than some universes. There is a lot that I know.”

  Morgan swallowed audibly. He couldn’t really wrap his mind around anything being that old. Then again, the dude might just be lying to me, he thought to himself. He opened his mouth to speak, but Oxy spoke first.

  “Look, I really have no time to explain everything to you. You are dead, and you can go toward the light and the afterlife—if it exists. I am not planning on going to check. Or you can accept my offer and get to live again, it’s as simple as that.”

  Morgan was certain that it wasn’t as simple as that, but he also knew that he really didn’t want to walk into the light. He hadn’t been very religious before he died, a great shame to his mother, but he really didn’t want to go through and then see that all the stuff she’d been telling him was the truth. With my luck I would end up in hell; I’m pretty sure that stealing is a sin. Frickin’ Marcus and his dumb bubblegum. He would much rather extend his stay in the land of the living, thank you very much. It wasn’t really a choice for him.

  “All right, I’ll give you my answer if you answer two questions. First, what do you get out of this? And second, why me? I seriously doubt that you give this offer to everyone that dies.”

  Oxylus sighed impatiently and then nodded to himself. “Fine. I said that I am running an experiment—what I get from this is information that helps my research, and that is as much as I am willing to say. As to why you…well, I am trying something new. Until now I’ve been making this offer to people I believed were more suited to my needs, warriors, soldiers, and the like. Those, I thought, could give me what I wanted, but the results I’ve been getting aren’t all that impressive. Now I am trying something else, and I am extending the offers to people like you as well. I am offering a new life, and if you gain enough strength and if you reach the end of the Tower of Power, I shall grant you a great reward.”

  “People like me?” Morgan asked, confused, and then he understood. “You mean gamers?”

  “Yes, and hopefully this won’t be a waste of my time. Now, what is your answer?” Oxylus asked.

  Morgan mulled it through one last time, even though he knew what he was going to say. A chance to live again, and in a world where everything would be like in his games? That wasn’t a choice at all. “This reward you offer, can you bring me back to Earth?”

  Oxy rolled his eyes. “I can’t think of any reason why you would want to go back there, but sure, if that is what you want.”

  “Then I agree.” Morgan nodded, spit on his hand and put it out for a handshake.

  Oxy just stared at Morgan’s extended hand without reaching out, then looked Morgan in the eyes and blinked at him as if he were insane.

  Right, Morgan thought to himself, pulling his hand back and wiping it on his pants. How in the hell did I even manage to spit on my hand if I’m dead? Morgan wondered.

  Oxy then tilted his head and pointed his palm at Morgan. Then he grinned, and Morgan felt heat radiating from the center of his chest—but then it changed, as if something in the core of his being shifted. “Great,” Oxy said, and stepped closer. “Now, I am in a bit of hurry, so we should get this over with. Oh, and I will need a piece of your soul first.”

  “What?” Morgan asked, but he had no chance to react before Oxy slammed his hand through Morgan’s chest. Morgan glanced down only to see Oxy’s hand elbow deep inside his chest. “Mother fucke—” Then there was only pain.

  UNIVERSE ON FIRE BOOK I – BROKEN STARS

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kane Reinhart’s hands flew over the controls in front of him as he adjusted the sensors of his mech-frame, even as he used his mind to fly. His mech-frame—codenamed the Leviathan—accelerated and he took care to keep his trajectory straight. The faint and brief blip on his sensor board made him suspect that his opponents were hiding in the planet’s ring. A good strategy, especially since he had noticed the blip only because he had been expecting something like this. But then he knew his opponents very well. Then two signatures showed up on his board, coming up on his six from the belt. Two fighters at almost max acceleration. Soon they would be right on top of him and he would be in range of their weapons. That would be bad, he knew the pilots and they would not miss such a chance. The mech-frame’s specs were overall worse than those of their fighters in most areas, and he did not want to be caught between the two of them.

  He watched them closely, waiting. And then just as the fighters came within range of their missiles they fired. Four missiles, two from each fighter, left their launchers and started closing the distance between them. Kane maneuvered, making it harder for them to lock on with their other weapons. He waited for the right moment, keeping his thrust at max, then as the missiles got close enough he pressed the trigger, firing the countermeasures from the Leviathan’s back. The missiles suddenly changed directions as the large fist-sized orbs that were the countermeasures pointed their lasers directly at the missiles’ guidance and tracking sensors and made them swerve to the side.

