Ascension

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  Peron inwardly frowned, as his mandibles prevented him from doing so outwardly.

  More victims of the Xank. A species?

  Peron hoped not, but a planet subjugated and purged was bad enough. But it wasn’t the time to cry for the ghosts of an unknown race.

  Peron signed for the group to put on their flashlights. Yeah, the enemy would see them coming, but with the clanking of chitin and keratin on metal, they’d hear them coming anyway. Flashlights erupted, painting the maroon of the room with a white translucence. The light only enhanced the darkness around it. Peron noted the irony. The brighter the light became, the stronger the darkness seeking to impede it. So was the way of the world. Peron only hoped Leri’s darkness would be kept at bay long enough by his light.

  The vanguard moved slowly into the facility, watching all their angles. The facility was meant to be empty, but one couldn’t be too careful. The Xank may have grown some sense after watching the Rii Revolution on Zeruit. Facilities like this were prime targets under Peron’s revolutionary strategy. Wars weren’t effectively won on the frontlines. They were won by skilled insurgents behind enemy lines.

  Peron recognised the faint humming as soon as he heard it. Computers. Xank tech, combined with captured human and exanoid technology. They were cruder than many other races but were sufficient for their purposes. Peron indicated the doorway where the humming was emitting from, and a zangorian with a blaster and reinforced talons went to investigate. All clear. The group followed.

  The rear gunner cried out and rasped. The zap of blasters followed. Blue and red lit up the maroon swaddled halls. Peron dove for cover. His vanguard opened fire. Another friendly fell. Peron crawled along the ground. He tossed his computer equipment into the room and clutched his blaster. Memories of Edmund. He had saved his friend then. But then memories of gold, fading…

  Peron fired, alongside his guards. Flashes. Bursts. Cries. Peron rolled and fired, not knowing exactly where or what he was shooting at. Then everything ceased. The sharp hiss of depleted blasters. A gut-wrenching warble filled the halls. The vanguard and their ambushers charged one another. Peron lifted himself up. His forces were dying. His forces…

  Peron shot forward at a speed only matched by his younger, more adventurous, self. He grabbed an assailant by the neck. In a moment, he analysed its uniform. Xank. He squeezed with a single hand. No suffocation. The zangorian’s windpipe was crushed instantly.

  The fighting had stopped. The surviving vanguard, and a wounded attacker, stared in horror at the gleran, holding a limp and bloodied young zangorian towards the roof with a single arm, his other three nonchalantly by his side.

  Peron blinked, and then dropped the zangorian to the ground.

  Without a word, or sign language, Peron retrieved his equipment. It had mercifully been undamaged in the fight. Only some crimson and some matted feathers marred its exterior.

  The room with the hum was what Peron had suspected. A single terminal dominated the floor. Peron touched the green. A cryptographic security screen dominated the screen. The ash-grey and gold symbols reflected in Peron’s black eyes. Peron examined the security.

  Requires: DNA input, intimate knowledge of Reshian horticulture, three passwords and off-site verification?

  Peron plugged in his equipment.

  Easy.

  

  The Abhorrent didn’t waver. They seethed forward. A guttural, rotting mass. They let out screeches that revealed that all they had ever known was pain. Their warbles were not of glory, or desire, or even desperation, but simple torment. They fell on the Xank lines like flesh on a thresher. They fell line by line. A horde of bloodied meat. Mutated, impure and…abhorrent.

  The Abhorrent were what Leri’s men called the mutant zangorians found in experimental hatcheries. In their investigation of their captured hatcheries, they found abominations like the mutants on Zeruit. But these were much more functional. Unlike the stifled, dwarf zangorians on Zeruit, these Abhorrent were able to move, to receive orders and even to fight – if ineffectively.

  Some Xank monster must’ve been dissatisfied with the natural lifecycle of a zangorian. Too many casualties and too many years to grow to a fighting age. Abhorrent grew in vats, forcing their growth in a matter of hours. It did shorten their lifespan considerably. One of Leri’s science-minded comrades predicted that an Abhorrent would be lucky to live for a single Zeruit year. But that wouldn’t matter for the Xank. The body-budget needed bodies, not lives.

