Storming Heaven

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Chiyo watched, fascinated, as the starships raced towards the black hole. The Defence Force had never studied black holes too closely – they had been more concerned with probing Killer star systems – and she had only seen one at a distance, although the Technical Faction had proved them closely, often at a cost of the starship doing the probing. A single starship hung in orbit near the black hole; Chiyo guessed, in a moment of dark humour, that the Captain had probably taken one look at the advancing Killer fleet and wet himself. The human ship was completely outmatched.

  And then the human starships had arrived and the battle had begun. Chiyo had been stunned at the pain and shock in the Killer mind when the human weapons actually inflicted damage for the first time, ever. Systems that were so old that they had literally worn away, even on a starship that was effectively bonded with the mind controlling it, were pressed into service to repair the damage, even as the Killers gritted their teeth and fought back savagely. They had never experienced such pain in their entire lives, yet they held on and returned fire. Chiyo would have been impressed under other circumstances, she decided, but their stubbornness was costing human lives. She watched, unable to understand why the antimatter weapons weren't working, until the first starship rammed a Killer ship. A moment later, two more followed…and the Killers lost their first starships in combat, since…

  There was no sense of time – she wasn't even sure if the Killers had any concept of time as humans reckoned it – but she had the strong impression that the Killers hadn’t died in a very long time. They were effectively immortal, she knew; they had no real concept of death, just…stagnation. The deaths of three of their number shocked them, the more so because they lacked anything like the MassMind, as far as she could tell. Humanity had invented religions to give the human race some concept of life after death, but the Killers…had not. Whatever drove them wasn't anything that a human could understand. For an immortal to die, to be exposed to the fates, had to be terrifying. Their response to the human kamikaze starships would be drastic.

  There’s no more time, she thought, grimly. She had already prepared her messenger – a duplicate of herself – and planned her moves carefully. The duplicate had been compressed down to a tiny data file – she had probably violated yet another legal restriction, she decided, although it would be interesting to see if the Community could legally prosecute her for hurting herself – and she swept her up into the Killer’s data stream. The Killers used constant low-level transmissions to communicate with themselves – it made little sense to her, but she was sure that she understood what they were doing, if not why – but she had another use in mind. She launched herself into the transmission stream, took a breath she knew she no longer needed, and pushed the signal out into open space. One way or the other, the die was definitely cast.

  ***

  “Evasive action,” Andrew snapped, as the Killer starship loomed closer. The starships should have been cumbersome, sitting ducks for the far more nimble human ships, but now they were throwing themselves around the battlezone like flies. They were still firing, a mocking reminder that there were still thirty Killer starships near the black hole and that they still had the power to wipe out the human force. Andrew wasn't sure, even, how the Lightning had survived. One blast had come close enough to scorch the hull. “Keep us spinning and return fire!”

  Another spread of implosion bolts shot out of the ship, hacking away at the Killer hull material and opening new targets for more conventional weapons. The Killers were trying to avoid a fourth ramming attack, Andrew realised, yet they couldn’t avoid one forever. A starship made a run for an exposed section of the Killer hull, only to be blasted into vapour before it could ramp up its drive and fly right into the damaged area. Another twisted and feinted, before firing a spread of energy torpedoes into another rent, sending tiny explosions glaring into the darkness of space. The Killer starship heeled like a wounded whale, before recovering and blowing the human starship into dust.

  “I have new targets,” Gary said. “Request permission to engage.”

  “Fire at will,” Andrew snapped. The old rejoinder – failing that, fire at Fred – surfaced in his mind and he pushed it down savagely. “Helm, take us in to point blank range and strafe the bastards.”

  “Working on it,” David said. The starship twisted and rocketed down towards the Killer ship, firing as it came. Gary fired an entire spread of energy torpedoes into a gaping hole and was rewarded by the sight of a burst of gas blowing out of the side of the starship. The vaporised interior material lit up space for a second before it cooled and faded out of existence. “Pulling away…”

  The starship shook violently. “What the hell,” Andrew demanded, “was that?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” David said. “A random gravity fluctuation…?”

  “Get on to the Technical observers and tell them to tell us what it was,” Andrew snapped. “And then…”

  “Sir, the Havoc,” Gary said, suddenly. “She’s in trouble.”

  Andrew snapped the live feed into his console. The Havoc had been zooming towards a Killer starship with the intention of ramming the ship – or, perhaps, trying to convince the Killers that they intended to ram. She was stopped, dead in space, twitching violently against an invisible force holding her in place. The starship was buckling even as he watched; a moment later, it broke apart and vaporised as the quantum tap blew, causing a massive explosion. There had been no time for anyone to get to the lifepods.

  “Hellfire,” he snapped. “What was that?”

  “Unknown,” the AI said. There was a sudden change in its voice. “Alert; possible viral software detected!”

