Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1)

by Ben Sheffield

  Two moons were rising at the same time. Detsen in the east and Somnath in the west. They would soon cross overhead in the cloudy sky, and hell would break loose.

  Twin moons were rare but terrifying. Everything bad about a single moon was multiplied – the earthquakes, the volcanoes, the destruction. Few had survived such a thing. Hopefully the shield wouldn’t, either.

  Sakharov had done some back-of-the-envelope calculations, which he declined to show any of his officers. He figured that a worst case scenario would be the loss of fifty percent of his combat forces.

  They had air units. And the Spidermechas were good at clambering out of harms way. As for everything else – ranging from tanks to ATVs to ground-based drones to infantry…well, they were the expendable side of his forces.

  “Buckle in,” he radio’d. “As soon as Detsen gives us the go-ahead, we strike. Nail them with missiles. While they’ve got that to think about, sink six tunnels and blitz them with Spidermechas. They barely held us off last time, and now they’re down on material.”

  He heard a series of metallic thuds echoing off the rock, and he turned to see Amnon approaching.

  In medieval times, the nobility that ruled society trained for battle their entire lives, and fought atop purebred destriers and expensive hand-crafted suits of armor.

  Some traditions changed, some stayed the same.

  Amnon was not a noble in any sense of the word. He had no combat training.

  But one thing would never change: when rulers go to fight, they do so in the state of the art.

  Amnon was in a gigantic Spidermecha, one with only six legs instead of the usual eight. Usually the Spidermecha scuttled along the ground, blurs of motion that were very unpredictable and hard to track without self-guiding bullets.

  Amnon’s Spidermecha was gold rather than silver, and massive enough to shake the ground when it worked. Two six-barreled chainguns were slung in firing position, along with a target-seeking missile launcher and a host of computerised paraphernalia.

  “I’m going down to Rorke’s Drift,” Amnon barked over comms. “Once the site is under my control, a personal touch will be required.”

  “Welcome, I suppose.” You’re not welcome. If you go down in that ridiculous thing, I’ll have to waste valuable resources trying to keep you safe.

  Amnon stomped his oversized Spidermecha over to Sakharov’s, speaking in tones just barely loud enough for the general to hear.

  “I’ve just heard something disturbing. That criminal Andrei Kazmer broke free. It seems he was being aided by several individuals on board the Konotouri. It was apparently necessary for the station’s new commander to seal off the outermost habitat wheel, and drop it to the planet.”

  “Never a dull moment out here, sir.”

  “Indeed. How hopeful are you that these moons will deactivate the shield?”

  “Just Detsen alone was enough to cause it to blink on and off like a faulty light. With Detsen running interference, it might not stay up at all. Even if that doesn’t happen, a double accident will create massive problems for the defenders. At any time, a landslide could take millions of tons of rocks away from their shield, giving us a wide angle to attack from. They could lose their defensive perimeter at a moment’s notice. If that happens, it will all be over.”

  “Maybe it already is.” Amnon said.

  The Doorway – March 18, 2136 - 1300 hours

  Earthquakes started to rattle the digging site. The surviving Defiant looked anxiously through the shield, at the moons rising in the sky.

  Mykor was issuing commands when he sensed the presence of his daughter’s Sphere.

  Where the devil were you, Zandar? He was too exhausted for fury.

  There was a silence, very un-Zandarlike.

  Then a man’s voice spoke into his head.

  “You will never see Zandar again.”

  He sagged, all the strength gone from his body. “Who are you?”

  “I don’t know at all. Perhaps you can tell me. Perhaps you can tell me a lot of things, such as the location of Sarkoth Amnon, and the location of the Wipe. I have goals that include them both.”

  “What did you do to my daughter?”

  “Don’t mourn her. She was running away – abandoning you. But I’m coming back in her place. A friend told me your name, Mykor. You are not my enemy, but that will not save you if you stand in my way.”

  The communication ended.

  The remaining Spheres hadn’t been privy to it, and several clamoured to know the news.

