by Ivan Kal
In his haste to capitalize on the opening, however, he nearly missed something moving in the Sha. A small part of his mind took a look, searching for what it was.
Then as he realized what it was, he tried to snap his mind back and reinforce his mind barriers.
But he wasn’t fast enough, and the weight of an ocean dropped down on his mind, breaking in.
* * *
Lurker of the Depths swam the ocean of the Sha, gathering power, watching, learning, and waiting. He had learned how the Enlightened controlled his ships, had lurked through the minds of the crew on the control ships. He had learned how their commander, Doranis, acted, how he operated. The Enlightened was too engrossed in the battle to actively search for Lurker of the Depths, and so he was free to study his opponent.
The allied forces were not faring well, and Lurker of the Depths saw that they were unlikely to make it to the sun—that was until Adrian and Moirai joined in the fight. Their power was enough to disrupt the battle, enough to give them a chance to make a run for it. Lurker of the Depths saw when Anessa ordered all ships to make a run for it, and he knew that the Enlightened would try to capitalize on that. He saw the Enlightened force surge forward, with no need for defense, focusing all of their power into attacks.
And Lurker of the Depths saw his opening. He formed a mind attack, being careful to keep it contained inside of his own mind as he prepared.
He took hold of all of his power, he steeled his mind, and formed his siege. Then he threw his mind across the space between them, striking at the Enlightened and breaking through his barriers. Lurker of the Depths knew that the Enlightened had been taken by surprise. Still, Lurker of the Depths found himself inside of Doranis’s mindscape, his mind construct. Lurker of the Depths’ avatar stood on an open plain that stretched in every direction for an eternity, and in one of his hands was a blue sphere.
Across from him stood a beast.
The Enlightened Doranis, with his six upper limbs and four legs, an animal’s head, and piercing eyes that glared at him in anger.
“You dare!?” Doranis yelled, his mind’s voice battering at Lurker of the Depths.
Lurker of the Depths didn’t respond; he knew that he was at a disadvantage here inside his enemies mind. He focused and unleashed an attack. Water formed all around him and exploded toward the Enlightened, even as he tried to spread his mind’s tendrils all around him, looking for a weakness or a way to simply distract him.
Doranis growled and air shimmered in front of him, stopping the water several meters in front of him. Lurker of the Depths banished his attack and started sending rocks, ice lances, flying toward him. Anything that he could think off to distract Doranis, he did.
His opponent countered everything, and then a wave of force expanded out of him and he started to grow. Doranis reached a size of twenty meters in height and raised a hand, intending to smash it down on Lurker of the Depths.
But by then Lurker of the Depths had found what he was looking for. He raised the blue sphere in his hand and cracked it, sending the attack through his tendrils, which had spread out and found weakness in Doranis’s defenses.
Doranis froze and his eyes widened at the attack, and Lurker of the Depths retreated hastily as his mind bomb exploded.
* * *
Anessa watched the formation of her forces flying for the sun even as the Enlightened at their backs opened fire. She knew then that it was futile, that the enemy would smash through the Titans at the back and finish her forces before they could reach the sun. But then, just as the fire from the Enlightened intensified, it stopped.
Every ship in the Enlightened force had stopped what it was doing.
Almost as if all of them froze at the same moment. A spark of hope blossomed in her and she prayed that it lasted. A communication came in from the Dark Waters.
“We need to hurry. I don’t know how long this will stop him for,” Lurker of the Depths said.
“What did you do?”
“I attacked his mind. He was controlling all those ships himself.”
Anessa smiled and ordered some of her ships to the sides to protect the others from the remaining machine ships as they entered the sun. The Enlightened force started to move, but not quickly enough. Only a few ships had begun chasing again, and by now it was too late.
Bastion entered the sun’s corona, and out in the distance she could see a bright shield keeping the access point safe. Even their dip into the sun was not without losses; some of her damaged ships lost their shields and died. Even those who just didn’t have shields everywhere across their hull suffered as heat scorched and twisted their hulls. Some even suffering enough damage to explode.
To the side she saw Moirai, her body peeking out of her shell, the fins on her back glowing as they absorbed the energy from the sun.
Then Bastion reached the access point.
“Battle Master, what codes should we send?” an officer asked.
Anessa had not thought about it, she hadn’t believed that they would even get here at all. They didn’t know if the enemy would be able to follow, but they needed to exit into a well-defended system. Which meant one of two: Shara Radum or Sol.
Making a decision, she told them to enter the codes for Sol, and the ring activated. Darkness filled it and her ships started entering it. Anessa waited, and Bastion entered last.
* * *
Doranis recovered slowly. His mind was a mess after the attack from the Lurker of the Depths.
“What happened?” Doranis demanded.
“They escaped through the access point,” Aranis answered.
Doranis stood up and sent a kinetic wave across the room, denting the wall in his rage. He nearly stumbled afterward, a sign of the true damage that Lurker of the Depths had done.
“We need to follow!” Doranis said.
“No, it would not be wise.”
