Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2)

by Rusty Williamson

  Adamarus looked at the countdown…five minutes to go.

  The Blackship’s arms kept separating, pulling the beam’s diameter outward. Finally, the arms stretched out straight from the Blackship. At first, the beam wavered. Then it jumped, its diameter expanding all the way to the ends of the arms but for just a second, then its diameter snapped back to its smaller size.

  And the Blackship recoiled and started moving backwards.

  The beam’s diameter jumped again to its full width. The Blackship jumped again and continued moving backwards. The beam remained, its diameter extending fully to the outstretched ends of the arms. The arms were over 3,350 miles long so the beam was now an impossible 6,700 miles in diameter.

  The incredible sight distracted Adamarus, but then realization hit. The Blackship had moved. Adamarus heart skipped a beat. He jumped to his feet, leaned forward and checked the targeting. The asteroids would now miss the Blackship completely—they would now pass into the Blackship’s fiery beam.

  He collapsed into the seat dumbstruck. He got to work quickly, working out how long it would take to target another group of asteroids on the ship. He knew the beam had been trained on the Loud sun for about half an hour. By the time a new batch of asteroids could get there, it would be too late.

  “No,” he whispered wildly, looking around for some way he could salvage the situation, but there was nothing. He’d failed. A tear ran down his cheek as he watched the fantastic spectacle before him.

  A ding sounded indicating his asteroids striking only now they were just passing harmlessly into the Blackship’s huge beam. Then he saw something within the beam—a small series of explosions. The asteroids must be exploding as they hit the beam. Then, in shock, he realized that the asteroids were hitting one of the Blackship’s arms.

  Five things happened in rapid succession:

  The alien ship’s arm broke away, was caught by the beam and was hurtled away toward Iceis.

  The beam, reduced in size by half, shot off at an angle, going harmlessly into space.

  Then the beam, reduced in size again, shot off in the opposite direction, toward Amular.

  The beam did not hit Amular because the Larger Moon was in the way and the beam hit the edge of the Larger Moon. The impact spun and pushed the Larger Moon as huge chunks of it broke away.

  Then the beam blinked out.

  The Blackship floated there, one of its long, thin arms broken, about half of it missing.

  The Larger Moon slowly rotated and moved away from Amular.

  Several large chunks had broken away from the moon and they tumbled away—however, one of them, as large as a mountain, was falling toward the planet.

  ---

  The staple ship poked its nose out again and Leewood fired using his maser. The alien ducked back into its hiding place, the maser missing. “Come on...” Leewood growled.

  Wicker said, “What the hell are we going to do? We can’t hit the fucker, it’s too fast. And, we can’t allow it to get out of that hole or it will turn that damn green shit on us. Which means, we can’t leave. So, we just have to stay here keeping the fucker in that hole until one of us runs out of power? And I know where my money would be on that.”

  Leewood knew he was right, but he didn’t know what to do about it. In front of him, on the other side of the hole, the canyon wall climbed upwards several hundred feet. An idea started forming…

  “ARRRRR EEEEK! ARRRRR EEEEK! URGENT ALERT! COLLISION DETECTION! COLLISION DETECTION! ARRRRR EEEEK! ARRRRR EEEEK!”

  The alert made both men jump. Alert details came up superimposed over the weapons targeting indicators. Leewood scanned the data as his hand flew out and slapped a switch stopping the blaring alarm. He scanned the time to impact, object size and the direction it was coming from. They still had a few minutes. The reported object size…what it said simply made no sense. His eyes jumped to the direction it was coming from and then he brought up that section of sky on an overhead screen.

  The incoming object was coming in from behind him, high in the sky. He looked up and studied the display. He saw nothing. The sky was a whitish blue with strange circular clouds. He focused, straining to see any kind of object or movement, but there was nothing. However, something was off—the hazy white sky with the strange circular clouds abruptly ended and a sky of darker blue took over. It ended in a perfect curve, then an almost straight line cut upwards. In addition, he had the distinct impression that things were growing larger.

