Villain

by Ivan Kal

The Grand Fleet started moving forward, and she felt another being reach out to touch the fleet. She reacted immediately—and perhaps too violently. She dropped the weight of her mind across the Enlightened, sending them reeling back. In those few moments of contact she detected surprise, and then annoyance.

  Anessa sighed as the Enlightened retreated. She didn’t know which one they were, but she had just shown herself to them, though she knew that she would had to have done so eventually. At least she had prevented them from taking a closer look at the fleet.

  As the Grand Fleet passed the hyperspace barrier, the enemy opened fire. Some of their access-point platforms were in range, and from nearly half a system away they attacked, the rings bending space and pulling pieces of ships to them. Debris appeared in the ring and floated beyond as the Enlightened weapon system prepared to fire again.

  The response from the Grand Fleet was immediate. They had known about that weapon, and they had been testing and improving their technology over the last several years. The Sovereigns moved to the front, their md cannons whirling and then opening fire. They had managed to boost the range of the molecular disintegration cannons to nearly that of a Star Guard station—that came at the cost of fire rate and firepower, but the beams were so powerful that it mattered little. The first beam struck the enemy platform and punched a hole in the side of a ring. She didn’t know how much damage that had done, but the Sovereigns didn’t stop firing.

  Inside the formation of the Grand Fleet, drones started ejecting barrel-like objects that flew on their own power and started distributing themselves across the formation. Then they activated, and she felt an effect similar to the one she felt when she bent space.

  The barrels were the defensive measure against the access-point weapon. They knew that it worked on the principle of bending space, or rather subspace, and so the barrels released a wave of radiation into subspace—not enough to harm the fleet in realspace, but enough to disrupt the subspace around the ships. She saw the hull of one of avian-looking Tar’ferat ships rip apart and disappear, an entire layer of the hull just gone in an instant. But it didn’t rip the ship in half, and all across the formation, the same thing happened. Their countermeasure had worked.

  And as the Enlightened platforms kept firing, the Grand Fleet fired back.

  She saw that the Enlightened warships all across the system were moving, gathering and heading up to meet the Grand Fleet. It would take time before the two sides met, but soon enough this war would start in truth. Her job was to protect the fleet in the best way possible, and the Enlightened seemed to have retreated for now. She felt no additional attempt to engage from them, so she decided that she should be able to do something even before the two forces clashed.

  She glanced at her children, but saw them engrossed in guiding their forces. Without disrupting them, she bent space and appeared above the warship. Keeping pace with it, she landed on the outer hull before walking to the back of the ship, where two massive containers had been attached to the hull. She found the triggers and pressed them with telekinesis. The two containers started floating up and she grabbed hold of them, pulling them up with her as she gained some distance from the warship.

  The one thing that Adrian had stressed to them about the Enlightened was that they relied too much on their power, and that they would be stupid not to take advantage of all the technology they had access to. Anessa agreed.

  The two containers were each about a hundred meters long and wide, which was not very large on a scale of object in this system. She brought them close enough to touch and then she exerted an effort with her will and bent space along with them. It took her a few moments to find her destination, but the moment she did, she snapped to it. She appeared next to one of the access-point weapons, then waited for a moment to see if she would be discovered—but bending space didn’t leave a signature, and the containers were dark, with no energy signatures.

  When nothing fired on her, she reached out with telekinesis and opened one of the containers, pulling out a single bullet-shaped object the size of her torso. She floated it over to the platform and attached it to the ring. Then she bent space and appeared next to another platform. She did it again and again, always leaving a single device attached to the ring, near the platform itself. She lost count of how many times she did so, but it seemed like a lot of time had passed. There were thousands of access-point weapon platforms in the system, but she had focused on the ones that were in range right now.

  She had to have placed several hundred devices before she felt a disturbance in the Sha. The Enlightened was searching for her. The moment the Enlightened found her, she lashed out with her mind, but this time they were ready. They didn’t clash for long, but enough that she could get a bit more from the exchange. She recognized the presence as that of Doranis, the one who had come to aid Aranis in Ullax Darr’s system.

  She knew that he would be coming for her soon, so she reached into one of the containers, the one that was now empty, and found the communications system. With mental commands, she turned it on and sent an instruction.

  All of the planted devices received the triggering sequence, and several hundred nuclear explosions blossomed in space, taking the access-point weapons with them. She felt space being bent near her, and pulled on the other container, which still had some devices left.

  Even as she hurled it through space, she reached into its system and triggered the remaining devices. Doranis appeared several thousand kilometers away from her, but the container was already well on its way. As soon as his six-armed and four-legged animal form appeared, the container filled with nuclear weapons triggered—right on top of him.

  Anessa bent space before the explosion, appearing in the middle of the Grand Fleet. She cast her mind across space, looking for Doranis. She found him in the same spot she had left him, but this time rage rolled off in waves from his mind.

  Anessa landed on the hull of an Empire Sovereign, and waited to see what the Enlightened was going to do.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Year 718 of the Empire — Josanti League Territory

  Doranis of the Enlightened seethed with anger as he reappeared on board his Living-ship. He glanced down at his burning flesh and saw that one of his upper arms was no longer there, and the rest of his torso blackened with fire.