  For the blitz, Leri needed bodies. As much as it pained him, he used the art of his enemies. He used the Xank’s twisted science and produced a horde of thousands of deformed, tumour-filled, almost crippled zangorians – and then he let them loose on the enemy defences. Aimless, scared and ignorant, the Abhorrent were the perfect cannon fodder. They absorbed the brunt of the Xank volleys and melee, allowing Leri’s forces to close in.

  Pink mist rose from the horde as it met the first line of Xank defenders. There were thousands upon thousands of Abhorrent, charging mindlessly towards the Xank HQ. They were no match for a blaster or semi-skilled spearman, but they didn’t need to be. The Abhorrent were moving cover for Leri’s forces, who trailed the horde with squad-sized energy shields, backed up by shipborne ordnance to keep the enemies anti-armour weapons in check.

  Leri watched from the Xiu, hovering behind friendly lines, using its super-scope and strategic mapping system to observe the battlefield. He felt restrained. In all the battles on Zeruit, he had participated. He was a warrior. A veteran of the body-budget. His place was with a blaster in hand. A part of the phalanx. But he was too valuable now. One stray piece of shrapnel could end him, and with him, the rebellion. So, claustrophobic as he may be, he stayed behind the line. He merely watched as the monsters he let loose upon his slave-kinsmen were slaughtered, as was their lot. He only hoped Peron’s part of the plan would succeed by the time that the Abhorrent were wiped out and real zangorians had to enter the fray.

  From his birds-eye-view, Leri observed the main line of Abhorrent begin to thin down dramatically. They were not making much headway against the defensive shield wall that the Xank slaves had deployed around the HQ, a domed building located on a hill around the urban centre. They attempted to merely run into their enemy, hitting, slashing, pecking and then crumbling into bloody, gooey messes. Just three layers of mutant flesh back, a black-metal case contained a squad of zangorian assault raiders. They were to breakthrough and slaughter the shield wall, allowing the main force to break through. If Peron was to fail, Leri wanted to ensure they got something out of it. While besieging the HQ was a ruse, it was a genuinely good strategic point to capture. From it, Leri could setup artillery to control most of the region, as well as have much better access to the hatcheries and food manufactories.

  But it wasn’t the main goal. This was a distraction, and Leri was counting down the minutes until the façade could collapse. He checked his Zeruit watch. It had been almost a day on Zeruit. He didn’t think he’d make it. But no matter. Taking a planet in two days was still a worthy feat.

  A group of Abhorrent broke through the shield wall and Xank phalanx. The assault raider box broke through behind them and opened up. Zangorians wearing heavy armour and wielding energy axes and traditional zangorian swords burst through doors on the side and began their bloody work. Chopping the arms of shield bearers, severing spear heads, tossing grenades into formations. Quite a few died, but that was their lot. They died for the liberation.

  Xank reinforcements poured into the breach, surrounding the raiders. Leri would have frowned if he wasn’t scowling.

  Those were his men dying. He should be there with them. They deserved to die by his side, for they died for him.

  But they did not all die.

  With the units of Xank reinforcements came the inevitable drones. Hover-types with heavy blaster arrays, tank-likes with short-range artillery, walkers with anti-shield lasers… There were even medics with all manners of bio-scientific ap
paratus.

  The medic-drones turned on their comrades first. They turned cauterisers into flame throwers. Zangorian feathers made good kindling. Those without cauterisers injected their closest charge with an overdose of whatever drug they were carrying. Zangorians upchucked their meals, foamed from the mouth. Some disintegrated from the inside.

  Oh, how easy does medicine turn to poison, Leri thought. As much as it pained him, he could not help but admire the gleran who had done this. For a moment, he would let himself trust Peron again.

  After the medics, the combat drones turned rogue. Heavy blasters, meant for long range engagements, turned the Xank squads into pink-mist at close range. Bones and feathers lay in puddles of melted flesh across the tarmac. The artillery was even more devastating. The drones lost all sense, firing their explosive projectiles at close range – killing themselves and entire squads of zangorians with them.

