Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars

by Iain Richmond

  “Grant his request, Lieutenant.”

  The ashen-faced officer locked an independent COM line to Station Pluto that would immediately begin pushing data packets.

  Battles fought in this new arena would come down to numbers, technology and finally, strategy. Technology would become the landscape that created advantages or disadvantages. The number of vessels could buffer a force that had a distinct disadvantage in technology, but no longer could a small force of ‘peasants’ rise to topple a king. There was no forest to run to, no caves to escape bombardment, nowhere to hide.

  The image of an ancient and outnumbered force sifted through Admiral Chen’s thoughts. Many centuries ago, lowly colonials had beaten the formidable British Empire by using native tactics, attacking in small numbers and then fleeing into their natural camouflage, the forest, the mountains and the grasslands, thinning Empire numbers until their advantage was gone and then the colonials struck in force. Of course, this force was bolstered by an ally.

  “Continue to hold stealth formation.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” The commander passed down the orders and moments later the greatest off-planet gathering of firepower in the history of humanity, floated in a sea of blackness. The stealth formation was simple and based on the latest sensory technology.

  Clustering the vessels in hull-scraping tight formations forced enemy sensors to read them as a few large objects or even a single one, hiding their numbers.

  “Commander, bring up the tactical hologram.” Admiral Chen stood and moved toward the circular table in the center of the bridge. A hologram shimmered into existence and hung over the table. Even the Battle-Net showed only three large signatures.

  In the China Sea on Earth, this would be a small but powerful fleet, Chen considered. Here at the edge of our solar system it is all we have.

  “Link the Battle-Net, begin combat drills and operational testing.” Admiral Chen returned to his chair, “I want every system and crewman ready for what lies ahead.” He looked toward the center of the bridge, at the hologram floating tabletop to ceiling. Three dots crawling across open space and still, Chen pondered, we have no idea who or what we face or how it got out here… or who put them here.

  So small and trivial we look. We wait and see if this new enemy has the patience of a master or the fervor of a fighter. Let you be the latter and let my name be made on your destruction.

  the Darkness

  the Krell

  Aris the Chosen One floated just behind the Veil of the darkness. Her sensors were hindered at the edge, but were able to watch the battle and passively connect with the Warruq thought-stream each time she passed into the Void.

  The Voices are strong, she considered and again made sure her thoughts were protected. All five vessels remained, though four were battered and her sensors could find few voices or systems that were still intact and functioning within their soft-layered carapaces that continued to froth and foam from every wound.

  As ordered, she had left the strong voiced beast untouched. She felt the rage within her growing and adjusted her systems to control it. It felt strange that the vessel remained with the damaged ones. Aris had been sure it would flee. It did not, and now hovered over the others like a mentor protecting her apprentices.

  Maybe they are like the Warruq and refuse to leave their clan. Or maybe they know what lurks in the Darkness. Yes, she thought, that is the truth as it follows the logic of fear that enshrouds the enemy Voices themselves. Another time, she thought, another battle. The Creators want to study these creatures, spread them open and dissect the beasts and the invaders that travel within them.

  The Darkness swirled around her fins, each appendage tensed and the slippery mass pushed beyond Aris and grew towards the enemy vessels. Our Creators are increasing the territories, she thought, the Darkness grows more turbulent.

  Aris shuddered, fear flashing through her systems. They are here and she wanted to flee, but controlled her trembling carapace and held her position.

  A torrent of pain and terror was closing in. The Creators had sent the massive Krell to finish the battle. Aris sensed the cold current while the Darkness thinned its mass to ease the path of the coming demons. Without thought, Aris the Chosen One gave in to her fear and pushed hard, swimming up and away from the approaching Krell’s path.

  Her thought-stream filled with the guttural shrieks of legend. The Krell had not been seen for millions of cycles. It was said they were caged far from the outer edge of the Darkness, somewhere near the two fiery stars that shone bright on the Creators’ twelve circling planets. A place Arial and the rest of the clans could not travel, another place of legend.

