Progeny

By Dan Worth

Chapter 1

Over and over he had the same dream. He dreamt that he was falling from the sky - plunging like a meteor to the ground far below. The wind screamed in his ears as he fell and that scream was mixed with other sounds, human sounds, urgent voices and shouts of terror. The green land below him was heavily forested and threaded with the bright ribbons of rivers and the silvered patches of lakes. Wispy cloud moved across it as it rushed closer.

The dream always ended the same way: with a gut wrenching jolt as he was yanked fiercely backwards by unseen hands, then moments later a crashing impact that threw him forwards, and then another and another until the dream ended in pain and darkness and no other sounds save those of his own breathing and the beating of the blood in his ears.

He woke. His vision was unfocused. A patch of dappled green moved unsteadily in front of him at the end of a dark tunnel clogged with angular shapes. He mumbled something, reached to touch the pain in his face and winced.

He was being held. Cradled.

He blacked out again and was falling once more.

There were sounds all around him: whoops and screeches, buzzing and chirruping calls and low, echoing booms. Where there had been green before there was now a patch of lesser darkness than that which surrounded him, it was speckled with glowing lights like little yellow stars. He watched them as they danced complex patterns amidst the shadows: a hypnotic ballet of light.

Dizziness and drowsiness overtook him. He just wanted to hang there and sleep. He drifted off again. He fell.

There was light again. That patch of green had reappeared. Things began to focus at last. There was something in front of his face. It was grey and padded and speckled with dried blood. His blood. He raised one hand to his nose and, touching it long enough to feel the blood encrusted there, cried out with the sudden shock of the pain.

His nose was broken, had to be. He felt nauseous. He wondered how the hell that had happened as he was still fully strapped in. Gradually he began to get his bearings. He was seated, that much was clear, but the seat was tipped forward at a crazy angle. Fumbling with unfeeling hands he realised that there were broad, padded straps across his shoulders, chest and lap that were keeping him from falling out. The woman next to him was hanging oddly. In her panic she didn’t appear to have properly secured her own restraints. Her broken body was slack in death. Her face looked familiar. Perhaps the arm of the woman seated next him had flailed out during the crash and caught him and broken his nose? He didn’t know.

He looked around himself. There were other chairs like the one he sat in and the one whose backrest he had spattered with blood from his broken nose. They were arranged in rows up the tilted cabin. Each row had two pairs of seats either side of the central aisle. There were three rows, and then there was another pair of seats at the front in front of the patch of green.

He looked across the aisle. A man in a blue uniform was slumped there. His head was angled wrongly, his broken neck hanging slackly against the restraints, his limbs dangling like a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was a woman next to him whose restraints had snapped. Her bloody face was a ruin pressed against the back of the seat in front. There were others too in the other seats, all contorted and broken. All dead. There was a sickly smell in the air too: stale cooked meat and emptied bowels.

The disastrous re-entry and the shock of the impact had killed them, he realised that. He didn’t know how on Earth he’d survived. He’d always been a lucky bastard.

He undid the clasps that he held him and, bracing himself, fell forward against the seat in front with a grunt. Gripping the chair back he swung himself out of his seat then began to climb down the ladder formed from the angled chairs where they were bolted to the floor by heavy, steel stanchions.

He was still woozy. His vision was still not completely clear and the going was difficult. His right foot slipped against the smooth metal and, panicking, he threw one arm out to steady himself. Instead of grabbing metal or a chair arm or back he had grabbed the right arm of Ensign Douglas, pulling the man’s body forwards until it started to slide beneath his restraints. The young ensign’s head lolled forward and the corpse groaned horribly as air was expelled from its lungs as it was forced against the straps.

Swearing, he released his grip on the dead man and grabbed the back of the chair in front of him then, rotating himself so that his back was against the tilted, thinly carpeted floor, he carefully slid his way down to the front of the escape pod.

The cockpit of the escape pod was a mess. Debris had struck a glancing blow against the armoured cockpit windscreen and had cracked it before they had even begun their descent. The glass had held out until the violence of re-entry had finally shattered it, admitting a jet of superheated atmospheric gases into the cabin and directly into the faces of the two crewmen who had filled the pilot and co-pilot positions. Their headless corpses hung forward towards partially melted instrument consoles scattered with the crisped remains of flesh and skull fragments. Looking upwards he now saw that those sitting in the front row of passenger seats were also horribly burned almost beyond recognition. They grinned back at him from blackened skulls, each person now identifiable only by the nametags sewn into the breasts of their uniforms. He could remember all of their faces. They had been young and eager, loyal and devoted. All dead now. Such a waste of youth. But he didn’t have time to mourn. He would do that later. Right now he needed to get out of this place.

Underneath the raised cockpit positions was a compartment containing survival equipment. He grabbed the handles of the panel covering the compartment and pulled it free with a dull thud, then reached inside. There were emergency rations, first aid equipment, signal flares and short range comms gear along with rucksacks, all weather clothing and enough flimsy environment suits to equip the escape pod’s maximum passenger capacity. There was also a sturdy plastic crate with a padded interior containing a number of side-arms and another full of ammunition. He left the suits – the air here was breathable or else he’d be dead by now – but he grabbed one of the rucksacks and stuffed it with as much of the food and first aid supplies as he could fit inside along with one of the comm. units and one of the pistols which he strapped to his belt. He filled his pockets and the side pockets of the rucksack with ammo.

There was another item inside the compartment too: a heavy, metal briefcase that he hauled from the back of the space and then inspected. It was the escape pod’s emergency hypercom distress beacon. He decided to take that too.

Eventually, grunting under the weight of his fully laden rucksack and with the beacon in its case in his left hand he popped the hatch on the escape pod and made his way outside.

The pod had come to rest in the branches of an immense tree. It was one of many. Looking along the branch that the pod had finally been caught by and upon which he now stood, he saw that it sprouted from a main trunk over two hundred metres in diameter and whose top, presumably kilometres above, was invisible amidst the layers of foliage. Dappled green, shifting light filtered down through the foliage, lending the scene an almost underwater feel, like the bottom of a lake. The air was filled with cries of the local wildlife, providing a background cacophony of buzzing, shrieking and whooping ululations as they attracted mates, fought, declared their territories and alerted one another to the presence of predators.

Looking about he saw that there were many such trees, marching off into the distance all around. They were similarly vast, their branches jutting out at unusually regular intervals, so that the branches from different trees grew together and intertwined and formed layers of growth. The trees in turn had been colonised by vines and moss-like vegetation and countless other plants that fed from the nutrients found in the pockets of moisture that gathered in the crooks and hollows in the branches. The trees were impossibly old, perhaps tens of millennia in age. During that time the various layers of foliage had matted together, decayed, composted into loam and solidified to form a sturdy footing. He trod gingerly at first, but soon realised that the suspended layer of vegetation would easily support him. There were, however, a few gaps here and there and looking down one such hole he could see other, successive layers below him until, hundreds of metres below, he could just see the ground, shrouded in green tinted shadows.

He stopped and turned and looked back at the escape pod, buried nose down in the branches. The boxy, snub nosed craft was scorched from re-entry and dented in a dozen places from the crash landing, not to mention the shattered cockpit. One airbrake jutted upwards from the rear of the craft, like a broken insect’s wing. The others had been torn off during the descent. He looked upwards across the green, cathedral-like space towards the leafy ceiling above and saw the hole that had been punched there by the pod’s fall. One of the pod’s airbrakes was suspended there, wrapped in vines. Through that gap was visible another hole in the layer above and so on and so on until a distant, ragged patch of blue sky could be seen at the top of the tunnel burrowed through the layers of greenery.

Something white fluttered there, the remains of the escape pod’s parachute that had been ripped off as it hit the top layer of branches. It would be visible from the air, of that he had little doubt. He glanced at the date and time on his watch. He had been unconscious in the pod for almost two standard days. Too long. They would be looking for him. He had to get away from this place as soon as possible, far away, to lessen their chances of finding him. Then he had to find a way to get off this moon. First things first, he needed to know where the hell he was.

He pulled the comm. unit off his belt and accessed its built-in mapping function. It produced a detailed map of the moon almost instantly, but the device couldn’t tell him where he actually was and reported that the network of global positioning satellites was currently un-contactable. Probably knocked out during the attack, he concluded grimly. He remembered seeing something about these forests once, some wildlife documentary. That, and the stickily warm climate placed him somewhere in the tropics of this Earth sized moon, but that wasn’t an awful lot of help. He needed to find some sort of landmark and get his bearings, or else he could be wandering forever, or worse still, into the arms of the enemy. He squinted up through the branches and tried to work out the position of the sun. It was almost impossible, but from the angle of the shadows he could estimate its rough position.

He checked the small compass that he had found in the survival kit and stuffed it in his pocket. Well, at least this moon had a magnetic field, though it was a little weaker than that of the Earth’s and he suspected that the fields of the moon’s parent gas giant were confusing his compass. The compass needle kept wobbling as if uncertain about the direction of north. Truth be told, he had no idea if this place’s magnetic north had any correlation with what had been deemed to be its north pole in terms of its axis of rotation. What the hell, at least it would keep him walking in the same direction, he hoped. North was as good a direction as any, just as long as he got away from here.

He adjusted the rucksack’s straps that had already begun to cut into his shoulders with the weight of their contents and then, following his compass, set off walking across the uneven surface, leaving the final resting place of his comrades behind him.

