Armageddon's Pall

by S. F. Edwards

  Remembering his training from so long before, Pi’Lig pushed off against the ceiling and rebounded towards the floor. He collapsed to the ground, then stood as slowly as he dared. With the walls shattering around him, he shuffled over to the door. He shoved the door wide as he reached it and the scene before him stopped him dead. The valley below had flooded as the ground continued to quake. His whole family lived in the small coastal town below, and they were gone. Screams of terror echoed across the tarmac as the maintainers of the aerospace craft pointed skyward.

  Pi’Lig looked up and felt his blood freeze to a stop. The local star hung eclipsed behind something massive, a ship, if he could call it that, which stretched across the sky. He felt it pull at him and those all around. Tearing his eyes away, he turned to his tied down fighter. His squad mates continued to stand dumbfounded. “Scramble people!!!” He hurried to his fighter as best he could, looking up at the massive ship again when it blotted out the sun.

  “May God have mercy on our souls,” his wingman hissed when he’d reached his fighter.

  “Only if we stop it,” Pi’Lig called out as he unhooked his tie downs, the long chains almost floating now.

  “Sir, what good are Splicer 900's gonna do against that thing?” one of the pilots asked before a quake threw him from the ground.

  “I don't know. But that's no excuse for not trying. Get to your fighters. We have to stop that thing at any cost,” he yelled and vaulted up the boarding ladder of his antiquated fighter. He dared not look again at the ship: this sortie, he knew, would be their last.

  Observation Dome, UCSBS Nosh-Tak, Nimbus System

  Admiral Quin Tosh couldn’t fathom it. The immensity of the ship, or space station, that the Gorvians had constructed was beyond anything she’d seen. Only the great ring stations that had been left behind by the extinct Voltap species could dwarf the thing, and those were static installations. That it managed to maneuver at all meant that it had to take more power than her whole fleet could generate. More than that, she began to wonder what purpose it could serve. How did they ever manage to move that monster from Sog’Reuv? I don’t know of any jump point large enough to allow it passage.

  “Admiral Quin Tosh, please contact the Command Center,” a call rang over the intercom.

  The Admiral chuffed, turning away from the nebula beyond the dome before activating her link. “Command Center, Quin Tosh. This had better be important.”

  The voice of the ship’s captain rang back. “Ma’am, the Gorvians are on the move.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Command Center, UCSBS Nosh-Tak

  “Report!” the Admiral barked as she stampeded into the chamber.

  “Ma’am, we’ve received scattered reports about a massive attack on the As’Tril system.”

  “As’Tril? Are you sure?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Officer Krade replied and a hologram of the irregularly-shaped ships formed. “They came in hot out of the jump point and are closing on the primary world. Standby,” he said, putting a hand to his ear. “Are you sure?” His face went pale as he turned back to the Admiral. “Send it to my console.”

  An image from the surface of As’Tril coalesced before them. At first Quin Tosh couldn’t make it out. It looked like any other sky, but then she saw it. The Planet Slicer appeared from out of nowhere and twisted about to block out the local sun. She felt her back feet quaver and stamp; stilled them, but she couldn’t keep her tail from tucking in between. “Mobilize the fleet!” she managed. Everyone just stared at her for a moment in grim silence. Setting her jaw, she looked back at them. “Now! While we might not be able to stop that thing, we’ll do everything we can to evacuate the colony.”

  Militia Fighter 7101, As’Tril System

  The G-Forces crushed Pi’Lig into his seat and right console as he squeezed his left slide control with all the strength he could muster to avoid a volley of plaser fire from a Gorvian 6-DF fighter. His acceleration compensators screamed in protest. The devices were unable to keep up with his maneuvers and the gravitational stresses induced by the proximity of the Planet Slicer and the shattering As’Tril. Blasts singed his shields and elicited a waning moan from his aged fighter’s superstructure. “Just hold on a little longer,” he pleaded and, releasing the slide control, pulled back hard on his stick.