  There were tales where thousands of Krell fought in the first Frontier Wars. Their shrieking cries filling the thought-streams long before Prox had passed through the Veil and came into existence. Aris’s mentor had given her glimpses of the massive beings, passed down from clan to clan. Aris only knew the Krell were not of the clans, nor did they care who lived or died, by their will or any other. She pushed harder to move higher. Again, Aris was overcome by the primal urge to ignite her energy bloom and flee the coming Krell.

  That would be her end. The Darkness protected Aris from all that called her thick mass home as much as she did from the enemy vessels in the Void. Suction from below worked at her carapace, the massive Krell moved past her position, just beneath her. The flow of the Darkness swirling into eddies and undertows that pulled and pushed Aris while the Krell’s bulk plowed through it. Suddenly, the Darkness fell slack and calm returned. The Krell stopped at the Veil that protected the clans from the cold Void beyond.

  Aris heard them pleading with the Creators, filling the open thought-stream without want or care for those who listened. Why do they fear the Oath, she thought? The Realm of Warriors awaits us all. Aris moved towards the Veil of the Darkness. She had to see the Krell for herself, allow her optical sensors to take in the beasts of myth. The fear of being detected by the dying enemy vessels was gone.

  Legends no more, the massive Krell were here.

  36

  Viper Battle Group

  Captain Fei

  Captain Fei watched in horror. The missile could not dispatch its target in time. A bright flash lit the bridge of his vessel, the Kwan Yin. The final attacker ripped through the hull of their sister vessel, the Kuan Ti, a lethal wound that had broken her back for good.

  He allowed the guilt of the moment to sink in. We remain unscathed, he thought; Kwan Yin is without a scratch. The sizzle of burning plastics and desperate, hurried movements filled the open-COM and soon turned to the sounds of the Kuan Ti’s remaining crew fighting to put out fires that ravaged her shredded hull. Muffled screams added to the glowing carnage that lit the black field. The commander of the dying vessel used the last functioning thruster to move the vessel down and away from the group and then the open-COM fell silent.

  “Battle group is drifting, Captain.” The commander looked toward Fei.

  “Weapons inventory?” Fei swallowed the rising bile.

  His Commander made a few swiping motions across a glowing screen, “Three missiles. The Feng Huang has two,” the commander exhaled, “the Kwan Yin has one, sir.”

  “Battle group, damage report.” Fei braced himself, but if there was anyone left alive on his boats, he would get them out.

  Seconds past as the commander waited for the Battle-Net to compile the data. Eleven seconds later, Commander Zhu read off the list.

  Captain Fei remained still, silent as Zhu finished reading the devastating report. He had only one option remaining.

  Captain Yue Fei quietly stood on the bridge of the Kwan Yin. His words fell heavy, the green light shown bright on the open-COM link, “Battle group of the People’s Navy, initiate Zéi Dé, Wú Ái, three… nine… zero… Yí.”

  Fei was following protocol. ‘Z-Y-390-E’ was the code for abandon vessel. Any surviving soul would hear the code, suit up and jettison into open space for pickup. Fei coul
d not risk the lives of a rescue party for the three crewmen the Battle-Net listed as ‘unaccounted for.’ Crewman that were most likely dead, were most likely in pieces or worse.

  Protocol also required that he fire a missile at a specified area on each boat to ensure total destruction. With only one missile left, that would have to wait for Admiral Chen to arrive.

  “Lieutenant, get us above them, minimum safe distance. Keep us in the center of the open space.”

  “Yes, sir.” The pilot lit the thrusters and the Kwan Yin began her lift to avoid any potential collisions between the four Viper class patrol boats aimlessly drifting, ‘dead in space.’

  “Black field is moving!” Zhu was locked on the Battle-Net screen. “Directly behind us.”

