Armageddon's Pall

by S. F. Edwards

Blazer couldn’t even shake his head. The wailing of the baby had ceased; he looked with wide-eyed terror towards the hatch. There was no response. He bolted towards the closed door. “Tell me you got the rest of them,” he called back to Arion.

  “All four,” he replied, running up.

  Blazer reached the hatch. Ignoring the pleas of the injured guards, he keyed it open. A single plaser round splashed against the opposite wall, forcing him back. Blazer waved a hand across the opening. “Friendlies! Passageway is clear.”

  “Then get in here,” Marda called back, her voice strained and exhausted.

  Blazer rushed in to find his wife, the woman he loved most in all the universe, laying in the bed. The sidearm remained in her outstretched hand. In the other, a tiny bundle snuggled in close to her beneath a blanket. Marda set the sidearm down. Blazer and Arion ran towards her. The nurses and medtechs rushed past them to help the injured guards.

  Blazer wanted to run up and hold her, but held back. He stood there covered in blood and gore from the Mini-Gorvians, and his hands scorched from his discharges. The bundle in Marda’s arms stirred revealing a tiny bald head from beneath the blanket. He held back a gasp of pride as two tired blue eyes gazed up from the pudgy face. “Blazer. Meet your son. Chrisvian. Say hello to your daddy.”

  A feeling of peace and contentment washed over Blazer as the baby’s eyes met his. Fatigue washed over him as well, his own, and a magnified sense as well. The baby yawned and snuggled in close to Marda. Blazer’s stomach grumbled. “I think he’s hungry.”

  Marda nodded, looking her husband over as the nurse helped her get the baby into position. “Get cleaned up. We’re all going to need your help her soon enough.” She winced as the baby latched on and sat back, contented. “And Blazer.”

  He stopped; looked back at her.

  “This was a targeted attack. Gondral was after you and Chrisvian. We have to stop him.”

  He nodded. “I know. But we’re safe for now. Arion. You and Big Red keep watch.”

  “Nothing Gorvian is getting past me,” he replied.

  Bridge, UCSBS Wolfsbane

  Captain Sardenon looked on with a certain satisfaction. Over a third of his fleet had reached the jump point out of the system, securing it. Now they could begin their actual retreat. A disturbance at the navigation hologram console drew his attention. The Planet Slicer still waited near the system’s primary. The Gorvians had destroyed the last of the dark matter mines earlier that cycle. With the dark matter restored, Gondral’s flagship was on the move again. The enormous ship was not what the technicians pointed at however, but the gas giant around which the destroyed shipyards had fallen from orbit. “What’s going on?”

  The technicians exchanged looks before the navigation chief tuned towards the captain on his overlook. “Sir. The gas giant, it’s expanding.”

  The image of that non-face and its warning prickled his skin. He duplicated the navigational display onto his own. The readings were unmistakable. The massive gas giant had begun to shear off its outer gas layers, expanding them to enfold the last of the shipyard and numerous ships in the Gorvian fleet. The local moons and rings had begun to fall from their orbits as the mass readings soared with each passing cent. Realization came over the captain.

  Without hesitation, he slapped the communications panel beside him, opening a link to the entire fleet. “All ships, Wolfsbane Actual. Recover all craft incapable of jumping immediately and make best speed for the jump point. We have possible readings of the detonation of a Tre-Tian Star Bomb in the local gas giant.” He unkeyed the communications panel and looked down at the navigators. His lead science officer ran towards them. “Give me an estimate.”

  “No idea sir. There are no official records of a star bomb going off. The Donvarions don’t even have anything. It could take a few hects or several cycles, or even an annura.”

  “We’ve got fusion cook-off,” a sensor tech called. “Neutrino scanners just picked up a massive spike from the gas giant. Radiation output has been steadily increasing.”

  Captain Sardenon turned to the SIS wall behind him. The gas giant was just a large dot at this range. That meant that the planet had begun to reach nuclear fusion almost sixty pulses earlier. “She’s about to cook-off!” He looked forward again: the jump point was visible, ships pouring into it to escape. “Get us out of here!”

  “Sir. What about the jamming corvettes?”

