by J. P. Yager
"What is going on?" Kaida asked from the backseat. "Are they leaving because of the Ruverans?"
"No. It's worse." Nathan set his radio headset down and turned on the intercom speakers.
"Attention…attention…Protocol 3 Warning is in effect." The prerecorded message played over and over again. Nathan flicked it to guard frequency. "It's an evacuation order."
Kaida still didn't understand. Florian Ecaths weren't afraid of Ruvera.
"Where to now?" Trevor asked, keeping his focus on the mission at hand.
Nathan joined the flurry of ships escaping the planet, unfazed. "I don't care. Wag it for now."
Trev shrugged. "All right." He punched in a random point and locked it in. The ship calculated the best route to get there. When it gave him numbers, he typed them into the flight computer. "Destination set."
The Wrath tore through the atmosphere. Thousands of ships were all around them from horizon to horizon along with them, scrambling in different directions. They exited the thermosphere and hit space. Nathan dialed up the force drive.
"What is that?" the radio crackled.
"I've never…" came another.
The guard frequency erupted with fearful calls.
Trevor couldn’t figure out what they were all looking at. It couldn’t be the Ruverans.
The flight crew kept looking forward, their attention focused between the two planets they were going to light-jump through, when they saw something on the back video. Nathan hit a switch and enlarged the view.
Flora was alight with ships taking off and bursting into light speed. The Breakers were closing in on the Wrath; one of them was opening its fighter ports. But behind them, something else was happening. The energy ribbon they had traveled through was…changing. The end that ran toward the Milky Way galaxy had shadows screaming through it toward them. Beyond the infected energy ribbon was a mass of darkness that no words could describe. It was a living mass of moving shadows.
"We need to move," Trevor said in the quiet.
Nathan turned the back screen off. The transition between the two engine modes was nearing completion.
Trevor tried his best to put it out of his mind and help fly the ship. The radio crackled with worsening accounts, and the radar was showing the impossible. Everything the “anomaly” hit…disappeared.
One of the Breakers blew past them at light speed, its captain smart enough to get out. The fighters from the other were on top of them now.
Nathan reengaged regular flight to dogfight away from them. Watching the darkness coming had cost them a clean escape. He pulled the stick around into clumps of other ships. The fighters came from all directions, and a large band blocked them jumping.
"What are you doing? Don't worry about them. We need to get out of here." Trevor saw the mass of disappearing blips getting closer. The darkness was fast.
A wild look passed across Nathan's face. "We have to have a clear jump." He flipped his guns on and broke toward the ships blocking their way.
Trevor was now more afraid of his uncle than the Ruverans.
The ship turned toward Flora, and Kaida covered her mouth when she saw the darkness hit the planet. As it contacted the surface of the planet, it surrounded it like a closing mouth until the jaws completely closed. Not stopping for a moment, the arms of darkness continued off in spires, enveloping hundreds of ships in its wake.
"He's right. We have to go!" she cried. "Light-jump through them."
Trevor saw the blip for the Breaker completely vanish. When he looked up, he only saw oncoming blackness where it had been.
The fighters had disengaged from them and were making a run for it, while other ships were taken into the mass.
Trevor knew they were going to die if he didn't act. In one motion, he took flight control from his uncle, who was still wildly fighting them and then pulled the circuit breaker killing Nathan's side of the jet so he couldn't take control back.
He aimed the ship as best he could toward blank space, as missiles streamed at them.
Ships were sucked in right behind them as the darkness came for them. For a moment everything seemed like it was about to hit.
Without another thought, Trevor hit the jump switch on his uncle's side. Outside the ship, a spire of seething, hungering blackness reached out to swallow them too. Just as it licked the back, the craft shot off at light speed and disappeared. The darkness did manage to absorb the rouge missiles and Ruveran ships and anything else that hadn’t escaped in time as it continued its path of destruction.
Chapter 9
Stars went by in a flash. Hearts stopped in their chests. Breaths were held in waiting to be released from lungs. The universe looked like it had stopped. Then—
The aft right side of the Wrath exploded.
The blinding speed-of-light travel slammed off, and they sped forward on momentum only. Before Trevor could figure out what to do next, he saw his uncle had control of the ship again and was looking at him like his murder wouldn't suffice.
"Don't ever do that again," Nathan hissed. "I didn't see we were clear."
Trevor felt stupid; he had thought he was going to get a "thank-you" in there, but no. "I just saved us."
"You just blew the force drive."
Kaida wanted to put her two cents in but realized that would only make the situation worse. Instead, she busied herself breaking into the ship's emergency systems.
Smoke detectors were lighting up one at a time throughout avionics.
"Make yourself useful," Nathan spat.
Trevor got up off his seat. "C'mon, Booster."
The two of them ran off to fight the fire, footsteps and wheels clumping down the metal stairs.
Kaida sat there, too overwhelmed to do anything. She had just witnessed the impossible—an entity made of darkness. There was no scientific approach to explain it. Though they were able to light-jump, it wouldn't buy them much time, twelve hours at most. Instead of worrying further, she finished up what she was doing.
A rumble sounded from the left side of the ship.