  “What now?” Fei growled. The Battle-Net alert flashed into life again. “Hologram up, Commander.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  A thick, oily smoke hung in the air above the bridge’s command table, the increased in clarity. The holo-feed represented what the Battle-Net was detecting hundreds of klicks dead ahead of their gutted battle-group.

  “Commander, what are we looking at?”

  Fei wondered if the Battle-Net was damaged. It was possible, he thought. Each vessel’s Battle-Net was a supercomputer housed in the core of each boat. It was the guardian of the vessel and could run as a standalone unit or could join with other Battle-Net systems to create a deadly defensive shield. “But it’s not possible,” he muttered to himself. The Kwan Yin was untouched during the fighting.

  The Battle-Net was buried in the center of the hull, away from weapon ports, engines or any system that could be detected by sensors and seen as important. The only known way to damage the Battle-Net was to destroy the vessel itself.

  “Captain,” the Commander kept his head locked on his display while his monitor continued to flash a warning, “Our sensors are picking up… they are picking up a zone of intense turbulence on the surface of the black field directly behind our position.”

  “What does ‘intense turbulence’ look like in space, Commander?” Fei fought to keep the sarcasm from entering his voice.

  “Sir, the data suggests this ‘zone of turbulence’ is similar to ocean currents.”

  “Commander, you mean the field has characteristics of Earth’s oceans?” Fei was already reeling from the hopeless scenario he and his crew faced; his connection to the present was losing its grip.

  “According to the Battle-Net’s database, the specific ‘area of turbulence’ is comparable to the surface forces created by a massive pod of bubble feeding humpback whales in the waters off the Southeast Alaskan Union.” The crew understood when Zhu stated the ‘database,’ every soul in range of his voice knew it contained every document and shred of information collected by humanity.

  “Bubble feeding whales in the outer solar system?” Fei knew the database used the best equivalent from the known experiences and history of Earth and humanity’s limited space travel. “The surface?” Fei looked to his commander. “Captain Falco and the Anam Cara detected light changes on the surface.”

  “Yes, Captain, they called it a lightning storm.”

  “Hmm.” Fei nodded toward his commander. “Its surface may give away an exit point or staging area.”

  “Possibly, Captain.”

  “Why did we not detect motion on the field’s surface prior to the other attacks?” Fei folded his arms.

  Commander Zhu turned toward Captain Fei, “Size. The first two waves were the size of cannonballs and soldiers. Something large is near the surface, large enough to create a disturbance.”

  Whatever was coming had probably not been seen by his battle-group – what was left of it – or the Anam Cara. It was not documented in the database or it would have recognized it. Captain Fei slowly rotated his chair, feeling the black field closing in. Whatever was going to surface from that hellish field was not going to be pleasant and it was not going to be a bubble-feeding pod of humpback whales.

  the Darkness

  the Krell

  Aris the Chosen One

  Legend tells of mammoth aberrations spawned by the Creators. Entombed in a far away piece of the Darkness and cut off from the clans. They were beasts twisted from the pain and torture of millions of cycles of design. They were forged in fire and said to be devastation in its purest form. They were known as the Krell.

  Aris the Chosen One drifted in the Darkness just above the four Krell. They felt foreign and alien to her and though Aris could feel heat rising from their mass, she could not see them through the thick, dark mass of the Darkness. She listened to their pleas over their thought-stream.

  The Krell of legend could not be cowards, Aris pondered, while their vast quaking forms vibrated through the Darkness and their shrieking consumed the open thought-stream. But their fear was not of death in battle and the journey to the Realm of Warriors, it was of something else. Fear of endless pain? What did it mean?

  The Krell’s form was immense. Aris constantly moved her fins to hold her position above them, pushing against the suction created by their rotating girth. Aris needed to know all that was available about them. She accessed the Thought-Stream of Clans that was always open, always updating the history and knowledge of the territories that spanned all cycles from the Rising to now. Updated by each clan and each form surviving within the Darkness.

