Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars

by Iain Richmond

  Light engulfed the hologram, showering the bridge of the Qing Long in shafts of white light that turned orange then blue. The Lie Gong or someone still alive on one of the Vipers engaged a self-destruct system.

  Chen and his officers watched while hundreds of Oortians blazed and died. The Vipers and cruiser were gone, and so were their crews. Floating in front of the carnage, flame and energy lighting its silhouette, a heavily armored form the size of a patrol boat watched 10th Fleet run.

  Two black eyes staring over a shining tusk-filled smile.

  82

  Captain Falco

  Battle Station Pluto

  Captain Falco reached a half sprint. The silver strip behind his ear continued to account for each word he spoke as he made his final inspections. He hugged the inside wall like a runner doing everything he could to reduce the size of the track that stood in his way.

  Air hoses sprouted from his right and snaked under his feet towards oxygen tanks strapped to the bulkhead he continued to graze with his left shoulder. The maintenance corridor buffered the Infinity Hall from the masses of Battle Station Pluto.

  “Battle-Cubes twenty-five through forty are good to go.” Falco slid to a halt, followed a hissing oxygen line until he found a small hole. “Cube forty-three needs a new O2 line.”

  “Check, O2 line for C43,” Ensign Holts stated.

  Her voice sounded distant, Falco pushed the longing aside, but it remained close at all times. Holts had shared something rare with him that night. Beyond the beginnings of love, she opened up to him and allowed Falco to drop seven years of pain, anguish and guilt. He started forward again, stopped, grunted and opened the hatch to C43. Harness, munitions lockbox, shoulder-mount missile launcher with safety line, he made the mental check and moved to the Infinity Wall. He inspected the perfectly circular cut that ran eighty-percent through the glass.

  Falco slid the locking bolt and opened the munitions box. Twenty missiles lay stacked inside. “Are you sure we have found the last of the Javelins?” Twenty per Battle-Cube put the count at three thousand. The image of the chasing Oortian fleet over the hologram feed returned. He tapped the small COM over his ear a few times. “Ensign Holts? I repeat have we checked every possible munitions’ hold on Station Pluto?”

  “Sorry, Captain, I was running another full search of all possible storage areas. All Javelin missiles are in the Battle-Cubes. That’s interesting.” Holts paused, “I show 350 Ore-Rockets inventoried in the mining block.”

  “Ore-Rockets?” Falco had used them many years ago. A large line-of-sight roman-candle with a simple two-hand grip. Aim at a big floating rock, fire and hope for the best which usually included the creation of new, smaller floating rocks. “Thought they stopped using those?”

  “Mining industry did, Captain. You can’t make any more, but you can use what you have.”

  Falco shrugged. “If they can blast apart asteroids, they may be of use as a last resort. Check out the Mining Block personally, Ensign, there may be other things we can use. Contact me when you’re there.”

  “Yes, Captain, on my way.”

  Falco climbed out the hatch of Battle-Cube forty-three and was on the run.

  Soon he thought, soon men and women would live and die in chaos along the curving Infinity Wall that circled the station and enabled clear observation of a peaceful chunk of deep space. Peaceful, however, was a lifetime ago. Now we have Battle-Cubes, hand-held missiles, Ore-Rockets and an Oortian Fleet chasing our admiral.”

  On cue, Admiral Chen chimed through on the open-COM. “Captain, no change. Oortians are following, matching our speed. Engagement in fifty-seven minutes.”

  Falco swallowed hard, slowed his gait to keep his breath. “We are ready, Admiral, according to the chief, we’ll fire our two breaking thrusters twelve minutes twenty-two seconds prior.”

  “Chief Tenzin,” Chen sounded like he may be smiling, “an engineer to the core, precise as always. We will form around Battle Station Pluto, Captain, dreadnoughts above, cruisers below. Simple and we are going to do it coming in hot. No slowing down, full retro-burn and swing to put our weapons in the best firing line. Do you understand, Captain Falco?”

  “Yes, Admiral, our first strike must inflict mass damage,” Falco stated.

