by Dan Worth
A squadron of enemy torpedo bombers had somehow broken through the blocking fighters almost intact and dived upon the two destroyers. They were met with rapid defensive fire from the ships’ laser batteries that reduced their numbers by half in seconds, but the remaining ships ploughed onwards, straight into the bridge and upper decks of the Scipio.
‘Sir! The Scipio is reporting kamikaze attacks by the enemy!’ cried Ensign le Bray. ‘They’ve lost the bridge, engineering are attempting to regain control of the ship, but her thrusters are firing erratically!’
Haines watched in horror. The Scipio was out of control. The random firing of her thrusters was rapidly slowing the velocity of the destroyer. Astern of her the Alexander was still accelerating, then realising the danger, the massive carrier began evasive manoeuvres. Too late.
The already damaged bow of the Alexander collided heavily with the engine block of the Scipio, smashing the destroyer’s power plant and buckling the bows of the carrier still further. As she was shunted heavily forward, the aft section of the Scipio began to come apart, spilling atmosphere, crew and vented plasma into space. There were small explosions within the hull of the destroyer, then her reactor core detonated.
The explosion tore the Scipio apart completely and blew the bow section clean off the Alexander. A honeycombed cross section of dozens of decks hung horribly exposed to the vacuum amidst a cloud of expanding wreckage and vented gases.
‘Sir, the Alexander is reporting massive casualties across all decks!’ said le Bray.
‘Admiral Walker, is he alive?’ said Commander Baldwin.
‘Still alive, sir. They secured the bridge armour as soon as they collided with the Scipio.’
Miraculously, the carrier still had power. She began to slow under reverse thrust.
‘Order them to the rear,’ said Haines. ‘Have the remaining ships in her group provide covering fire until she’s clear of the combat zone.’
‘Yes sir.’
They were close to the wrecks of the Khan group now. The laser batteries of the Lincoln and her escorts opened up to decimate the enemy fighters that swarmed there, the support fire finally allowing the friendly squadrons to break off and make a run for home.
Haines noticed that the Germanicus was facing directly away from them. By engaging the Qin Shi Huangdi, Cox had left his ship’s vulnerable aft quadrant exposed. It was not a mistake that Haines intended to let him repeat.
‘It’s time to take down Cox,’ growled Haines. ‘Helm, aim our centreline at the Germanicus. Gunnery control, prepare fire our main gun on my command.’
Hong looked puzzled as he peered at his instrument console.
‘I’m picking up some unusual sensor readings...’
‘Be more specific Mr Hong,’ said Baldwin.
‘I’m seeing massive tachyon emissions and unusual space-time fluctuations.’
‘Where, Mr Hong!?’
‘All around us, sir!’
Haines felt his stomach lurch. The Shapers were here in person. It was a trap.
‘Le Bray, put me through to the fleet! All ships, this is Haines. You are to break off the attack immediately and jump to the fallback co-ordinates.’
Other ships were appearing out of hyperspace. Haines could see them through the bridge windows now; huge, long and bristling with crystalline spines, they moved like hungry sharks against the stars. The Lincoln began to power its jump drives.
‘Sir, I’m detecting multiple contacts, at least thirty unknown vessels are closing on our position.’
‘They’re Shapers...’ Haines growled. ‘All ships: Fire at will on the Shaper vessels, all guns!’
‘Sir, jump drives are ready!’ cried Ensign Douglas at the helm.
‘Good, jump to the standby co-ordinates immediately,’ Haines replied. Nothing happened. ‘I said jump now god damn it!’ he shouted.
‘Sir I’m trying...’ the Ensign replied desperately. ‘Drives are unable to initiate a jump envelope.’
‘Admiral, I’m detected a hyperspace inhibitor field coming from the Shaper vessels, they’ve got us boxed in. Shaper vessels are firing!’ said Hong in panic.