  Andrew blinked. The Killers didn’t attempt to hack into human computers. It wasn’t their style. “Report,” he snapped. “Who’s attempting to hack into the system?”

  There was a long pause, an eternity in computer time. “Uncertain,” the AI said, finally. “We picked up a transmission from one of the Killer ships containing a compressed human mind pattern.”

  “A compressed human mind pattern?” Andrew asked. “What the…?”

  “Confirmed,” the AI said. “The pattern is definitely human, the product of a Community personality recording implant, standard issue. I have placed the compressed pattern in suspension and will alert the MassMind. Further analysis here may put the ship in danger.”

  “Cut yourself out of the local command network,” Andrew ordered, shortly. “If you’re contaminated, we don’t want it spreading throughout the fleet.”

  “Yes, sir,” the AI said.

  Andrew pushed the mystery to the back of his mind and looked over at David. “Take us back into the fight,” he ordered, “but be ready to run if they start trying to rip us apart.”

  “Aye, sir,” David said. The display flickered for a second as a fourth Killer starship blew up and vaporised. A moment later, a fifth followed it as two starships rammed it in quick succession. There was no way to know, but Andrew would have bet good money that the Killers couldn’t replace their losses any faster – if that – than the human Defence Force. It only took three days to build a destroyer, yet a destroyer was tiny; an Iceberg-class ship was massive. How long would it take them to replace their losses? “Do you think it could be an attempt to communicate?”

  Andrew shook his head. “Why would they send us a human mind pattern to communicate?” He asked. If it was an attempt to communicate, how had the Killers known how to do it? Had they taken a human alive after all? They’d certainly had the opportunity…and there were billions whose deaths had never been confirmed. “It makes no sense at all.”

  ***

  Paula watched grimly as another human starship was ripped apart before it could ram a Killer starship amidships. “It’s unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head in awe. A human mind might have thought of such a system, but actually deploying it in combat? Anything could go badly wrong. “They’re actually using focused gravity beams as a weapon. The power leve
ls it uses must be astronomical.”

  “Never mind that now,” Chris snapped, shortly. “Can they counter it?”

  “We should be able to tune the warp fields to compensate for sudden unexpected changes in the gravity field,” Paula said, slowly. Gravity technology was her area of expertise, after all, and she was learning more from the Killers than they would have liked, if they were even aware of her existence. “I can write them a formula for it, but their AIs should be able to counter it…hell, if they manage to alter their attack patterns, they should be able to prevent the Killers from taking out more than one or two craft. They won’t be able to maintain that kind of power generation and deployment for long.”

  Chris frowned. “Are you sure of that?” He asked. “We’ve underestimated them before?”

  Paula shrugged as another Killer starship died. The odds were turning rapidly against the Killers, she realised, even though she had never claimed to be a military tactician. They had to prevent any and all human starships from ramming – and there seemed to be no shortage of commanders willing to commit suicide to take down a Killer ship – while the humans only had to get lucky once. The fleet might have been reduced sharply – the once-neat attack wings had been broken up and destroyers were flying with whatever wingmen they could scrape up – but there were still far more human starships than there were Killer ships. She was rather surprised that the Killers had decided to continue the fight, rather than opening wormholes and escaping across the galaxy.

  “I managed to get some background figures on what they could handle onboard their ships,” Paula said, finally. The hours spent studying the captured ship had answered all kinds of questions, and raised thousands more. “Projecting such massive gravity beams would require…”

  Her voice broke off. “That’s how they’re doing it,” she said, slowly. “They have a black hole on each of those starships and…they’re using the black hole as a source of the gravity beams. Damn; that’s clever. They’re creating the power by skimming it off the black hole and running it through the focusing fields. I wonder how they actually compensate for the gravity flux…no, they counter that by using their own fields to handle it.”

  She shook her head. “It should be easy enough to watch for a sudden rise in gravity fields and set the warp drive to get the starship out of range,” she added. “I’d give anything to know just how they do it.”

  Chris gave her a wry look. “I thought you intended to use Shiva to learn how they do it,” he said. He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t that be cheating?”

  Paula scowled at him. “Trust you to see it that way,” she said. She saw no reason why she shouldn’t steal the answers from the Killers if she could. That might solve other questions as well. A nasty thought had been lurking at the back of her mind, a sense of just what the Killers could do if they decided to apply themselves to the task. “It’s terrifying, though; with enough power and patience, they could dismantle the entire galaxy.”

  ***

  “Watch out for gravity flux,” Andrew warned, as the attack fleet closed in on another Killer starship. The massive starship rotated with terrifying speed, bringing its weapons to bear on the human ships, which split up as bolts of white light flared out towards them. Their speed was still greater than the Killers – and a flurry of implosion bolts began wrecking havoc on the Killer hull – but the Killers were still fighting. Andrew had long since lost his admiration for their sheer bloody-minded determination. He just wanted the fight to end. The Killers had lost ten massive starships. A human enemy would have withdrawn to rethink matters. The Killers kept fighting. “Fire at will.”