  Mykor just turned away, wept. His first tears in thirty years. They came slowly at first, like rust flaking from a machine, but soon he was sobbing.

  He gave no more orders, not even when the missiles started to fly, not even when the mechanised armor came rolling down the hills.

  The moons were quickly gaining ascendency, and Caitanya-9 was tearing itself apart on the spindles of their gravity. Clouds of dust rose from miles away, sucked into swirling tornadoes. Boulders the size of tanks were going airborn. Sakharov’s men collapsed and puked out their guts not from fear or pain, but just from simple oscillation waves in the ground.

  It didn’t matter. The attack swept in.

  Overwhelming force from the north, overwhelming force to the south. The Solar Arm had Repulsor shields, but no cause to use them. The defenders were holed up, their dwindling might focused on a single point on the ground.

  After the first few dozen missiles exploded harmlessly against the shield, they surrounded on foot, and started tunnelling started. The double confluence of the moons that prophesied victory was making this difficult – holes kept collapsing upon themselves, burying the men inside. Scores of casualties were sustained without even coming in contact with the enemy.

  “Keep going,” were Amnon’s words to Sakharov, as seismic ripples destroyed another tunnel, swallowing men wwhole. “These are the easiest losses to deal with – they’re considered ‘buried human remains’ and we are under no obligations to retrieve them. If all our casualties were incurred like this, it would make our jobs easier.”

  “I will deny you said that, if anyone asks.” Sakharov said, darkly.

  “Glad for it.”

  Finally, a tunnel was successfully completed, and Spidermechas started pouring through the hole. From inside the semi-transparent dome, they watched flashes of gunfire started to illuminate the landscape.

  Amnon cursed the dome, the way it took away all sensorial stimulation from combat. The gunshots sounded like faint crackles. The explosions were muted thuds, almost inaudible over the landscape collapsing around them.

  He wanted a show.

  Twenty or thirty Spidermechas were now in the dome, and started doing what they did best – spreading out, using their speed and nimbleness to get amongst the enemy and destroy them at close quarters.

  Amnon anxiously waited reports, until a soldier suggested that they move to lower land – the defile they were on seemed liable to collapse at any moment.

  Sakharov and the rest of his command station started hurriedly vacating, but Amnon remained stationary inside his huge Spidermecha. “Why aren’t you coming?” Sakharov shouted.

  “I dare it to let me fall,” the Second Minister said.

  As the division evacuated to a lower valley, Sakharov cast anxious glances back towards the lone figure atop the hill. If Amnon came to harm, his career was over, regardless of what he achieved or failed to achieve at Rorke’s Drift.

  After twenty of the most nerve-wracking minutes of his life, he realised that the hill wasn’t going to fall. Only then did he return to co-ordinating the attacks.

  Violent winds scoured the plains, flipping light vehicles. The planet was dancing his army to pieces. They pressed onwards, and inwards, not breaking or surrendering. Finally, their persistence was rewarded.

  The shield started to flicker.

  Chasms erupted and closed like speaking mouths, swallowing men and equipment alike. Rocks were flung high
in the air, adding to the casualties.

  Still soldiers piled through the tunnels. Still the defenders held.

  Sakharov felt a gnawing animal of worry eating at his guts.

  When the shield started blinking, he could hardly believe it. When the blinks became a steady on-and-off cadence, he was spellbound, as if at a light show.

  Then the Shield disappeared entirely.

  The surviving Spheres – all fifteen of them - were now completely exposed.

  “We can wipe them out with artillery,” Sakharov said to Amnon on the defile. “Give the word.

  “No. They’ve managed to keep the hole open, and that might close it. Destroy them on foot.”

  The Wipe – March 18, 2136 - 1400 hours

  Waves of Spidermechas poured in. Waves were repulsed, torn to shreds by relentless volleys of fire from the Spheres.The Spheres flew and darted, wide open targets without the Shield protecting them.

  It should have been over in seconds.

  Instead, the Spidermechas suddenly become the attacked ones.

  From across the dissolving planes, through the swirling plumes of dust, a bolt of liquid light arrived.