‘I’m not going down without taking as many of these bastards with me as possible!’ snarled Haines. ‘Recommence our attack on the Germanicus! Gunnery control, prepare to fire our main gun at the carrier and direct all other weapons at the Shapers! All ships, you are ordered to fight your way out and jump back to Earth if you get the chance. I am taking Cox down!’
Reynaud fought and killed. He had never felt like this, never felt such power! He swooped among the lumbering ships of the Commonwealth loyalists and tore into them with his weapons. He saw, he felt everything! The delicate hulls of the fragile warships spilling open at a touch! Their vulnerable crews choking, convulsing and dying in the endless night. The heat of their weapons as they sought to engage him. The thrill of the hunt! The delicious feeling as he slew them, over and over!
He had been like those pitiful creatures once, snivelling and weak and afraid. The Shapers had granted him godhood, elevated him above the ignorant cattle, he feared nothing and no-one. He was a god, but he was not merciful.
The Lincoln powered forward through a barrage of beam fire as she swung to point her main gun back at the Germanicus. Haines saw the ships of his fleet die around him. The Qin Shi Huangdi exploded in a ball of nuclear fire that broke the carrier in two as Shaper vessels poured shot after shot into her, her escort ships ripped apart by exotic energy weapons that glittered and twisted in the darkness. The Augustus Caesar too was in trouble. Shaper ships had already disabled half of her escorts and were moving on the carrier, directing fire at her engines that buckled under the onslaught.
They were swarming about the Lincoln now, attempting to rip her engines from under her and board her. Haines wasn’t about to allow that. The main gun of his ship was aligned directly with the Germanicus.
‘Gunnery control...’
Haines paused. Something else was in the way. Another ship was emerging into the line of fire. Another Shaper vessel. It was huge. Haines estimated it to be at least twice the size of his carrier, and it was closing with them rapidly. He could see the sparkle of energy building up across the spines on its bow section.
‘Fire everything you’ve got at those bastards!’ he barked. ‘Now!’
Chapter 40
Fleet Meritarch Beklide’s personal flyer sped her across the skies of Keros. Below her, the ancient streets and carefully manicured parks sped by in a blur. Keros was the Arkari home world. From here, her species had spread out across the galaxy. It formed the administrative heart of the Sphere, capital of the thousands of inhabited Arkari worlds and had been so now for around fifty thousand years. Beklide knew that it had once formed the capital of an earlier, more savage stellar empire, one which had collapsed into anarchy and civil war, but such things were not widely discussed.
Keros was beautiful. Its surface was dotted with ancient cities, preserved against the ravages of time with painstaking care, their outskirts ringed with newer, delicate constructions that reached for the heavens and shone in the morning sunlight. Outside the cities, the landscape was a carefully tended version of paradise, a planet-wide park where the most exalted amongst the Arkari meritocracy made their homes, if they chose. Meanwhile, the brilliant blue sky above was bisected by the Ring, a vast orbital structure that girdled the planet and served as additional living space, space dock and – it was rumoured – last line of defence.
Beklide knew that the rumours were true. The Ring was home to thousands of concealed weapon systems and berths for a sizeable portion of the Arkari fleet if required. Many of her ships were docked there now, around two hundred in total. It wasn’t enough.
She was approaching the capital city, Aralia, now. The skies were becoming thicker with other vehicles like hers. They flew in vast, complicated, intersecting patterns at tremendous speed – collisions being prevented by the co-ordination of their on-board sub-AI computers.
Ahead the Meritarch Council building loomed over the streets of administrative buildings that surrounded it. It formed a giant sphere squatting beneath the splayed legs of a soaring, kilometre tall spire than shone whitely in the morning light.
Her flyer deposited her on a landing platform half way up the side of the sphere and she made her way inside the building as the machine folded its wings and placed its systems into standby mode, awaiting her return. The inside of the Council building was as impressive as the exterior. Halls with soaring ceilings thronged with Council members and their assistants, as well as the holo-projected avatars of members unable to attend in person but linked in remotely via neural interfaces. The air was filled with the sounds of urgent chatter and last minute debate. A few saw her approach and nodded in her direction but there was no time to stop and exchange pleasantries. She was due to speak in a matter of minutes. The Council needed to be persuaded.
