by Ian Woodhead
The monitors on the bridge, displaying the exterior all cut out simultaneously. He saw the captain grip the holdall and he emulated his actions. The captain told him that the jump would only take a few seconds as they were only travelling to a system a few parsecs from this one. He opened his mouth again and then – Nothing.
Walish Din saw huge walking machines of death thundering towards him. He screamed and the view changed to a huge chamber with three metal coffins in the shape of Elasomog leaves in the middle of the chamber. He watched himself looking into one of the coffins. Walish Din shrieked when the coffin’s occupier looked back at him. The person inside that metal contraption was Walish Din.
His eyes snapped open just in time to see the monitors were now showing the exterior once again. He shook away the effects of whatever he’d just experienced and looked around the bridge. Had his dream scream pierced through into reality? If it had, the captain gave no indication. Apart from his knotted-up guts, he didn’t feel too bad. Walish Din wanted his voice of reason to appear so he could boast. It turned out that his species did not need any treatment to survive through whatever he’d just been through.
He saw no sign of the girl on the bridge.
“Oh no, not them! Can my day get any worse?”
Walish Din had no idea why the captain was so troubled. He followed his gaze and saw that the exterior now showed three huge dark grey objects in the external monitors. They looked very similar in shape to those coffins he saw in his waking dream.
“They’re Imperial warships. Don’t you know anything?”
“THIS STAR SYSTEM IS UNDER QUARANTINE. YOUR ORDERS ARE TO JOIN THE EVACUATION CONVOY IMMEDIATELY.”
“They’ll vaporise the ship if I don’t comply!” he cried, rushing towards the front of the bridge.
Walish Din silently shook his head, knowing that the captain could not be allowed to alter his course. The captain slowed down until he stopped dead, a couple of metres from the front of the bridge. The man’s eyes danced in their sockets.
“Time to leave.”
He spun around to find his voice of reason stood beside him. “What’s going on?”
“Your influence stops the captain doing anything other than what you originally asked him to do.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the door. “Come on, we have to get you to a lifeboat!”
“But you said if I leave, he’ll alter course.”
His voice of reason pulled the Diannin out of the hatchway. “Doesn’t matter now. This ship has already defied the will of those Imperial warships. Even while you delay, they’re already charging their cannons!”
She raced along the narrow corridor until the girl reached another hatchway. “Come on, move it!”
Before he ran after the girl, he heard the captain imploring with the Imperial warships to stand down, to give him a chance to make the necessary calculations. Walish Din groaned in despair, knowing that it wouldn’t be just him and that captain who were about to die but the other people that this ship had rescued from their home planet. Just as he caught up with the girl, she set off again, this time turning left, heading towards the cargo hold. He should have stayed on his planet. What the hell was he doing here? Apart from getting a bunch of innocent people killed?
“Okay, I need you to climb into here,” she said, pointing to the interior of a dark red cupboard. “Come on, we don’t have much time left.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a lifeboat, you idiot,” she shouted. “Now get inside!” she spun around. “Oh no, they’re about to fire!”
Walish Din threw himself into the small space.
“Press the green button,” she said.
He didn’t even bother asking how she managed to climb inside without him noticing. Walish Din obeyed her command. The door rolled into place. He heard the sound of a dull thud and the lifeboat detached from the ship.
“Brace yourself.”
Walish Din had no time to react to the girl’s warning before the lifeboat’s thrusters fired. He shrieked in terror as the lifeboat sped away from the main ship. Moments later, his world exploded into white light. By the time his eyes had adjusted, he saw that the ship was gone, only revolving balls of glowing red debris hinted that there was once anything occupying that space.
“They’re all dead,” he murmured. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Stop that,” she said. “Stop that right now. It isn’t your fault.” She grabbed his chin and pulled him away from the view port. “Listen to me, Walish Din. They should have died on your planet and they would have if you hadn’t ordered that captain to leave as he did.”
“You don’t know that.”
The girl then kissed him. “It is a tragedy that those poor people had to die but right now, all that matters is for you and the other two to survive. Believe me. You three are the most important people in the Galactic Expanse. Without your continued survival, the fate of every sentient being hangs in the balance.”
“No, I can’t believe that. I refuse to believe it. I’m just a simple shepherd. All I know is glikgliks. You make me sound like I’m some kind of God.”
She shrugged. “That’s not far from the truth, my friend.” She turned his head towards the viewport. “Look outside, Walish Din. Just look at what they’re doing to this world.”
Walish Din saw hundreds of spacecraft in orbit, some he believed were once part of the Terran Empire while others were of a design he’d never seen before. Not that this was too much of a surprise considering he’d never left his world until now. Still, the Diannin could still recognise some sort of pattern to the different ship designs. Walish Din also knew that their original owners were no longer in charge.
Like the orange dragons on his world and those huge metal walkers he had seen in his waking dream, the pipes and wires infested every ship. What made this utterly different was those pipes were not confined to their hulls. The vile-looking things reached out through the depths of space and joined up to the other ships, creating a vast web-like network around the planet.
He watched, dumbfounded, as those pipes pulled in another spacecraft and tethered it to the growing network. This one he did know as it was one of the Terran warships which destroyed the evacuation ship.
