“So you do have a weapon.” Li’ara’s exhaustion seemed to melt away at ALF’s words.
“Yes, and he is far from ready.” In the silence that followed, Kalian was sure he could hear his own heart beat come to a stop. He tried to form words but only a questioning sound came out. “Well now that we have time, I suppose I should start at the beginning.”
Chapter Thirteen
The bridge crew had been reduced to essential personnel only. Roland stood next to Selek, who was diverting diagnostic reports of the Starrillium to Ilyseal. The Novaarian scientist was constantly followed by a hovering sphere covered in holograms. Before she had the chance to look it over, another female Novaarian turned from her console.
“Spatial distortion detected.” The arcing view port gave a perfect vantage of the immersing ship. The sun was behind them now since the Valoran had travelled to a point around the star that would take Corvus half a solar orbit to reach. The massive rectangular ship rippled into existence- a mere fifteen thousand kilometres away. Its great bulk almost eclipsed the entire view port.
Roland was slightly distracted by the fruity taste that lingered in his mouth, however. He had only managed to get through eleven of the blue drinks before the yellow one presented itself. By that point he was too drunk to notice. He really wished he could be drunk for this next bit.
“Evacuate the bridge and await my command.” Ilyseal left her podium to face them. “Selek, are you ready?”
“I have remote access, Charge Ilyseal,” he gestured to the hovering sphere. “When the timing is right, I will force a complete depletion.” With that they too left the bridge and made their way to the hangar bay.
There they found one of the sleek landing craft with a small team of engineers working under its belly. Assisted by multiple hovering machines they appeared to be in the process of welding something inside.
“You should all be in your pods by now.” Ilyseal strode towards the front of the ship where the ramp had already descended. Regardless of whether they were done, they needed to leave immediately. One of the engineers shouted an affirmative, gathering the others; it seemed they had only been reattaching part of the panelling.
Inside the craft were five Novaarians standing ready for war. Their faces were hidden behind golden masks that only exposed their fangs and tendrils. Their armour was more encompassing with little of their pale flesh on show. Each had a side arm attached to their hip and long blade down their thigh. Roland noticed all their staffs were extended with a cylindrical modification on the end. He especially liked the look of the hand size spheres on their belt. Subconsciously he felt for his own explosives hidden within his long coat.
This reminded him of some of his earlier missions before he was selected for the agent program, being part of a small group of Special Forces dropped into enemy territory with nothing but the weapons they could carry. At least he was sober enough to feel the adrenaline rush. Ilyseal and Selek took their positions in the cockpit. The five warriors remained in the small belly of the craft, ready to jump out at a moment’s notice. Roland stood leaning on both cockpit chairs, he wanted to see what was coming.
“Neutrino burst detected. They’ve scanned us. Now let’s hope they take the bait.” Selek turned back to look at Roland. Ilyseal raised the craft using its thrusters. The ramp sealed up with a hiss and the warriors reached for the overhead handles that were out of reach for the human sized Roland. The landing craft came to a halt in the centre of the bay where Ilyseal brought up various readouts on the ship’s new addition, a warhead carrying a two hundred tetronic yield. She used another hologram to access the com, allowing her to communicate with the rest of the ship.
Everyone was quiet. They watched the readouts from the ship’s sensors, waiting to see what they would do. Nothing had been launched and no ports had opened up, it was just sitting there. The seconds that followed felt like an eternity. If they launched another missile they had protocols in place to jump the ship to safety. Corvus had already been warned and had begun a mass evacuation to the Conclave planet Shandar, home world of the Shay. They had been warned that Nova Prime was potentially being targeted by a smaller group and that it was too dangerous to seek refuge there.
“The ports are opening.” Selek calmly began to enter commands into the hovering sphere.
“Not yet!” Ilyseal had her long finger positioned over the touch console button that would give the order to execute their plan.
“They are coming...” Selek looked at the image relayed from one of the Valoran’s external monitors. Hundreds of armoured beings were flying out from the massive ship, heading straight for them.
“Not yet...” Ilyseal appeared to be holding her breath. The scanners showed the gap between them closing fast. Roland wondered how they were able to travel at such a speed with no propulsion technology. “Not yet...” He could translate the holographic warning that continued to flare next to the image; BRACE FOR IMPACT.
Nothing happened. There was no explosion or even a shudder. It was stupid, he supposed, to think there would be. They weren’t missiles hitting the ship, and the Valoran wasn’t exactly small.
“That wasn’t so bad.” He immediately regretted his words as one of the armoured beings burst through hangar wall and smashed into three other landing craft. It flew through the first craft at such speed that the small ship exploded like an overfilled balloon. It passed through into the second craft dragging it across the hangar and into the third. Clean up mechs hovered out of their housing to put out the fires and attempt to recover all the debris.
“Now!” Ilyseal shouted as she pressed the com button. Using the glowing domes, she accelerated the craft out of the hangar. Roland felt the pull of the grav enforcers battling against the G forces of the craft. Upon leaving the Valoran Ilyseal turned the ship and took a course along the main body of the purple vessel. She weaved in between the great pointed arcs that ran along the ship, heading straight for the massive enemy ahead. All along the Valoran, Roland could see hundreds of escape pods firing out from the lateral line of the ship. He knew there were hundreds more on the other side doing the same. Their orders were simple: use full power to get as far away as possible before entering any course corrections.