Chapter 2

Momentarily blinded, Chen felt the shot strike her. It spun her, knocking her off her feet as she lunged and sent her sprawling on the deck. The photochromic layer on the bridge windows finally compensated, blocking the brilliant light from the massive AM warhead detonations taking place outside. Panicking, her vision still occluded by the after-images, she looked up and saw Haldane. He stood with the gun in his hand and was looking down at his chest with a puzzled expression on his face. A dark stain was beginning to spread across his right breast. The gun fell from his limp fingers and he slumped to the deck.

Chen tried to move, and felt burning pain in her left upper arm. Gasping from the sudden pain, she scrambled to her feet and saw Commander Blackman, her chief of security, standing in the entrance to the bridge clad in combat armour, rail rifle gripped firmly in his gloved hands. The rest of her crew were frozen in shock. Blackman rushed forward and aimed the weapon at Haldane’s head for the kill-shot.

‘Wait!’ said Chen, wincing with pain. ‘We need him alive if possible! He claims to be human. Have him examined. If he’s lying, kill him.’

‘Ma’am,’ Blackman replied and then began yelling into his comm. for a medical team. He turned to Chen, looking apprehensively at the spreading bloodstain on her upper arm. ‘You okay, Admiral?’

‘I’ll live,’ she replied grimly, as the throbbing ache in her arm grew. ‘Thank you Commander. We have a battle to win.’ She cast a disgusted look at Haldane’s prostrate form and added. ‘Now get this piece of shit off my bridge.’

Reynaud’s mind screamed in agony. He was being burned alive. The pain! He had never felt such torture! He writhed in torment as the radiation washed through him. The ship convulsed around him like an animal thrown into a scalding lake. He could feel the pain of the others as their minds were snuffed out, vaporised in an instant as they became pure energy. He couldn’t control the ship as it writhed. He couldn’t bear the pain. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t act. Couldn’t… He was trapped within this dying thing, imprisoned within this crystalline shell which, even now, shuddered and died. His violated body, now little more than a machine encased skull and spinal column would be entombed within it, for without the ship’s systems to keep him alive he would surely die.

As the ship’s skin faded to a deathly black, he lost all contact with the dominating will of the Shaper consciousness, and the realisation of what had happened to him flooded back. His humanity had been stripped from him, his body had been mutilated and destroyed, his mind had been enslaved. He would never set eyes on the world again, never touch, never feel the warmth or the love of another. All his dreams and hopes had been snatched from him. His life, what remained of it, would end here - trapped in this hulk. He tried to cry out in anguish, but his throat was filled with machines and he could not weep for he no longer possessed eyes with which to do so, the sockets having been crammed with invasive tendrils.

The ship was dead now. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t taste or smell or speak. He was truly alone and trapped within this alien tomb. A god no longer, he waited fearfully for the end to come.

Sitting shakily back in her command chair, Chen assured her shocked bridge crew that she was not seriously harmed, and then she quickly took stock of the situation. The formation of Shaper vessels had taken the brunt of the bombardment. Where before there had been a massive arrowhead formation of over thirty alien vessels, there was now nothing except for a rapidly expanding shell of radiation and fragments of spinning debris. The trailing Shaper ships had suffered heavily also. Having been fried by the sudden burst of radiation, many were now drifting out of control, dead in space, their blackened hulls contorted as if they were living things that had died in great pain. The survivors were peeling away. Wounded things, they were attempting to spread out to avoid a second attack. Several disappeared back into hyperspace to lick their wounds. The renegade human ships on the other hand - being further back - had escaped the worst, though the blast had collapsed the shields of the majority of vessels and had overloaded their sensors and targeting systems. Still, they powered forwards towards the waiting loyalist fleet. The Germanicus and its group led the charge, with the Nimitz and Hector groups in flanking position and the Marathon bringing up the rear. Chen would meet them head on. Quickly, she gave out orders. She had to seize the moment.

‘All ships, this is Admiral Chen,’ she announced. ‘Launch all available bomber wings and as many escort fighters as you can get off the decks. Tac. missile frigates are to begin bombardment of the advancing ships. Ships without shields are priority targets. All friendly ships are to remain in formation and engage the enemy at optimal firing range.’

A steady stream of bombers and fighters began to emerge from the forward launch catapults of the loyalist carriers as the missile frigates opened fire on the leading enemy ships with a barrage of depleted uranium slugs. The long, kinetic rounds were useless against shielded vessels, but they were devastating when used against exposed hulls. The leading destroyer of the renegade fleet, the Nile, took the worst of the initial volley. In vain, its defensive turrets attempted to intercept the inbound warheads, destroying a couple, but the remainder slammed home into the vessel’s superstructure, decapitating the ship and annihilating the bridge section at a stroke. As the vessel lost control and began to roll forward, a second volley struck the forward gun decks, exploding the energy capacitors that fed the forward batteries and breaking the ship in two.

With the Nile out of action, the missile frigates switched targets to another destroyer shielding the Germanicus - the Crecy. Meanwhile, the loyalist bomber and fighter squadrons had begun their attack run, the tiny craft initiating a looping course that would enable them to dive onto their targets whilst keeping out of the line of fire between the capital ships. They now climbed above the two fleets as depleted uranium rounds from the missile frigates under Chen’s command sped below them and pummelled the enemy ships.

The renegade fleet was within a hundred kilometres now and the Nimitz and Hector groups were breaking away and attempting to flank her ships. Chen checked her tactical display and noted that the Shaper ships were beginning to rally and regroup. She ordered the Nemesis class ships that had launched the opening AM barrage and which were now out of ammunition to withdraw from the field before they were attacked in return. She didn’t have a lot of time.

The Crecy was going down under the barrage from Chen’s missile frigates. Her bow section and forward gun decks had been smashed and her superstructure had taken a terrible pounding. She began to slew to one side as another volley of kinetic rounds struck her and began to break her apart. Admiral Cox’s ship, the Germanicus, was now exposed.

‘Gunnery control,’ Chen ordered. ‘Target the Germanicus and fire the Arkari cannon on my command. Helm, adjust our aim.’

‘Sir,’ replied Goldstein and the ship swung fractionally. Chen’s HUD showed that her vessel was now tracking the advancing enemy carrier. Wait till you get a load of this, you bastard, Chen thought to herself and then barked: ‘Fire!’

The Arkari spatial distortion cannon that had replaced the Churchill’s main gun spat a stream of hyper-dimensional death at the advancing enemy carrier. It struck the Germanicus’s bows dead centre and collapsed them like wet paper, instantly blunting and shattering the wedge shaped nose of the craft. The impact travelled on through the vessel’s internal hangar bays, twisting the internal structure of the ship, breaking apart ammunition magazines and fuel supplies and crushing the fully fuelled and armed craft waiting on her bow catapults. A vast ripple travelled along the length of the two kilometre long warship in an instant, ripping off armoured hull plates, shattering view ports and tearing open the hull in a hundred different places.

The creature on the bridge of the Germanicus that had once been Admiral Cox roared in surprise and alarm. It felt the deck beneath it buck violently from the impact, felt the disorientating backwash from the weapon and then the awful shudder as the ship began to come apart beneath its feet. Through the bridge windows it saw the skin of the warship rip open along its length like a great blade had been thrust into the Germanicus’ guts to eviscerate her. A dozen alarms began to sound as the impact reached the bridge and instantly shattered the broad windows that Cox had been staring out of. A howling wind dragged him out of his command chair. His arms flailed, his hands seeking purchase on anything as the others on the bridge around him were similarly sucked towards the waiting vacuum in a howl of venting atmosphere.

As his feet flew through the shattered window into freezing darkness, Cox’s right hand caught the broken edge of the armoured pane. For a second he held on, before the emergency shutters detected the sudden decompression and slammed down upon his hand, severing it above the wrist.

Cox howled as he tumbled free of the ship, trailing a stream of blood from his shattered arm. He screamed Chen’s name in rage, but no sound came from his mouth in the vacuum. The creature inside him immediately attempted to filter out all neural messages from the pain receptors across his body as the sudden exposure to cold, hard vacuum began to wreak havoc with the body of the fragile human being it had chosen to inhabit, but the Shaper creature was overloaded with sensory data - sensations that it found new and fascinating. It knew now what it felt like to die, how it felt to feel the life being ripped from a fragile, biological body. Now it knew true pain. Pain like it had never known. Cox’s blood began to boil in his veins. His lungs burst. His bowels evacuated. The Shaper creature inside him was transfixed by this new experience for a moment.

Almost too late, the Shaper creature tried to regain control of Cox’s broken body as it tumbled away from the dying carrier in a cloud of debris and twitching once-human forms. The Germanicus was breaking apart below him as kinetic rounds hammered the dying vessel. The Shaper creature leapt into action, using the nano-filaments that it had spread throughout Cox’s body to repair the most critical damage: shoring up rupturing organs, sealing punctured arteries and siphoning off pressure. Below him, great plumes of plasma had begun to vent from the Germanicus’s port side as the engines began to disintegrate, the brilliant blue of the eruptions contrasting with the livid orange of the fires that consumed the vessel, fed by the oxygen rich atmosphere within.

All around, the battle raged. Ships fought and died. Cox looked upwards and saw a great squadron of loyalist torpedo bombers dive onto the renegade fleet, whereupon they unleashed a hail of deadly missiles onto their exposed and unshielded decks.