  The Planet Slicer filled his vision in all directions. Futile as it might have been, he squeezed his trigger and sent a rain of plasma fire towards its surface. If vids have taught me anything, even a single fighter can kill a monster ship. Reality sunk in a moment later as he watched the flaming wreckage of a civilian transport fall towards the Planet Slicer’s surface. “Control, tell me that we have reinforcements inbound!”

  The image of a controller amidst a chaotic scene of collapsing metal, crumbling concrete and deafening screams appeared on his dimmed display. “The Monitoring Fleet is en-route, as are two other task forces. At least that’s what we were able to interpret through all this interference.”

  Pi’Lig looked at another civilian shuttle attempting to race away, his own communications all but jammed due to the panicked calls of all the ships trying to escape.

  “They better get her soo…” A blast cut Pi’Lig’s call short as it pierced his depleted shields and melted through his antique armor. Warning lights sprang to life across every panel. The symbol for a fuel tank breach all but screamed at him moments before the fighter’s internal compressed hydrogen supply splashed against the superheated engines. The fuel flash ignited, engulfing the interior of the craft in an instant.

  The flames pierced the firewall behind Pi’Lig, melting away his controls and flight suit, the heat threatening to immolate him before it had even burned through. He made one last, desperate gamble and pointed his fighter towards the Planet Slicer. He opened his throttle to full and as he felt the first flames lick his wrists bit down hard enough on his tongue to pierce the poison ducts within. His own natural neurotoxin raced into his mouth unimpeded, flooding it. With one final swallow, the poison dove into his throat.

  He felt nothing as his fighter took a meteoric dive towards the ever-growing surface of the Planet Slicer. Heat and flame filled his vision in those final moments before impact, and he couldn’t even close his eyes, his lids burning away in the infinite instant before his death.

  Bridge, Planet Slicer

  Gondral couldn’t help but let a cruel smile curl fas amphibian-like lips as fae watched a flame engulfed Splicer 900 slam into the hull over a hundred kilometra away. A brief geyser of flame was all the dead pilot would ever receive in memorial. “Status?”

  The arachnid-like Gorvian tactical officer waved a hand over mor console before turning towards Gondral. “Lord of All, we will be in position to launch the wedges momentarily.”

  A shudder flowed through the ship as chunks of As’Tril’s crust came crashing into the hull. Gondral looked to the dome overhead as rocks and trees flew past, torn free of their world by the Planet Slicer’s gravity. We could do nothing but wait here and the whole planet would shake itself apart. An ethereal light glowed along the front of the dome, and looking down Gondral saw that the anti-matter jets along the bow had activated.

  “Hold position for now,” Gondral ordered. “Wait until the first Dondick reinforcements arrive, then press forward. I would have them witness their fate to come, to see them cower before us.” Gondral waited, and glowered out at the scene beyond the dome. “Let the spirits of all the Gorvians who died here so long ago be reborn in this time. Let this act be the call to their rebirth such that the bravest warriors of our past will lead us into the future.”

  A roar of applause filled the bridge, echoing through the massive ship at the proclamation Gondral had transmitted to the whole of the Gorvian race. They’re so easy to please, fas mused and retook fas seat; brain tails twitching with the excitement radiating around fam.

  Bridge, UCSBS Nosh’tak, Hyperspace

  The Admiral cursed her lack of foresight. O
f course, the Gorvian’s would go after As’Tril, if for no other than pure vengeance. But how did they get that monster into the system? The jump points there wouldn’t be large enough, but neither were the jump points in Tib’Trim. Could this be some technology of the Tre-Tian, their old masters?

  Just finding As’Tril was no easy matter for the fleet however. The innermost jump buoy around the colony was gone, destroyed when the Planet Slicer had entered the system. If the fleet had any hope of stopping the attack, or saving any of the colonists, then they had to move quickly. Even taking the system’s further jump point might make them too late to help. A fortuitous report from a recon craft in hyperspace identified the wayward jump point however.

  It was like nothing she’d ever seen. Jump points from the hyperspace side always looked like spherical divots, the opposite of how they’d appear in normal space. But this one: it looked like a great squashed egg, flattened out to an impossible degree. It was still too small to accommodate a ship the size of the Planet Slicer. The rate at which it shrank back into normal shape however confirmed, at least to her, that the Gorvian had developed a technology to temporarily manipulate hyperspace tears.