  He had been taken off guard. He had been stupid and had dismissed everything that Aranis had told him, even after seeing him with half of his body missing. He should’ve known better, but how was he to know that the enemy would use such tactics? He had expected a battle with the Sha, a direct attack. That was what he was watching for, waiting to respond. Instead, he had been harmed by mundane weapons. Nuclear fire had seared him. He had just barely managed to bring a shield up to protect himself. If he hadn’t been fast enough…

  It deserved no thought now. He was still here.

  His arm was already growing back, the regenerative power that all of them had gained from the lifeform that had evolved them all, that had given them such great ability over the Sha. But it was guided by their minds. Instead of having it regenerate the limb, he stopped the bleeding and closed the wound.

  Doranis walked over to the wall and it slid open. He stepped inside the cocoon and felt it fill around him with biological material. He didn’t need to spend his mind to pull matter from the air and his surroundings to heal himself when he had material on hand.

  But instead of regrowing the arm, he shifted his form. His usual appearance was his true one; he didn’t know why that was, but that appeared to be the way his genetics had evolved when pushed far beyond. His form was useful when fighting things weaker than him—it could intimidate, it was fast and powerful—but it did not lend itself well to a fight against an equal. He changed to a more bipedal form, leaving four arms instead of his usual six. He used the biomaterial around him to fill in the gaps in his body left by the injury. Shifting didn’t heal him; instead, he just moved the injury elsewhere. He would still need to
spend some time in the cocoon to heal.

  Now he looked more like his original form did, when he had been one of the People, except that his skin was still covered in tiny scales which he changed to be red in color. He flexed his arms and tightened his fists. He would not have an easy fight, especially as he didn’t know how many of the enemy Sha state users had come here. He would need to be very careful. He didn’t need to get entangled in a large battle, nor did he need to even win. All he had to do was stall enough for Aranis to finish the Conduit and fire it up. Then it would all be over, and their mission finally complete.

  He reached out to his Overseer breeds and looked through their minds, paying attention to the battle that was about to begin in truth across the system.

  * * *

  Urvu’ri of the Tar’ferat flight saw the enemy access-point defensive platforms explode and leaned down from her perch to speak to one of her secondary wings.

  “What was that?”

  “We don’t know, Exalted,” the young Tar’ferat with brown feathers answered.

  “Find out,” Urvu’ri said.

  Her secondary chirped and worked on his station. A few minutes later he had an answer. “Exalted, it appears that Battle Master Anessa destroyed them.”

  Urvu’ri blinked. She knew, of course, intellectually at least, that Anessa had the same power as the Enlightened. She had watched the recordings of the battles in which the Enlightened participated and used their power. As unbelievable as they seemed, she couldn’t deny the truth. Still, knowing that she had perched next to a person that could’ve crushed her like an ant was disconcerting.

  “Ah,” Urvu’ri answered, “thank you.”

  She couldn’t focus on that just now. She was just happy that they had someone who could defend them from the Enlightened. They had made protocols and programmed systems to deal with the Enlightened in the wake of what they had done to the previous Grand Fleet, but they hadn’t been able to test them. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to.

  She turned her attention back to the battle ahead. The right wing of the Grand Fleet’s formation was about to engage with the enemy force. She could try to bring the rest of the Grand Fleet to bear, surround that formation and destroy it, but more of the Enlightened forces were closing in and she couldn’t allow her ships to be caught out of position. So she sent orders to the commander of Hexar that they were to engage and the force. The Enlightened going toward them had less ships than the right wing, and she judged that victory was probable.

  She still couldn’t believe that this was a single fleet. In reality it wasn’t, but it was all hers to command. The formation she commanded stretched for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in all directions. It was shaped as an uneven blob traveling toward the center of the system, and as time passed it lost cohesion more and more. There was never any way of keeping the fleet together. As the Hexar had the honor of clashing with the Enlightened forces first, the rest of the formation continued on. It had already been several hours since they had arrived in system, and it would be hours yet until they meet any further resistance. The only ships firing were from the Rimward Alliance, as they alone had the range on their massive fleet-killer vessels to match the access-point weapons.

  She was glad that the Empire’s countermeasure for the access-point weapon worked. It was saving her a lot of ships. The Grand Fleet had suffered losses, but on the scale of the entire fleet, they were nothing. She figured that the same was true for the enemy. They had lost many platforms, and Anessa’s attack had to have hurt them, but overall they still had an insane number of ships.

  She sent an updated course to the entire fleet, instructing that they were going to head straight for a formation of Enlightened warships. She intended to punch through them on their way to the closest gas giant. Taking that area was paramount in their long-term plans to win this battle.

  She saw the projections, and it would be another seven hours before they reached the range where most of the ships could fire. She sighed and settled her head down between her wings and chest, closing her eyes and resting. The secondary wings would alert her if anything unexpected happened.