The great spherical chamber of the Meritarch Council was packed and noisy. Almost every seat was filled, either by a live occupant or the holographic representation of the delegate. Beklide strode confidently into the middle of the floor, calling up her notes on the holographic display of the slender lectern there and cleared her throat. There were calls for silence from the Council Speaker on his dais at the far end of the chamber. Then Beklide began:
‘I have come to this chamber today to address the inadequate war preparations made by this body. As commander of our navy, I implore the Esteemed Members here to allow me to review the strategic deployment of our forces in order to better counter the Shaper threat. Time is of the essence. We already have reports that the Commonwealth is collapsing into open civil war. It is only a matter of time before the Shapers come for us too.’
‘Meritarch Radalla of War Production,’ announced the Council Speaker as a slightly stockier than usual Arkari male got up out of his seat.
‘Ship production has been significantly increased during the past year,’ Radalla began. ‘In particular, we have brought on line over two thousand new destroyer class vessels in this period and two dozen dreadnoughts. Is the Esteemed Member dissatisfied with the levels of resources she has at her disposal?’
‘I would like to assure the Esteemed Member that I am happy with the progress that he and his department have made in increasing ship production,’ Beklide replied. ‘My issue is with the way I am being forced to deploy said vessels. Currently, the fleet is spread across the Sphere. Small numbers of vessels are assigned to each system. This, I believe, is deeply unwise. Our forces are spread too thinly to counter a concerted Shaper attack.’
‘The Esteemed Member Turinno,’ the Council Speaker intoned.
‘I was under the impression that we had decided upon such a strategy in order to minimise the effect of Shaper infiltration. If I recall correctly, this Chamber took the decision to spread our forces out to reduce the likelihood that entire fleets of our ships could become infected with Shaper agents or placed under the command of individuals who had been subverted,’ said Turinno, a slender, elderly Arkari woman whose holographic avatar wore a severe expression.
‘The Esteemed Member is correct,’ Beklide replied. ‘However we have conducted a mass screening programme of all naval personnel and have found no such infection. It is my estimation that the Shapers may have changed their tactics.’
‘Changed, how?’ said Turinno.
‘We don’t know. However it appears that they have forgone any attempt to infiltrate our organisations as they did in the Commonwealth and in the K’Soth Empire. I have considered the possibility that they may use whatever resources they can gain from their conquest of these two civilisations in order to launch a full scale assault on our systems. I have drawn up a list of key systems that I would recommend that we defend, rather than attempting to defend every single one of our worlds.’
‘You would leave civilians undefended?’ shouted a voice from the benches.
‘Any competent commander is not going to attack every civilian system in the Sphere. They’ll begin by attacking key centres of government, communication or supply in order to paralyse our ability to fight back. These are the systems that we should defend first and foremost. To deploy our forces otherwise is madness unless we can put a thousand ships into every system. Furthermore, I recommend that we commit a portion of fleet to defeating the rebel faction in the Commonwealth. Earth needs our help. From what we can tell, Fleet Admiral Haines’s attempt to defeat them in the Achernar system has not been successful and Shaper vessels are already at large in Commonwealth space.’
‘Do we know the strength of the enemy forces?’ said Turinno.
‘No, I’m afraid that we do not. The Shaper vessels are proving very difficult to track. Indeed it appears that, as yet, the Commonwealth vessels are unable to detect them at all until they re-enter normal space, by which time it is usually too late.’
‘Then we should not commit our forces without proper information.’
Beklide was losing patience. ‘I implore this Council to let me aid the humans. Earth is poorly defended if the Shapers decide to move against her. I need fifty ships at the most to accomplish the mission. We have to act! Do our long-standing alliances count for nothing? They need our help!’