  Some drones still fought Leri’s forces, as was to be expected. Peron couldn’t make them change sides. But he could make them go rogue. Without any targeting protocol besides: ‘Eliminate everything’ – the drones became stupid and easy to dispatch, alongside their emaciated Xank forces.

  Leri’s forces pressed the advantage, targeting everything. Xank slaves didn’t know who to fight. Many surrendered, just to be killed by their drone comrades. Others, closer to Leri’s lines, were captured. They were thankful to be captives, rather than targets for the drones.

  The grey sky eventually turned to a fading pink, and then a dark blue. The brunt of the combat had stopped at the Xank HQ, which was subsequently captured and turned to better uses. Skirmishes were rare after that. Most Xank slaves surrendered immediately. They sought safety among the rebels. Anything was better than their metal overlords turning on them.

  Leri stood on the balcony of the Xank HQ. It was a similar design to the one from Kazh-aira. The Xank Immortals had loved building these monstrous monuments to authority. The balcony was a show of power. A platform to exude arrogance. But Leri liked them nonetheless. They let him survey his domain. To feel its angst.

  ‘Rii, you should come celebrate,’ Tek’roa slurred, appearing in the doorway behind Leri, almost a silhouette with the light behind him. The city was still dark, dotted only with searchlights and the occasional war-wrought fire. Tek’roa’s breath smelt of fermented worms and seed.

  ‘Celebrate?’ Leri asked, incredulous, ‘That we lost so many?’

  ‘That you reached your goal. You took La’rz in a day.’

  Leri shook his head. ‘I missed my goal by a few hours.’

  Tek’roa grinned. ‘La’rz has longer days than Zeruit, my brother. We have five more hours until full rotation. La’rz is ours! And with time to spare.’

  Tek’roa lurched away after that, starting up a warrior song. Soon, the war cabinet joined in, and then the guards. The song spread, until the entire HQ was singing:

  Until the sun sets

  The pyres grow cold

  We’ll keep on coming

  Till the days grow old.

  “Humanity had become lazy. Apathetic. It was perfectly willing to let its soldiers die light years away, treating war like a game. But when war comes to the homefront, as it did at Ganymede, laziness isn’t allowed. War is a forge, and it made us into steel.” – Lenda Smitt, Collin’s World Archivist

  Chapter 10.

  Melancholy

  The Empire of Xank was fading.

  One by one, every hard-won star, every ancient colony and new domain attained after the fall of blessed Resh, turned black. On the star-map, first, and then in the shrinking of supply lines. The body-budget dwindled. No more feathery peons to fill the ranks. No more worm-feed to sustain the loyalists.

  The Xank Empire was not so much burning, than merely shrinking away…until it would be no more. Krag-Zurktag, the first and last Avenger, had witnessed the death of an empire before. The Empire of Resh. The united front of a warlike people. Not even united could the areq defeat the Imperial Council. They were hunted to near extinction. Their great tracts of space, now derisively called the Outer Reaches, fell into ruin. Species they had created, forgot about them. All because they had stood up to Imperia.

  But every sin deserved punishment.

  Now, the Avenger and the Xank were paying for their crimes and for their incompetence.

  La’rz shouldn’t have been lost. It was the most important cog in the body-budget. A hatchery, mutation and training world. The invasion of the Resh’s home system rested on its productive capabilities. And now it lay in the hands of that…that…bird.

  It all began after the fall of Zona Nox. Resh’s first colony world. The place where the Reshian Empire had been developing its main weapon against the Imperial Council. It had been called Daikur-kra, back then. And it had been much more habitable. Alas, after the blighting of Resh, warp-storms infused Zona Nox’s mountains with twisted energy, disabling technology and obscuring the mind. But that couldn’t stop the Xank. And neither could the new human inhabitants. There had been one goal: Secure Daikur-kra, now Zona Nox. Finish the Vortex. Finish the war. And this time, win it.