  Then he used his mind to move, using the spell that allowed him to control the mech-frame’s movements. He cut his main thrust, and used his maneuvering thrusters to turn around just as he pushed a slider to the left of him down, in order to decrease the distance of the spell he prepared to trigger. Then as soon as he was pointed toward the fighters coming up on him, he triggered the teleportation spell. His mech-frame was suddenly several hundred meters behind the fighters. There was no sensation as he disappeared and appeared almost instantly, but he knew that the pilots of the fighters would’ve seen the faint blue flash as he used the spell to “blink” across space, as they called it.

  Leviathan was still hurling through space, his previous momentum still carrying over and now taking him toward the fighters’ backs. They were faster than him, but they weren’t fast enough to get out of range so quickly. He swiftly turned his mech-frame back around, now facing the fighters. He targeted one of them with the rail-gun turret mounted on one of his mech-frame’s forearms, and he fired even as he launched missiles from the shoulder-mounted launchers. Eight missiles flew out toward the fighters. His laser struck one of the fighters and it disappeared from his sensors, and he saw it move aside on the monitors in front of him that projected the outside. The missiles sped toward the other fighter, and just a few moments later the fighter disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving the missiles flying aimlessly on their previous course.

  Kane tsked to himself and sent the shutdown code from the board in front of him to the missiles, shutting them down. His sensors searched for the fighter on its previous course, knowing it could only blink in the direction it was pointed to, just like the mech-frames. Finding it was simple, and adjusting the slider Kane blinked forward as well.

  He came out just on top of the fighter, but its pilot had known that Kane was coming, and she had maneuvered her fighter around and was facing toward him waiting as its former momentum carried it backwards. He had nearly no time to react before the fighter fired on the mech-frame with its weapons. But he was piloting a mech-frame, and that came with its own advantages over the fighter. The mental spellscript that gave him control of the mech-frame’s maneuvering allowed him to react nearly instantaneously. His thrusters fired and he slid to the side just as the fighter started firing, and he brought his own weapons to bear and fired. It was over in seconds.

  Kane grimaced in annoyance as he read the damage list that the computer was showing him. He had destroyed the fighter, but his mech-frame had been so damaged that he would certainly be unable to get back to base. Or rather, he would’ve been unable, had this not been a mock battle.

  His comm came to life and the voice of Lieutenant Commander Wang Shu Jiang
came through.

  “Damn, I almost had you there,” she said with amusement in her voice.

  “You might as well have. If this was a real battle I doubt that I would’ve survived you for long.”

  “You certainly would be dead if you had been piloting a Havoc,” she said with just a tad of envy. “I would give anything to have the mech-frame’s control spellscript for my fighter.”

  “They might still figure it out,” Kane told her, even though he doubted it. The laws of magic were strange but they couldn’t be changed. And the spellscript laid down in the mech-frame required a person with magic to operate it. And none of the Havoc fighter pilots had magic. “Comm the shuttle crew, tell them that they are free to recover the blank missiles. And we should get back to the base.” He checked his sensors and noted that the beacons were still active. They couldn’t leave Earth tech in Ethorria, even though it was doubtful that the Ethorrians could find and recover it in the orbit of the planet. But then again, they did have a much greater mastery of magic than humans did. And they were very interested in getting their hands on any Earth technology.

  “Right away, Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Jiang said.

  He turned the Leviathan toward the planet and set a course.

  ***

  A while later, Kane shut down the Leviathan’s systems and opened the cockpit. A section of its chest slid open and he climbed out into a large hangar. People were moving around securing the mech-frame in its berth and moving in to replace its power cells and do tests. All around the hangar, techs and magi-techs could be seen running around working on the fighters and the other three mech-frames. Kane climbed down the stairs that the support crew attached to his unit. Once down on the ground he turned his eyes to the mech-frame, taking its massive form in.

  It was a large machine, almost twenty-eight meters tall, wide and bulky. The plates covering it were made mostly out of kotarium and a few of its alloys. Kotarium being a metal not present on Earth, but abundant on Ethorria. A metal that was widely considered useless by the Ethorrians. They preferred materials that had magical properties, and kotarium had none. It was however the strongest metal humankind had ever come in contact with. It was uniquely suited for building spaceships. And as the Ethorrians cared little about it, they could obtain it relatively cheaply. The hull was also covered in a special obfuscation nanite-mesh that could be activated to make the vehicle harder to see on scanners. The composition of the hull gave the mech-frame a silvery color tinted with just a bit of green, but if the nanite-mesh—or silent mode— was activated it turned all black. It was an impressive weapon.