"What the—?" Nathan was looking over his displays. "We just lost our emergency beacon."
Kaida closed her display and sat quietly.
Meanwhile, Trevor and Boost were putting out the sporadic fires. Most of the wiring from the force drive engines had overheated. As soon as they hit the electric fires with suppressant, they died off. He hit the avionic fans on so that the remaining smoke would dissipate. The shelves of wiring were largely intact but thoroughly burned through.
On their way back to the cockpit, Trev saw Daphkalian staring out at him from their holding cell.
The cell itself had been retained from the old design of the ship and had come in handy a few times. The design was pretty old school, with its crisscrossing metal bars. The only thing "new" about it was the electric locks that were fully engaged with steel rods. Daph wasn't going anywhere.
"You have no idea what's going on, do you?" Daphkalian laughed. "Your uncle hasn't told you?"
Trevor laughed himself. There was no other way to react to the man. "No, we've gone over the plan. We're ejecting you into space in a few. We're just trying to find the right thing for you to wear for the occasion."
"Jokes won't help you." Daphkalian shook his head. "Your uncle knows what I know. I wonder why he hasn't let you in on it. He knows what the darkness is." He paused. “He knows about you.”
"See ya around." Trevor waved the big man off. Was that the plan? Cause distrust among the crew so he could escape? This wasn't the Old West. Oddly though, something did stick. He thought about the way his uncle had acted when the darkness was coming. There was still something about it that stuck out. He just couldn't see it yet. And there was no way Nathan knew about his…secret.
He and Boost dropped back down into the passenger compartment and wound their way back toward the front. As they did, Nathan shouted over PA. "Ruveran ship inbound."
Trev passed the top step and buckled himself ba
ck down. "Fire's out."
"Good, because we have other problems." Nathan pointed to the giant blip that had reappeared on their radar.
The radio started crackling again. "Captain Sutherland, this is Commander Argum of Breaker IX. After what we have both witnessed, we do not want to lose another ship, yours or ours. We just want the data pad, and then you may go. Believe it or not, our intention is to use what's on the pad to stop that anomaly."
Nathan scoffed.
Trevor knew his uncle would never agree to anything with Ruvera. Nathan was battling them every day somewhere in his mind. They had taken away his life, his family, and his world, and all the training he had ever received was geared to fight them. He would rather sacrifice his life to help kill as many as he could, than to submit to them. Usually, Trevor was all right with fighting Ruvera, but after the bloodlust Nathan had just displayed, he wasn't so sure anymore. It was like after years of running from the fight, he was ready to reengage them, killing others like himself and Kaida to get his revenge.
"What's that?" Nathan nodded toward a white-and-blue mass they were floating toward—or, more accurately, was floating at them.
Trevor looked it up on the star map. "Marked as a hybrid-type planet named Frosterrene. By all accounts, it's a giant ball of ice flying through space with its own gravitational pull and thin atmosphere. It's experiencing a massive blizzard, planetwide."
"That's where we're going then."
Trev wanted to object, but his uncle seemed to be himself again, back in calm control. "We're not going to be able to escape that way."
"I'm not trying to escape."
Kaida just sat back and watched Boost roll out of the cockpit. He must recognize the next part of the plan already.
Nathan paused at his controls and looked out over at the giant speeding ball of ice. "Here we go."
The Wrath lurched forward again, spinning toward the spinning planet.
The radio crackled at the first sign of movement away from the Breaker. It was the Ruveran female commander. "Captain, I heard you were a reasonable man. Sorry to see that's untrue."
The Breaker port doors fired open by the thousands. The sleek little jets pinged out and engaged on the their Tiger-37. Automatic countermeasures fired off as the fighters' weapons volleyed at them.
Kaida peeked at the back ship camera to see open space fill with their fighters. They were still a long way off, but the missiles coming at them were closing in fast. She turned it back off.
"Boost, use the wall," Nathan called over.
Trevor hated the wall, and for a good reason.
Boost fired it, and behind them, a force-field emitter brought up a large, solid barrier. Like its name, the force field grew into a large wall in space. The forward series of weapons from the fighters hit it. The force of the impact engulfed the missiles that impacted plus the incoming weapons still coming up from behind them. The power of all of it created a type of cosmic explosion that detonated everything at the middle of it, and then the force of it reached their ship.
The tidal wave hit the Wrath, and they rode it into the atmosphere of Frosterrene. Snow and ice hit them and formed across the glass. The temperature inside the cockpit immediately dropped as they flew into the planet's atmosphere.
Gusts of strong wind carrying sleet were blowing them all over the place. Nathan grasped the yoke, utilized all his training for crash landings, and aimed his craft.
Trevor watched gratefully as the second large grouping of missiles died in the atmosphere, probably falling to the ground as icicles. He held on tight as the ship felt like it was coming apart, and down they went.
Nathan kept the ship aimed between two glaciers. There appeared to be soft powder running between them. It also looked like a landing strip. The rest of the terrain was covered in jagged, sharp ice towers.
Trevor ran through a quick before-landing check just as they struck the tops of the ice pinnacles. Shards of ice careened toward them.
