“I regret to inform you that all your dedication in building the new fleet may have been unnecessary,” he said. “My engineering project is complete and I’ve just heard back from Apex and Grey Wolf. Everything is in place to get us to the new world. The Otrid can stamp their lumbering feet all they want, but we’ll be rid of them once and for all soon.”
She rolled her head in his direction. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t decommission them right away. Somehow I get the feeling we’ll always need a defense fleet. There’s always somebody out to get us.”
“Ha! A cynical view of history. But you don’t fool me with your downbeat attitude. I can see you smiling beneath that mask you present.”
Talia smiled for real at that. “You can’t fool a god.” And then, quietly, she added, “I guess I just never really believed this day would arrive. Thank you, Apollo. Only you could have done all this.”
He dismissed her praise with a wave of his hand. “I wish I could say your burden is behind you, but things will actually get busier for a while before they calm down. The City will need its demigod for a bit longer, as unpleasant as you may find that prospect.
“Now clear out a large section of mental space for me. We have much to discuss.”
Hours later, Apollo came out of his meeting with Talia in even better spirits than he’d entered. His enthusiasm was cresting, and he’d undergone a mental shift—not long ago the idea of addressing everyone under the dome had been a worrisome task on his checklist, but now he couldn’t wait to tell them about it.
He spent more time than strictly necessary enhancing his most awe-inspiring Aspect, but at last it was tweaked to his satisfaction. He projected it into the center of The City. It towered over the surrounding structures, a golden giant radiating strength and purpose. He lit up his godship in orbit above The City so that it shone like a small star.
Talia had supplied a small flock of axis flyers that he directed to strategic points, and through these Apollo broadcast the most inspiring of the symphonies he’d composed.
At least someone besides me will finally hear them.
He shamelessly reached out and stimulated the blood riders of every citizen.
The reaction was exactly as he’d expected. People flooded into the streets, gazing skyward in wonder. The light he saw in their eyes made his own heart swell. He heard his name being chanted from every direction.
“My people, beloved children of the beautiful Earth,” he began, his voice booming between the spires. “The time has come to prepare yourselves for the greatest journey any man or woman will ever know. As you’ve been told, Apex has fulfilled his promise, and the new world is ready to receive us. Yours is the generation that will walk once more under open skies and breathe fresh air.
“Many of you have wondered, of course, how we’ll get from here to there,” Apollo said, pausing for effect. “We will open a pathway through Divine Space itself that will transport the entire moon of Skyra to the new world!”
He watched through his Aspect as ripples of disbelief washed over the assembled crowds. Almost immediately, fits of cheering broke out, but not everyone participated. He spied hesitation in many, and even signs of fear.
“Apex is preparing for our arrival, and will use his powers to open the door on the other side and guide Skyra to its rightful place. It will become the new world’s permanent satellite, a moon to stir the planet’s oceans and guide the natural cycles of the Earth animals we will reintroduce.
“Even Grey Wolf will help us make the passage, although she will not be joining us as we build new lives. She’s staying to guard her flock on the Wandering World, and her hope is that by maintaining two branches of humanity it will increase our odds of survival. Only time will reveal the wisdom of her position.
“We will leave no trace behind, so that if the Otrid come hunting us once more, they won’t find anything here but an empty system. They know nothing about Divine Space and will not be able to track us. Our new home is so distant they’ll never be able to reach us.
“And so, Talia and I will be guiding you as we all make final preparations. Gird yourselves—much work remains before we step foot on virgin soil. We must…we must…”
A security alert from his godship shrieked in his mind. He shifted his attention outward, letting his Aspect evaporate. Information flowed through the ship’s sensors like water.
Alien portals were ripping open the fabric of space around Lodias.
The Otrid had arrived.
Chapter 25
Battle Stations
The Hightower’s defensive network sent a spike of something very close to pain through Mik’s body. Information points flared in his vision like stars in the night sky. The haptic inputs gripped him in a way that forced his attention to the ever-shifting viewing fields.
Aye, I knew it was too good to be true.
Encased in the Hightower’s command bridge as he was, Mik felt the ship’s report through all of his senses. Despite the time he’d spent as admiral, and even with Talia’s assistance, the interface with the ship had changed very little since Tower had first created it. Mik was still rather crudely plugged into the ship’s systems, but they hadn’t been able to improve on the god’s handiwork.
But Mik needed no godly interpretation to understand what was happening—the Hightower was showing him the unmistakable energy signature of an Otrid jump gate opening.
He moved a 3D visual to the front of the viewing field that gave him a sense of the scale of the incursion. Sixteen large warships had emerged through the gate nearly simultaneously, spaced only a kilometer apart from each other.
Mik took a brief moment to analyze their formation and heading. The ships were moving in a surprisingly sluggish way, as if the jump necessitated a reboot on this end, or exacted some sort of toll on the crew.
A rapid response would be crucial. He opened a link to the fleet as well as Apollo’s godship.
