Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “Captain!” Lerwin called from somewhere. “I’ve got an incoming message from Ishimoto! Looks like they’ve working something out with the Isoshi, they’re going to try something!”

  “What is it?”

  “Something about a system backfeed…I don’t know, seems like it was too much to include in one message. They just say, ‘Get ready to pull out.’ ”

  “What? They’re that certain it’s going to work?”

  “Seems like it, doyen.”

  “Check the time stamp on the message, Lerwin. How long between the time we first tightbeamed them the Tablet’s feed and now?” Lyokh was nervous about the answer.

  “Looks like four hundred seventeen days, sir.”

  “A year and some change,” said Takirovanen, who was presently rushing over to Lyokh’s shield wall to crouch beside him. “All told, they’ve been fighting over two years up there. Meanwhile I haven’t even developed a five o’clock shadow. Makes me wonder what’s become of the rest of the Knights fighting across the system.”

  “The crazy son of a bitch Kalder actually did it,” Meiks said from somewhere. By the sound of his voice, Lyokh could tell he was looking up through the hole in the ceiling and through the dome at the fast-forwarded battle overhead. “I never thought I’d see anything like this. It’s…” For once, Meiks appeared to be at a loss for words.

  “Lerwin, did they give a timetable on that evac?” Lyokh asked.

  “Not yet, they said they’re—”

  All at once, the ground itself hemorrhaged. And Lyokh knew. Deep down, he knew what this was. He knew that the worldship had somehow understood what he’d done, what the humans and Isoshi had done, what they had all managed to accomplish together. The worldship was somehow being attacked, maybe hacked like a computer, or else invaded by some means only an Isoshi could understand. He knew the ecosystem framed within this world was being called to action. The mind behind this worldship, if it could be so called, had had enough of them.

  This was evidenced by how fast the world around them began to dismantle itself, even as untold hordes of enemies leapt out of the holes that opened all around them, like demons through the gates of Hell. Lyokh cried for the warhulks to pull back, to tighten their protective circle. His people cried for the wall.

  When the first enemies came at him, Lyokh leapt to meet them. He swung his sword double-fisted and brought low two drones in a single stroke. Takirovanen was at his side, firing with intense precision at the creatures that pried greedy fingers and tentacles between the warhulks, trying to get through. Takirovanen fought the ones at range, while Lyokh took care of those that made it in close. He side-stepped one centipede, shoulder-barged another, shuffle-stepped away from one of its bladed hands and split its belly open with a diagonal slash. He liberated a bipedal drone from all four of its limbs before relieving it of its head.

  An explosion rent the air. His gaze was wrenched upward, where he saw two skyrakes being downed by a dozen clawcraft entering through the hole in the ceiling. Three Novas were coming in, preparing for the evacuation.

  Lyokh shouted, “Hold this position! Hold it! We need to clear a landing pad for the Novas! Don’t give these monsters an inch!”

  “A-HOO!” cried the Knights of Sol, as well as the contrite brothers, and the VPMCs.

  “Meiks, form up a wall using Io and Callisto Wing! Paupau, start the staged evac when the—”

  A scissoring blade of a biped almost beheaded him, but Lyokh was saved by the HUD ghost that appeared on his screen. He saw the attack coming from behind, ducked, spun, and eviscerated its turgid belly. He kicked its failing, twitchy body into another drone before spinning and hewing another centipede in half. All around him, men were falling into the holes the drones had made when they came crawling out.

  Then, Lyokh spotted movement from his left flank, he spun, and almost decapitated the High Priestess as she ran forward, into the mad tangle of bladed arms and barbed tentacles. Her legs looked flimsy like a marionette’s, and yet she plunged ahead, each wave of her hand exploding two or three drones at a time, or deforming them into something unholy and inoperable.