“Even if those warships hadn’t been on patrol, the ship you’d travelled on wouldn’t have made it to the surface.”
The flexible pipes and wires ate through the warship’s hull in dozens of locations. Hundreds of bodies flew out of the hull breaches. Walish Din wanted to be sick when he saw other, smaller, pipes reaching out and fastening themselves onto the ejected corpses.
“The aliens do not waste anything,” she said.
He spun around. “Wait, what about us? I mean, what’s to stop any of that stuff from latching onto the outside of this lifeboat?”
“That will not happen. They will sense your presence inside and avoid you. Trust me, I know this.” She turned his head around again then sat beside him. “This is the first world they settled on, so their operation is more advanced than any other world. What you see here will happen to your world too, Walish Din.”
“Why are they doing this? We haven’t done anything to harm them!”
“I suggest you strap yourself in now. We’re about to hit the atmosphere.”
The lifeboat slipped between three interconnected ships. The pipes even brushed the outer casing of the lifeboat. He shuddered when he saw thousands of needle-thin tendrils whip out from the pipe and attempt to fasten on the lifeboat’s hull, but just as she promised, as soon as they touched the skin, the stuff recoiled like it had been struck by lightning.
The ground rushed towards them like a bullet. Walish Din fought to hold in the scream, just hoping that he wouldn’t be splattered across the side of this planet.
The girl wrapped her arms around his and pushed her warm body against his. “Calm yourself, they do slow down, trust me. I haven’t let you down yet.”
He decided to stay silent
and close his eyes. Telling her exactly what he thought of her trust right now was probably a bad idea.
Walish Din felt the straps tighten just as his stomach launched up into his throat. He snapped open his eyes to see the scorched grey surface fill his viewscreen. “Wait, is the air okay? I mean, will I be able to breathe it?” It would be just his luck his he made it all the way to the planet’s surface, only to choke to death in the toxic atmosphere.
“It’s fine, stop worrying. Everything is going to be okay.”
The lifeboat hit the ground with a slight bump. The straps fell away and the canopy slid back into the hull. Walish Din gingerly took one experimental breath. It didn’t immediately kill him, so he decided that perhaps she was right after all. He turned to ask her what was he supposed to do now, but she’d done her usual disappearing trick again.
He climbed out of the lifeboat, unsure of what to do now. It felt weird to be safe, to know that nobody or nothing weird was trying to make him dead. Walish Din walked a few metres away from the lifeboat. He stopped then turned in a small circle, looking for anything that might resemble a village or town.
The landscape offered nothing but featureless desert. The only thing which broke the horizon was him and the lifeboat. He walked back to it, trying not to allow the built-up anger from spilling out. Oh sure, he was safe from any nameless pursuers, but unless he found food and drink, this stupid metal pod was likely to end up as his coffin.
This didn’t make any sense. Why did she have to bring the lifeboat down to this remote location anyway? At least he assumed that it was under her control. Come to think of it, why did she have to go leave him just when he needed her most? He gripped the side of the lifeboat’s cockpit. This just wasn’t fair!
“Self-pity? Have you reduced yourself to this already?” Walish Din arched his back. It felt weird to hear his own voice without expecting a reply. A bit like old times, when he used to have such in-depth conversations with his flock. He smiled. Perhaps that wasn’t the correct term as he spent most of his time complaining to the glikgliks over the tribe’s apparent indifference to Walish Din’s plight. He used to say that life wasn’t fair to those stupid animals almost every day.
He looked around the landscape one more time in the hope that perhaps he had missed something during his initial scan. Walish Din stopped dead and gawked in disbelief at the sight of his voice of reason running towards him, with at least twenty orange dragons chasing her. It took him precisely three seconds for his shocked brain to inform him that this human was no figment of his imagination. She was the real thing.
“Why are you here?” she screamed.
Two of the huge monsters raised their staffs. “Get down!” Walish Din saw that she wasn’t taking any notice, so he ran to the girl and threw his body against hers. They fell into the soft sand, just as the air a metre above his head burst into flames.
Walish Din turned his head and moaned in horror. His lifeboat was literally melting.
“You bloody idiot,” she hissed. “Why are you even here? You’re going to get us both killed!”
He looked up at the advancing dragons and watched them all point their staffs at him and the human.
Chapter Eleven
What the hell were those things using? The Chaplain peered around the stone wall and silently prayed for the poor bastards who were once part of his diminishing unit of surviving Imperial Palace guards. Their hellish weapon had fused those three soldiers into the now melted plasti-steel wall.
He ducked down when the first altered Gizanti came into view. The fact that he was hiding behind the same plasti-steel constructed wall didn’t escape his attention. It just wasn’t possible. The palace walls were made from material designed to withstand everything from nuclear attacks to kinetic fusion bombs.
The Chaplain turned to face what remained of his team and showed the terrified sergeant at arms three fingers quickly followed by a fist. The man got the message and tapped the soldier crouched next to him on the shoulder. The soldier pushed the stock of his pulse rifle into his shoulder, aimed it at the wall in front of the Chaplain, and fired the three shot left the weapon. The Chaplain stood up and fired his SS80 directly at the first Gizanti before fleeing down past the five remaining soldiers.