The Shaper creature cried out to its fellows for rescue. Through its remaining working eye it could see other struggling figures all around it. It had stopped the bleeding, for now, but it would repair this vessel in time, even though it could manage perfectly well without all these extraneous organs and tissues. The others would come for it soon enough.

The two fleets were approaching optimum firing rage. Ships on both sides began to open up with energy beam weapons, criss-crossing the void between the two fleets with brilliant spears of light.

The Germanicus shuddered and exploded.

There was a ragged cheer from the Churchill’s bridge crew as the Germanicus went down. Chen felt a grim satisfaction as the carrier blew itself apart, taking Cox with it, she assumed. The Germanicus’s group was been taken apart by the concentrated fire of her entire fleet. The considerable amount of defensive laser fire being thrown up by the unshielded enemy warships had not saved them from the hail of warheads that had rained down on them from her torpedo bomber squadrons nor from the barrage of missiles, particle beam and plasma fire from the massed loyalist warships that finished them off. A couple of the trailing frigates, the Boadicea and the Demosthenes had escaped the worst and now attempted to come about and jump away. The first, the Boadicea, was first disabled by a wing of Azrael bombers before a kill-shot from the Nelson’s plasma cannon took out the vessel’s powerplant just as she tried to jump. The resulting hyperspatial collapse ripped the Boadicea apart and temporarily disabled her sister ship’s jump drive long enough for a barrage from the loyalist destroyers to collapse the Demosthenes’ wavering aft shields before a volley from the missile frigates impacted her engine block and detonated her reactor.

The Germanicus’ group had been destroyed in short order, but now a vast, spreading cloud of broken ships and scattered debris was drifting towards Chen’s ships. Whilst she had been busy destroying Cox’s command ship and its escorts, the Nimitz and Hector groups had assumed stand-off attack positions to either side of the loyalist fleet and were beginning to launch fighters and bombers, whilst the Marathon group had halted. Chen had to act quickly lest her ships be surrounded and their early success squandered. Meanwhile, the surviving half dozen Shaper ships were beginning to form up into a claw-shaped formation centred around one of the surviving larger vessels a thousand kilometres away. It wasn’t over yet.

Chen’s ships began to fire on the approaching debris, shattering the chunks of dismembered warships into more manageable pieces. She ordered her formations to spread out to allow the debris cloud to pass between ships, but even so, there were a number of glancing impacts on the hulls of the assembled vessels causing minor damage to external systems and armour plating.

Chen considered her next move. Cox had split his forces, presumably with the intention of getting her to do the same in response to make it easier for the more powerful Shaper vessels to destroy her fleet. She wasn’t going to take the bait. Cox was gone and his forces were scattered. She would take them apart piecemeal before they could regroup.

‘Ensign Andrews, send a message to all ships,’ she ordered. ‘Commence attack on the Hector and its group. All bombers are to return to base and re-arm, whilst fighters are to regroup to our rear to cover our advance against bomber strikes from the Nimitz.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Helm, bring us about to engage the Hector, ahead full and take us out of this debris field. Gunnery control, prepare to fire once we’re in range.’

‘Admiral,’ came the reply from gunnery as the Churchill changed course and accelerated. ‘Status of the Arkari cannon is thirty percent and charging.’

‘Thank you Commander Mitchell,’ Chen replied. ‘Save its use for now, we’ll need it against those Shaper ships. Use everything else at your disposal. Chen out.’

The medical team had, meanwhile, removed Haldane from the bridge. Blackman’s men kept Haldane under heavy guard, even as the Churchill’s medical team tried to save his life. One of the medics had remained on the bridge to see to Chen’s wound. Luckily, it seemed that the bullet had only grazed her upper arm, cutting a deep gash from her left shoulder. Nevertheless, it hurt like hell and Chen’s uniform was quickly becoming soaked in blood. Chen winced as the young female medic carefully cut away a section of her bloodied uniform before she cleaned and dressed the wound.

The Commonwealth ships were moving out of the debris field now and heading for the Hector and its group. Ensign Andrews, manning the comms station, piped up:

‘Admiral, a number of ships are reporting boarding attempts.’

‘What?’ replied Chen, puzzled. ‘How is that possible? We saw no assault craft.’

‘I… I don’t know, ma’am,’ Andrews replied. ‘The Dowding, the Marlborough, the Blucher and the Bader have all reported that the enemy have successfully breached external hatches and have gained entry. They each have their respective situations under control. Only a small number of the enemy were successful in gaining entry in each case, but they have suffered explosive decompression in the affected compartments. Maybe it was an inside job, ma’am?’

‘We regularly screened the crews of those ships,’ Chen replied. ‘But it’s possible that Haldane wasn’t alone. How the…?’

Goldstein cried out in shock. Chen followed her gaze. There was a figure pressed against the bridge windows: a man dressed in a Commonwealth Navy uniform, or what had once been a man. One arm and half of his face were missing, burned away. The rest of his features were distorted, blackened and bloody from the effects of exposure to hard vacuum, but yet he still moved. His remaining hand beat madly at the armoured pane as he fixed Chen with a sightless gaze.

‘He’s still alive…’ muttered Chen in horror.

‘It must be the Shaper parasite,’ said Singh. ‘Any normal human being would be long dead by now.’

‘Agreed.’

See what awaits you…

It was there again, the whispering voice at the back of her mind.

There is no death within our embrace, only eternal bliss for the undying.

‘Anyone else hear that?’ asked Singh.

Chen shuddered and nodded. ‘Lieutenant Commander, order our marines to be watchful for any attempt to breach our external hatches. Andrews, warn all other ships to do the same. Someone get that thing out of my view.’

‘Gladly sir,’ replied Goldstein and worked her console. The armoured shutters designed to shield the bridge slammed down. When they were raised again, the crushed remains of the enslaved man could be seen drifting away from the windows, which were now smeared with blood. His head had been completely smashed, killing the horrible creature within. Slowly, he tumbled upwards out of sight.

Chen’s wound throbbed. They were coming up on the Hector group now. The carrier sat between its four principle Titan class escorts, as well as an equal number of cruisers and frigates in a text book formation. They were heavily outnumbered by Chen’s oncoming forces, but far from defenceless. As the loyalist ships approached, the renegade warships defending the Hector began to turn to present both fore and aft turrets to the enemy, maximising their firepower. It was a classic broadside tactic. A swarm of fighters and bombers hung above the enemy ships, poised to strike.

‘Enemy ships are preparing to fire!’ warned Singh. ‘The Hector is powering its main gun. They’re targeting us! Secondary beam cannons are still out of range.’

‘Brace for impact!’ Chen cried. ‘All carriers: target the Hector and take her down!’

‘Hector is firing!’ warned Singh.

Goldstein slammed the armoured shutters down once more, a split second before a terrific jolt threw Chen forward in her seat. She felt the ship shudder and flex from the impact.

‘Admiral, we have lost all forward shields!’ Singh reported hurriedly. ‘Forward sensors are offline, turrets one and two on our upper port side are out of action. We have also lost a number of defensive turrets across the forward portion of the ship. The hangar deck is reporting that the bow catapults are inoperative. We are venting atmosphere from our port bow section, decks five through eleven. Data links to other ships have been knocked offline by the EMP.’

‘Helm, reverse thrust and keep us out of range of their beam turrets until our shields come back up,’ Chen replied. ‘Mr Singh, order damage control teams to the bows, immediately.’

‘We can’t stop!’ cried Goldstein, frantically working her console. ‘Admiral, the port-side bow thrusters are not responding!’

As the carrier slewed to port, the bridge shutters began to raise once more, revealing a massive scar across the forward portion of the ship where the impact of the plasma bolt from the Hector had ripped across the port side of the bows and across the forward gun turrets, fusing and melting armour plating and slagging two of the turrets.

‘Bring us about so that our starboard side faces the enemy and use our starboard thrusters to reduce our speed.’ said Chen. ‘Gunnery, engage the enemy with all remaining fore and aft turrets!’

As they watched, the Hector went down. Repeated shots from the other four carriers collapsed its shields and armour and ripped a massive, gaping hole through the forward hull, the plasma bolts emerging from the far side of the vessel in a massive exit wound of shattered hull plating and bulkheads. The ship was burning inside from a hundred different fires fuelled from its internal atmosphere as well as ruptured fuel and power lines.

They were now within optimum firing distance for particle beam fire. Ships on both sides opened up with everything they could bring to bear. Chen was struggling to see exactly what was going on. With the forward sensors damaged and offline she was only getting information from one hemisphere around the ship. She peered out of the starboard windows to get a better view of the battle.

‘Mr Singh: what can you tell me?’

‘I’m rebooting our data link to the other ships’ sensors now, ma’am,’ Singh replied. ‘Engineering are sending teams to replace our sensor modules if possible. As far as the battle goes: we appear to be winning. Despite their defensive posture, we have the enemy outgunned.’

As if to emphasise his point, an enemy frigate, the Sitting Bull, exploded in a ball of nuclear fire. The remaining warships were being heavily battered by the combined fire of Chen’s flotilla. So far, Chen had lost no ships.

‘Excellent, Mr Singh.’

‘Also, our fighters have engaged the bombers from the Nimitz,’ Singh replied. ‘Some losses but they appear to have the upper hand. Reports from our wing leaders are that the Nimitz and the Marathon are… behaving oddly, they’re not advancing on our position or attempting to aid the Hector group in any way.’

Chen’s gut instinct told her that something was afoot. The Shapers must have something up their sleeve. The comm. crackled into life.