“Why not?” Doranis rounded up on the cocoon that held Aranis.
“They have most certainly fled to a well-defended system… And trust me when I tell you that we do not want to invade such a system without our Juggernauts and armies.”
Doranis growled and looked over his force. His 500,000-strong force had been reduced to 180,000—far too much against an opponent that was numerically inferior. True, he had done a lot of damage to them, had taken out a lot of their large vessels, and yes he did not have the best of the Enlighteneds’ ships here, but it still angered him. He had not thought that the races out in the galaxy could’ve advanced this far.
In the end, though it didn’t matter. They didn’t need to fight them all—they just needed to keep them busy for long enough to deploy their relays.
* * *
The Custodian reviewed the data from the battle. Its initial conclusion had been that the invaders’ forces had had barely 7% chance of successfully escaping the system. That number had changed over the course of the battle, however, as the invaders demonstrated Sha abilities and the true capabilities of their ships. Had they not been able to enter the access point, they would’ve perished for certain, but the outcome had been different.
The Custodian immediately started devising tactics to battle the invaders’ tactics, and others which would give it the upper hand against their large vessels. The one that was the most interesting, however, was the ship that appeared to be alive. Clearly derived from the animal ships of the race calling itself the Krashinar, the ship had been impressive.
For now, there was not much that the Custodian could do; following them through the access point would be inadvisable, and the Enlightened had come to the same conclusion. And so the Custodian turned to its swarm. It had been damaged in the battle, but it had been a small swarm. Not anything like what the AI had controlled in the past. Now it would need to grow the swarm, and thankfully there was enough debris in this system to get started. It moved the command spheres ahead and used the swarm to begin disassembling debris and building more.
Soon enough it would have a for
ce that nothing could match.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Year 714 of the Empire — Sol — four days later
In just four days, the Sol system had turned into an invader’s nightmare. The already formidable defenses had been reinforced and increased twofold. The standing defender fleets numbering ten thousand ships had been joined by many more ships from across the Rimward Alliance, brining that number up to five hundred thousand ships. Star-Guard stations were kept in constant orbits above the access point, and all eyes were watching the point for any unannounced visitors.
Ryaana’s shuttle brought her through Mars’s atmosphere and down to the Sentinel complex inside Olympus Mons. As soon as her shuttle landed, she exited it and started walking briskly deeper inside, knowing exactly where she was going.
She finally reached a large meeting room, inside of which she found her mother, father, Lurker of the Depths, Gotu, and Lord Sentinel Hayashi.
Without greeting anyone, she glared at her mother and father.
“Vas was one of the Enlightened?” she asked. She already knew, of course, as she had learned it from reports that her father had given to the Sentinels, informing them of everything and his ideas on how they could prevent such infiltration in the future. They hadn’t even told her themselves.
“Ah,” Master Hayashi said. “I guess that we can finish this at a later time.” He gestured to Gotu and the two of them walked out of the room, leaving her parents and Lurker of the Depths.
“So?” Ryaana asked, barely containing her anger. “For how long did you know, exactly?”
Her father was the first to answer. “I recognized what he was the moment I met him.”
Ryaana narrowed her eyes at him. “So that is why you acted strangely that day.”
“My first instinct was to get you away from him, but then I reconsidered.”
Ryaana paused and turned to look at Lurker of the Depths and her mother.
“I found out shortly after your father,” Lurker of the Depths sent.
“And I after we finished our war with the Erasi.”
Ryaana nodded her head as if all of that was completely reasonable. “And so you all decided to let me stay near a monster?”
Her father took a deep breath. “It was in my opinion the best course of action. We knew very little about them, and we weren’t even certain that we could take him out. He was clearly here to gather information, and making him suspect that he was found out could’ve had terrible consequences.”
“So you let me form a friendship with someone who was pretending to be human,” Ryaana said.
“No, I do not think that he was pretending to be your friend. At least not at the end.”
Ryaana rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, right.”
“I am serious. He told me as much when we fought in the control system.”
“And so what? He still wants to kill all life in the galaxy, right?” Ryaana asked.
“Yes. But his time here has showed us a lot about him. Aranis is not a heartless monster, and anything that tells us more about the Enlightened is a step to us finding an advantage.”
“I can’t believe that you kept it from me,” she whispered. Vas had been her friend, her best friend. At one point her only friend. Finding out that he was… She shook her head painfully. It hurt.
“It was the only way to keep you safe. The less you knew, the more protected you were.”
Ryaana’s mind raced, reviewing every moment of their interactions. Then something occurred to her.
“When we were attacking the Erasi base… It was him, wasn’t it?”
Her father nodded. “We believe so. He saved you.”
“And what about the rest?”
“We think that he didn’t want any witnesses. Saving you was an emotional decision.”
Ryaana felt like she was going to be sick. She had lost an entire fleet, and what was worse, the person that had killed them all was her friend—who had saved only her. “I… This is too much.”
Her mother was there in a moment, embracing her. “It is all right, daughter. It will be all right,” she whispered in Ryaana’s ear.