  This newly-arrived Sphere slammed into a knot of Spidermechas, knocking them around like skittles. Bolts of light blasted in a near-constant stream, demolishing Spidermechas left and right. Whoever was in there was brutally fast and accurate on the draw. Soon, the remaining Spheres from the defense rallied and the Spidermechas fell back.

  Mykor stared senselessly. The man’s voice spoke in his head, liquefied hate, as though the phonemes had to pass through sixteen feet of steel-solid rage.

  “I was thrown out on this planet like waste. No memories. A gun in my hand, a military pension, but no memories. I don’t get to be a martyr, or a hero. I get to be lubricant, my blood greasing the tires when they run me over. I get to be fucking destroyed, and nobody will care. You want anger? Yes. I can help. Anger’s what I do. “

  Another attack came fast on the heels of the first. The battle churned the ground. Errant bolts of light flashed and hammered, destroying everything they touched. The surviving Spheres and the newcomer fought back to back against the tides marshalled by the Solar Arm. The changing elevation and shattering fault lines played havoc with the advance – throwing some Spidermechas back down hills, crushing some under sudden landslides. Aiming at the defenders was nearly impossible.

  Sakharov was shifting position yet again to avoid tumbling avalanches of rock, when he realised that their temperamental Second Minister had abandoned the ledge.

  “Where are you going?” He asked, knowing that there was no way in hell he’d like the answer.

  “This ends now.” Amnon said. “You have failed.”

  The colossal Spidermecha lumbered down, more than twice as large as any of its confederates. It was a target that would be annihilated in seconds.

  Sakharov swore, and started rallying his forces in a tight protective wedge, so that they’d take the brunt of the fire.

  Flames and dust rose in eddies as the Defiant lightbolts hammered home into the advancing formation. Scores of Spidermechas were hurled away, wrecked, only to be swallowed by the earth.

  Finally, in the face of fearsome casualties, they gained the digging site, and began to systematically take down the Spheres, one by one. They’d fought a massive defense, a defense that wasn’t supposed to be possible in the 22nd century, but that didn’t change the reality of the situation: they were outnumbered dozens to one and fighting with the dregs of their resources.

  Sphere after Sphere fell, dimming out. Survivors crawled out of them, surrendering. Soldiers balked at this new responsibility: having to take prisoners.

  Mykor was dragged from his Sphere, his eyes bleary with rage. Sarkoth Amnon caught side of him, and with a jolt of recognition saw his old comrade.

  “That one!” Amnon roared, blasting away with his chainguns. “Take him alive! Don’t let him be hurt!”

  Finally, there was only one Sphere that left. It flashed from target to target, destroying them with merciless speed and precision, evading gunfire.

  Then it flew at the wedge containing Amnon.

  Amnon opened up with a two full clips of ammunition, hitting the Sphere dead center. In return, it fired several thunderous bolts of light. Spigots and rivets burst in the Spidermecha, showering the scene in sparks. The bulletproof dome that encapsulated him fell, half-stunning him with its fall.

  Still the Sphere came on. It had him dead to rights.

  Amnon realised something. He wasn’t ready to die.

  The thought that he could be a participant in the Wipe was stirring, enervating. But now that his death day was finally here, he balked.

  “Sakharov! Save me!”

  The Adjutant General’s men surrounded the lone Sphere. Weakened, battered, it was finally brought to heel. It collapsed in the quaking earth, its light dimming, and a hole appearing in its surface.

  When the attackers dragged out the last Defiant, they found it wasn’t really a Defiant at all.

  “You!” Snarled Amnon, as a rescue crew cut him free from the ruined Spidermecha. “Damn it, you’re goddamn dead!”

  Andrei Kazmer stared up, his face an unreadable mask. “Ten years ago, you started an experiment. And now the experiment ends.”

  “Throw him down the pit.” Amnon yelled, gesturing at the hole. “I don’t even want to have to look at him.”