‘Churchill, this is Captain Diaz of the Leonides, we are detecting a large number of enemy fighters and bombers headed for your position. ‘I am detaching a couple of our anti-fighter cruisers, the Zama and the Isandlwana to assist.’

The Churchill’s sensors hadn’t seen those attacking wings! They must be approaching from their blind side. ‘Thank you Captain,’ replied Chen. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘Wait a second,’ replied Diaz. ‘Admiral, the Shaper ships are now advancing towards our position.’

‘Our data link is back on-line,’ reported Singh. ‘Confirmed, the Shaper ships are on an attack run towards the port side of our formation, the Nimitz and the Marathon are…’ he paused. ‘Sir, it looks like they’re preparing to jump away.’

‘They can’t possibly be retreating. We need to know where they’re headed! Andrews, signal all ships, they are to assume a defensive posture against the advancing Shaper ships as we complete our attack on the Hector group.’

As she spoke, concentrated beam fire leapt out from the remaining renegade warships and targeted the two flak cruisers moving to shield the Churchill. The Zama exploded almost immediately, its shields catastrophically collapsing, leaving the enemy beam fire free to rip through its superstructure into key power relays linked to its weapons systems. A series of explosions tore the ship open from within. The Isandlwana’s bow section and bridge took the brunt of the barrage of fire aimed at it, which killed the command staff instantly and left the ship drifting, but still able to defend itself.

Return fire from Chen’s warships was quickly wearing down the renegades. The Hector group was down to just three destroyers and two flak cruisers, but they were now choosing their targets more carefully, concentrating their defensive fire on individual ships. Splitting the carrier groups had been an enemy ruse and whatever they were up to, Chen knew in her gut that she had fallen for it.

‘Admiral, incoming enemy fighters and torpedo bombers!’ cried Singh. ‘They’re headed for our bows!’

‘Gunnery, open fire with all defensive turrets,’ Chen ordered. She could see the bright points of enemy squadrons diving towards them. The anti-fighter batteries of the other warships claimed some, turning those bright points into spinning, burning trails of fire, but the majority rushed onwards towards the Churchill, whose own, remaining defensive batteries began to put up a storm of laser fire. Enemy craft died in their dozens as they dived The forward shields were still offline. The enemy squadrons were well within the release range for torpedoes but hadn’t fired. Still they flew onwards towards the carrier. Chen realised with horror what they were doing.

‘All hands, brace for impact!’ she screamed as an Azrael torpedo bomber raced head on towards the bridge. Goldstein hit the bridge shutters.

There was a shattering jolt.

All across the upper forward decks of the Churchill, the kamikaze squadrons from the Hector slammed into the armoured plated hull in a final gesture of defiance as the carrier continued to fire furiously at the small, onrushing craft. The plumes of explosions blossomed across the vessel as the Azrael torpedo bombers and Daemon class fighters piloted by humans enslaved by the Shapers sacrificed themselves. The carrier, now heavily damaged and venting atmosphere in a dozen places, began to list.

The lights had gone out. Her HUD was offline. Chen picked herself up off the floor as the emergency lights kicked in, bathing everything in a dim red glow. Her crew similarly dusted themselves off. Singh dragged himself back to his console and found to his relief that it was still functioning as Goldstein tried to stabilise the ship, which had now begun to roll about its lateral axis. She also attempted to re-open the shutters and found that they were jammed shut.

‘Damage is pretty severe to the upper decks, Admiral,’ Singh reported, scanning the reports on his console. ‘Deck four is open to space in twenty different locations, decks five and six are also showing decompression. Decks three, two and one in the bridge tower have so far escaped the worst, though atmospheric levels are dropping around the emergency escape lock and there is damage to the power relays to the bridge, as you may have noticed. Casualties are unknown, but I think they’re inevitable.’

‘Engineering and sickbay have indicated that damage control and medical teams are on their way to the forward sections,’ Andrews informed them.

‘Okay, thank you Ensign. Mr Singh, can we still fight?’ enquired Chen.

‘I think so, yes,’ Singh replied. ‘The underside and rear of the ship are undamaged. The Arkari cannon is on-line and charged. We have sensor data relayed from the other ships. We will have some trouble manoeuvring. All vessels from the Hector group have been destroyed or are out of action, but the Shaper vessels are still inbound, ma’am. Our ships are in the defensive posture as ordered. All carriers report main guns charged and ready. The good news is that our shields are back on line and charging. Looks like engineering are re-routing power from the aft generators.’

‘Distance to the enemy?’

‘Approximately five hundred kilometres and closing.’

Chen peered at a nearby screen that showed a feed from an external camera. The Shapers’ ships could be seen faintly in a loose X formation that centred around a massive vessel at its centre, several kilometres in length.

‘Helm, point us at the largest ship.’

‘Aye Admiral,’ replied Goldstein then added. ‘I am having some difficult accurately aiming the Churchill.’

‘Gunnery, hold your fire,’ said Chen. ‘Let them come closer, we need to make this count.’

‘One hundred kilometres to target!’ reported Singh as the Shaper craft grew ever larger in the external feeds.

‘Just a little closer,’ murmured Chen. As she did so, the other carriers opened fire on the advancing vessels. The nimble Shaper craft dodged and wove quickly to avoid the incoming plasma bolts. Only two struck home, scoring glancing blows that seemed to do little damage.

‘Twenty five kilometres!’ said Singh, now sounding much more agitated.

‘Fire!’ snapped Chen.

The lights flickered for a moment, and then the ship lurched drunkenly to port.

‘That’s a miss!’ yelled Singh looking wildly at his console. ‘Oh god, that thing’s still coming at us!’

‘Fuck!’ spat Chen. ‘What happened?’

‘The recoil, our stabilising thrusters aren’t working properly! I don’t know I…’ babbled Goldstein.

Energy began to ripple across the bows of the massive Shaper craft as it bore down on them.

‘Shaper superdestroyer is preparing to fire at point blank range!’ cried Singh. ‘Oh fucking hell!’

‘Helm, get us out of here!’ exclaimed Chen. ‘We need to withdraw!’

‘The other ships are under heavy attack!’ said Singh. ‘The Nelson is suffering severe damage to her starboard side. Two of her escort destroyers are already down! The Leonides’ weapon systems are offline. The Dowding is venting atmosphere from her hangar deck.’

‘Andrews, signal all ships: jump to the far side of the Moon. We can regroup and counter attack from there.’

‘Three ships from the Grant’s escorts are out of action. Two have been destroyed. The crew of the Lexington are abandoning ship. The Grant’s shields have collapsed!’

Chen felt panic rising in her as Singh’s litany of destruction continued. Everything was starting to fall apart. Earth would be defenceless now if they failed…

‘Admiral, the jump drive is failing to engage!’ sobbed Goldstein as she fought with her controls. ‘She won’t respond!’

‘Our weapons are having little effect, Admiral,’ said Singh. ‘The shields on those Shaper vessels are just too strong… Shaper superdestroyer is firing!’ There was a sudden jolt and then a sickening lurch to starboard. ‘Our shields have gone offline again!’ he added and then he noticed new traces that appeared on his sensor display, massive vessels that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘I’m picking up other ships in the vicinity! They’re all around us!’

‘For god’s sake Mr Singh: what ships? How many!?’ yelled Chen in desperation as the Churchill shook heavily from more blows.

‘Over twenty, ma’am! They’re Nahabe vessels, gunsphere class… they’re firing on the Shapers!’ cried Singh, the relief clearly flooding into his voice.

The comm. came to life. The voice that issued from it was clearly that of translation software, calm and emotionless.

‘This is the Order of Void Hunters to all Commonwealth vessels. We come to your aid. Leave the world killers to us and withdraw, we have negated their drive inhibitor field, jump away now! Vengeance is required!’

‘Those are Nahabe ships, do as he says!’ said Chen, scarcely believing what she was hearing.

‘Where to, ma’am?’ replied Goldstein.

‘Wherever the hell the Nimitz and the Marathon went! This isn’t over!’

‘Admiral,’ said Singh, ‘The Nimitz and Marathon groups are attacking Amazonia Port.’

Amazonia Port was one of four gigantic orbital spaceports in geostationary orbit above the Earth’s equator, linked to the ground below by the slender, shining threads of space elevators. The five kilometre wide plate-like structures formed the main trade hubs within the Solar System and were still packed with tens of thousands of civilians desperately trying to reach the relative safety of the planet below them.

The Churchill had jumped clear of the battle, leaving the Shaper superdestroyer and its escorts to the mercy of the Nahabe fleet. The other four carriers had also made it, though the Grant and the Dowding were both badly damaged along with the Churchill. Ten of the remaining escort vessels had failed to escape, the fate of several ships was as yet unclear. Chen’s HUD had come back online and was feeding her targeting data, whilst successive attempts had raised several of the bridge’s emergency shutters.

The remaining ships of Chen’s fleet emerged from their jump five hundred kilometres above Amazonia Port and witnessed a scene of devastation. Hundreds of ships had still been in the vicinity of the port when the Nimitz and Marathon groups had emerged from hyperspace and had begun firing at anything in range. The port, its dark disc outlined against the bright backdrop of Earth’s shining cloudscape, was surrounded by a gigantic spreading field of tumbling wreckage. The Marathon group was closing with the station whilst the Nimitz group held position further away, facing outwards towards the oncoming threat. The Marathon’s group were already firing on the orbital dock, picking off the scores of laser turrets and launchers dotted across its surface.