Ryaana didn’t really believe her.
* * *
After Anessa had taken Ryaana out of the room, Adrian was left alone with Lurker of the Depths.
“It is a hard thing, learning that something you have believed to be true is not,” Lurker of the Depths sent.
Adrian nodded his head as his eyes remained on the doorway. Lurker of the Depths understood that feeling better than anyone. “She will be fine,” Adrian said, and then turned to the taller Sowir. “We can match them.”
“They were stronger, more experienced with the power. Could hold it for longer.”
“Still, we hurt them.”
“We surprised them, and they underestimated us. But yes, you are right. Alone, we are not enough. But you with Moirai, and me with my amplifiers, had given us a push up to their level.”
Adrian still felt the effects of his exertion during the battle. But he was content; he had attained power equal to the most powerful in the galaxy. Now he only needed to surpass them.
“Next time,” Lurker of the Depths continued, “they will be ready.”
“Next time, so shall we.” Adrian knew that they would need to train, even as Tomas gathered the armies from across the galaxy. The core powers’ forces had already returned to the core through the access point. Their stories and records of the battle would convince more, but Adrian knew that they needed a lot of firepower. If the records that the People held were true, the numbers the Enlightened possessed was staggering, and now with the AI fighting on their side, it would be even harder.
But Adrian always loved a challenge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Year 714 of the Empire — Sanctuary — two months later
Hyeon Seo-yun stood in Tomas’s private office surrounded by Adrian, Lurker of the Depths, Anessa, Tomas, and Levisomaerni. She was itching to begin, but when Tomas finally gave her the go ahead, she nearly froze. She had so much to explain that she didn’t even know where to start.
After Adrian had returned from the containment zone, he had told Tomas and her what Aranis had said about looking into hyperspace and trans-space. Seo-yun had already been looking into that; she had found it fascinating that the People never used hyperspace or trans-space, that those types of travel hadn’t even been possible during their reign of the galaxy.
“All right,” Seo-yun started. “After Adrian told me what Aranis had told him, I began doing a lot of research and tests. I already had some of my own suspicions as I had been studying this stuff for years, but what Aranis said had pointed me in a direction, gave me focus. Now I think I have an idea about what the Enlightened are trying to do and why.”
“Well, tell us,” Tomas said when she had paused.
Seo-yun tried to figure a way to explain it without getting bogged down in scientific jargon, and she finally decided to try. “All right. We know that the Sha is what the universe is made of; quite literally, we are made out of Sha. Our bodies have atoms, molecules, but all of that is held together by Sha. Stars, planets, even vacuum—all Sha. Now, Sha, according to the Enlightened, is also the border of our universe. It keeps us safe from everything outside of it.” She turned to a box of small clear globes and then turned to Tomas’s book shelf. She reached out with her Sha and pulled the books away from one of the shelves and stacked them on the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Tomas asked alarmed.
“Shush,” Seo-yun said as she concentrated on not damaging any of the books.
“Some of those things are priceless,” Tomas grumbled.
Seo-yun ignored him until she finished. Then she turned around and faced them, showing them the globe in her hand. “Imagine that this globe is our universe.” She turned toward the shelves and pointed to one in particular. “And that this shelf is space, time, reality. More precisely, reality in which our universe exist
s.”
Seo-yun put the globe on the shelf, then grabbed two more globes and put them next to the globe representing their universe. “Now, those are other dimensions. You see they exist in the same reality as our universe, but these two dimensions don’t really exist next to us like on this shelf. Instead, all of the dimensions—including ours—exist inside roughly the same space and time. Now there is a spectrum, but that isn’t important for now. Sha is what keeps us all separate. Hyperspace, trans-space, our universe… Our universe had never been supposed to interact with the other dimensions.”
“But we can use those other dimensions to travel,” Anessa said.
“Yes, we can. As I said, they occupy the same space, but have different rules. The problem is that that kind of travel was never supposed to exist.”
“How so?” Adrian asked.
“This is the part where I am not sure about. I have an idea about why it happened.”
“Why?” Tomas asked.
“I think that it was life.”
“Life?” Anessa asked.
Seo-yun nodded gravely. “You see, life is one place in the universe where Sha pools, is drawn to. And as it is drawn into life, it had to come from somewhere. Which means that somewhere else has less of it, which in turn weakens the bonds between particles in certain areas.”
“But how could life do something that was that harmful to the universe?” Tomas asked.
“To put it simply, we were never supposed to be here. The People were the first race in the universe, and they had been alone for a long time. My hypothesis is that there can only be so much life in one place before it starts to be harmful, and I think that what the Enlightened refer to as balance is exactly that. The universe does not create bountiful intelligent life; it keeps the balance, limits how many living things can exist at the same time.
“The People went against that. They altered themselves, made themselves stop aging, and then they started uplifting other races, artificially giving them the ability to use the Sha. In barely the blink of an eye on the scale of the universe, the life in this galaxy exploded uncontrollably—and that is when the dimensional barriers weakened, and hyperspace and trans-space became possible.”