  He pulled the tactical plot. The corvettes were on the far side of the system. He doubted that they could make it to any jump point before the bomb finished birthing this new star. “Order them into proximity of the nearest worlds, I don’t care where. They are to cease all jamming and hide out until it's safe to escape. We can’t hold the jump point. And wish them luck.” He made his way back to his seat, disheartened that he might lose those crews. He had hundreds of thousands more lives to concentrate on. He only hoped that they’d make it out alive and that they bought the Admiral and the Synthetics the time they needed.

  “Sir. Mass density readings of that gas giant just spiked. And by the pit…”

  “On viewers!”

  Multiple angles from probes left near the gas giant emerged on holographic displays across the bridge. What was once a vibrant world of great swirling clouds and storms had drained of color as the dust and gasses it had captured collapsed inwards. Even the moons and debris that had once surrounded it were gone, drawn down into the compressing gasses that the cameras fought to focus on. Then the seemingly impossible occurred. In a brilliant flash, the shrunken world exploded in a brilliant flash of nuclear fire. The light was beyond blinding, burning out the optics of every stealth probe. Backup optics sprang to life on the surviving probes and revealed a shockwave the likes of which Captain Sardenon had never seen. Hundreds of Gorvian ships disappeared as the expanding wall of superheated plasma overtook them. It reached the remaining probes faster than he’d ever dreamed possible, each one cutting out in rapid succession. “Flank speed, now! Full power to the engines and shields. We’ve got maybe a hect before that shockwave overtakes us!”

  UCSB Date 1004.053

  Admiral’s Office, UCSBS Nosh’Tak, Garov 197754

  The destruction was beyond comprehension. Had she been a weaker individual Admiral Quin-Tosh would have downed the whole bottle of hard Cobel Nectar she kept in her desk for special occasions. As it was, the bottle remained three-quarters full to this very cycle, despite collecting dust for over twenty annura. Watching the star bomb detonation again, she felt like she might need a narcotic to settle her nerves.

  The fleet’s recording from Beshtrig recalled a horror the galaxy hadn’t seen in tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. The Tre-Tian Star Bomb was the stuff of legends. To see it in use reminded her just how much more powerful the ancients had been compared to the present generation of races. She watched with great interest as the shockwave engulfed the Gorvian fleets, obliterating every ship it came across. Then there was the Planet Slicer.

  Plasma fires washed over the massive craft. The Planet Slicer’s shields flashed under the onslaught and in sections began to fail. As the shockwave passed however the Planet Slicer emerged within the ever-expanding bubble of destruction. In a last-ditch attempt to save the Planet Slicer, the Gorvians had turned into the shockwave and the antimatter jets along the forward hull to annihilate the plasma. The plan had almost worked. Large stretches of the hull lay blasted open, and the tips were deformed, but the Planet Slicer had survived.

  She leaned back in her seat and wished once again to grab the bottle. It stared back at her from the drawer. The message her first commander had written on it when he’d given it to her reminded her when she should drink from it.

  Congratulations on your promotion O-20. You make this chief engineer proud. Keep this for all your special occasions.

  -JV

  986.315

  Guilt gripped her heart as she looked up through the artificial window at the Mercy and its escorts. Seve
ral of the corvettes that had been the last to escape the Beshtrig System floated around it, their hulls blackened. The Mercy was far worse off. Multiple torpedo hits marred its hull, and the lower engine stalk had been damaged to the point where it threatened to break free if run to full thrust again.

  Her intercom beeped and she pulled herself back into the moment before pressing the answer button. “Ma’am. The Synthetics have arrived and are on their way to the meeting room.”

  “Thank you. I will join them in a moment.” This wasn’t a meeting she was looking forward to, not after what she’d seen the Synthetics do to Gorvia. Had she not passed word from the Wolfsbane of their retreat, she felt sure that the Synthetics would have reduced the planet’s surface to a glass finish.

  Launch Bay 2, UCSBS Mercy

  Five cycles wasn’t enough time, not by a long shot. But that was all the time they’d give them before the doctors aboard declared Marda and baby Chrisvian fit to travel. Now they were heading home but Blazer had to stay behind. Blazer floated Marda into the bay in her hoverchair, the baby nestled in her arms. “Ho big yawn,” he said as the baby pulled away for a moment to take a deep, sleepy breath.