‘I’d say that they were trying to take the station,’ commented Singh. ‘It looks like the Marathon is moving in to begin a landing. That must be why they’re taking down those defensive hard-points: none of them pose a threat to the warships - the port mainly uses them for targeting debris - but they could take down a landing force.’

‘I have to agree with you, Mr Singh,’ Chen replied, assessing the situation.

The comm. crackled into life. It was the voice of a woman, panicked and desperate.

‘Churchill, this is Station Commander Mawson of Amazonia Port. You have to stop those ships. We have thousands of civilians still aboard the station and we cannot evacuate them to the surface quickly enough. The space elevator just can’t handle that much traffic and any ships we launch will be shot down!’

‘Amazonia Port, this is Admiral Chen of the Churchill. Hang in there a little longer. We’re going take these bastards down for you. Your men should prepare to resist any attempted landing.’

‘We don’t have much: a few hundred security personnel. We have no heavy weapons or military grade kit, just side-arms and body armour. I doubt we’d last long against marines.’

‘Acknowledged, Amazonia. We’ll do what we can. Churchill out,’ Chen replied, then turned to Andrews and added. ‘Signal to the Leonides and the Nelson that they and their escorts are to take out the Nimitz group and should attempt to draw their fire away from us. The Grant and the Dowding are to remain with us. We need to take down the Marathon.’

‘Aye, Admiral,’ Andrews replied. ‘Transmission coming in from the Nahabe ships also, ma’am. They have taken down the Shaper superdestroyer and have forced several others to flee. They are engaging the remainder of the ships.’

‘Excellent,’ replied Chen. ‘Signal our thanks.’

As the Leonides and Nelson groups began to separate from the rest of the ships and start their flanking assault, Singh said:

‘Admiral, what do you think the renegades are attempting to achieve by this? There are thousands of people on that station - do you think that they intend to implant them all?’

They were only two hundred or so kilometres from the port now, and the flashes of weapon impacts could be seen erupting from the upper surface of the structure.

‘No I don’t, I think that they intended to capture it and use it as a bridgehead.’

‘For what? We’ve got them heavily outnumbered. They couldn’t possibly hold it now.’

The Leonides and the Nelson were firing on the Nimitz group. Blinding bolts of plasma shot forth from the main guns of the loyalist vessels and struck the leading enemy warships as they closed the distance. The Nimitz returned fire, striking the bows of the Titan class Marlborough and collapsing her forward shields.

Something wasn’t right. Chen could feel it. The enemy’s tactics made no military sense, unless…

‘Admiral, the Marathon is charging her main gun!’ cried Singh. ‘She’s preparing to fire on the port!’

‘No!’ cried Chen, in horror. ‘Ahead full and engage that carrier with everything we have!’

‘It’s too late,’ replied Singh, aghast. ‘God help them.’

Amazonia Port did not possess shields of the same strength as those of warships. The port’s shields served only to protect it from micro meteorites and the occasional chunk of debris. Against the onslaught from the renegade vessels, they provided no protection whatsoever.

The initial shot from the Marathon’s plasma cannon punched through the upper decks of Amazonia Port, smashed through docking bays filled with ships and continued downwards into the core of the station, into the departure lounges and concourses packed with panicked civilians awaiting a journey to the safety of the surface below them. Hundreds died instantly, immolated by the boiling plasma. Hundreds more were sucked into the vacuum of space to die via the massive wound gouged into the heart of the port. The blast emerged from the Earth-ward side of the structure, punching through the great transparent dome that looked down onto the planet below and collapsing the exclusive buildings that sat there amidst lush parkland as the atmosphere vented, howling, into space. The rest of the Marathon’s group opened up next, the massive cutting lasers slung beneath the destroyers carving and slicing into the structure as dozens of particle beam cannons and kinetic missiles punched ragged holes into the outer skin.

The Grant and the Dowding were firing now, plasma bolts impacting the upper decks of the Marathon, collapsing the assault carrier’s rear and dorsal shielding as it rained death onto the port below it. Chen’s ships were closing the range, trying to reach optimal firing distance and positions to bring their turrets to bear and for the Churchill to stand a chance of being able to use its spatial distortion cannon without hitting the port by accident.

‘Enemy ships are powering jump drives!’ Singh exclaimed.

‘No!’ cried Chen, fully aware what would happen next.

As one, the Marathon and its group engaged their jump drives under a kilometre from Amazonia Port. Ships jumping together in close proximity synchronised their drives to create a shared hyperspace envelope. However, the resulting space-time distortion from so many drives tearing a hole in the fabric of reality had immense destructive power, and so ships reached a safe distance from other vessels and space borne structures before doing so. Here, the hole that the renegade ships tore in the fabric of space-time also ripped through Amazonia Port, rending and twisting it as terrible, conflicting tidal forces tore through it. Amazonia Port sagged visibly as its internal structure shuddered and distorted, and then the great space borne structure began to slowly break apart. The interior of the port was now open to space in hundreds of different places as atmosphere, bodies and debris began to spill from its wounds and life-rafts began to fall like autumn leaves. Further out, the Nimitz group now also jumped clear from the clutches of the Leonides and the Nelson.

Chen and her crew watched in mute horror as the distress signals poured in.

Singh broke the silence.

‘Admiral, what shall we do? Shall we pursue the remnants of the renegade fleet?’

‘No,’ replied Chen, quietly. ‘There’ll be time enough for that. Signal all ships, we have to get as many people off the port as we can. Medical teams are to stand by for massive casualties.’

She was still alive, thought Chen. At least that was something.

Chapter 3

The Shining Glory floated, dead in space, her once gleaming hull battered and blackened by tremendous forces. Her wings were still, their trailing edges torn and perforated. Her graceful tail was truncated, the end sheared off. The delicate curve of her gorgeous hull was scarred in a dozen places by weapons fire. She rolled slowly end over end, gleaming dully in the starlight, a mangled, broken thing. Yet within the battered ship, there was still life.

She was in total darkness. It was utterly black. Katherine floated freely in zero gravity against the crash restraints that had grown out of her chair after the warship’s first wild jump away from the exploding portal. The Shining Glory had jumped again and again, and then after a particularly short and violent jump she had lost all power.

Katherine’s hair floated upwards into her face and mouth. She brushed it away. The darkness was filled with panicked cries in Arkari. Her left hand still tightly held that of her friend and colleague, Rekkid Cor. She could feel his leathery skin in her grip. Her stomach lurched. The ship was rolling forwards, sickeningly.

‘Rekkid?’ she said.

‘I’m still here,’ he replied, his voice a little shaky.

‘What the hell do we do now? Where are we?’

‘I think,’ Rekkid replied slowly, ‘that we are up a certain creek without a certain boating implement. This can’t be good - the ship must have lost all power. Mentith!’ he cried out.

‘Over here, Professor,’ came the answer out of the darkness from the gruff, aged War Marshal.

‘What just happened?’

‘Eonara used the Glory to destroy the Shapers’ wormhole portal and after that we jumped and…’ Mentith sighed.

‘So you know about as much as we do.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. It may be stating the obvious but primary, secondary and tertiary power supplies are offline. The ship is completely dead in space. I have no idea where we were when we lost power, but it seems that our initial jump was far from normal.’

‘How so?’ said Katherine. ‘Did the explosion of the portal do something?’

‘Quite probably yes, we travelled an interstellar distance almost instantaneously. It’s possible that the detonation of the device spun off multiple rogue wormholes… who knows? Quite how far we travelled I just don’t know yet but after the first jump, we were definitely clear of the Maelstrom. You’ll have to bear with me a moment.’ Mentith cleared his throat, preparing to raise his voice against the clamour. ‘Everyone, please. Try to remain calm. This ship has numerous independently powered auto-repair systems. We should sit tight and wait for them to do their job.’

There was a rumble from behind them. It was Steelscale. He gave a guttural growl and spoke.

‘I hope so, for all our sakes, War Marshal,’ he said, as his harsh alien syllables were translated by the pendant he wore into a flat synthetic voice. ‘I had not planned on ending my days in a floating tomb.’

‘The Glory isn’t dead,’ said Mentith. ‘Not yet anyway. She is wounded, yes, but she will recover in time.’

As if in response to his words, the bridge was suddenly bathed in a dim green light from panels on the walls and ceiling and the artificial gravity returned. There was a clatter of floating objects suddenly falling to the deck and a number of startled cries accompanied by the thuds of falling bodies from those who had not managed to secure themselves. The crash restraints withdrew themselves into their chairs and the nauseating sensation from weightlessness and the ship rolling disappeared as its artificial gravity established ‘down’ as the direction towards the deck. There was a palpable sigh of relief from the occupants of the bridge, although the consoles and holographic displays remained offline. Katherine looked at Rekkid in the weird, almost aquatic light. His large black eyes appeared darker than ever, the pupils having widened to their maximum. Whether it was through fear or due to the darkness she couldn’t tell.

‘My hand…’ he managed to say eventually. ‘I can’t really tell in this light, but I think it might be turning blue.’

‘Ah, sorry,’ she replied a little sheepishly and released her grip.

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he replied. ‘Numb fingers are the least of my worries right now. Dying out here, on the other hand? Well…’

‘I thought we’d had it back then,’ said Katherine. ‘I think my life really did flash before my eyes and I remember thinking that it wasn’t nearly long enough. I really, really didn’t want to die. When we were staring at that black hole, I remember thinking that that thing really was the end of everything and I thought…’

‘Yes, I suppose we’re lucky to be in one piece. Maybe Mentith isn’t as crazy as I thought, since we actually survived. We’re not out of this yet, though. We must be thousands of light years from home.’