  It wasn’t even the odd shape, but the fluctuations rippling across its concave surface which had convinced her just what it was. The jump point rested in the volume of space where the colony and its moon’s gravities canceled one another out. Now a new planetary scale mass sat beside it. It hadn’t had exposure to gravity like this since the As’Tril system’s formation. Fighting to achieve gravitational equilibrium, debris from the destruction on the other side had crashed through, only to meet annihilation in hyperspace.

  Approaching the jump point, she caught her first glimpse of what waited beyond, as distorted as it was. The horror of it seized her heart. Even with the computers reconstructing the image, it was impossible to comprehend. The Planet Slicer looked to be on a collision course with the planet.

  “Get us through that jump point!” she ordered, and the helmsman pressed the battleship ahead.

  The jolt of entering normal space threatened to topple the admiral to the all but invisible floor. Looking up, she stared out once again into normal space as the ship rocked around her. The view was no less sickening as the Planet Slicer dominated the space around her. The scene froze her to the spot. The tips of the great crescent craft had all but wrapped themselves around the planet, extending over half the world’s radius away from it. Then, movement. At first, she couldn’t make out what they were, but from each tip, and the center of the ship’s forward hulls, three great wedges shot free.

  “What in the worlds?” she asked.

  “They appear to be wedge-shaped rocks ma’am, and each one is in excess of two times ten to the seventh tons, and are travelling at over two hundred kilometra per cent.” The sensor operator’s face went pale. “Ma’am, at that mass and velocity…”

  “It’ll shatter what’s left of the crust,” she replied. Watching the three triangles of rock racing towards the world stole the admiral’s voice. When the Planet Slicer’s massive engines lit up a moment later and irradiated the void again, she found the words she needed. “Open Fire! All ships, open fire!”

  The tactical officer sat transfixed for a moment, his hands limp by his side. A transport, little more than an orbital hopper exploded on his screen, and gritting his teeth, he punched the command in. “Yes ma’am! All Ships, open fire!”

  “All ships, Nosh’Tak Actual. Priority is to the evacuation of the civilian population. All bomber wings, those wedges are your target priority, try and least shave off some of their mass.” She knew it would be futile. The bombers would never make it in time, and even if they did, at the speeds those wedges were flying they’d just turn a slug into a shotgun blast. As’Tril was doomed.

  “Bombers are en-route ma’am,” the tactical officer replied as multiple wings of bombers raced towards the destruction with their fighter escorts. Several destroyers surged ahead as well; pushing their engines at maximum towards the Planet Slicer and the nearest of the wedges. A glance at the navigational display revealed that they’d never make it in time. The gravitational fluctuations caused by their proximity to the Planet Slicer and the shattered world would make slipstream travel suicidal, if not impossible.

  Bridge, Planet Slicer

  “Lord of All,” the Gorvian sensor officer called, fas shrill, ear bleeding voice cutting through the commotion of the bridge. “The Dondick fleet is launching bombers on vectors towards the splitting wedges,” fae reported and the holographic screen above revealed a tactical plot of the fleet’s movements.

  “Will they be able to intercept the wedges in time?” Gondral asked, studying the plot.

  “Negative, Lord of All. We are disrupting local dark matter too much for them to use anything other than conventional drives.

  “Good, launch additional support craft and vector our fleet to intercept their capital ships. Time to wedge impact?”

  “Five pulses, Lord of All,” the Gorvian replied, fas twisted smile as shrill as fas voice.

  “And then the deed will be done, and our fallen ancestors avenged,” Gondral commented. A look at the main view screen showed thousands of drive glows explode from the Gorvian fleet like a swarm of buzzers. “Launch the Bi'Cond class cruisers. Order the Ship Lords to defang the Dondick Fleet’s largest craft. The Ship Lord that brings me the highest prize will have their choice of honors,” Gondral ordered, their new cruisers hangared across the Planet Slicer’s hull; waiting for such a glorious battle.

