Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic (26 page)

Nearby, heavy bombers swarmed around an ithiral
capital ship, blasting at its shields, firing salvo after salvo of missiles,
but none of them punched through.  The protective barrier clipped one of the
bombers, and the tiny craft vanished in a cloud of sheered metal.  The bombers
scattered, tearing away from the ithiral starship at top speed.

On the dark side of the planet, battle stations
cut through Hydra Fleet’s heavy cruisers, reducing them to scrap and cinders. 
Three ithiral starships converged, forming a vast, floating wedge that
encompassed Cepheus Fleet’s starship carriers.  Within seconds, blue lances had
destroyed the marked warships and all hands aboard.

The
Wraithfin
appeared over an ithiral
capital ship as its main cannon connected with the destroyer
Willis
,
annihilating her.  Small turrets moved along the towers, tracking the
Wraithfin
as Gavin closed his eyes.  In that moment, the ithiral juggernaut lowered its
shields, and its upper turret array fired upon the corvette that threatened
it.  Her cascade shields soaked the initial blasts, but they were quickly
stripped away.

The battleship
Trinidad and Tobago
advanced
as the ithiral stardrome’s main cannon swung around to receive her.  Fired from
squadrons of heavy bombers, volleys of missiles flooded in, seeking the exposed
battle station.  They exploded upon its heavily armored outer hull, but did
little damage. 

“Come on, Gavin,” Zerki breathed.  Alarms blared
from the active defense console.

Hull shouted, “Ready the phase hopper!”

The
Wraithfin
shuddered as searing blue
needles chewed into her ventral armor.

“This close to their starship?” cried Zerki.  “We
could reappear
inside
them!”

Glaring at Gavin, he growled, “We’re out of time.”

Salvos of cannon fire erupted from the
Trinidad
and Tobago
’s main guns.  They tore apart more than half the small turrets
and worked steadily down the length of the towers.  She continued firing, even
as the battle station unleashed its main gun and eradicated her.

Gavin grasped the gravity well of the distant
neutron star and placed it within the heart of the ithiral stardrome. 
Explosions, like liquid, poured into her center mass.  A waterfall of metal and
plastic flowed from the skyline.  She shrank in fits and bursts.  Seconds
later, the stardrome was gone, and another deafening cheer rang up from the
bridge crew.

Gavin’s chest ached, and his head swam.  He
steadied himself upon the edge of the tactical console.

The stardromes changed course.  A dozen formed up
and advanced on the
Wraithfin
’s position, abandoning their previous engagements. 
On the opposite side of the planet, the remnants of the Union fleets gave chase
as the battle stations that had been decimating them sought a single new target.

Range was not Gavin’s concern, and time was on his
side as the ithirals ponderously advanced.  Well before the battle stations had
moved into firing range, he placed the pulsar’s gravity within each of them. 
One stardrome at a time, the twelve-strong formation vanished from the
battlefield, the sum of its matter destroyed on an atomic level.

“The western hemisphere is all clear!” Hull
announced.  “Gavin, you did it!”  Grinning, he clapped loudly and hooted.  “The
coordinates of the ithiral beacon tower are on the screen in front of you.  Get
Sawyer’s team in there.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” he muttered and stared down
at the tactical display.  He took in the relational data and steadied his
breathing.  “Right,” he whispered, and he created a rift between a single crate
in the main cargo hold and the entrance into the underground passages leading
to the beacon tower.  He was to hold it open until Captain Hull received a
signal from the strike team that everyone was inside.

He wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed
when the captain stood up, wearing a defiant smile.  Hull announced, “They’re
through!”  He regarded Gavin.  “Gavin, they’re through.  You can let go.”

“Oh, sorry,” he muttered, and a line of spittle
trailed from his lower lip.  Bile swelled up from his stomach, as Gavin closed
the tunnel.  Wiping at his brow, his hands shook as he fought to maintain his
balance.  “It’s, uh… closed.  Sorry.”

“Hey, kid, are you feeling alright?” asked Hull, and
he stepped to Gavin’s side.

Swallowing to moisten his throat, Gavin answered,
“Sure.  I… I think I just… need some water.”  He collapsed, unconscious, at
Captain Hull’s feet.