‘It wasn’t Mentith that took down that portal and flew us out of there, it was Eonara. She saved everyone.’

‘Yes indeed, and what do you suppose has happened to her?’ Rekkid replied. He looked over at Mentith who was standing with a huddle of his officers and technicians. They wore concerned looks on their Arkari features and were talking hurriedly with one another in their own language. On the floor between them lay a silvery puddle of nano-form material where Eonara and the ship’s cat avatar had been standing.

‘Doesn’t sound good,’ Rekkid commented. ‘I can only hear snatches but the phrases, AI core offline and something about the jump drive sustaining critical damage cropped up.’

As he spoke, a number of crewmen dashed out of the bridge. Mentith came over and addressed Katherine and Rekkid.

‘It’s not good,’ he began. ‘We have no way of contacting the other parts of the ship, at the moment. We have light, heat and atmospheric systems online now, but the ship’s computer systems and internal communications are offline and as yet we don’t know how bad the damage is across the ship. We do know that there was some sort of power surge in the jump drive’s systems and it is possible this may have cascaded back through the ship’s other systems, causing them to shut down to protect themselves. If that’s the case, the Glory’s AI will have taken steps to isolate itself until we manually reconnect it. As for the state of the drive: well we just don’t know. The aft section of the ship sustained heavy damage before we jumped clear of the explosion. The hull will heal in time, but more complex components may need replacing. Auto-repair systems have their limits.’

‘What about Eonara?’ said Katherine.

‘I have no idea,’ Mentith replied and shrugged. ‘It was a jury-rigged solution when they installed her. Who knows whether she managed to protect herself? I will try and keep everyone updated, but we need to get at least rudimentary systems back online and find out where we are.’

‘I strongly suspect,’ said Rekkid. ‘That we may be on the part of the map labelled “Here be Dragons.”’

‘If I understand the reference correctly Professor Cor, you may be right,’ Mentith replied and frowned, before turning smartly and accosting one of his officers. They fell into deep conversation.

‘Great,’ said Katherine. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘We wait,’ said Steelscale. ‘Mentith isn’t lying. It takes a lot to kill an Arkari ship. Believe me, my people have tried and failed often enough. We should be patient.’

They waited. Arkari engineers and other crew hurried to and from the bridge. Mentith listened to their urgent messages and gave orders to them, then sent them back, on foot, to other parts of the five kilometre long ship. After a while the lights came back up, and then the bridge instruments came back on, although at first they seemed to be displaying nothing more than the same set of error messages in Arkari script.

After about an hour the internal transport system came back on, saving breathless crew members the less than enviable task of running through the ship’s seemingly endless corridors to relay messages between different parts of the vessel and eventually internal comms were restored, albeit on a very basic level.

Finally, after some coaxing, the ship’s computer systems came back up. Holographic displays appeared once more in the air in an arc at the front of the bridge. They showed self diagnostic information from the ship’s internal systems and sensors as various functions were restored by the vessel’s auto-repair facilities as well as by the efforts of her resourceful crew. One display showed the status of the warship’s skin, which even now was beginning to slowly re-grow itself.

Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscale sat amid the bustling Arkari whilst all of this occurred, feeling a little out of place and more than a little helpless. Still, the crew of the Shining Glory seemed well drilled and focused on their task of repairing the warship and it didn’t look as if they needed the assistance of two frightened, baffled academics and a K’Soth lord. Even so, there were still no signs of life from the ship’s AI or the mysterious Progenitor AI that had called itself Eonara.

Mentith left a gaggle of officers who had just reported their progress to him and walked over.

‘How go the repairs, War Marshal?’ said Steelscale.

‘Better than hoped in some areas,’ Mentith replied. ‘The skin of the warship’s hull is healing well, and we have restored primary power and a number of other systems including primary life support.’

‘But…’ said Katherine, she could tell that the old Arkari was holding something back.

‘But, the jump drive and primary relativistic propulsion systems will require extensive repairs before they will work again, and I’m afraid we’ve not had a lot of luck in getting either the ship’s AI nor the Progenitor AI to talk to us. Work is being carried out as we speak on the AI cores, but repairing the drive systems is a bigger problem, we think. The components in question are too delicate and require a level of precision in their manufacture that the ship’s auto-repair functions cannot furnish us with,’ he said and sighed wearily.

‘So we’re stuck here then? We’re just going to be stranded in deep, unexplored space until we all starve or freeze to death?’ said Katherine, panic obvious in her face.

‘No! No, absolutely not!’ replied Mentith, attempting to placate her. ‘You misunderstand, I think. This ship has facilities on board for the manufacture of entire replacement components for all of our systems. It will take time, and will probably require the acquisition of additional raw materials, but we can fully repair the ship’s drive given enough time.’

‘And the AIs?’

‘Are perhaps another matter entirely. However, in the event that we cannot repair them, the ship can be flown by the crew just as yours are. It will be more difficult, but we will manage if necessary.’

‘But Eonara said that she knew how to defeat the Shapers and that she shared that information with the ship!’ said Katherine. ‘We have to get her or the ship’s AI working again, for everyone’s sake. We need that knowledge!’

‘We struck them a decisive blow,’ said Steelscale. ‘Surely a great many of them must have perished and their portal device has been destroyed.’

‘Alas, I fear our success is only temporary,’ said Mentith. ‘We do not know the total enemy strength or what proportion of them was destroyed when the portal exploded. As for their slaves: I will wager that they will have little trouble in acquiring more, nor will they have little difficulty in constructing another portal in time. This will be a temporary setback for them, nothing more. We have bought time for our people, not outright victory, and now the Shapers will seek vengeance for what we have done to them. Their wrath will be terrible, I have no doubt of that. Katherine is right, we must have access to the data that the AIs possess if we are to stand a chance of winning this war.’

‘War Marshal,’ said Rekkid. ‘I hate to bring this up: but do we know where the hell we actually are?’

‘No,’ Mentith replied solemnly. ‘No, we have no idea whatsoever.’

‘Then how are we supposed to…’

‘What else would you have me do!?’ Mentith exploded. ‘We’re still alive, can’t you be satisfied with that!? Taking us into the centre of the galaxy was a calculated risk in order to stop the Shaper invasion of our people’s home systems, to stop the massacre of billions! Do you not think that that might be weighing heavily on my mind right now?’

‘I’m sorry, I…’ Rekkid stumbled.

Mentith gave an exasperated sigh.

‘Professor Cor, our own people, the Arkari people may have suffered untold casualties. The Shapers may have destroyed entire populated worlds! Don’t you think I want to help our people? Our families, our friends and colleagues back home: they are relying on us! We cannot fail them, but it is one step at a time! We do not know exactly where we are, but we do know that we are in low orbit around a planet.’

Mentith manipulated one of the holos to expand it so that it dominated the far end of the bridge. An image appeared there, filling the display. It showed a vast curving swathe of boiling cloud tops lit by unknown alien suns, sweeping past as the ship continued to roll.

They watched the scene for a moment. As the ship’s orientation changed the image flickered to a different feed from another external camera. Beneath the swirls of cloud could be seen the grey-brown surface and the faint glimmer of patches of open water.

‘What is this place?’ said Katherine. ‘Where are we?’

‘As I said: we do not know,’ Mentith replied. ‘Initial sensor readings show a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and the gravity is about ninety-percent that of Earth, almost the same as Keros. Based upon the density of the background stars, I’d guess that we’re on the edge of the central galactic bulge. But other than that I cannot be any more accurate. I’ve got people working to identify any obvious markers - known pulsars, black holes, nebulae and so on - to get a better fix on our position.’

‘Maybe the ship brought us here for a reason.’

‘Maybe. Maybe this was the only habitable world it could find in this part of space. The ship may have been trying to find somewhere where we could survive for long periods, if need be, if its systems failed completely.’

‘It doesn’t look very inviting,’ Rekkid commented. ‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t see much vegetation from up here, unless everything that grows down there is either grey or brown.’

‘Is there any life down there, War Marshal?’ said Katherine.

‘Doubtful,’ Mentith replied. ‘The atmosphere shows a very low methane content, almost undetectable in fact. The gas is chiefly produced by living things or by vulcanism but it doesn’t last long before it breaks down. There needs to be a constant supply. If there was anything living down there, I’d expect there to be a much greater amount of it in the planet’s atmosphere.’

‘If there is nothing living down there,’ said Steelscale, ‘then what is that?’ He jabbed a clawed finger at the screen, where a geometric pattern could clearly be seen, half hidden by a bank of clouds. It was a series of radial lines joined by smaller, fainter lines to form a spider’s web pattern. A thicker, straight line extended from this across the barren wastes until it was hidden by a range of cloud smothered mountains.

‘That looks like civilisation to me,’ said Rekkid. ‘That looks like a road network.’

‘I concur,’ Mentith replied and gave few brief orders in Arkari. ‘I have ordered my crew to begin sweeping for any signals of any kind. If anyone is down there, then they may have noticed us, or we may be able to pick up the general background chatter of their civilisation.’

‘I wouldn’t expect too much,’ said Katherine. ‘Look.’

Their viewing angle had changed as the Glory continued in its orbit and the clouds obscuring the network of roads had parted, allowing them a better view. What looked like a great city could now be seen below them, its network of streets extending over tens of kilometres. The centre, however, had been completely obliterated by a gigantic crater that abruptly erased the lines of streets right at the point where they appeared to converge.