  “Correct.” Chen fell silent.

  Falco waited for the connection to drop, but Chen remained. “Admiral? Is there anything else, sir?”

  “Captain Falco… Thank you for coming.” The line went dead.

  “Would not have missed it for the world.” Falco spoke to himself and picked up the pace, checking hoses and munitions boxes of each Battle-Cube as he neared the end.

  Falco and the 500 Battle Station Pluto guardians of humanity had endured the helplessness watching and listening to the mighty 10th Fleet fight and die only hours from their aid. They would not do it again. They would join the fight and live or die with their sisters and brothers of the United Nations Navy.

  Battle-Cube 150 looked good. He slid to a final stop, slightly out of breath he tapped his COM twice and waited.

  “I have just reached the Mining Block, Captain,” Ensign Holts stated. “Opening the main cargo hold now.”

  “Good.” Falco took a few deep breaths. “Battle Cube forty-four through one-fifty are ready and crewed. How about those Ore-Rocke—”

  “Captain, I have an idea,” intensity filled Holts voice. “I found something. Meet me in the Mining Block, main hold.”

  “Already on my way, Ensign. The main hold is around the corner from BC-150.”

  Falco sprinted the distance in twenty seconds with the help of the station mapping system. Hands on his knees, panting, he looked up at Ensign Holts standing on a small mountain of crates just inside the Mining Block main cargo hold.

  “Ore-Rockets?” He barely got the words out, still catching his breath. The look on Holts’s face was something new. A sneer crossed with a glimmer of the evil eye was his best guess. “Ensign, what then?”

  “We have the Ore-Rockets and they are already being dispersed to the Battle-Cubes. But…” she pointed to the crates under her boots, “these may help.”

  Falco moved closer to the crates, dusted off the faded red, block lettering on the top, next to the soles of Holts’s boots. “EXTREME CAUTION: A-N-F-O Mining Packs.” Falco looked up to Ensign Holts, and backed away. “What is this dangerous shit doing on Station Pluto?”

  “Mining companies cut corners.” Holts raised her shoulders. “We could lay this out like a minefield using the long-range detonators?” She raised an eyebrow.

  God she was right, Falco thought, looking over the crates. “We could take out half the Oortian Fleet with this, but how do we safely and quickly place a minefield in front of a flying space station and not destroy us and 10th Fleet?

  “The pods!” Falco smashed his fist into an open hand. “We pack the Data-Pods with ANFO and a long-range detonator. The Oortians stopped attacking 10th Fleets pods once they realized they were not weapons, but decoys.”

  “They’ll let them through.” Holts’s eyes lit up. “We could modify the mining blast shields to fit on the rear of the pods.” She jumped down to the deck. “Focus the blast everywhere but behind them, everywhere but the station and 10th Fleet.”

  “The Oortians used the pods against us once, let’s return the favor. How many Data-Pods do we have on station?” Falco looked to Holts who pulled out the slim data-pad from the side pocket of her uniform and tapped away.

  “Two hundred and fifty.”

  Every able body on Battle Station Pluto who was not in a Battle-Cube or strapped to a rail gun, sat in the protected, private docking bay in the stern of the station working on the assembly line. 250 Data-Pods lay in the last phase of production a few meters from the Anam Cara.

  Chief Pema Tenzin decided the only way to ensure the lead-lined pods could be detonated with a remote was to place the detonator on the outside. Each completed pod was filled with the mining explosive ANFO. A wire connect
ed the epoxied long-range detonator on the outside to the explosives on the inside. The interior modified blast shield would focus the destruction away from the station and 10th Fleet. The lead lining from the exploding pods would create immense damage, the ultimate improvised explosive device (IED).

  The Oortians will ignore them, Falco had explained to Admiral Chen. They will let them fly by to be destroyed in their black field thinking them another desperate ruse, but this time they will be our messengers, they will speak for those lost. Chen had simply told Falco to fire the Data-Pods the moment 10th Fleet were thirty minutes out.