  The ground heaved again, as did the sky. The air seemed to explode all around him, and, about half a mile away from them, one of the Roman-looking colosseums broke apart, and out from it rose a drone easily forty feet tall and spitting particle beams in every direction. It looked like a lobster titan, with tentacles not unlike what trailed a broodling ship coming out of its stomach. It had no arms, only large bulbous protrusions covered in onyx flesh, with rippling muscles exposed in places. And on those protrusions were portholes that opened and closed like dilating eyes, and once they were opened, they fired salvos of missiles that annihilated half of the remaining warhulks.

  The explosion sent Knights and drones crashing to the floor, beholden to its immense shockwave. Lyokh’s STACsuit struggled to protect him from the impact, and his helmet’s sound dampeners were the only thing that saved his eardrums. Upon impacting the ground, he bit his tongue, tasted blood, and roared with the deathlust as he climbed back to his feet and ran into the recovering host of enemies.

  The Ravagers turned on the titan at once, obliterating one of its legs and sending it canting, slowly, to one side. Its second salvo ripped the ground, and sent chunks of the chiton-steel ground flying through the air, killing a dozen soldiers at once. The Novas swarmed it, bombarding it with what arsenal they had left. One skyrake, upon having its wing clipped, performed a suicide mission directly into its face, which had a single green-glowing eye. The ’rake exploded upon impact, staggering the titan.

  Lyokh had no more orders to give. He knew this was it, the moment when death finally found them all, including him. There was nowhere else to go, the Novas surely couldn’t get them all out in time. This was surely it.

  Lucerne.

  Eulekk.

  Heeten.

  Abethik.

  Ziir.

  And now me.

  This acceptance carried him once more into the purest state of no-mind. Past, present and future fused into one all-encompassing happening. Never had Herodinsk’s footwork been so perfectly married to lethal skill. Lyokh swept through the field of foes, losing himself in the moment, knowing that he was at the very height of his abilities. His suit was dialed to max power, and he welcomed death. It was time. No, it was past time.

  The enemy was not capable of handling such ferocious skill. Finely-tuned AI it might be, evolving to near perfection over millions of years perhaps, but whereas it understood only assimilation and world-building, it still had yet to grasp the pure creation that came with lateral organic thinking. He scythed enemies as they came at him, pivoted and rolled out of their way, watching the foes behind him by monitoring their HUD ghosts, shuffle-stepped towards them to smother their attacks, then kneeling-stepped towards them to come under their attacks. He teep-kicked the centipides as they rose to attack, and flung the bipeds to the ground by off-balancing them, and disarmed using modified guissard motions.

  He also moved in perfect concert with those around him. On his HUD, he saw the motions and intentions of his people, particularly Takirovanen, who was always right behind his leader, firing with precision into the cycloptic eyes of the drones, never failing to miss the key joints in the legs of the centipedes, and never letting a fresh drone crawling out of a hole get the drop on him. In turn, Lyokh protected Takirovanen, who once or twice found himself snagged by the tentacle of an enemy, only to be saved by a quick wave of his captain’s sword.

  Lasers would have annihilated them earlier, too, if not for Ptolem, who was there with two other Dagonites, all rushing through and barging the enemy with shield walls, and using their warhulks as ablative walls against the heaviest artillery.

  At times, Lyokh moved through the enemy like a man in a jungle, hacking with a machete to clear away cumbersome vines, while behind him the Novas had finally found enough ground around the Giant Egg to make landing. Lyokh and his friends had do
ne this at least, they had pushed back the enemy a precious few yards, just enough to get some of the Knights clear. He doubted they would survive the battle they would surely encounter on their way out, but all that mattered was that they showed the Brood that humanity, like its most controversial politician, would not bend.

  Five wyrms descended on the landing zone, screeching their warsongs and firing what weapons they had left. Thrallyin led them. Severely wounded, and having no ammo left in reserve, the hatchling was conducted by Artemis to storm through the throng of enemies, grabbing up the smaller ones in its jaws and slinging its head like a dog with a chew toy, breaking them. The larger ones Thrallyin batted with his claws, or impaled with his sharpened tail. Another hatchling was decapitated, its body still fighting on like a headless snake.

  Though his head is cut off, he should not die, thought Lyokh, moving in behind Thrallyin for cover and felling two more enemies in the process.