‘That has to be the result of a weapon of some kind,’ said Steelscale. ‘That’s too accurate to be a natural occurrence, like an asteroid impact. It looks like someone targeted the centre of that city intentionally.’

‘Maybe this planet is dead after all,’ said Katherine.

‘Perhaps not,’ Mentith replied. ‘Others may have survived elsewhere on the surface. We should keep looking.’

As the Glory continued in its orbit, other devastated cities swept into view before disappearing over the limb of the planet. Though they differed in size, each was similar to the one that they had first seen, both in their general topology and the fact that all had been struck by some sort of devastating weapon. Some had been hit multiple times and in these cases, barely anything remained outside the limits of the overlapping craters.

‘I wonder what happened here,’ said Rekkid. ‘A global nuclear war? Bombardment from space?’

‘Maybe the Shapers did this,’ said Steelscale. ‘Perhaps this is the remains of another people who defied them? Perhaps this is what awaits us when we return home to our own worlds?’

There was an uncomfortable silence as yet another blasted city rolled by beneath them.

Then, one of the crew manning the comm. system called out something to Mentith in the Arkari language. Mentith replied in kind. An audio feed began to play across the bridge. It was faint at first, the sound quality poor and distorted. Icons began to appear on the display of the planet’s surface, denoting the source of the signal as having just appeared over the limb of the planet below.

‘The signal is very weak,’ said Mentith. ‘It is an old fashioned analogue radio transmission. Systems Adept Radila is working to clean it up.’

An alien voice began to echo across the bridge. The words were incomprehensible, the sounds strange and guttural. But after a few moments the pattern of syllables began to repeat itself.

‘Must be an automated message,’ said Rekkid. ‘But it’s in a language I’ve never encountered before. Hardly surprising, considering that we’re probably the first people from our respective civilisations to ever come here.’

‘It could be a greeting, perhaps?’ said Katherine.

‘The signal is omni-directional rather than directed at us,’ said Mentith. ‘It’s more likely to be a distress signal of some kind.’

‘Or a warning,’ Rekkid added. ‘Maybe someone left it here to tell anyone who arrived to stay away. Look at what’s happened to this place. It’s clear that something bad happened here, something very bad indeed. Maybe we should stay away.’

‘Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of choice,’ said Mentith. ‘The Glory’s orbit is decaying. In this low orbit we’re brushing the upper layers of the atmosphere. It will take some days, but eventually this ship’s orbital speed will have been reduced to the point where it will fall to the planet below unless we can restart the engines. We need to secure raw materials so that the ship’s manufacturing systems can replace its own damaged components, before we move the ship to higher orbit and repair the jump drive. To that end, I think we need to establish a base on the surface. We may be spending some time here and we need to know what we’re dealing with in terms of the environment, resources and so on.’

‘Are you saying that we might have to settle here?’ said Katherine.

‘I had considered that possibility, yes,’ said Mentith. ‘If we cannot repair the ship in time, we may have no other choice if we wish to survive. However, I also believe that we need to know what happened here and why Eonara brought us here in the first place. The initial reports from the ship’s engineers are not good and it may be difficult, if not impossible to restore her to full functionality with the resources that we have available. We need to know everything about our current situation. I would greatly appreciate it if the three of you would head up the investigation as to the source of these signals.’

Chapter 4

Fully protected in their suits, Isaacs and Anna stood looking up at the Profit Margin, the nose of the sleek craft looming over them in the dimly lit bay. Behind them, other members of the Hidden Hand were using heavy lifting gear to push the piles of mangled debris and bodies from the battle out of the shattered dock.

‘So,’ said Anna. ‘What’s your big idea?’

‘We need to get back to the core systems still loyal to Earth, right? We need to tell the Navy what we know.’

‘That the Nahabe have found a way to detect the Shapers’ comms traffic and are about to join in the war. Gotcha.’

‘We can’t transmit any of this information, because we don’t know how secure the hypercom network is, so we need to deliver it by hand, preferably to Admiral Chen, since we can trust her. Thing is, we need to do that without being intercepted, or without giving away the location of this base.’

‘Warp signatures would be a dead giveaway, of course,’ said Anna. ‘Okay, go on.’

‘I’ve been going through the inventory of this place, not to mention the specs of my own ship. I found an engine stealthing kit amongst your stores. God knows how you guys got hold of that, since it seems to be a piece of Black Ops kit, but I guess you have your sources.’

‘Shigs ‘acquired’ it for us a while back from some dodgy ship dealer types he knows. We could never get the damn thing to work - it wasn’t compatible with any of our ships.’

‘It’s compatible with mine, being a newer model and all. It won’t hide us completely, but it’ll make the jump drive signature much harder to spot from a distance. It should allow us to leave this place without being spotted from the inner system.’

‘Uh-huh. Okay. We should talk to Maria and Farouk.’

They made their way back into the warren of tunnels and chambers within Port Royal and found Maria in one of the noisy mess halls. The brightly lit room stank of cheap, greasy food.

‘Yeah I remember that fucking thing,’ said Maria, half eaten burger in one hand. ‘So, your big shiny dick ship has come in useful after all, huh?’

‘Yeah, it has,’ Isaacs replied, ignoring the insult. ‘Plus it’s about the only thing we have left that still flies.’

‘There is that,’ Maria sighed and ran a hand along her cornrows. ‘Listen,’ she said, above the noise of background chatter. ‘I think me and Farouk and the others can get this fixed up pretty quickly, since you say that your drive’s compatible. We can also maybe make a few tuning improvements along the way, but you need to consider the way that this thing works.’

‘Oh?’

‘Okay, this stealth device is basically a dampening tool. It smoothes out your warp signature, so that it blends into the background more gradually and removes any regular patterns from the wave. Space-time ain’t totally smooth anyway, so this hides you within the low level chop, making you less obvious and even if they do spot you, it makes it harder to identify your ship type. But there is a drawback.’

‘Go on.’

‘This thing creates a lot of heat. We’re gonna need to swap out the heat exchangers as it is, but it’ll still produce more than they can cope with and it’ll be radiated into the hyperspace envelope. When you come out of your jump, all that excess heat will be dumped into space, making you more obvious, plus, you’ll have to limit the length of time that you use the stealth device. After four or five hours, the temperature outside the ship will be raised to dangerous levels. When that happens, the device will shut itself down and you’ll be easy to spot. If you try to override the shut down you risk melting the drive.’

‘I see. So what we have here is actually a stealth device that makes us really fucking obvious. What a great invention,’ said Anna, scathingly.

‘No. I think it’s still useful,’ said Isaacs. ‘We just need to learn how to use it. We can’t have it on all the time, just at the start or end of a jump. I guess if you were moving around for long periods and didn’t want to get spotted you’d have to do it in short hops between safe spots. Say, do a short jump to the sensor shadow behind an asteroid or moon or something, vent the excess heat, then jump again.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too,’ said Maria. ‘You could move around pretty easily, as long as you planned your jumps out in advance.’

‘And as long as you knew where any interested parties might be.’

Anna seemed distracted. Cal saw her check the screen of her comm.

‘Okay well, we’ll let you guys get on with it then,’ said Anna and shot Maria a grin. ‘Cal, come with me. The Speaker wants a word with us.’

‘Sure. Maria, can you and Farouk at least have a look at the thing as soon as you get chance?’

‘Mind if I finish my lunch before I take your ship apart, hotshot?’ said Maria and scowled at Isaacs.

The Speaker, encased within his armoured sarcophagus, floated amidst a grove of small, purple trees in Port Royal’s lower arboretum. The chamber functioned both as recreational space and part of the base’s air recycling mechanism. The creature seemed to be inspecting the bright blue flowers that grew on the tips of the wiry branches – it held one delicately in the grip of a slender manipulator arm. As it heard the two humans approach, it released the delicate bloom and turned to face them.

‘You wanted to see us?’ said Anna.

‘Yes,’ said the Speaker. ‘I have here a copy of everything that we have learned of the Shapers’ communication methods and the means by which they may be detected. You must give this to the Commonwealth, or to the Arkari. It will be most useful to them.’

The manipulator arm that had been holding the flower reached inside a recessed chamber within the Speaker’s armour and produced a couple of data wafers, proffering them to Isaacs and Anna. Isaacs took them and eyed them thoughtfully.

‘You said so earlier,’ said Isaacs. ‘What I don’t understand is how come we suddenly have this information to hand.’

‘Because of your help!’ exclaimed the Speaker. ‘You two, and the warriors from the Order of Dead Suns, bless their departed spirits – your courage led to this discovery.’

‘It did?’

‘Perhaps I should explain,’ said the Speaker. ‘You remember the boarding action that you undertook on the Casilinum, to gather information and bring back samples of Shaper parasites for us to study?’

‘How could we forget?’ Anna replied and shuddered, as both she and Isaacs recalled the shadowy halls filled with slavering beasts enslaved to the will of the Shapers that had once been the officers and crew of a Commonwealth warship.

‘The samples you recovered were taken on board the Uncaring Cosmos for study. It was evident that though badly damaged, a number of the creatures were still partially active. It was the assumption of the crewmembers assigned to study them that when separated from their controlling node – the one that you destroyed aboard the Casilinum - that these simpler creatures of the Shapers would attempt to seek out other Shaper creatures in the vicinity to try to find a link back to the main Shaper consciousness in order to receive further commands.’