  A crewman pushed a cart with a finished pod on it, stopped and saluted. Falco returned the salute and noticed writing on the top, not far from the detonator.

  Dearest Oortians

  –FUCK U & SUCK ON THIS–

  Love Captain Zhi &

  the crew of the Li Gong

  Falco released a deep grunt, nodded to the crewman and looked to the rows of finished Data-Pods lining the deck in front of the bay door. Each carried a message from a fallen sailor or boat of 10th Fleet.

  Captain Jack Falco felt something new taking hold.

  Hope.

  83

  the Movoo

  the Darkness

  Spirited pleasure passed back and forth between the eight moon-sized creatures, filling their shared thought-stream with a joyous banter. The Darkness opened a flowing pathway across her surface, where her protective mass ended and the unforgiving Void began. The place where the latest invaders fled and the clans followed.

  The eight bobbing giants cheerfully rode her current, skimming just behind the protective Veil. The happy gatherers for the territories quickly turning from pain and fear to laughter and joy. The Darkness was healing their hides, scorched from the heat of the flaming stalks the Movoo pushed into the Void only cycles before. The energy waves from the invaders’ weapons bruised their organs and temporarily scrambled their systems.

  Each of the Movoo carried and released one of the great protectors of the territories, a shield, only to powerlessly watch the fire descend into the Darkness, biting and eating its way through the clans. The energy rolled toward them, the stalk connecting the Movoo and shields became a fuse and the stalks’ strongholds that did not release their warriors, became a furnace. Warriors died.

  Cries consumed the clans’ thought-stream and then fell silent only moments before the pounding rings of energy rolled through the Darkness. Her thick, flowing mass struggling to slow the destructive force and soften the fury, but the energy waves marched on and assaulted all within their path.

  But that had passed and cycles would continue. Warruq, Prox, Seekers, Krell and the rumored others that swam deep in the furthest reaches of the Darkness would come and go. When needed, clans would die and the Realm of Warriors would overflow with the departed.

  But the eight Movoo would remain as they always had since the beginning when the Darkness covered little more than a single planet tied to a lone, fiery star, happy and content. They were the gatherers for the territories, yet their greatest achievements would always be collecting the thirteen.

  On the Movoo went, speeding across the face of the Darkness toward their mission, her cool mass washing over them, spinning their bulk in its healing mass. The Darkness accelerated the driving current, the Movoo turned into pinkish blurs, racing towards their destination.

  Cycles passed and the flowing current slowed then stopped and dispersed. The full mass of the Darkness came rushing in. Each Movoo smashed into the one in front of it. One after the other, their moon-sized forms flattened and bulged until they formed a connected string of compressed disks. For a moment the joyous banter fell silent and the stunned creatures came to a connected stop.

  The two at the ends were the first to spring off in opposite and unopposed directions, followed by laughter filling their shared thought-stream. They regained their spherical shapes, two by two, springing apart. The Movoo huddled, nudging and rubbing against each other, ensuring to provide the nurturing touch their clan of eight needed. A separate thought-stream from the Creators opened.

  The group fell silent and the Creators uploaded their final orders. Once the Movoo left the protection of the Darkness, they were on their own. The thought-stream closed, the Creators had spoken. Again the Movoo opened a shared thought-stream and uncertainty passed among them. The clans moved through the Void, chasing the invaders and their powerful weapons.

  Many had died alone in the cold emptiness, beyond her protective mass. Those of the clans that left the Darkness had not returned to upload their findings. The Creators sent a Seeker to absorb their histories and return them to the clans, but those still alive were chasing the invaders – moving farther and farther from their home.

  It was almost time to leave the protection of the Darkness. She had taken them as far as her mass would allow. She had shifted her form to protect the clans moving against the invaders and left the far territories unprotected. The enemy’s powerful weapons left her weak, injured and still she healed the Movoo and aided them in their journey. But the Darkness was quickly regaining strength.