  “I don’t want to go, to leave you all, but…”

  “We have to do what’s best for you and the baby,” he said reaching down to caress the newborn’s cheek. He wanted nothing more than to hold the baby close, to cuddle the precious infant. Now that Gondral knew through his Mini-Gorvians that the babe existed, keeping him and Marda here would place them in even greater danger. “I’m going to take leave right after this operation Tadeh Qudas told us about last cycle. There’s no place I’d rather be than with you two right now.”

  Marda took Blazer’s hand and held it close to her face. “Be safe, please. Come back to us.”

  Before Blazer could reply the alarm sounded to signal an inbound craft. Blazer looked up just as the shuttlecraft crossed the threshold and pierced the atmospheric shield. The battle-scarred gribbet shuttle nestled onto its extended landing skids. The landing legs compressed with a nasty hiss beneath the mass, the craft coming to rest at an off-kilter angle, causing the baby to stir. Blazer couldn’t be sure in that moment if the annoyance he felt was his own or the baby’s. Raising a telepath is going to prove interesting.

  Marda looked back up at him. “I’ll bet you’re thinking the same as me.”

  “Raising him will be hard, yeah. When do you get your micomm re-implanted?”

  “At the end of my maternity leave. So, six tridecs at a minimum. Little Chrisvian here fried it when he was born.”

  “Powerful little bugger,” Blazer said with a smile and petted his puffy little cheek.

  The shuttle’s boarding hatch lowered, a short set of stairs making up the inside. Blazer moved to bring Marda up to the hatch when two uniformed officers, a male Lodran, and a short, tailless, female Rimdook, with cargo packs on their backs, descended. The pair looked about. Upon seeing Blazer, they walked over and snapped off a pair of salutes. The move caught Blazer off guard. The pair were O-20s like himself, but his command pips made him an O-25, their superior officer. Despite that, their salutes seemed out of place. He had no idea who they were or why they’d report to him. “Officer’s Priest and Hallet reporting,” the Lodran said. “We thought we were reporting to Commander Tadeh Qudas first.”

  Blazer and Marda exchanged a quick look before he turned back to the pair. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you be reporting to me?”

  “We’re your replacements,” Priest offered, the Lodran prayer rope over his shoulder having so many knots tied so close together that to anyone at a distance it appeared smooth.

  Hallet stepped forward, rolling her big Saurian eyes. “We’re the replacement flight crew for your unit. We were assigned to the UCSBS Crembil’s rescue unit,” she explained and looked down at the baby with loving eyes. Marda pulled the baby in close in response. “No reason to fear dear. I love the pudgy soft skin of Anulian young, so different from my, our own…” she trailed off her eyes turning hooded and sad.

  Blazer nodded. The Crembil had been lost during the retreat from Beshtrig with most of her crew. The rescue team had had a fantastic record, but he hadn’t heard anything about them getting shot down. “I hadn’t been informed about your transfer. And we don’t have a fighter for you two.”

  Priest stepped up. “Our fighter is to be delivered in the next few cycles, along with spares for the rest of the squadron.”

  “That’ll make the chief happy,” Marda commented and looked up at Priest. “Your prayer rope is impressive.”

  Priest picked up the still untied end of the strand. “I had six more just like it. One knot for every life I’ve saved.” He looked away for a moment. “They were lost aboard the Crembil. I failed to save the ship, then had to untie six knots when my anger made me kill the Gorvians who’d destroyed our home.”

  Hallet laid a hand on Priest’s shoulder. “You’re being too hard on yourself. There was nothing we could do to stop those bombers. We were on landing approach and on fumes. That you took them down and got us someplace to land should earn you two more knots.”

  “You say that after every third flight.”

  Marda tugged at Blazer’s sleeve. “I have a shuttle to catch, and you need to acquaint these two with the squad.”

  Observation Bubble 1, Planet Slicer, Beshtrig System

  The bodies of over a dozen Ship Lords littered the floor of the Observation Dome. These were not scraps leftover after a consumption, but fully flayed corpses, their flesh rent from their bodies. These commanders had survived the inferno of the Tre-Tian’s Star Bomb only to succumb to Gondral’s wrath.