“All ships: battle stations. Otrid incursion, sector nine. Attack pattern resembles scenario Delta, with sixteen ships. Tac Group Three, follow me. I’ll clear the path, you’ll be the following swarm. Tac Group 2, converge on the next jump gate, with Hammer taking lead position. If Apollo calls you off, obey him, and regroup to respond to the next Otrid jump point.”
Just moments before, Mik had been listening in on Apollo’s big announcement to The City. He’d even managed to set aside his normal cynicism about high-flown speeches since, in this case, he knew it was all true. Even the part about transporting the entire moon of Skyra through Divine Space didn’t trouble him too much. That had to have been the secret message he’d carried to Apex. It sounded risky, but Mik had traversed Divine Space in the Hightower twice now, and both times ended up where he was heading.
If a starship piloted by human ballast could fly to a distant corner of the galaxy and back in only a few days, it wasn’t that much of a leap of faith to believe the gods could transport an entire moon the same way.
He’d felt so confident during Apollo’s speech that he wondered if the god was manipulating his blood riders even way out here, tens of thousands of kilometers above Skyra, but decided it didn’t matter—Apollo’s message was good news no matter which way you viewed it.
Having that feeling ripped from him by these hideous enemies spawned a rush of anger at the Otrid that overrode the fear he would normally feel.
The building rage channeled itself through his connection to the Hightower. Weapons systems snapped to full readiness. The ship’s shields crackled to life.
If the galaxy was a jungle, and the strongest species would rule, then so be it. He was in the perfect position to do something to upend the galactic food chain.
He laid in an intercept course. As admiral, by traditional doctrine, he wouldn’t be expected to be at the point of the spear in combat. But the Hightower was always going to be the lead vessel in any of their attack formations. It was the most advanced ship in the fleet, the pinnacle of Tower’s creative ab
ilities, and one that Talia could never reproduce. The other ships were still formidable, but Mik had determined their most effective use would be as the secondary force—once the Hightower—or one of the godships—made the initial strike, the other ships would swarm in and attack using a variety of weapons, the better to keep the Otrid off balance.
The Hightower closed the distance with the invaders.
The Otrid ships were already altering course in his direction.
Mik thought back to that chunk of debris he’d hauled into the Hightower, and all the experiments he’d conducted since then. Time to find out if those simulations of the Otrid shielding were worth the time.
The Hightower raced toward them, unleashing the full power of the ship’s engines.
That’s it, stay in formation just a little bit longer.
He launched the first Gravitic Compression Point bomb—or as he still called them in his mind, implosion bomb—as soon as the targeting system locked on. It dropped in and out of Divine Space to land among its targets almost simultaneously with the launch.
In a flash almost too quick for his instruments to record, two of the Otrid vessels were dragged into the compact, temporary singularity that had burst into existence.
He aimed a second shot deeper into the Otrid formation before the ships could fully disperse. Three more vessels were sucked into the maw of a compression point and disappeared from his screens.
The Hightower’s immersion sensors gave Mik an omnidirectional feel for the battle around him, and they now detected his squadron of five warships closing up behind him. The lead ships fired maser beams at the Otrid vessels that were trying to separate from the main body. Seconds later, they followed with a launch of missiles.
Two of the Otrid warships glowed like dawning suns as their shields firmed up to deflect the incoming barrage.
But the Otrid had finally shrugged off their torpor and Mik could read their ships’ weapons systems powering up.
He engaged the Hightower’s distraction array, which released a small cloud of probes on either side of the ship that condensed to form decoys. The ruse worked, briefly, as the Otrid diverted a not-insignificant portion of their opening salvo on the decoys.
The distraction allowed the Hightower to close with the enemy. He targeted the nearest one and raked it with an amplified electrolaser beam. As he’d calculated, the scorching bolt partially compromised the Otrid shields, sketching a line like a molten crease across the ship’s hull. The ship wobbled under the assault, and peeled off from formation.
Mik ignored the crippled prey and changed course to block the ships at the head of the Otrid formation.
“Red Dagger, Fist of the Seven, Bulgae, swarm that damaged ship and take it out!”
Dellis, in the Red Dagger, acknowledged the order and altered course to intercept.
“Talia, are you monitoring the action up here?”
“Of course, Mik.”
“Can you light up their left flank with the ground-based weapons? I’m going to block the center, and I’m sending my Tac Group to tangle with the right flank. We need to bounce these ships before The City rotates fully into their weapons range.”
“I’m on it.”
Many of the weapons in use were invisible to the naked eye, but Mik watched in awe through the Hightower’s sensors as the sector lit up with beams, exotic energy bursts, and shields shedding excess energy. The space around him was riven by webs of murderous energy signatures. It was both beautiful and terrible to behold.
Scorching beams from the ground-based cannons on Skyra joined the mix. Two more Otrid ships broke formation as their shields strained to block the incoming fire.
Mik adjusted course to meet the next ship in the group. He could never have followed all the action without the Hightower’s immersion sensors, and even with them it was hard to follow the next three seconds of battle. He saw the explosion as the Fist of the Seven, Red Dagger, and Bulgae destroyed the crippled Otrid vessel. He actually felt the surge of power through the Hightower as it struggled to repel the incoming fire from the Otrid ship.