  Each of the Movoo felt a slight pinch and methane pumped into their fuel sacs. A fraction of a cycle before their sacs burst, relief swam over the moon-sized creatures and the tube slid out. A muscled valve spiraled open near their optical sensors and a new pressure built. They inhaled the darkness as deeply as their forms would allow, their lung expanding into every available cavity. A quiet hiss and the orifice closed.

  Their orders were clear, capture the fourteenth before it moved beyond their reach. They could not fail and would not relent until they had towed it back to be shaped and molded within the Darkness for millions of cycles. When it was completed, the Creators would position it among the others.

  The oldest of the eight, the first Movoo to swim from the core of their planet and bask in the warmth of the original star, gently nudged the other seven towards the Void.

  Eight pillars of fire erupted behind the Veil of the Darkness. The Movoo ignited their energy bloom and pushed into the Void to carry out their mission.

  Capture and return the fourteenth world.

  84

  Captain Fei

  Kwan Yin – the Black Field

  The Viper class vessel, the Kwan Yin hung battered in the dark field. Her hull foamed with hundreds of new ruptures filling with repair epoxy.

  Bobbing on a warm sea… where am I? Captain Yue Fei drifted up, knees bumping a hard surface followed by his face pressing into a tacky sludge. Fei’s thoughts felt heavy, clouded and his head thumped like a drum, heart pounding. Are my eyes open? A dream, yes, this must be a dream.

  Slowly he began to descend. Over and over Fei’s body rose, stuck and fell. A sickly-sweet scent grew stronger with each upward rise. It began to overwhelm his senses…

  “Open your eyes, Captain.”

  “Rank and surname!” Fei cried out. “Captain Yue Fei of 10th Fleet, Chinese contingent, United Nations Navy.”

  Floating up, his heart pounding, slowly he opened his eyes centimeters from the sticky surface. This time he raised a throbbing and bloodied hand, halting his rise.

  Swirling black current filled his peripheral vision. Fei focused on the carnage before him, his clearing mind trying to grab hold of something, anything in the moment. He traced the hardened white foam that framed the sticky surface.

  Details flooded in, his mind trying to fit them together. Captain Fei pushed hard off the overhead and away from the crypt created by the hull repair system. It looked like large pieces of flypaper, but instead of insects stuck to its surface, parts of humans… and something else covered the space. Fei shut down his mind; he could not explain what he was seeing. Much of the carnage was not human… or was it?

  Wet, gummy warmth rolled down his cheek, building as it went like a snowball rolling downhill. Fei clawed at the substance that covered his jaw and realized it was not his own. Pain rippled through his sluggis
hly awakening mind and body. His head spun, he wobbled then hit the deck and rebounded towards the overhead.

  Grav-system is damaged, oxygen mix is wrong, life support down? Think, Captain. Composure is survival. Fei heard the familiar voice in his head and a calm returned. He caught the rounded corner of the Battle-Net station, his feet continued toward the overhead and pushed off the almost invisible surface. The Virtual Surround Vision was still operational, maybe fifty percent, he thought, large pieces of interior hull, bulkheads, overhead and the deck flashed in and out of existence.

  He was not sure which was worse, seeing the carnage now a permanent part of the hull or the patchwork of swirling camouflage mixed with the Kwan Yin’s interior. “The patchwork,” Fei grunted, “is the true reflection of the situation.”

  “Captain…” a lone muffled voice carried from the bowels of the Kwan Yin. For the first time since awakening into his current nightmare, Fei surveyed the Kwan Yin beyond her bridge, his mind releasing him from its protective blanket.

  Boots hovering centimeters off the deck, he slowly rotated a full 360 degrees.

  “Captain?” Again the distant voice sounded.

  It’s closer, Fei thought. It’s not me, is it? Taking in the full weight of the situation. “They’re all… dead,” he whispered, his mind beginning to fracture. The remains of his crew not stuck to a surface, lay scattered, floating and bouncing around the bridge, some whole, others in pieces.

  Get a hold of yourself or put a bullet in your brain and end this. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply and exhaling powerfully, again and again. Finally, Captain Fei opened his eyes and willed himself to focus on the moment.