Then the ship hit the snow between the glaciers, and they went through. Nathan realized too late that the snow was too soft. They tunneled deep down into the frozen world. Snow was flung up and hit them, along with rocks and ice until finally the ship slid to stop. Behind them, the tunnel they had created going underground caved in. They were buried alive.
With the Wrath sealed in tight, the Breaker stood watch outside, floating after it. Fighter-bombers continued to pile out.
Argum gave the order to commence bombing the area where the Wrath had just crashed. The fighters zeroed in, fighting against the storm, and began their attack.
Chapter 10
Elsewhere, not everything was looking so grim. At a hidden shipyard within a multi-ring gas planet named Neroth, a celebration of sorts was underway. A middle-aged man stood before a throng of thousands. Dressed in clean, open brown robes with a white belt to mark the occasion like everyone else, the speaker raised his hands in triumph. His arms motioned toward where their vast battleships surrounded them, the fruits of years of work. Finally, they had rebuilt their fleet. Finally, they would have a chance at a future.
This man was a little past his midlife with salt-and-pepper hair, which he wore combed to the side. Two light-brown eyes sat above a strong nose and a thick jaw. His naturally dark skin glistened with sweat that was both from apprehension and excitement.
A great cheer arose from the masses. Screams of praise and jubilation echoed off the walls of their secret base. They calmed as the figure lowered his hands to speak.
"This is truly a day of days. Easily one for the record books!" Fox Kalemegdon began. He held the sides of the speaker post and shook his head to himself. "I'll admit, I wasn't sure we would be able to accomplish this feat. When Earth was destroyed, my father swore we would rise again. And here we stand, poised to strike back. But our enemy is ruthless. They extinguish entire worlds on a whim. They murder and destroy at will. And now today…we finally have a chance to fight back."
The crowd burst into cheers. The sounds reverberated throughout the great bay.
Fox motioned for them to quiet down once more. "We have a responsibility now. We have the might, and we have the talent to meet our enemy on the battlefield once more. I have constructed a plan of attack with His Majesty's aid, one that aims at breaking the back of Ruvera. We will not fail in this. We cannot. Everyone in the galaxy will whisper of what we are about to do. The day the Elysians came. The day we all fought back."
The people erupted once more. This time, he let them go with it. They had earned a moment of celebration.
All around them were docking ports to massive battleships that could rival the Ruveran Breakers. They were one-third the size but faster and more agile with the upgraded shield technology. After going through several name choices for their battleships, like Vengeance, Marauder, and Justice, they finally agreed on one: Valian.
The legend of Vale read like a dusty chronicle from another age. Long ago, hundreds of years ago in fact, two similar races of humans lived together. Those calling themselves Valians, and the other, the Ruverans. And then one day Ruvera surprised the world of Vale, filling the skies with primitive airships, though highly advanced for their day. They enslaved the free continents much like they currently did the known universe. Then just when things looked grim, the animal people and humans attacked in a legendary rebellion. They almost defeated Ruvera, though time erased how it failed. The loss brought terrible consequences, public executions and punishments. But their spirit lived on. The Elysians would take up their torch once more.
Valians 1 through 22 were all ready to go at long last with the Helcarion as their lead command ship.
"Now, let’s get to work!" Fox laughed. He turned from the microphone and was met by his personal aides.
"Sir, the Helcarion is ready for flight on your order."
"Excellent. Is His Majesty aboard?" Fox asked.
"Yes, sir. He is under guard and stable."
"Well, let's get moving." He patted his
aide forward, and they entered the command ship. His men and women in uniform were lined up, forming a path for him. He pressed through, and as he crossed, he was joined by their ranks. Beyond him, the crowd was dispersing toward their assigned ships.
Fox acknowledged to himself as he walked through the Helcarion that they had done the unthinkable. After what had happened to Earth, the fledgling Earthborn community had had nowhere to go and no purpose left but to wither and die out.
And then his father, the Armiger Callius Kalemegdon, had gathered them back together. As soon as he found one group, he'd find another. So many had been scattered from Crystalis to Cenari. Some reverting to such low jobs as cargo haulers and messengers for other sentient species. And slowly, a force developed. Then unexpectedly, countless millions whose worlds had also been savagely defeated had joined them too. As they built a sizeable offensive force, the Armiger united them under one cause: to defeat Ruvera once and for all. But to do that, they had to destroy Razerus XIII. It was the only way. And on Neroth, they had rebuilt a force ten times stronger and more powerful than anything they'd had for years. Now, after all that time, they were ready to fight again.
Hope was back in their hearts, and Fox felt like it was all held together, still, by his father. But as the Armiger grew older and weaker and became ill, he knew the mantle of leadership would fall to him, and he knew he wasn't ready for it. His father had to hang on a little longer to see this all through.
Sections of the ship were opening like a city beginning to turn on its lights, one at a time.
He led his aide and personal guards up to the command center situated above the Helcarion. As he did, he could hear the other ships taking flight. Massive gunships rumbled to life for their first formation.
When he reached the top level, he saw the bustling activity as preparations were in full swing.
The director of flight met him as he came in. "Sir, we are standing by."
"Where's my father?"
"He isn't well enough, sir."