  Then, the ground rumbled. It was different this time, it started much deeper, and vibrated through their suits and into their ears like never before. Lyokh saw the ground widening—not splitting yet, just somehow widening, separating, as though growing out in all directions. When the split finally came, superheated gas was vented from its crevices, which melted two Knights upon contact. Once the gas was spent, the ground raised, canted to one side, and Lyokh was suddenly fighting on a slope. Looking back into the chasm awaiting him below, he saw a universe of lightning, metal railings, complex interlocking gears, and fleshy wires that spat red fire—the inner workings of the worldship.

  He didn’t know what explosion had occurred to knock him flat, only that he went backward, downhill, end over end, along with a centipede he’d been engaged with. Lyokh recovered himself just in time, clinging to a random aperture in the ground. All around him, wyrms were snatching up soldiers in their claws and jaws, trying to keep them from falling, but none were close enough to Lyokh.

  Then, he saw something go sliding by him. In all the vented hot air, he made out Takirovanen, moving like a man half awake, half asleep, about to tumble into the chasm, into the inner workings of the worldship.

  Without thinking, Lyokh reached out and snagged Takirovanen by his wrist, and perforce went with him.

  The last thing he saw before falling into those infinite inner cogs was a dozen Novas taking off, making for the exit. Lyokh clung to his friend as they plummeted, and was glad to be dying alongside a fellow warrior, and a friend of such fierce loyalty.

  THE LAST NOVA was only twenty steps away. Just twenty steps. But those steps were blocked by a throng of the enemy, and the ten Marines that survived at her side were surely no match for them, and her power had been spent, warping her own mind to the point Thessa no longer believed everything she was seeing. She saw time melting away, and saw images of vast vistas on alien worlds she’d never visited. One of her eyes had gone blind. Her breasts lactated both milk and blood. Her fingernails and toenails were peeling off. She felt this defilement of her body, even though she could not see it through her e-suit.

  Her legs seemed boneless. She now crawled between her foes as her Marines showered them with bullets, and one remaining warhulk ripped into them with its PBC. Thessa was still tapped into the power of the universe, the power of Mahl, and her suit was filling with blood, piss, and shit. Mahl’s defilement of her was almost complete.

  But she could not make it easy on him. Mahl would not be pleased with her if she made it this easy.

  Thessa forced herself onto her knees, vomiting now, and between convulsions poured herself into the interconnected tissues of the universe, attacking the Brood and rending molecule from molecule, catching some of her own people in the invisible wave.

  The pain was too intense, as was the pleasure. The parasympathetic response within her shut everything down, her body and mind going numb. All at once, she was on those unvisited alien worlds again.

  …the tall, two-legged-horned creatures grazing over purple-leafed trees at night on a moonless world where seas of stars cluttered the sky…

  …the world with seas of bioluminescent algae that devoured all organic life, leaving the seas forever unoccupied and the land animals fearful of all water…

  …a dead rock with a single temple that knew no night, for there were five suns in its sky, and at no time was there not at least one star giving it daylight…a world without darkness…

  …worlds of razed cities, satellite fortresses crashing into the oceans, a ring system filled with space stations growing cold…

  When she came to, she was blubbering, weeping tears—real tears this time—at all she had seen. She was being carried by someone. A Knight. The man called Meiks, who had peeled off his own helmet and had a slab of his own flesh hanging off his face. They were inside a Nova. They had made it. He was just strapping her into a seat, and shouting to someone else, “I told you, the captain is dead! I’m in charge here, and I say get us the fuck out of—”

  An explosion shook the Nova as they began to take off.

  Thessa looked down at herself with her one good eye. Her e-suit had been half stripped from her. Her body, once so beautiful, had been etched with crisscrossing stabs and cuts. Part of her left breast was missing and she was bleeding profusely.

  “The artistry,” she whispered to Meiks, who looked at her queerly. “Do you see Mahl’s artistry?”

  “I don’t know what you did, sister,” he said, “but you gave us enough of a clearing to get the last load out.”