  Then one of the strange circular clouds started turning red, a bit of it breaking away, and with a jarring sensation that actually shook him, he realized what he was seeing. The funny circular clouds were actually craters—craters entirely too large and too close.

  “Oh…my…God,” he gasped in disbelief, and in the span of those three words, he realized that something horrible had happened above in orbit. There was only one thing it could be—a large part of the moon was falling.

  “What? What is it?” the president stammered.

  Leewood ignored Wicker and instead addressed the ship’s artificial intelligence, “AI, how much time do we have before we must leave in order to safely escape?” At the same time, he glanced into the hole, saw the alien ship and fired a burst, sending it back into hiding.

  “Fifty-two seconds,” came the calm voice of the ship’s AI system.

  “What’s going on?” the president asked again.

  Leewood held up his hand and then frantically started entering commands. He said, “AI, on my mark, I want you to fire all remaining missiles using the targeting sequence I’m now entering, then take us out of here at best speed on a safe course.”

  The AI calmly replied, “Safety cannot be guaranteed in this situation…”

  Leewood interrupted the AI. “I know that,” he snapped. He activated their high gee restraints and their seats folded around them, then he pressed enter, inputting the targeting sequence he’d keyed in and said, “Mark.”

  Six missiles launched from the fighter, then both men were thrown to the right as the ship spun, then they were pressed back into their seats as the ship went to full military power.

  The six missiles drove into the wall of the canyon above the hole and exploded. The canyon wall burst apart and began falling into the hole.

  Out of the fighter’s side view ports, the terrain blurred by. Both seats were tilted back and Leewood and Wicker looked up into the sky. The large chunk of moon took up half of the sky and the rims of its craters were glowing red as they began to buffet the atmosphere.

  Wicker turned his head to get a look at the passing landscape. In the distance, he saw a large factory of some kind. Suddenly the ship started shaking. Wicker looked forward at the instruments—the wind had gone from zero to over 80 miles an hour, but that wasn’t all. Gravity had gone crazy.

  He turned his head again. Things were rising into the air. Rocks and dirt started hitting the ship and the shaking increased. They were about 1,000 feet up now. Looking up, he saw the falling mass was now burning and it filled the sky. Black smoke was racing from its sides.

  In disbelief, Wicker saw the factory coming apart. Much of it was being pulled into the air but much of it just seemed to float above the ground. Just before the factory went out of view, the entire thing lifted into the air and rose upward.

  Then they heard the loudest sound they had ever heard. The ship started spinning and they were surrounded by white light that was impossibly bright.

  ---

  From the History Station, Woodworth, Jan and Harrington watched in silent horror as the mountain-sized piece of moon hit Amular. There was a brief moment when it caught on fire, trailing smoke. This was replaced by an expanding white fireball and an invisible circle that radiated outward at incredible speed. It traveled hundreds of miles, only visible due to the clouds, which instantly vanished within the expanding circle.

  Then a shockwave that lifted the terrain and turned it back on itself spread outward as a plume of red lava ro
se up from the center of impact. The glowing plume reached well above the atmosphere before the upper portion broke away and continued into space as the lower part fell back.

  As the devastation radiated outward, from the center, thousands of fireballs shot into the upper atmosphere trailing black smoke. These traveled for thousands of miles before falling back to Amular’s surface.

  Eight percent of the planet was wiped out instantly while the fireballs arced then fell, creating firestorms across another 60 percent.

  The impact area had included a small part of the Eastern Sea and a tidal wave 500 feet high radiated from the point of impact.

  The shockwave that hit Leewood’s fighter flung it out of control, ejecting it from the planet’s atmosphere. The concussion knocked both men out.