His shot wouldn’t have even scolded the alien never mind hurt it, but he just hoped that it would be distracted enough to allow him and his squad to reach the next turn without their awesome weapons turning any more of them into lumps of melted flesh.
He ran towards the next corner, painfully aware that they were all fighting a losing battle. Nothing they possessed were even slowing them down, never mind stopping the monsters. The Chaplain dived into the safe space. He rolled and pressed is body against the wall, firing continuously until the last of his men were behind him.
“There’s several barrels of Lydrex propellant in the armoury,” said the sergeant at arms. “We could blockade the next passageway, and as soon as they get close, we fire on the barrels.” He nodded to himself. “There’s no way they’d withstand that.”
“Neither would we,” said the Chaplain. He looked straight at the man’s determined face. “Forget it. That stuff would filter through the entire palace, killing everything in here, including the God-Emperor. Is that what you want?”
The man shook his head. “Impossible. The God-Emperor is immortal, nothing can kill him. Not even these demons. Our lives mean nothing, our only task is to serve him.”
“And we’ll do that by wiping out every living thing in the palace?” The Chaplain got to his feet. “I applaud you for your ingenuity, but we need a better strategy.”
“There is no other strategy, priest!” hissed the man. “We’ve thrown everything at them and nothing has worked.” He looked behind him. Beyond the next door lies the God-Emperor’s inner sanctum. I will not allow them to enter such a hallowed space.
“If they’ll even go in that direction,” murmured one of the house guards.
They had picked him up during the first frantic battle with the altered Gizanti. The very fact that Trooper Delaney was still alive and in one piece both physically and mentally surprised the Chaplain. The house guards were notoriously poorly trained.
“They might not come that way,” he continued.
The plain truth of the matter was the Chaplain knew they’d be heading in this direction. Those ancient designers of this magnificent structure had built a vast maze within the several buildings which made up the palace. A maze impossible to decipher unless the individual had the microkey surgically implanted in their head. The walls moved randomly every dawn.
None of these preparations had stopped the invaders from getting closer and closer to their revered leader. They instinctively knew which direction to take. The Chaplain really wished there was some truth in the palace guard’s blind optimism, but the increasing sound of the monsters’ heavy footsteps told him otherwise.
“The doors to the inner sanctum, Sergeant. What do you think they’re made out of?”
The man beside him shrugged. “The same stuff as the walls, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s my guess as well.” He stood up. “Sergeant, get your men through those doors. Once you’re inside, bolt the door.”
“What about you?”
The Chaplain patted the side of his blaster. “Like you said, Sergeant, our only task is to serve the God-Emperor. I will do that that by staying here and holding them off for as long as I am able. Now go.”
He made sure that the soldiers had reached the double doors and entered the inner sanctum before turning back around to await the monsters. His sacrifice might buy them enough time to ensure that the God-Emperor is lifted to safety.
This was the right thing to do, despite his recent lapse in faith. The God-Emperor just had to live on, no matter the cost. Everything here could be rebuilt. As soon as that particular thought entered his mind, the Chaplain cried out in pain. He shut his eyes and slammed both hands to the side of his head to try to
stop the agony.
The interior of the palace vanished. He saw another Gizanti and a human fighting some kind of furry animal before that two dropped away to be replaced with the image of the interior of some chamber dominated by three sleep-pods. The sergeant at arms and the other men were stood around them, all firing wildly at some unknown invader. Then, as quickly as the pain arrived, it left him.
He opened his eyes, picked up the dropped blaster, and pushed his shaking body against the wall. He had no idea what had just happened to him, nor did he want to know. The Chaplain got to his feet and took up position. Had he just had a vision or was something else at work?
“Focus on the task, Philip,” he murmured.
He had to aim for the head, perhaps if he fired enough time in a single spot, perhaps one of his blasts might get through. The Chaplain heard the soldiers locking the door and pushing stuff against it. He might not last long, but the door should hold those monsters. He then frowned. The soldiers pushing objects against those doors were the only thing that he could hear.
“Where were they?” He stood up and ran out from his hiding place to find the corridor totally empty. The Chaplain slowly made his way back, his mind reeling at this new quandary. Had that guard been right about the monsters finding a different route? Had seemed too good to be true. If the altered Gizanti had gone in another direction, then the delay might actually give them the extra time needed to find some method of destroying the invaders.
He heard their distinctive staff blasts coming from somewhere inside the palace, telling him at they certainly hadn’t retreated. Even so, where had they gone? He continued to carefully move back the way they came, looking for any new evidence of their passing. Their staff blasts echoed down the corridor. The Chaplain stopped dead. That sounded like they came from behind him, but how could that be?
He took a few more steps along the battle-damaged hallway of heroes then slowed down when his eyes focussed on an area of wall more damaged than the surrounding area. “No, this cannot be!” The Chaplain approached the melted mess with his guts folding over. He now knew why he couldn’t see them; the monsters hadn’t retreated, the bastards had simply cut through the wall!