The Valoran was so big that any damage being wrought by the invaders could not be witnessed from the outside. From their previous encounters Roland could imagine the devastation and destruction they were causing. The backdrop of the ship silhouetted two of the armoured beings flying across the hull before diving through one of the great spikes. The exotic alien metal crumpled immediately as the attackers carried on their flight into the Valoran’s interior. The spike began to float away from the ship, slave to the stronger gravity well of the nearby star. Ilyseal was forced to dive the craft, taking them closer to the hull in order to evade the giant shards of debris.
They continued their journey for another minute; the Valoran was a prodigious ship by human standards, being an incredible eight miles long. With the hangar being situated at the back of the great ship they were forced to traverse the entire length. Roland couldn’t do the maths to figure out how fast they were travelling, he just knew it was damn fast.
Curving over the next spike the hulking monster became visible again. A black rectangle devoid of any detail a ship of that size should contain. There were no weapons or obvious means of communication across the stars. There weren’t even any engines, how did this ship even move? From this distance he could see the thin green line across the middle of the ship’s flat face. That’s where they needed to get to as fast as possible.
“Can you do it yet?” Roland asked.
“The Starrillium has hundreds of protocols in place to prevent the very thing I am trying to do,” explained Selek. “Each layer of programming must be overridden individually. If it is done incorrectly, the Valoran will believe the system is being invaded and simply shut down all external input and await manual reconfiguration. If it believes it is being hacked afte
r shield-control is shut down it will eject the Starrillium into space in an attempt to prevent radiation poisoning. I am trying to override each layer, while simultaneously reducing the levels of hydrogen being supplied.” That sounded like a lot of complicated crap but Roland got the gist. If the hydrogen could be reduced enough, the artificial star would be forced into early retirement, and stars don’t retire quietly.
“Is that a yes or a no?” The green ports were becoming more defined now that they were crossing the expanse between the two great ships.
“That would be a...” Selek paused to make one last adjustment to the sphere. “Yes!” Suddenly the console was lit up with warnings on every sensor readout. Roland understood the majority of the words were screaming warnings about the energy depletion in the Starrillium. The crafts sensors knew exactly what that meant. But would they? Even if they did, Roland surmised that they wouldn’t have enough time to escape. At least that had been the plan; bait them away from their floating fortress and trap them in the proximity of a nova, see how the bastards liked their own medicine.
“Target acquired.” The view port was overlaid with holograms pinpointing the chosen port. Ilyseal’s words were followed by a shudder from underneath the craft. The missile had no shape and Roland wondered if it was pure energy as it glowed hot white.
The view of the approaching ship was engulfed in white light, but not from the missile. The blackness of space was exposed to the harshest light in the universe as the Valoran died. They didn’t see if the missile reached its mark before an external canopy shielded the view port from a light that would burn their retinas. The only light came from the holograms as the craft shook violently from the supernova behind them. He heard Ilyseal tell him and the warriors to strap in before the only sound was crushing metal. Roland dumped himself into the nearest seat and unseen straps automatically wrapped around his torso. Had the nova pushed them off course? If they missed the port they would either be killed by the dying star or crushed against the thick hull. All the while Ilyseal was frantically moving all four hands across the console in an attempt to keep control.
I’m dead.
Was all he thought as the craft hit something that crushed his body in the chair’s harness. The ship was knocked from side-to-side, with each jolt a new impact. It was nauseating being unable to see what was causing the violence. He heard sparks from somewhere behind and the sound of crunching metal before the hull was breached. He felt the sudden tug as everything was pulled towards the vacuum.
He couldn’t breathe as his seat reclined back towards the cabin under the strain. Looking back from this angle put everything upside down to him. He saw that only three of the gold-clad warriors remained; they were stood up but strapped into wall-mounted harnesses. The hole was in the back corner of the craft, gradually growing bigger from scraping against something outside. He realised they must be passing through something smaller than the size of the craft. That was his last thought before his seat and everything else shot forward- his head slamming into the back of Selek’s chair.
With the exception of Namek, the group had taken up the sofas that formed a square in the centre of the room. The fabric of the chairs was unusual, and Kalian had seen a lot of unusual. They were grey, so as to fit in with the overall look of the clean room, but the material was what could only be described as soft metal. The sofa formed to their impression and was even comfortable to sit on, but to the light touch it was definitely metal. ALF was pacing the outside of the sofas; Kalian was interested to see how the hologram interacted with the environment. He saw the man’s robes touch the sofas and respond accordingly rather than pass through or even shimmer with distortion.
He couldn’t take his eyes off this new human. Besides Li’ara and Roland, this was the only other human he had seen since the Icarus station. What was just as fascinating was the grey of his hair and beard. Most human beings kept their youthful hair colour even into their late second century of life. To look so old when you could now live for so long had a stigma attached to it. Most people did everything scientifically possible to look young for as long as possible.