  Gondral looked past the devastated bodies to the blackened hull of fas ship. Their creators had deemed them unworthy and had attempted to destroy them with their greatest weapon. That weapon should have been the Gorvians’ to use, but the masters had lied. They’d told the ancient Gorvians that no Star Bombs had remained. Beyond the Planet Slicer, a new sun shone in the darkness, highlighting the damage done to Gondral's command ship.

  Between the great ship and the star hung a cloud of debris, the remains of what had been Gondral’s primary fleet. Many of the smaller assault fleets remained, attacking numerous worlds at fas behest. They were still operational, as were most of the task forces holding the jump points out of Beshtrig.

  A body twitched on the floor and Gondral dug a heel into its skull, crushing it. Half of these Ship Lords had dared to allow the Dondick fleet to escape and live. The other half had been responsible for the recovery of the Mini-Gorvians. Maybe fifteen percent of the deployed Mini-Gorvians had survived the battle. It was not attrition that had caused their end, but abandonment from their carrier ships. It would take almost half an orbit of the homeworld to restore the legions of Mini-Gorvians.

  Only one amongst these Ship Lords proved worthy of consumption; moe who blockaded the jump point with mor own ship. Moe only escaped the wreckage because the sire of mor latest, lost brood, dragged what remained of mor from the command console. Gondral saw to mor before the rest of these wretches, as did the whole of the Gorvian; the consumption transmitted throughout Gorvian space had helped to boost morale.

  The whole fleet was beyond disheartened by the fact that their creators had turned against them. Gondral knew fae had to do something grand to win back their spirits. Even the assault fleets had begun to lose ground since the Star Bomb had gone off. The birth of the next heir should be a grand event, one that would bring them back into the fight. That was still at least a tenth of an orbit away. At the rate the fleets were losing ground however, it might take another two centuries to recover.

  For now, the remnant of the prime fleet had gathered around the last jump point that the Planet Slicer could ever slip through. The lights of workpods flitted about the remainder of the fleet, either repairing the damage done or salvaging anything useful from those ships that couldn’t continue. A strike corvette drifted past, the rear third of th
e craft blackened and destroyed by the star birth. A Mini-Gorvian launcher hung on by just a remnant of its framework. The sight set Gondral’s rage boiling and fae looked down to find the nearest carrier Ship Lord. By the time Gondral had finished, nothing recognizable remained of the corpse.

  Gondral’s new aide staggered into the observation dome, fas legs still bearing the marks of where the star birth had crushed them. The head was just as scarred, and when fae began to speak, the voice came in the same cadence as the Old Mind. Gondral had had the brain of the Old Mind transplanted after the orb that had kept the head alive had shattered. “Lord of All, we have destroyed the last of the Dondick’s jammer craft and have managed to contact Gorvia.”

  “How did the Dondicks know where to set the jamming blockade?”

  “That is not yet know Lord of All. We believe that the Synthetics informed them.”

  “Why?”

  The Old Mind in fas new body motioned towards a holographic screen coalescing in thin air, liquid dripping from the head scars. Images of the sphere ships fighting them in the Cynial System appeared. The ships gathered before a familiar star field. The glare of numerous beam cannons piercing the darkness drowned out the image. The darkness returned a moment later and Gondral recognized the constellations before the next volley overpowered the visual again. “That’s Vondican the Wise; greatest strategist of the first brood. Moe can only be seen from Gorvia.”

  The Old Mind began to back away. “That is true Lord of All. It appears that the sphere ships, that the Synthetics, and some of the Dondick fleet, attacked our homeworld.”

  Gondral reached down and grabbed one of the dead Ship Lords. Fae split the corpse in twain then threw one half at the dome with enough force that it all but liquefied on impact. “How extensive is the damage?”

  “Unknown as yet, Lord of All. But it appears to be near total.”

  Gondral spun about with the remaining half of the dead Ship Lord and beat the Old Mind with it until the stitches that held fas brain in place began to break. Huffing with rage, Gondral stood over the assaulted aide; grey-green blood marred every nearby surface. Gondral’s rage flowed out and infected the fleet. The thought that any being would dare assault Gorvia drove them into a newfound blood rage. Gondral sought out the minds of every remaining Ship Lord of any operational craft in the fleet.