Displayed on both the main view screen and the
holographic battle grid, the rest of the ithiral fleet crested Thasad’s western
horizon.  Unknown to them, the
Draconian
led the advance.

“
Freedom
is never dear at any price.  It is the breath of life.  What would a man not
pay for living?
” –Mohandas Gandhi

Eons ago, the ithirals had
mastered quantum mechanics.  They built molecular manipulation into day-to-day
undertakings: food generation, material formation and transportation.  So
thoroughly and regularly did they manipulate matter on an atomic level that
their existence took on a deep and distracting sense of impermanence.  As time
progressed, the ithiral people increasingly turned to automation, and over the
course of generations, their factories came to know volumes more about
production than those who had built them.  Immersed in an opulent world of
replicators and teleportation, they eventually forgot how to make the very
devices they had come to reply upon.  Science became religion, and religion
turned into brutal xenophobia.

They grew restless, as their own world had become
very small in their eyes.

On a day long lost to time, a charismatic leader
rose to power and called upon his people to join him in the First Black
Crusade.  They spread to the stars, conquering planets and ruthlessly wiping
out their inhabitants.  Theirs was a doctrine of superiority, and every
populace they encountered that did not exceed their technological prowess was
deemed unworthy and marked for extinction.

Over the course of centuries, the zealous Ithiral
Dominion utterly subjugated their galaxy, and the First Black Crusade
concluded, deemed a sweeping success by the ruling theocracy.  But there were
other galaxies in need of cleansing, and thus began the Second Black Crusade. 
First on their list was the Milky Way.

Upon arriving in their citadel ships, they took
stock of the galactic culture.  Two factions vied for dominance: the Galactic
Union of Allied Worlds and the Ellogon Empire.  While the Union had greater
numbers, the ellogons were more advanced.  As they saw it, it was an honor to
be First Burned, one they bestowed upon the ellogon fleets, their core worlds,
and ultimately Thasad, their planet of origination.

But for a brief and confusing incident aboard the
Draconian
,
they had not lost a single life in their quest to purge this galaxy of its
heathens.  Still, the Union had a great many more worlds than had the Empire,
and the ithirals desired a greater number of starships for a swifter conclusion
to their plans.  They set up a teleport beacon that could draw their citadels
from galaxies away.

Now, with millions dead, lost to a devastating and
mysterious technology at the Union’s disposal, they were faced with the
realization that they had at last met a technologically superior foe.  Their
beliefs demanded surrender.  And so the ithiral leaders were faced with two
choices: bow before the might of the Union, or summon the might of their whole
armada.

·· • ··

Aboard the
Wraithfin
, Valerie stood at the
back of her strike team.  Like the other members of her attack group, she was
dressed in standard Battle Dress.  She recognized a few faces from the K’n-yal
operation: Brucker, Haley and Ajax.

Everyone’s attention was on a single black crate
seated in the center of the cargo hold.  Any moment now, it would fall through
spacetime, signaling their advance.  Anxiously, Valerie watched as the
Wraithfin
suddenly shuddered.  She creaked and moaned as she shook, and warning klaxons
blared.  The computer announced that her ventral armor was compromised and that
hull breach was imminent.

The corvette pitched, tossing the strike team
about and scattered them to the deck.  A moment later, the shaking stopped, and
tense silence hung in the air.  Brucker got to his feet, prompting the rest of
his team to do the same.  He spoke into his microphone and waited, but received
no response.  Waving to one of his fellows, he instructed the trooper to get an
update from the bridge in person.

With a snappy salute, the soldier dashed to the
bay’s forward bulkhead.  A moment later, he declared, “The cargo bay’s breached!” 
He tried in vain to get the door to yield.  “Sir, we’re locked in!”

“How bad is it?”

“Minor, but we’re steadily losing air.”

Brucker nodded.  “Find it.  Patch it, and that
should reset the overrides.”  His team spread across the deck, seeking the leak
into the void, listening for the whistle of flowing air.  Valerie’s head was
light, and she was having difficulty drawing a full breath.  Her ears popped
incessantly.

