Shadow Stars (Universe on Fire Book 2)

by Ivan Kal

  Still, Grimm couldn’t help but feel sick to his stomach. He understood the need, but he was also the one who had given the go ahead on the project. He had signed off on harvesting of genetic material, of eggs and everything else that they needed to create the children. He shuddered to think what would happen should the children ever learn of how they had been brought into the world. The children were under the impression that they were all orphans. But at the time, they had felt like they had no choice. They had still been under the rule of Qash’vo’tar, and they’d needed an asset which could strike fear into the heart of a stellar empire.

  The Dragons were the product of a twisted and some might say a genius mind, his own. His proposal had been met with horror and initial refusal, until he explained all that it entailed. Even now, Grimm wasn’t sure if it would work; but they were too far in it to try and get out. Grimm had authorized harvesting from the previous generation, from the children they had been training to be super soldiers. It was despicable, they had done it without their consent or knowledge. Using the many medical tests that they had put those who were capable of magic through as means to get what they needed to breed a new generation.

  From what the Wanderers had told them, they knew that magic was passed down from parents to children, and that children of two mages were guaranteed to be mages. And so that was what they had done. Grimm took what he needed from the previous generation, who were barely out of childhood themselves. Magic manifested at onset of puberty, and that was when they had taken the children of the previous generation, and started training them. And that was when they had started doing tests. The tests were necessary to learn more about magic, but Grimm had used them for a darker purpose. Only a few people had been involved in the harvesting, and only a handful of them was still alive. Grimm had covered his tracks well.

  They found surrogate mothers and put fertilized eggs in. Over several years they had conceived over five hundred children. They had matched their strongest male and female mages, but they had also experimented by matching the best with those less capable. The pregnancies were left mostly untouched, they didn’t want to risk any genetic alterations of the children as they had no idea which genes made magic possible. Only using a few treatments after the children were born.

  The children had underwent genetic treatments at six years old, treatments which had increased their physical strength, reaction time, speed, and intellect. They had also been given an experimental treatment which introduced Wanderer DNA into their cells in a hope to increase their magical ability. Thankfully, it had paid off, as every one of them was almost four times as strong with magic as the current strongest human mage and biological father to many of them—Kane Reinhart—had been at their age.

  Their education had been far different than that of the previous generation, too. They didn’t need blind killing machines; they wanted warriors without equal who would fight for Earth: who would stand apart, yet still have the desire and need to keep humanity safe. They were taught history, made to understand humanity and why events occurred, they were taught the arts, every one of them was a poet, or a music maker, or a painter. They were taught beauty, and everything that made humanity great: their different cultures, the good parts of religion.

  And they were taught brutality. Everything that made humanity terrible: the greed, the atrocities one culture could do to another, the evil parts of religion. But they were also taught everything that humanity knew about the aliens and their customs.

  They wanted them to have all the facts, to be able to see the whole picture. Each of them was projected to have a genius level intellect by the time they fully matured.

  Grimm felt small looking at them. They would not be human once their transformation was finished; they would be something more.

  “How long until their next augmentation?” Grimm asked McCullagh.

  “The first group will go through it in a few months, and then they will go through the final augmentations when they turn eighteen.”

  Grimm nodded. The next augmentation would augment their regeneration, as they would need it for their final augmentations. Grimm knew enough about the procedure to know that it hurt like hell. The children would be kept sedated for months while the doctors worked on their bodies. The final augmentation would get them their spellscripts, the newest updated versions that the Wanderers had come up with since they crossed over to Earth—as well as a few other things that the military believed would make them better, such as mods and cybernetic enchantments.

  “And how goes their physical training?” Grimm asked.

  “They were trained to fight and kill since they were five. I would pit them against grown men easily; already their bodies are as strong as those of grown adults. I might not pit them against someone like me just yet, but regular soldiers? They would wipe the floor with them,” McCullagh said proudly.

  Grimm was having trouble reconciling the children he was seeing with McCullagh’s words, but he knew better than to doubt it. Down there was humanity’s future, a sword that would keep them safe. With one last glance he turned around and walked away.

  Next, he was scheduled to check upon a few smaller projects, and then the Fury.

  ***

  Grimm sat in a small briefing room with two other people inside. To his left was Shipbuilder Andrea Railly, and across from them sat Chieftain G’rok Uhra of the Wanderer tribe, which had left their world and joined the humans. The old Wanderer looked intimidating to say the least—snow-white hair fell down to his shoulders, his tusks were long and one of them broken, his skin wrinkled and aged. But his eyes were alert, and shone with intelligence. The old Wanderer was the oldest of his tribe, being over two hundred years old. The man had been writing scripts long before Earth had even been taken over by the Qash’vo’tar. The Wanderers were an enigmatic race, one that not even Grimm could find out much about.