  "Yes, my Lord," the tactical officer replied, setting to work.

  Bridge, UCSBS Nosh’Tak

  Even from her command chair, Admiral Quin Tosh could see the sensors chief’s eyes go wide and his face drain of color. “Admiral! The Gorvians are launching hundreds of some capital scale ships.” The first sensor images appeared on a holographic display to ram his point home.

  The admiral turned to the display. She would feel hard pressed to call any one of them a ship, being more of a conglomeration of ship parts grafted to the bodies of asteroids. Just like their masters, no two were alike, but they all shared common features. The engineer in her screamed that no shipyard would produce such a design, but the tactician in her saw through that. The massive ships dwarfed those of her fleet, and because each was different, new tactics to attack any weak points would have to be invented for each engagement. The designs were ingenious however, and would be quick for the Gorvians to build. She doubted that they’d even bother repair damaged units, but would just strip them of their systems and mount them to a new asteroid. She did see at least one exploitable weakness; the stone making up the hulls of the lumbering craft were dense, and therefore slowed the craft.

  “Send the fleet pickets forward and have all fleet defense squadrons take point,” she ordered as the Gorvians fired upon the first wave of bombers.

  Flight Deck, UCSBS Robial

  Ever since Nodio had formed the Nip Tails from the washouts of their academy’s Special Operations program he’d itched to see actual combat. They’d received a taste against the Gorvian Strike Corvette which had attacked their training transports the annura before. Still, that was nothing compared to the massive fleet action around them. Now, with his fighter hanging in its launch claw before the open mouth of a launch tube, he felt his own bravado get the better of him. “Move it! Get us in the tubes!” he called out from the open canopy, the scramble alert echoing across the flight deck.

  The launch technician beside the open doors worked the controls at a furious pace. “One final self-check sir,” the technician called. As the Robial’s first response attack squadron, the Nip Tails should have already launched. A fault in the power grid had shut down all launch operations from their launch bay however, and the engineering teams had only just resolved the problem.

  Before Nodio could say more, his docking claw began moving again, and the lights around the launch tunnel sprang to life. He reached up and sealed his cock
pit, then lay back in his seat. “We’re cleared for immediate launch as soon as we’re in the tubes,” he said keying the comms and turned to his WSO, Rashe. He had dropped under ‘the shroud’ already, and was busy completing the last of their checklists. “We’ve been retasked with disarming those Gorvian Cruisers; the ones made from asteroids. I want clean firing patterns and strong formations. Don’t cross anyone else’s firing line.”

  The launch doors slammed shut behind him a moment later, the echoing of their closure dying as the air evacuated from the tunnel. “Nip Tail Zero One, signal ready for launch,” the controller called over the link.

  “Nip Tail Zero One, Flight of One Three, ready for launch,” Rashe replied, his voice terse even through the WSO link.

  Nodio understood and pushed himself back as a flash of light from the battle outside illuminated the end of the launch tunnel.

  “Confirmed Zero One. Reading all units as ready; claw disengaging,” the controller replied a cent before it retracted into the ceiling, leaving the fighter floating in the middle of the tube. “Grapplers engaged,” he continued and the fighter shuddered for a moment as the gravitic/magnetic beams took hold. “Launching in five, four, ready, steady, go!”

  The G-Forces slammed Nodio back into his seat and an instant later he and the rest of the squadron fired out of their launch tubes like rounds from a battery of cannons. Nodio’s eyes went wide at the view. More contacts than he could hope to track clogged his sensors before Rashe called up their first target. Steeling himself, he guided the squadron about to attack. Gathering them into a loose claw formation, they raced through the fleet towards the nearest Gorvian cruiser.

  He didn’t even have to give the order for the WSOs to begin targeting the odd asteroid-hewn ship. Possible weak points appeared on their plots, few though there were. “We’re going for strip kill,” Rashe reported. Targeting boxes lit up around the cruiser’s external weapons, sensors, shield generators, engines, and a handful of other ‘soft spots.’ While it might not kill the ships, it would, at least, take them out of the fight.