  * * *

  Anessa walked into the command center, seeing Kane there but not Vaana. She realized immediately that she was probably resting. The battle would rage for days, probably more. They would need all of their strength. This early in the battle there was little for them to do, so they had to take advantage of the downtime. Later, when the battles heated up they would need to use stims in order to stay awake. Anessa could go without sleep for a few days with the Sha state keeping her strong, but it would drain her mentally. She had seen no sign of Doranis or any other Enlightened, so she risked dropping out of the Sha state for a while. She didn’t think that he would strike now, not if he hadn’t retaliated immediately.

  She wondered if she had managed to injure him, or if her attack had done nothing. They didn’t know much about how long the Enlightened could sustain the Sha state, as the People had never managed to measure it, and the battles they had been engaged with them were short affairs.

  Anessa would assume that they could do everything that she could do at least ten times better. But that still meant that they needed to rest. So she didn’t think that a fight against them was as hopeless. For now, she retired to her room on the Sovereign. She let Kane know so that he could call her if something happened. With nothing else to do, she rested.

  She had thrown the first punch, and she had no doubt that Doranis would throw one back.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Year 718 of the Empire — Josanti League Territory

  It was the third day into the attack on the system, and Anessa was growing worried. Doranis hadn’t shown himself since that brief encounter, and the Grand Fleet had moved deep inside the system, the Hexar ships remaining close to the hyperspace barrier in order to protect their retreat route. Urvu’ri seemed to have learned the lesson from Johanna Stern’s mistake—she didn’t want to get trapped inside the system.

  They were getting close to the gas giant, and had already had several skirmishes with the Enlightened forces, and one full-on battle. The Grand Alliance got out ahead in that one, as the Krashinar had decimated a force of some one hundred thousand. Anessa had always been impressed by their battle prowess, but watching them through the Sha state made them all that more impressive. The scattered remains of the Enlightened force had fled in all directions, and were now joining other forces across the system.

  But the force around the gas giant was much larger, with around five hundred thousand warships standing guard over the rings. Two more equally large forces were on their way to reinforce, but they would not reach the gas giant until a few hours after the Grand Fleet did. The problem with fighting with so many ships was that often you couldn’t even bring all your numbers to bear. There were too many warships, and they couldn’t all fire on targets. If they spread out the formation enough that they could, then the edges of it became far more vulnerable, and nearly impossible to quickly reinforce.

  The plan that Urvu’ri had shared was for the Rimward Alliance and the Josanti League formations to attack the defending Enlightened forces, while the rest of the Grand Fleet covered them from the arrivals from across the system.

  Anessa wondered at the fact that she had lived for long enough to see several different battle doctrines come to light. Long ago, battles had been slow, as ships had to travel vast distances inside a system in order to reach one another. Then, with the discovery of the skim drives, that disappeared, as a ship could cross a star system in moments. Now, they were back to slow travel through systems as the skim-nullifying fields were constantly on. She knew that every ship in the Grand Fleet was watching closely for any sign of the field going down, as if that happened both sides would be able to use their most devastating weapons as well as reposition themselves quickly.

  She sighed. Adrian and Moirai could disable that field in a bubble around Moirai, allowing them to travel arou
nd the system with impunity. Too bad that she couldn’t take more than a ship or two with her.

  Anessa kept a close watch on the Sha around them. If there was a good opportunity for Doranis to cause some damage, it would be now. She watched on the holo as the ships around her fired their missiles, dozens flying out of every ship in two formations, millions of missiles flying toward their targets. The Enlightened fired their own equivalent. Then they reached the range where other weapons could be fired. Quickly, the space between the two forces was filled with weapons fire. Ships were burned on both sides, but the Enlightened were taking the brunt of it. Their greatest weapon was their access-point defenses, but she had crippled them at the start. The Enlightened had used the versions that they could make with their ships, but those had a far worse rate of fire. The Sovereigns were constantly firing across the system at them, too, even as the Enlightened fired at the Grand Fleet. With the countermeasures deployed, however, they weren’t having as much success.

  Anessa saw a dreadnought get hit with a beam that punched straight through its shields and open a gaping hole in its hull. Several more followed and the warship buckled before blowing up. She tightened her fists as she watched. She didn’t like not being able to do anything, not when she knew that she could help with her power, but she was not here for that, and she was certain that Doranis was just waiting for an opportunity to strike.

  She wasn’t going to give him one.

  * * *

  Urvu’ri watched as the two forces smashed into one another in high orbit around the gas giant. The battle had intensified. Both sides’ shields were glowing harshly, painting the entire space with blinking lights. Her ships had the upper hand, as the Josanti League and the Rimward Alliance’s warships were clearly more advanced. The Enlightened ships were powerful, had incredible weapons, but they weren’t as fast, their shields not as potent. Although their hulls could take a bit more damage, the biological material was tough, and the damage from the Grand Fleet caused it to bleed some kind of gaseous liquid into the surrounding space. It was strange, fighting ships that could bleed. She had to remind herself that their ships weren’t truly alive, and if they could be considered such, they were more akin to plants than animals, unlike the Krashinar beasts. Even now, Urvu’ri shuddered every time she saw one of their kind. To think that there was such a race in the galaxy, growing and spreading without anyone knowing…