  “You…you brought me with you?”

  Meiks nodded. “Could’ve left you there, but—”

  “I shall reward you…with riches…and defilement…you will degrade yourself for me…and for Mahl…as you promised…”

  Meiks just stared at her as the shuttle jumped and shifted. Outside, the battle could still be heard going on. Thessa saw Meiks rushing off towards the cockpit just as she passed out. Her dreams were filled with the faded images of unvisited worlds.

  : SDFA Lord Ishimoto

  Kalder fell against the wall and banged his head as the next impact was felt throughout the keel of the ship. A vorta was rushing past him, stopped, and stuck out his arm. Kalder took a moment for his ears to stop ringing, then took the proferred arm and muttered a thanks the vorta never heard, for the man was already rushing off.

  He touched his head, and his fingers came away with blood. He’d struck it pretty hard. No matter. What was a little blood at the end of all things?

  He waved his hands in the air and summoned a 3D rendering of the battle on his imtech lenses. What he saw was a devastating model of unparalleled monument, a solar system of twenty-three planets nearly jampacked with alien interferences, asteroid belts choked by industry that had been strung up like pearls throughout, space stations hauled in-system by Grennal freighters and defended by Faedyan craft, orbital shipyards built by the Tulfghan Caliphate and circling six different planets, and legions of Isoshi and human ships protecting, as best they could, the energy stores of the Dyson swarm and the helium-3 factories. All while Deirdra stood beneath the shadow of a leviathan, the worldship, which orbited and brought almost two billion deaths.

  “Sir…it’s them,” said Julian, who had materialized at his side at some unknown point. Kalder’s sense of time was skewed, as it had been in the days after he had ventured into a Watchtower far from here, and as he suspect happened to all people who toiled around Stranger tech for too long.

  “It’s who, Julian?”

  Julian was offering his arm now to escort his mentor to CIC, and Kalder gratefully accepted. “Novas, sir. Seven of them, coming out of the worldship just now, exiting the same way they went in. We got a transmission from Meiks, who was made Knight Companion, it seems. Lyokh appears to be dead, as are most of the others—”

  Kalder gripped his arm, drew him to one side of the hallway to allow a panting, bleeding crewman to go racing by. “What are you talking about? Speak slowly. My mind…”

  Julian nodded in for
lorn understanding. It hurt him to see his mentor brought so low, at times nearly incoherent, even senile. An extreme loss of dignity, even for a man who always wore a lack of decorum on himself like armor. “Sir, there are Nova shuttles reported leaving the worldship now, moving slowly, of course, from our vantage point, but they are at top speed. Desh told me to find you, and tell you it could be less than a day before the shuttles make it beyond the time-warp bubble—”

  “Desh…” he said, looking for a face to connect it with. “Desh…yes…of course. Desh sent you. That makes sense.” The fog was lifting again, but for how long? I have to act while I still have my wits. “Take me to CIC. Tell Desh I’m on my way, and to have an open conference with all members of the Visquain, as well as General Hyatt and the others. Have Diogenes ready to record and transmit to…to…” He searched for the name of the Isoshi flagship. “The Pride of Our Ancestors.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Julian, fingers already dancing in the air as they made their hurried way to the conn.

  The lights in the corridors shut off multiple times, even the red emergency lights, casting them into darkness. Kalder felt a service bot slam into him, knocking both him and Julian to the ground. Acting on some unknown instinct, Kalder reached out to the seas of zero-point energy surrounding him. He looked up, and saw the corridor clearly in the darkness, saw how all the materials and constituent molecules interacted with gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, in a savagely serene ballet that molded the universe and held it together. He saw the sea of zero-point energy that he, Julian, and everyone else on the ship were wading through without ever knowing it.

  It was strange, for he wasn’t seeing all of this with his eyes. It was as though someone had wedged open his skull and poured into it a totally new perspective on everything. A sixth sense. Kalder had been poisoned, irradiated by a power that turned his mind against itself. It is too soon, humanity is not yet ready to receive such enlightenment.