  The Ethorrians were extremely hard to get information from, and his intelligence agents on the other side had difficulties finding any information about the Wanderers. The only thing that Grimm knew was that they were nomadic, and that the other two races of Ethorria—the Elvarr and the Dwarvarr—disliked them. The Wanderers lived by selling their spellscript-writing skills to villages and towns, but they did not actively practice magic. It was something that they considered forbidden, a punishment for a crime they committed long ago. The only thing that Grimm could find out about that crime was that it had resulted in the massive crater that currently housed the portal to Earth. Which in itself spoke volumes, as all Earth scientists agreed that its existence was not a coincidence. Something had made it possible for human experiments to bore a hole to another universe, and it hadn’t been just simple luck.

  But that was a puzzle for another day. Grimm was here for another reason entirely. He turned his eyes to the center of the table, and the hologram floating above it: the Fury, a warship that humanity had put a lot of its hopes in. It was a strange-looking ship, nothing like the Prometheus or the Atlas-class carriers. It was a long cylinder, over five kilometers long and about eight hundred meters across. Its front was a tube, its center a massive hole that led deep into the ship. The back part looked a bit more like a traditional space ship’s, with the widening of the drives. The entire length of the cylinder was covered with weapons all the way around the cylinder. It was humanity’s way of doubling down on their one advantage: their fighters and their magi-tech. The original outline of what they had wanted was given by the Fleet, a simple mandate for them to build a super carrier. The design and implementation was all Senka.

  “How long until it is operational?” Grimm asked.

  Shipbuilder Railly tapped her fingers on the table as she answered. “Technically it is operational now. It can move and its fighter complement is full. If you are asking when it will be fully operational…well, that is another thing entirely. We still need to reinforce the hull plating; we have developed a magi-tech hull which we will be placing on top of the kotarium base. Th
e main rail-guns are missing a few key components, and we still need to put in the plasma turrets. The laser turrets are mounted and missile launchers installed, but only a third of them are powered, and we haven’t started producing missiles for them as we are still developing extreme long-range missiles. We still need to install two additional fusion cores, and the magi-tech power cells for the basic systems are not yet installed. Nor are most of the ones for the weapons, which means that magi-tech weaponry that requires a constant energy stream can’t be used. That means that the blink cannons aren’t operational, nor is the disintegration wave.”

  “Disintegration wave?” Grimm asked.

  She looked at him for a moment in confusion, but then she blinked in understanding. “Oh, right. We developed that after the communications blackout. G’rok can explain it better than I.”

  Grimm turned to look at the Wanderer, who coughed loudly and started speaking. “My people’s main role in Ethorria was to provide or repair spellscripts in villages or towns. Most of that work meant putting up spellscripts in pantries to prevent food from going bad; spellscripts for purifying water in wells, enforcement of walls, and that kind of thing. We were basically what you people here call janitors, though that is not to say that we did not from time to time need to put up different kind of spellscripts. But the disintegration beam is an evolution of a simple spellscript that is in Ethorria mainly used for waste removal. Anything that the wave touches is disintegrated into its most basic components. Few mages would use this spell against others, as most know how to protect themselves from it, and it would require a truly insane amount of power to disintegrate anything at a distance, as we require. Thankfully, your kind have some pretty amazing power-generating capabilities, and with the converter spellscripts it is enough to power an overpowered version of the spell.”

  “What are its capabilities? Range, power? Have you tested it?” Grimm asked.

  G’rok nodded his head, making his white hair bounce on his shoulders. “We have tested it. Currently our maximum range is just under five hundred kilometers, with a recharge time of seven minutes. We are planning on installing two dedicated capacitors for it, so we have two separate charges. And it will disintegrate anything in its path—it is a light-speed weapon.”

  “Five hundred kilometers?” Grimm asked, disappointed.

  Andrea caught his expression and smiled. “The disintegration wave is not an offensive weapon, Mr. Grimm. It is a defensive one. The spellscripts are engraved on the inside of the ship’s hull, all the way around in a massive segmented spellscript. Its main purpose is to serve as our point-defense—as you may see the Fury currently does not in fact have any. The wave can be activated once enemy missiles come close enough to the ship, pulsing the wave around the ship and destroying them all in a single shot.”

  Grimm reevaluated his first impression; with the explanation given he now understood just how powerful the wave could be. “What if the enemy staggered their missiles? Have them come in one long stream of salvos? And you said that you have only two charges—I mean, sure, you can overlap them, but if you have salvos coming in every minute or so, it won’t be effective as your only defense.”

  “We never said that it was the only defense. The Fury was designed as a super carrier—with the amount of fighters we have, two squadrons are always equipped with anti-missile modules, and if it is required other fighters can be equipped with the same modules as well. But in any case, the naval doctrine is such that such a tactic is unlikely. Sending thick salvos of missiles is the only way to overwhelm point defenses. Sending a stream of missiles would only make it easier for a traditional point-defense system to take them down. And we are planning on having another defense system installed. We are holding off as the research department is currently working on something new that we believe will be better than the traditional point-defense turrets that everyone uses.”

  Grimm nodded, then he had a thought. “Does the wave work only on matter?”

  “It will disintegrate plasma, but it will do nothing against lasers,” Andrea clarified.

  “And the fighters?” Grimm asked.