And he cried out in pain as the The Fist of the Seven’s shields collapsed under a simultaneous barrage from four Otrid warships. The Fist was there one moment; the next, only a shimmering debris field gave evidence that it had ever existed.
A flashing vision of the faces that served on the Fist of the Seven raced through his mind. He’d trained the officers, recruited the men, and personally signed off on the ship after it emerged from the construction dock. Those faces were now gone—the first men he’d ever sent to their deaths.
Mik set the thought aside almost as quickly as it had formed. He needed to process information like a machine now, rapidly and rationally. Human reflection would come later.
If he lived.
He calculated a new formation that joined the Red Dagger and the Bulgae with the Terra and the Acolyte and sent a tightbeam message with orders for their next target. They were to swarm an Otrid warship that had broken away on a looping course that made no tactical sense—unless it was staking out a new position to guard the next portal opening.
Mik flinched again as secondary weapons from his Otrid opponent raked across the Hightower’s shields. He responded with a three-shot salvo that he’d worked up as part of his defensive plans, a strike that used a trio of completely distinct weapons each fired a split second apart, and intended to overwhelm the enemy’s shields.
His target disappeared behind the ruby glow of its shields as forces and counter-forces clashed. Mik launched a second three-shot barrage, cycling through a different combination, and the red globe around the ship collapsed. The Hightower was close enough now that Mik could see the fatal gash along the ship’s flank. A deathly stew of atmosphere, Otrid bodies, and mechanical debris spilled out into the void.
The Otrid warship was massive—far larger than the Hightower or any of the vessels in the newly-constructed human fleet.
Each ship must carry an invasion force of soldiers and provisions for a lengthy occupation. Are they here to conquer and enslave us, or simply to eradicate us?
The Hightower flashed by the dying ship in an instant. The primal surge of satisfaction he felt dissipated almost as soon as it was born—the Bulgae vanished from his sensor view as it exploded, a grim splash across his sensors.
Mik targeted the next ship before it could adapt to his three-weapon tactic and hit it with a new combination from the Hightower’s arsenal. It returned fire, rocking the ship and setting off several warning alarms.
He entered an evasive course sequence that led back to his original station above The City. The fighting was already at the stage where the chaos of battle upended all planning, and only speed, strength, and a clear mind would win the day. It was only going to get worse, and he wanted to place his ship once more between The City and the Otrid.
For now, the defense was holding. The ground-based beams that Talia controlled and the fire from the orbiting weapons arrays had stalled the Otrid advance, and the invaders had lost more ships.
But he knew this had to be only the first incursion. The last time the Otrid had attacked, they’d come in waves. A battle of attrition did not favor the human defenders.
Mik had cleared out the center of the Otrid formation, and now, as he raced back toward Skyra he fired a spread of torpedoes toward the Otrid right flank to draw the heat off his three remaining ships.
The Hightower still had two weapons systems that had never been used in combat—prototypes developed by Tower—and Mik had refrained from using them as long as possible, in the hope that he would be able to spring a surprise at a decisive moment. Yet as the two sides exchanged fire, Mik wondered whether that was too great a gamble. The fight could end for him at any moment, and the thought of never trying a tool that could solve a problem offended the Fixer in him.
He activated the sequence to power up the unused arsenal and targeted the ship that had gotten the closest to Skyra…and then his a
ttention was ripped away as the unmistakable signs of a second Otrid portal lit up his immersion sensors.
A third portal flared to life moments later.
Adrenaline racing through his blood, Mik altered course while making a quick tactical analysis.
The third portal opening was close—very close, in fact, to Faraway’s godship.
The second, however, was surprisingly far away. Was it a feint? To engage them, it would draw his defense fleet farther away from The City. Or was that the best the Otrid could do? Maybe their star-spanning leaps weren’t as controllable as he’d been led to believe.
As he studied the energy signature of the third portal, another possibility occurred to him—the aftereffects from the detonations of his Gravitic Compression Point bombs were still easily detectable through the ship’s immersion sensors. Gravitational waves still roiled the space around Lodias, and probably would for years. Had that kept the Otrid from a more effective insertion point?
Mik had little time to ponder the new shape of the battlefield. Apollo’s voice flowed through the Hightower’s comm system. The majestic voice rang in his mind like the bells of the temples.
“Hold back your ships, admiral. I’ll take care of these.”
From Apollo’s rapidly approaching godship, a beam shot forth, glowing as if the sun itself had extended a finger into the heart of the Otrid formation.
Chapter 26
Boarding Party
War Vessel 84 made the transition through the gateway and into human-occupied space.
Kwed had taken extra time to prepare all hands for the mild dissociation that came with passing through the jump tunnels. He knew how debilitating the experience could be, as the forces that opened a portal scrambled the connections between segments. Even communications could be spotty for a period after emerging.
The personal discomfort was no longer an issue for Kwed, whose Harness of Lordship allowed him to quickly master the fugue state that came when passing through the jump gates. But he knew how the disorientation could affect fighting performance during the precious first watch-fractions after the transition.
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