  ---

  Adamarus watched everything in shock. Then he watched as the damaged Blackship began moving away. He could see the broken arm and already some kind of transparent energy extended from the broken end of the arm. The energy was taking the shape of the arm—it was rebuilding itself. The ship was wasting no time and was quickly building up speed, leaving the star system.

  They had accomplished their goal to damage the alien ship enough to force it to leave before completing its mission, but had they been in time?

  He looked at Iceis and was shocked to see that a large dark red stain had formed on its surface.

  ---

  In the dark vacuum of space, lit by the damaged orange dwarf, the broken piece of the Blackship’s arm spun around endlessly. It was over 1,000 miles long and almost two miles in diameter, tapering to a sub-atomic point.

  Made of an exotic material designed to manipulate singularities, it had almost no mass and in fact was more energy than matter. Gravity had almost no effect on it, but at the same time, the little it had was unbelievably sensitive.

  The alien beam had sent it flying toward Amular’s orange dwarf sun. Iceis’ gravity had very little effect on it, but that little bit pulled it in that direction. However, its keen awareness of gravity detected the small planetoid of Cinder and that pulled on it with almost the same minuscule force that Iceis did. Indeed, it even sensed the Hideaway Shipyards in orbit around Cinder and it also applied a tiny pull on it.

  And it had millions of miles for those forces to act upon it.

  ---

  General Whitehall led his fleet of immense gunnery ships filled, not with ammo but refugees to the Smaller Moon—the farm moon. His ships docked at several of the large docking facilities and began unloading their human cargo.

  The two levels of farms provided a lot of space, water and food, but no shelter. However, the temperature was controlled and moderate so this was not too much of a problem. Definitely, an inconvenience, but it would serve for the time being.

  It took eight hours to unload the thousands of people and then Whitehall returned to Amular’s surface to collect more.

  ---

  Adamarus flew the T-Fighter back to the Larger Moon, which had been knocked out of its new closer orbit and was spinning and moving slowly away from Amular. It would settle into a new orbit over time.

  He maneuvered around the dozen or so pieces that had been blasted away by the Blackship’s beam that were still following the moon, and then he passed over the huge newly formed crater on its surface.

  Making his way around the moon, he landed near Jumper One and boarded his craft.

  He had seen the Loud Umbrella Ship spiral down to Amular’s surface. Back at Echo Charlie Seven, he’d watched the other Loud ship be destroyed, but Bugs’ ship had rippled and vanished so he knew that Bugs’ ship was the only ship it could be. He made his way down into Amular’s smoke- and ash-filled atmosphere.

  Chapter Nineteen – Aftermath

  “Some two hundred years ago, a study concluded that, next to survival, the most powerful driving factor for human beings of Amular was advancement—there were always the hungry few who wanted improvement and overall they supported sustained advancement. A similar but slightly different study done by the Loud came to a completely different conclusion. The reason for this discrepancy is that we looked for driving forces that dominated over thousands of years and large groups of people—the long-term ‘species’ view. The Loud, on the other hand, looked at the strength of emotional spikes in an individual—the short-term personal view. Both answers are considered correct depending on the context. The Loud’s answer was revenge.”

  Differences Between Humans and Loud - 2nd Edition

  Lorraine Harrington

  Source: The Archive

  T-Minus 0 Years

  In Orbit Around Amular…

  First Wicker heard the low roar of the engines, smelled the unfamiliar but unique ozone and plastic of a cockpit. He opened his eyes and his first thought was surprise that he was still alive. His second thought was of his wife and children who had perished aboard the ark. He closed his eyes. Then he felt a hand grab his arm and shake it.

  “James, are you conscious yet?” It was Leewood.

  The President lifted his head and looked over at Leewood who was crouched over him.

  “You okay?”

  Definitely not, Wicker thought. He said, “I think so.” He took inventory by clutching his hands and wiggling his toes. “What happened?”

  Leewood pointed out the side view port and the president looked. Out there, everything was explained.