  Infantry dragged Kazmer across the vibrating ground, and hurled him down the shaft. He fell like a stone, plunging into the heart of Caitanya-9.

  The hole only survived for another few seconds.

  The seismic tremors ripping apart the landscape took their final toll on the digging site, and it closed shut. An enormous plume of dust fountained skywards, showering everyone in grit.

  Amnon ranted and swore. Their access to whatever was underground was lost, until they could excavated it anew.

  The Solar Arm forces were in a state of near-panic. The twin moons were shredding the land. Vibrations destroyed equipment, landslides buried men. The dust was so suffocatingly thick that it was impossible to see more than a few meters in front of your face. Only fear of Sarkoth Amnon prevented Sakharov from sounding a general retreat.

  Mykor was taken to back to the shuttles. A prisoner of war.

  Wake plunged straight down, into the sucking maw of the hole. He bounced off walls. He tumbled out of control. But his mind was ice.

  He worked his hand to the biokinetic wings clipped to his belt, and unhooked them. He got a glimpse below. In the fading light he saw a length unbent tunnel beneath him. If he was lucky, he would get a few seconds of controlled freefall, starting...now.

  He looped a hand around his back, and fastened the Vyres. They spiked their way into his nerves, into his spinal column.

  The wings crackled through his nervous system, and he spread them.

  He didn’t have enough space to unfurl the wings out fully, but he did succeed in making his fall survivable.

  He was able to land on a jutting out crop of rock, a hard jolt running through knees that he would probably never need again. A few hundred feet below, the tunnel angled away again, this latest twist terminating in a shimmering surface of blue. It rippled with a mighty rhythmic pulse, which was supposedly a countdown. He had only the vaguest of ideas of what lay ahead. Just the twice or thrive removed rumors, ripped screaming from Ubra’s lungs as he made her feel some of his pain.

  The least part.

  Everything about this planet is illusory. Beneath the surface is a mighty engine, The Wipe. A ticking bomb that erases everything as far as there are stars.

  He had no idea of what he’d do with such a weapon, if he found it. But he knew he wanted his hands all over it.

  He swooped down, and entered the chamber below.

  His senses were immediately disoriented. He was like a flatlander, experiencing the third dimension for the first time. Strange lanes and alleys of perception intermingle
d in front of his eyes. Scrambled sensory data punctured him, crystals ripping through fabric, rock that flowed like liquid mercury, sixteen or seventeen colors, the handiwork of a race that transcended man.

  It’s talking to me…it’s in my head…

  A foul and alien presence erupted inside his mind like a flower.

  YOU AM I

  He was vaguely aware of a huge mass of pestilent flesh rising from the ground. More and more eyes erupted out of the thing’s hide, and all of them were piercing him with their gaze.

  Then his Sphere flew closer, as did everyone else’s, and he realised mass of tentacles and eyes was controlling them.

  I KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE

  The Wipe…

  I COMMAND THE WIPE. IT HAPPENS IN MINUTES. YOU CANNOT PREVENT IT.

  “What happens when it goes off…” He was nearly lost in the beauty and horror of its manyfold stare.

  Visions clanged in his head like bells.

  …The planet, whiplashing itself from system to system through wormholes…

  …The twin moons… Detsen and Somnath… discharging the energy gathered over millions of years in a single burst…

  …Flurries of ghostly neutrinos, the particles so small that they can fly through entire planets and stars without interacting with matter at all, released in such intensity that they evaporate everything in their path…

  …Gamma rays, rinsing a million billion stars in a pan-galactic storm. So bright they’re beyond white hot, just the ultimate Platonic ideal of BURN…

  …Everywhere the rays pass, extinction. All life dies. Where civilisation thrives, now just eerie wastelands that were cities, atomised to below the level of dust...

  …A blank landscape, with no creatures, no higher brain functions, nobody suffering, just the purity of no life…

  …And then, millions or billions of years later, a roll of the primordial dice creates enzymes, and proteins, little coils of data that eventually learn to replicate…

  …The ones that die, die. The ones that live reproduce, and spread their kind across an empty world…