Before they could uncover the fissure, the central
crate tumbled backward through the air and vanished.  Brucker called his team
together, and they marched through the rift Ensign Santiago had created for
them.  Steeling herself, Valerie followed, the last one to cross through.

Brucker removed his earpiece and toyed with the
microphone.  It had been damaged when he was thrown to the deck, but not
badly.  He made a few quick adjustments and returned it to his ear.  “Captain
Hull,” he said, and he grinned as he heard a response.  “We’re through.”

It took a moment for the tunnel to collapse, and
in that moment, Valerie studied her surroundings.

Enormous stone pillars rose up from what had very
recently been the jungle floor, endless rings of mesas interconnected by natural
bridges.  Built atop the network of plateaus, the ellogon capital was a skyline
of soaring buttresses, swooping architecture and majestic arches that glittered
in the sun.  Roofs were plated in gold, bronze and copper, wondrous caps upon
hundreds of towers.  Radiant motes hovered over ornate byways.  Adrift within
Thasad’s heavy atmosphere, they would brighten the night, a gently flowing
river of light.  Glassy waterfalls spilled down from rooftops into artificial
lagoons, fountains and decorative canals.

Like the branches of an ancient banyan tree,
elevators and pathways connected all levels of the city, joined by plunging spiral
staircases.  Abundant sky docks had been subtly woven into the ancient
architecture.  Enormous steel fans, slats and sails sprang from building facades,
esthetic sentries endlessly trumpeting their architects’ passion for form. 
Great market spheres floated in mid-air, now little more than memories of a
time when the ellogons had thrived.  Monolithic skyscrapers gleamed in the
early morning sun, reaching for the firmament.  Between the taller buildings,
towering holographic displays cycled through giant images of trees and animals
that had been native to Thasad.

Some distance away, directly ahead of the strike
team, the ithiral beacon tower rose up from the streets.  It cast aside bridges
and byways, crushing the structures surrounding it into rubble.  Composed of
three distinct modules, it stood nearly as tall as the tallest ellogon towers.

At its base, brilliant coils lined the flat sides
of a steeply sloped power center.  Beyond the coils, a few stories off the
ground, a huge circular generator slowly turned in time with the sequential
brightening of the capacitor coils.  It was connected to an enormous L-shaped
arm that was in turn mounted to the generator by means of a giant axe-shaped
piston.  Along the sloped face, enclosed catwalks allowed access to the lower
module’s inner workings.

Nestled against the power center’s far side, an
administrative tower loomed twice as tall as its shorter counterpart.  Cylindrical
in shape, indented rings separated each of the module’s dozens of floors. 
Ghostly green light bled from embedded windows.  It was crowned by a convex,
overhanging disk.

Completing the tower, the actual beacon itself was
seated against the far side of the administrative module.  It touched the
clouds, much simpler in appearance than its companion modules.  Plated in
burnished steel, an indented ring marked the base of an enormous lamp that lit
the mantle of clouds.  Cylindrical in shape, with a rounded top, it was encased
in a colossal cage of phased metal that shared a quantum state with every other
beacon tower across the multi-galactic Ithiral Dominion.

The entirety of the structure was enclosed in the
same shields that protected the ithiral citadels.

At the feet of the strike team, an access plate
allowed them entry into the underground maintenance network.  According to
previous scans, the shields didn’t extend past the surface.  Brucker planned to
use the tunnels to bypass the shields and lead his troops up through the
tower’s basement.

The team moved into position behind nearby
buildings as a demolitionist set charges on the surface of the hatch.  He
returned to his comrades, and a muted boom sent the trapdoor down into the
depths.  Brucker urged his team through, and they descended single file along a
steel ladder, reaching a grated landing within a series of vast access tubes. 
Status kiosks stood at the intersections.  Silently, they displayed sections of
the city, flashing red, flashing constant warnings.

Moving quickly, the strike team advanced toward
the tower, checking for hostiles along the way.  They followed a lengthy,
curving tunnel to its abrupt end.  Tattered steel edges drooped toward the
capital’s ocean of automated machinery, set some distance back from the beacon
tower’s enclosed basement.