  It was said that even those living on the Creators twelve worlds circling the burning twin stars fed the Thought-Stream of Clans. More myth and legend, Aris thought, if those who lived on the planets shared their histories, then why do we not see and learn of these worlds? But she knew the answer before the thought, because it is kept from us, just like the twelve worlds and the warmth of the twin stars.

  Aris filtered through the data, allowing new information to enter her systems, but little data told of the Krell. She studied a diagram of the clans. An image of the small and deadly Seeker was displayed with a list of warrior attributes and all of its varying dimensions, but its overall size was exact and never varied. This was true of all the different clans of the Darkness. Dimensions varied but the size was exact, as if each Prox or Warruq was made to fill an exact area and nothing more or it would perish without a trace.

  Aris moved through the physical hierarchy. A Seeker was smaller than a Rover that in turn was half the mass of a Warruq. The fierce Warruq were smaller than the skillful Builders who were smaller than Aris, a Prox, one of the largest of the clans. Or are we? she wondered. Whatever the size and dimension of the clans, they must be determined by the laws used by the Creators. But the Darkness… the Darkness seemed to grow and expand on her own. No, maybe it was simply that Aris the Chosen One wanted the Darkness to be free from the Creators’ laws and rules.

  Aris searched more data. Finally the increasing movement from below reawakened the fear of these beings with no loyalty or allegiance and she exited the Thought-Stream of Clans finding no new data on the Krell that lurked below her. They were real and soon they might be released into the Void.

  Regardless of her presence, the Krell showed no interest in Aris hovering above them. The Creators’ thoughts cut through the constant shrieking flooding out of the four creatures and they fell silent. Their quaking forms rippling the Veil of the Darkness in front of them.

  Aris adjusted her position in the torrent created by the beasts. The Darkness concealed them so Aris gently moved her fins and pushed herself slowly through the raging flow until she hovered directly above them and for the first time in millions of cycles, a Prox looked upon the Krell.

  Creators, what have you done? Aris thought. She was consumed by the guttural fear of those who were born to it. The sight repelled her sense of curiosity and the Krell’s tortured thoughts again poured over the thought-stream and burned into her memory.

  Aris was overcome by something new. Not only did she fear for her own existence, but she felt terror for the invaders that would soon meet the Krell in combat.

  37
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br />   Captain Fei

  Viper Class Battle Group

  Fei kept his eyes on the hologram and pushed to find the answer. Why leave us in the open when they could have covered us in the black field and destroyed us without even revealing themselves? Fei shook himself from the image of the suffocating black field and looked around the bridge.

  “Why not kill us in the dark where we are defenseless? Why risk the losses?” Fei stood as he moved around the bridge. “And why did they not attack our vessel?

  “Think. Our lives depend on it.” He continued to prowl around the bridge. “We are surrounded by black field controlled by something, yet we sit in the open? Blind to all but this small patch of open space.” An area now shaped like an endless tube and for all he knew, the Kwan Yin was in its center. No ceiling or floor as far as the sensors could tell.

  Fei was missing something and it was infuriating. It literally is right in front of us, he thought, as the madness of knowing their survival depended on one of them making the connection.

  “Captain,” the young lieutenant was working hard to keep emotion from his voice, “we know the black field is thinnest directly in front of us… or was. We have full burn capabilities and Admiral Chen and the rest of 10th Fleet is underway…” the lieutenant stammered and lost control, “We could make it, sir! A full burn towards 10th Fleet! We must get out of here!”

  Fei shot a steely glance toward his lieutenant and the man quickly regained his composure. Fei nodded and turned toward his commander.

  “Yes, we could run toward open space, but this must be the end move our enemy has orchestrated. That’s it.” Fei raised an open hand and clenched it into a hammer-like fist. “Go!” he exclaimed to a bridge filled with confused officers.