  It did not look like Amular, but Wicker knew it was. Only two things could be seen on the planetary orb below them: A huge red spot that seemed to pulsate and the dark ashen clouds covering the rest of the planet.

  Above the red spot, surrounded by countless stars was the Larger Moon. From his angle of view, it was a perfect circle except for the lower part. There it looked like someone had taken a bite out of it. Around that broken notch, a dozen or so pieces of various sizes seemed to float in random locations.

  Finally, above the shattered moon, was the translucent white dumbbell shape of the Loud Nebula. Pastel threads of red and blue lined the expanding bubbles that now dwarfed everything in the sky.

  Grief, destruction and chaos had aligned and nothing would ever be the same.

  “Where’s the alien?” Wicker asked, his voice flat.

  “Headed out of the system is what I hear…and, there might be some good news,” Leewood said.

  Wicker looked at him and raised his eyebrows a bit.

  “It fired on our sun for only a few minutes…it fired on the Loud’s sun for almost half an hour. It seems something went wrong; the beam weapon it fired at Iceis was somehow disrupted—it kind of went crazy then just stopped. That’s what happened to the moon—the beam hit it before shutting down. So far…” he leaned back and changed positions to get more comfortable.

  “Go on,” Wicker said.

  “…I’ve only been able to contact HQ. That’s about all they know right now except…one of the Loud Umbrella Ships appeared and fired at it before it attacked Iceis—maybe that had something to do with it. The Blackship fired back and the Loud ship crashed somewhere on Amular.

  “They told me a couple of other things…there’s a report that one of the Blackship’s arms broke away—part of it anyway. Also, we were expecting the alien to somehow collect the black holes—you know, what’s left of Aster and Serena—but they left the system without taking what’s left of them.”

  “What’s left of them?”

  “Well, they’re black holes now. Oh, yeah…although we can’t see it from here, I was also told some damage was done to Iceis. They said there’s a large dark red spot on its surface.”

  Wicker looked back at the molten red spot on Amular again. He was numb and his brain didn’t seem to be functioning. That’s when he saw the ship. Focusing on it, he realized there were actually three ships.

  Leewood had spotted them as well and had moved forward to the pilot seat. “Amular One, calling trio of unknown ships, please come in.”

  The reply came at once, “This is Spacer01.
Amular One, we see you. Is the president on board?”

  “Yes, President Wicker is aboard. This is Admiral Leewood piloting.”

  “One moment…I’m putting General Whitehall on the line…” a new deeper voice came on, “This is General Whitehall. Is President Wicker okay?”

  “Hello, general. Yes, the president is okay.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. What is your status, who else is with you, and where are you headed?”

  Leewood thought he heard disappointment in the general’s voice, but discarded the idea. “We were close to the planetary impact…very close. The concussion rendered us unconscious. Looks like we made it to orbit and somehow survived. We only regained consciousness ten minutes ago. It’s just the two of us. I briefly talked with HQ down on the planet, but they, as well as us, have been mostly out of touch for a couple of hours. What can you tell us?”

  “Not a lot, other than I’ve been conducting rescue operations. Twelve battleships, back from Echo Charlie Seven, have just entered orbit and have offered to assist. I’ve been in contact with the Smaller Moon and our three ships are en route there with about six hundred survivors. Many are seriously wounded.”

  “Understood. We’ll follow you. Leewood out.”

  ---

  The two Loud Umbrella Ships—the ones acting as arks and leaving the system—had turned around as soon as they detected the Blackship departing.

  They had monitored the battle and knew that one of their ships had been destroyed and the other had crashed on Amular. They were able to contact the latter and learned that it was badly damaged—one result being that they could not communicate with the humans directly. More importantly, they learned that a fragment of the Blackship had broken off and was racing toward Iceis. This immediately became a priority and the ships went to full power to attempt to intercept it.

  On the way, they detected what appeared to be the forward wedge of an Amular battleship out of control and headed out of the system. One of the ships decided to change course to intercept and investigate.