  Resh was lost. The Avenger had no delusions that he would ever see its lush green fields again. Even if he was, his people were effectively extinct. Only the immortals survived, and they were sterile. And that was only the ones who remained alive and loyal. Krag-Zolith was recently dead. Krag-Zot had run off with the traitor Word Lector. The Avenger expected such a betrayal from the human Word Lector, Smith, but not from one of his oldest comrades. Krag-Zot’s betrayal truly stung the Avenger. But that was the least of his concerns at present.

  After the Imperials blighted Zona Nox, the Vortex was out of their grasp once again. Some may have thought that the cessation of attacks by the Xank was because of military defeat. That the hordes needed refilling. But that wasn’t it.

  The Xank had halted because there was no point going on. The Vortex, the only possible way the Avenger and the Xank Immortals could fathom could defeat the Imperial Martyrs, was out of their reach. No one could survive a fresh warp-storm, and nobody wanted to wait half a millennium more to seek their revenge.

  After the fall of Zona Nox, the traitorous Word Lector seceded. To cover his tracks, he sent his dread-champion to the zangorian homeworld. It was awhile before the Avenger found out about this. He was too busy attempting to defend the more important holdings. The main fleet had to retreat from Extos III, and the decaying squogg Black Fleet was hot on their tail. And there simply wasn’t anyone to notice the terrorism and rebellions on Zeruit.

  The Xank were stretched thin. There were only seven loyal immortals left. Only seven individuals, as powerful as they may be, to run an empire containing thirty-five star systems and countless subjects.

  How was one meant to run an empire with so few?

  They couldn’t. And that was the Avenger’s downfall. For he had not seen the Xank Empire as a true empire. He had seen it as a transient project. A means to an end. A tool for vengeance against Imperia.

  Krag-Zolith had died on Zeruit. The Avenger had wept. He was sure the traitor Krag-Zot would have wept too. Krag-Zolith had been his lover. After the bird-scum had slain their comrade, the Avenger refused to send anymore immortals to Zeruit.

  ‘Let them have their planet,’ the Avenger had said, after sending a force of slave-warriors in one last ditch attempt to end the insurrection. After it had fallen, the Avenger gave up on Zeruit.

  La’rz should not have fallen, but the Xank ran into the same problem again. A lack of manpower. Without the direction of a genuine immortal, or skilled zangorian general like the now traitor War Lector, the La’rz fleet and host fell to the rebels.

  No, not rebels. Not anymore. They were their own galactic power, now. And they were growing. More and more planets fell. More joined willingly.

  The body-budget dried up, containing only loyalist gleran hives, drones and zangorians numbering in measly thousands.

  The Avenger watched his empire crum
ble, and he didn’t care.

  All he had ever wanted was to avenge Resh. Without the Vortex, that wasn’t possible now. The gods of the Council would continue their atrocities. The areq would fade into memory and then dust.

  There was no reason to keep on fighting…except…

  ‘Immortals,’ the Avenger said, turning on his throne away from the star-chart and towards his assembled comrades. ‘It is time we end the Xank. Our race can never come back and neither can we avenge it. We have lost.’

  ‘Never, Avenger!’ a tall, muscular (even by areq standards) man yelled.

  ‘Krag-Dai is right. We will not abandon our cause,’ a small areq woman, Krag-Tein said.

  ‘But it is lost,’ the Avenger lamented. ‘We cannot kill the Martyrs. We cannot retake Resh. With so few of us. For all that we have done…’

  The Avenger felt moisture rise to his eyes.

  For all I have done…

  Mutation. Genocide. Slavery. War unending. A thousand years of monstrosity.

  ‘I have sinned. And the Reaper comes for me.’

  ‘We have sinned,’ Krag-Tein stated.

  The Avenger remembered when her now metal body was flesh. Supple. Snow-white. She had worn a red gown in the setting sun…

  ‘You stayed with me, Krag-Tein.’

  The Avenger stood and approached his band of friends.

  ‘You all did.’

  Some smiled, sadly. At least half of them were missing their underbite fangs.

  ‘But, do not follow me now. Our time is at an end. The Age of the Areq has finally come to an end. I will face the Reaper. I will pay for my sins. My honour requires it.’

  ‘And what of our honour?’ asked Krag-Dai.