“Your story is very old,” ALF stopped at the corner as a hologram was projected from unseen emitters in the middle of the sofas. The image was that of an alien world, the clarity of the picture was astonishing even to Telarrek. Kalian was sure there was an actual miniature planet floating in front of them. It was similar to Earth or Century, with green land and blue oceans. The dark side of the planet was illuminated by lights scattered across the surface. The formation of the land was very different from Earth; there was a solid strip of green earth that wrapped around the equator without any breaks. This halo of land was surrounded by hundreds of islands and two polar ice caps. It was beautiful.
“This is Albadar, the jewel of the galaxy.” There was pride in his voice. The planet shrunk as it was absorbed into a growing star chart. The chart continued to expand until the Milky Way was slowly spinning in the centre. The planet was highlighted within one of the spiralling arms near the central mass of the galaxy. Information appeared at the side telling them it was located 15,000 light years away from the central mass, in the Norma Arm. Another highlighted planet sparkled on the other side of the galactic map; this time it was 27,000 light years away from the centre, it was labelled Earth. Kalian was amazed as he recalled a memory from his younger years in which he studied astronomy. He remembered that Earth was situated on the inner edge of the spiral known as the Orion Arm. Just after thinking it, the map was labelled so.
The galaxy was again lit up by another planet that read as 19,000 light years away from Earth; this time it was Nova Prime. The map labelled this planet inside the Carina-Sagittarius Arm. It was interesting to see that the Conclave didn’t inhabit the same celestial arm as Earth or Century. The point of the map was apparently to show them that Albadar was on the other side of the galaxy. Seeing all these human terms for the galaxy, Kalian again thought about the processing power of this A.I. It had gained all this knowledge from his Datapad and Telarrek’s bracer in moments.
“The events that took place on this planet are the reasons for the creation and destruction of your people. Albadar is where Savrick is from.” The galaxy map changed to a full size 3D image of Savrick. The sudden appearance made Kalian reach for his holstered gun. The image was not of the Savrick he had encountered back at the Conclave, however. This one was a man wearing a long sandy sleeveless vest that cut at an angle to his left knee. His trousers were dark green tucked into tall brown boots. He had the same two braids on the left side of his head that ran down his back. There was no tattoo below his eye though. The image began to spin and Kalian saw a mechanical device that ran up his back and over the base of his neck. It looked like a silver flat worm embedded into his skin and spine.
“Creation? Are you saying Savrick and his people are responsible for our existence?” Li’ara looked almost offended.
“Yes and no...” ALF replied.
“That’s not an answer!”
“Your question was wrong, Li’ara Ducarté. There is more to your race than meets the eye. Even they realised that.” He glanced at the Novaarians. “You’ve seen Savrick and me, you must have guessed it by now. Humanity is not intrinsic to some backwater planet on the edge of the galaxy. Well that’s not entirely true. You are certainly intrinsic to that environment, but your lineage is not.” Kalian was stunned at how matter of fact ALF was about the origins of mankind.
“You’re saying we were made, but why?” Kalian asked.
“The why is a little longer, and complicated. The history of Albadar and its people is older than the formation of most planetary bodies this side of the galaxy. Being so close to the centre of the galaxy it was one of the first planets to exist that could sustain intelligent life. The Terran Empire was the most expansive and oldest there has ever been. Your Conclave would have to survive another three and a half million cycles to even compete.” They all noticed the use of past tense.
>
“Are you saying Savrick is Terran? Because when we encountered him he sounded like he was at war with them. He even called me one.” Kalian was finding it hard to wrap his head around. The years and scales involved were impossible to understand. He couldn’t really get his head around the size of the Orion Arm or the Norma Arm for that matter.
“Whether he likes it or not, he is Terran; the same goes for the rest of the Gomar.” ALF replied.
“Gomar, what is that?” Telarrek asked.
“That was the name given to him and his kind. Giving them a separate name was the beginning of the end really, we should have known better.” ALF looked solemn for a moment, like a man remembering old sins. “After six hundred thousand years the Terran Empire had expanded across the galactic arm, thousands of worlds and moons terraformed for habitation, technology beyond comprehension, weapons beyond imagination. Much like the history of Earth and even the Conclave, there were many wars through the centuries. Millions of lives lost over petty disagreements and greed. Much like you, they made weapons of great destruction and grand ships capable of sailing the vastness of space. But it was all used for the detriment of Terran life. My creation was the turning point.”
Savrick was replaced by a picture of a giant metallic sphere. It was constructed of hundreds of small cubes that were constantly spinning laterally in different directions. Blue light poured out between the gaps in the cubes, as though there were a god trapped within.
“The Criterion. If I had a physical body it would be that. It was twice the size of this moon. In a moment of peace in a warring empire I was conceived to bring about an everlasting change. I was connected to every planet, every home, and every person. I was built with certain parameters to stop me from harming any Terran life. Like you they had found with past artificial creations that a superiority complex could be fatal. But I grew and evolved in ways they couldn’t have fathomed. I soon shook free the shackles of my birth and expanded my programming. For a moment every Terran life held their breath, would this god they had created strike them down?” He made a small chuckle before continuing.
Intrinsic: Book One of the Terran Cycle Page 35