  Andrea worked the command board for the holographic projector, and two new objects appeared next to the large ship. One looked somewhat like a Havoc fighter, except that it had three wings instead of four, while the spherical core of the fighter had three laser turrets all pointed forward, with missile pods being attached inside the wings.

  Andrea nodded toward the three-winged fighter. “These are the newest of our designs, the Wraith-class fighter. They are lighter and smaller than the Havocs, their purpose being mostly quick attack runs, anti-missile defense, or recon, as they have stealth systems.” She then nodded toward the other one, which still had a sphere as a core but only two wings. “This is the Eagle-class fighter. They are built to be bombers: deliver a heavy load of missiles and then get out. As such, they don’t have any other weaponry, but they can carry about twice as many missiles as a Havoc. We’ve also managed to put in power cells strong enough for them to execute a single 10k blink, doubling the Havoc’s range. It was envisioned as a closing maneuver, as after that they would have power only for one more 5k blink. So in a sense they can’t provide the same adaptability that Havocs can, but they can deliver a bigger punch—and with the Wraiths, there isn’t any real need for them to have those capabilities.”

  “How many fighters can the ship field?” Grimm asked.

  “One hundred squadrons, half Wraiths and half Eagles,” Andrea answered.

  Two thousand fighters—Grimm couldn’t believe it. He knew that they had sent a lot of people to Senka. Millions, enough to restart human race should the worst happen. But what they had achieved here, in just a short time… It was mind boggling. The five Atlas-class carriers that are protecting Sol had only four hundred fighters all together. Fighters were the only thing where Earth was ahead of everyone else, and only because the nullification spellscripts allowed them to neutralize g-forces for the pilots. Creating a dampener small enough for a fighter was impossible only with technology; it required magic to be feasible.

  Earth didn’t have much choice. They had a massive industry, but it was still nothing compared to that of the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar, or any other star nation out there which controlled more than one star system. They had less people, and overall their tech was worse—made equal only by magic. Both the council and the Fleet were aware that magic would not stay their advantage for long, however—either the Zhal or the Qash’vo’tar would steal that secret or the alien scientists out there would figure out what had happened. Children with magic would be born to aliens, it was inevitable. Earth would always have an advantage in knowledge, their connection to Ethorria made that certain, but others would figure it out in time.

  Humanity couldn’t build enough ships to stand against their enemies, not if they turned their full attention on Earth. The amount of resources that Earth would need to spend in order to build a fleet of cruisers and battleships capable of protecting Earth was insane. Earth could produce the required number, true, but it would not only take time, it would also be futile in the end.

  The Fury was their solution: a ship which could project power from a great distance, which would require a great price to take down. It represented a lot of investment, a truly massive amount of kotarium ore purchased from the Ethorrians. The fact that they had sent it all here was another reason why they hadn’t been building more warships in Sol. The other was that there was just no point in spending those resources on traditional warship classes. The carriers allowed them to hit above their weight class, but they needed more protection than they could provide. The Fury could provide that, and the other, smaller carriers could serve as its escort.

  “How long until it will be fully operational?” Grimm asked finally.

  Andrea glanced at G’rok, and something seemed to pass between them. Then she turned to look at Grimm.

  “Three years, minimum.”

  Grimm gr
imaced. Senka had been building this ship for more than two years already. But he knew that this took time—they all had known that—and now it was up to him to decide what to do. Revealing what they had wouldn’t be prudent at this time, but he also knew that it would be years before the Prometheus could finish its mission. The travel time to the location of the cache alone would take them months, and then they would need to get whatever they found back to Sol.

  Grimm would need to stay here. The council had given him the authority to order the Fury to Sol, which would then trigger a series of contingency plans they had in place. But Grimm knew that it wasn’t the time; waiting would run the risk that the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar might make the first move, true, but he wasn’t willing to begin the plan to drive them out of the system just yet. There was still hope for a peaceful resolution, and the more they waited the greater the chances that the Val’ayash would make a move. In Grimm’s opinion, that would give them a great opportunity. At the first sign of the Val’ayash moving against the Zhal or the Qash’vo’tar, they would get scared, would mobilize their fleets to deal with the threat. Offering magi-tech in return for true freedom, reinforced with the power of the Fury, that would be the optimal play. The Fury would show the two that Earth could be a valuable ally in the fight, if they were allowed room to become equal partners. And that had always been the council’s plan—fighting a losing war had never been their desire.

  But balancing so many moving pieces was hard, as was being patient in the face of pressures from so many sides… It could break anyone.

  “Very well then,” Grimm acknowledged finally. “We shall take the time to do this right.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aiko sat in the briefing room on board the Prometheus. It had been several days since the battle, and finally they had found some answers. The facility had in fact been a Val’ayash cache—the only problem was that it had been mostly empty by the time the Prometheus came into the system. The Red Suns had arrived almost two months earlier and had taken the most valuable pieces and shipped them to a star system about one hundred and fifty light years away, to their employer, who owned an auction house. Apparently he was some kind of a black-market dealer, one who worked exclusively with ancient tech. The items would be sold several months from now.