Deep inside the Black Rock facility, the Shaper creature stirred. Its many weeks of preparations were now completed. It had subverted every single firewall in the Arkari hypercom network, replacing them with slaved copies of its own code and now it heard its master’s command. It was time to strike. The carefully crafted virus it had lovingly programmed leapt from its grasp into the data-sphere and began to multiply.
‘This Council moves to vote on the question of deploying forces to assist our human allies. Voting will commence in two cycles and...’ The Council Speaker looked up at the sudden commotion in the benches that ringed the chamber. Beklide saw it too. The holographic projections of members attending remotely were writhing in agony, clutching at their skulls. She saw it spread in a great wave around the chamber, a ripple of pain that travelled around the benches. The other members stood and stared helplessly at the writhing images of their fellow Meritarchs, some of whom now appeared unconscious as the images began to distort and fragment. Beklide saw Turinno clawing at her skull, her mouth wide open in an endless scream as she sank to her knees.
It was an attack of some kind. It had to be. Beklide tried to contact her ship. The Sword of Reckoning was still docked at the ring above.
‘Reckoning, this is Beklide. I don’t know how, but I think we’re being attacked. The Council members linked in remotely via their neural interfaces, they’re being assaulted somehow.’
‘Meritarch, this is the Sword of Reckoning,’ the voice of the ship’s AI was badly degraded and barely audible. ‘My hypercom interfaces are being bombarded with virus programs ... also ... massive energy spike ... centre of the galaxy...’
She got nothing but static from her hypercom ear-bead. Now she was sure. Something had gotten into the data-sphere. It had to be the Shapers. She gripped the podium and looked across the chamber, now in chaos and dotted with the corrupted, flickering images of Council members in various states of collapse. Some were writhing in torment; others lay still in oddly contorted positions. Other images showed only cubes of static. Beklide did a double take at one. For a split second she had glimpsed the transient image of a horribly leering face amid the electronic snow.
‘Listen to me!’ she cried over the tumult. ‘We are under attack! I will try to get back to the fleet and co-ordinate the defence from orbit. Communications are out, but try and activate whatever emergency measures we have!’
She turned and ran from the chamber, leaving chaos in her wake. Breathless, she ran through the puzzled crowds in the corridors outside – all of whom were wondering why their communicators had suddenly stopped working - until she arrived back at the landing pad and scrambled into her transport.
‘Get me back to the Reckoning,’ she commanded the craft as it rose
gracefully into the air. ‘See if you can contact the ship, or any ship for that matter, and relay these orders. They are to be disseminated across the entire Sphere: Enemy attack imminent. Hypercom systems have been compromised. Many Council members feared dead or incapacitated. All ships are to leave port and assume emergency defensive posture. Planetary defences are to be made armed and ready.’
As the ship powered into the morning sky Beklide looked up at the Ring. Beyond it lay Keros’s moon. Between the two, a brilliant point of light could be seen growing in the sky.
The Shaper creature felt glee. The Arkari had been paralysed with a stroke! Its hard work had certainly paid off. The virus rampaged throughout their primitive hyperspace communications network, cutting off all interstellar traffic and boiling the minds of anyone foolish enough to have a neural connection active. It watched those pompous fools in the Arkari Council collapse and die. It felt no more remorse than if it had swatted some troublesome insects. After all, that’s what they were in comparison to the greatness of His intelligence. Now they would feel His wrath.
For millions of years, the Shapers had sought to emulate the lost technologies of their creators, the Progenitors. They had sifted the ruins of their dead cities for relics that would enable them to reconstruct the wonders of that bygone age. Towards the end of their pan-galactic reign, the Progenitors had perfected wormhole generators. These planet-sized machines had enabled them to escape the galaxy and start anew. It was the ultimate form of interstellar transport, allowing the users to cross intergalactic distances at a stroke and, it was rumoured, move through time as well as space. Potentially, it was the also the ultimate weapon.