Brucker called an engineer over, and she deployed
a narrow folding bridge that spanned the gap.  Carefully, she crossed the metal
plank and pulled a plasma cutter from her tool belt.  Intensely focused, she
set to carving a hole in the metal face.

Valerie closed her eyes and reached out in search
of the hollowness she had come to associate with ithiral thought.  She found
hundreds of candidates, and she took note of their positions.  Suddenly, there
was a rush of movement, but none of it was toward the basement.  Dozens ran for
the beacon module, and dozens more hurried to man the power station. 
“Something’s got them in a panic,” she said, and she opened her eyes.

“How much time until they get here?” asked
Brucker.

Valerie shook her head.  “It’s not because of us. 
I think they’re getting ready to fire up the beacon.”

“We’re in,” the engineer interjected, and she
stepped back from the glowing edges of the steel slab she had created.  Blowing
into her hands, she stored her plasma cutter and produced four heavy suction
cups that she placed near the top of the slab as it groaned and creaked under
its own weight.  With the push of a button on each, they sealed themselves and
deployed four cables.  The engineer took up the cables and crossed back to her
teammates, passed them out to four strong fellows, and they lowered the slab
slowly into the passage beyond just as it began to topple backward.

Cautiously, the assault group made its way deeper
into the complex.  They climbed up through the basement, and soon stood before
the door leading into the power center.  The air itself seemed electrified as
Brucker gathered his troops.  “Show no mercy,” he declared, “for they will show
you none.”  With grim certainty, he pushed open the door and held it open until
the last of his team had passed through.

Ajax took the lead, armed with a Hurricane-Pattern
automatic blaster.  His battle armor provided the mechanical assistance needed
to bear the crushing weight of the massive gun.  At his side, four others bore
the same heavy weapons, and they marched into a crowd of surprised ithiral
workmen.  Before they could raise their hands, Ajax’s fire squad mowed them
down.  Streams of blaster bolts lit up the machinery, chewed away its housings,
exposing conduits and fiber cables for an instant before they dissolved in a
hail of charged plasma. 

Haley raced for a nearby set of stairs, springing
along the steps to the catwalk.  She quickly deployed her sniper laser, as four
others did the same at different points around the room.  “We’re in position,”
she whispered into her headpiece and trained her scope on the door visible to
her, far across the room.

Thundering booms sounded from the coils outside,
and the power center was suddenly cast into complete darkness.  Strike team
members activated vest lamps, got their bearings and spread out.  Into his
headpiece, Brucker said, “The tower has been neutralized.  We’re ready for
extraction.  Lock on my location.”

Captain Hull’s response was filled with static.

“I repeat: we’re ready for extraction.  Lock on my
location.”

Again, Hull’s response was unintelligible.

Brucker watched an electrical charge snake,
web-like, across the flooring.  Along the walls of the massive chamber, nine gray
machines the size of refrigerators rose up from floor plates and began to hum. 
Debris littered the room in smoldering heaps of varying heights and density.

“Stay sharp,” he said.

Suddenly, the front panel of a gray machine burst
open, and a dark blur struck from within.  Clad in matte black body armor, his
head encased in a featureless helmet, the ithiral warrior attacked with a blade
so sharp it sundered Ajax’s hurricane rifle in two, just in front of the
trigger guard.  Plasma spilled out like advancing lava and burned through the
ground.

“Kill them all!” Brucker roared.

Ithiral warriors sprang from their pods, sweeping
into the strike team, blades swinging.  Three of his soldiers fell as Brucker
leveled his blaster at the warrior charging him.  He pulled the trigger, but
the ithiral dodged the blast and instantly closed the distance to the strike
team’s leader.

Brucker spit on his mask as the warrior reached
back with his blade.  The side of the ithiral’s head spilled out onto the
ground, however, a red lance drilled straight through it. Gasping, Brucker
gratefully glanced up, found Haley, and she nodded.

Brucker’s troops desperately aimed their weapons
and fired.  Integrated combat systems engaged blaster safeties as needed to
prevent friendly fire.  In vain, they tried to track their stealthy foe, only
to have barrels sliced from their stocks, limbs cut from their trunks.  The vaulted
room filled with the screams of the wounded and dying.