  The Killer starship staggered under their blows. A moment later, it blew away two of its tiny tormentors, while a third vanished in the blue flash of warp drive before it could be torn apart by a gravity field. The Lightning slipped into a complicated series of spinning evasive manoeuvres – firing all the time – before it pulled up and escaped, seconds before it would have crashed into the hull. The other starships followed, their weapons digging deeper into the Killer hull, before they too escaped with ease. The Killer starship was dying. Its hull material had been reduced so much that it was far less capable of returning fire. It was only a matter of time before it was battered to rubble and destroyed.

  “Concentrate fire on the drive section,” Andrew ordered, as the destroyers came around for another run. If they could take out the limitations controlling the black hole, the results should be explosive. It might not matter. Andrew was grimly aware that other Captains were making their own preparations for suicide runs; backing up their personality recordings, allowing crewmen to escape their ships and taking direct command of their final flight. In time, he was sure, the Defence Force would deploy automated ramming ships; it would save lives and prevent the Admiral ever having to ask someone to commit suicide. There was no longer any need for suicidal stands against the Killers. They could hurt them now.

  “Engaging,” Gary said, as the massed firepower of the remaining attack wing dug deep into the Killer’s interior. The starship shuddered under their fire. “I think we’re hitting heavier shielding deeper inside the ship; the particle beams aren’t having a greater effect…”

  “Keep firing,” Andrew snapped. A thought struck him. There was no reason why the Killers couldn’t use their hull armour material – and supporting power – further inside the ship. The black hole would provide the power for its own incarceration. “Deploy implosion bolts if necessary…”

  “Gravity flux,” David barked. The starship heeled drunkenly to starboard before stabilising and flying straight for as long as they dared, around two seconds. It was long enough to evade any chance of being caught and destroyed. “They’re opening a wormhole!”

  Andrew saw the icon blossoming open and enveloping the Killer starship, which dived into the wormhole and escaped the human fleet. It left behind considerable amounts of space junk and debris floating in space. He looked down at the display as new wormholes blossomed into life, swallowing the remaining twenty-one Killer starships, ending the fight…no, one of them had remained in the fight. It was still firing at his ships.

  “Scan that ship,” he ordered, as the Killer ship picked off a Defence Force starship that had come too close. The other starships regrouped at a safe distance before advancing on the final target. “Why is it still here?”

  “Low power curves,” Gary said, after a moment. The image of the Killer starship floated in front of Andrew, looking as formidable as ever. It was still firing, even if it hadn’t escaped. It was still in the fight. “I suspect that it lacks the power to open a wormhole.”

  Andrew smiled. It would have been easy – and that was a great change – to destroy the Killer ship, but he had another idea. “Contact the Footsoldiers,” he ordered. “I want them to take that ship and its controlling mind intact.”

  “Aye, sir,” Gary said. He paused, suddenly. “The risks will be considerable.”

  Andrew surprised himself by laughing. “No, Gary, the risks were considerable before we developed the new weapons,” he said. “Now we can fight and hurt the bastards on more even terms.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “This was a dumb idea,” Private Ron Friedman muttered to himself, as the transport floated closer to the trapped Killer starship. “We should have come in with the suits instead.”

  “Silence in the ranks,” Sergeant Michael Francis Carey barked, although Ron suspected that he privately agreed. The tiny transport should have been hard for the Killers to locate, let alone kill, but it was a much bigger target than two hundred separate Footsoldiers wearing powered combat armour. “Prepare to debus!”

  Another flicker of white light flared off in the distance as the Killer ship shouted its defiance of the human gnats tormenting it. The Defence Force starships were circling, like hyenas circling a wounded lion – not that Ron or anyone else outside the MassMind had seen a lion – and distracting it, nipping in to fire a few bursts of particle be
ams or energy torpedoes into the hull, before pulling back before it could gore them. The sheer immensity of the starship – and the powerful force fields holding it together – made taking it apart a difficult task. Ron wondered, absently, why the starship commanders hadn’t unleashed their antimatter warheads, or even good old-fashioned nukes, but perhaps they’d decided they wanted a trophy on their wall. Who knew what went through the mind of starship commanders? They enjoyed nice clean ships and clean living, while the Footsoldiers slogged through the metaphorical mud and grime. They probably thought that the Footsoldiers would be able to take the ship as an afterthought – and then they could claim credit for it.

  On the other hand, he decided, as the transport ducked low and zoomed through a massive gash in the Killer’s hull, it does beat shepherding refugees around the Community…

  “Out, now,” the Sergeant barked. Tubes opened and expelled the Footsoldiers into space, their sensors coming online and rapidly scanning for possible threats. No one expected the Killer mind in command of the vessel to react quickly, but they’d already lost one ship to Footsoldiers and probably wouldn’t want to lose a second. “Form up; section leaders, on me.”