‘And of course they didn’t find any, I suppose?’ said Isaacs.

‘We don’t think so. Previously when we fought the Shapers it had been theorised that although they must be using some form of hyperspace communication method, they were able to make use of dimensions that my people, with the technology that we possessed back then, were unable to access, or that they were able to mask their signals in some way. In any case, the war was over before we got a chance to test our theories and the Shapers were not encountered again for tens of millennia. Now it seems that in the intervening period the Shapers have developed drive systems that make their ships incredibly difficult to detect, particularly at long range. We believe that their vessels are able to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously and gradually phase between hyper and real space rather than jumping suddenly between them as our vessels do. In addition, their methods of propelling themselves leave only the slightest of ripples in space time. Even the Arkari with their advanced technology are unable to detect jumping Shaper vessels over distances of more than a few thousand kilometres.’

‘Yeah, I seem to recall the sneaky bastards caught us by surprise,’ said Isaacs. ‘Those damn ships appeared out of nowhere.’

‘Quite so. However, it seems that those ancient researchers I mentioned were correct in their theories: the Shapers are able to access a dimension above hyperspace, and although it seems that they are not able to travel through it, they are able to make use of it for communications. The crew of the Uncaring Cosmos managed to jury rig modifications that enabled them to scan this higher dimension using the ship’s own hyperspace sensors. It was soon realised that a number of weak signals were coming from the captured parasite creatures that you had recovered for their study. When the Shapers attacked Port Royal in the Spica system, it became clear that the Shaper creatures were communicating with the attacking vessels. Their signals were duly monitored and analysed.’

‘Right, so let me get this straight,’ said Anna. ‘The crew of the Uncaring Cosmos just happened to completely re-engineer their hyperspace sensor array, just like that?’

‘No of course not,’ the Speaker replied. ‘The Order of Dead Suns and many others in the Nahabe scientific community have devoted years of study to this subject. However until now it was difficult to test any of the theories on ‘live’ subjects.’

‘Uh huh,’ said Isaacs. ‘So what, we can read their mail now?’

‘Alas, no,’ the Speaker replied. ‘We do not, as yet, understand the Shaper language and nor do we have any knowledge of the methods that they doubtless employ to encrypt their transmissions or the workings of any of their communications protocols. Even if we did succeed in doing so, it is likely, given that they are machine based life-forms, that they would not find it too difficult to change them relatively quickly.’

‘So what use is this new found knowledge to us then?’ said Isaacs.

‘The Shapers are a hive-mind. They are in constant contact with one another. If we can detect their transmissions, then we can detect their ships at range,’ the Speaker replied. ‘We have taken the liberty of also reprogramming and recalibrating Port Royal’s hyperspace sensor array. I think you’ll find the results quite impressive.’

A map of the Achernar system appeared in the air in front of the Speaker. The current position of Port Royal was marked with a green icon on the edge of the system, within the Kuiper belt. The orbits of the various planets and their attendant moons were sketched in hair thin ellipses about the massive central star, a rapidly spinning, oblate blue giant that seared the inner planets. Humans had therefore colonised the verdant moons around the sixth planet, Tethys, and it was to there that the Speaker drew their attention.

‘This simulation is a product of our modified hyperspace sensors and observations by Port Royal’s telescopes,’ said the Speaker. ‘Here we see the system shortly after we successfully completed our jump from Spica. You can see the huge number of warp signatures indicating vessels moving to and from the moons of Tethys. As I’m sure you’re already aware, shortly after we arrived the fleet of renegade ships under the command of our old friend Admiral Cox arrived in the system and made straight for Orinoco, where they proceeded to attack the orbital station

’ As the creature spoke, a group of red icons entered the system and made a bee-line for the sixth planet. It continued. ‘The loyalist fleet, already waiting for them, responded and took down a number of Cox’s ships in the opening minutes of the battle.’ The icons indicating neutral vessels scattered and many simply vanished, before the tightly packed red icons were met by two groups of blue icons appearing from opposite directions. A number of the red icons quickly disappeared. ‘By this point the Uncaring Cosmos had succeeded in tuning its newly modified sensors to longer ranges and managed to capture the final stages of the battle,’ said the Speaker, as an approaching group of additional red icons in a massive claw formation appeared within the image. The Speaker paused the simulation and then zoomed the image inwards so that the battle was more clearly magnified. A faint tracery of lines could be seen linking each of the newly displayed ships to one another, whilst further lines extended from the larger ones back out of the image in the direction of the galactic core.

‘Shapers,’ said Isaacs.

‘Yes indeed,’ said the Speaker. ‘At this stage they are still within hyperspace, but we can see them nonetheless at a distance of billions of kilometres. That faint tracery of lines represents their network of communication traffic between one another.’

The Speaker resumed the simulation and the blue icons quickly winked out.

‘If we’d only seen them coming earlier,’ said Isaacs. ‘We could have warned them.’

‘Yes we could,’ the Speaker replied. ‘Even though the Commonwealth would have been unable to repel an attack of that magnitude with that number of ships available to them, it might have saved the lives of their crews.’

‘So, we can see them. But how the hell can we kill them?’ said Anna.

‘The Arkaris’ spatial distortion weaponry and the dark energy weapons of my people are quite capable of taking down Shaper vessels as these are able to bypass their shields and in the case of the Arkaris’ weapons, affect the molecular fabric of the Shaper craft in this and other dimensions. Human vessels, relying on kinetic, laser and directed energy weapons, however, are likely to be much less successful.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ said Isaacs. ‘So, even if we give them this information, it’ll just let them know that the Shapers are coming for them and that there’s nothing that they can do about it.’

‘I suspect that this may already have happened,’ said the Speaker, and switched the simulation forward a few hours. The projection now clearly showed a formation of renegade Commonwealth vessels departing the system, shadowed by a fleet of Shaper craft. ‘Judging from their trajectory when they left the reach of our sensors, they were headed for your home-world,’ the Speaker added. ‘Enough time has elapsed by now for them to have arrived.’

‘Shit,’ said Isaacs. ‘So that’s it? We’ve lost already? So much for the human race,’ he added bitterly.

‘You should not give up hope,’ said the Speaker. ‘Before we left Spica I received word from my government that a contingent of gunspheres was to be despatched to Earth to aid in its defence. It seems that they have finally come to their senses after all. Hopefully they acted in time. However the fleet will likely be rather small as we require the bulk of our forces for the defence of our own systems. Doubtless the Shapers will move against the Nahabe in time. If you encounter the Nahabe fleet in the Solar System you should also ensure that this information reaches them too.’

‘Pardon me if that doesn’t fill me with confidence,’ said Isaacs. ‘So what, we get all the way to Earth, only to discover that it’s too late? Can’t we pick up anything from the hypercom network nodes in this system, any news?’

‘Not without our connection giving away our current position, no, and we are too far out from the inhabited worlds to pick up any general broadcasts of any kind, especially with that blue giant star in the centre of the system generating so much electromagnetic radiation. It would be like trying to spot a candle next to a starship engine’s exhaust.’

‘We need more information.’

‘We just don’t have time. I gather that you have been investigating the possibility of making use of the engine stealthing device in our inventory.’

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ replied Isaacs.

‘My advice would be to approach the Solar System with caution. Do not head straight for Earth. Skirt the outer system and use the device to conceal yourselves. If it looks like Earth has fallen, or it’s too dangerous to approach, you should leave immediately. On no account must you let this information fall into enemy hands. If you are about to be captured, you must destroy it. If the Shapers realise that we can use their communications traffic to track their ships they are likely to change their methods and the advantage that we now possess will be lost. I would of course have preferred to send the Uncaring Cosmos to complete this mission, but she is still too badly damaged to move. Yours is pretty much the only ship left in one piece and certainly the only one suitable for the job.’

‘I don’t get it though,’ said Anna. ‘Surely the Arkari could make more use of this technology in the short term. You said it yourself: their weapons are able to hurt the Shapers more easily.’

The Speaker said nothing for a moment.

‘Well wouldn’t it?’ insisted Anna.

‘Our… passive hyperspace sensors have picked up… unusual readings from Arkari space. The signals were very faint at such great range, but it appears that there has been severe space-time disturbance in a large number of their systems indicating the presence of numerous wormholes and sudden spikes that point to what we think may have been the deployment of weaponry powerful enough to devastate entire planets.’

‘The Arkari have been attacked? By the Shapers?’ said Anna, open mouthed.

‘Difficult to ascertain for sure, but it seems very possible,’ the Speaker replied.

‘Okay, I get it,’ said Isaacs. ‘Mission of utmost importance. Fine, I’ll get the job done. You can rely on that.’

‘I hope so, Mr Isaacs,’ said the Speaker. ‘For all our sakes.’

Several hours later, Maria called them in their quarters with the news that she and her team of mechanics had finished installing the stealth module into the Profit Margin as well as overhauling the ship. Isaacs and Anna made their way down to the still airless bay and inspected her. They found Maria and Farouk standing in front of the vessel in scuffed, armoured pressure suits, admiring their handiwork. Isaacs took once glance at his vessel and exploded.

‘What the fuck have you done to my ship!?’ he cried and gesticulated at the large, gleaming panels now extending from shoulder mounted recesses over the vessel’s powerplant like ungainly insect wings. ‘Was that really necessary? It looks like something from the twentieth century for fuck’s sake!’

‘Thank you for all your hard work, Maria, would have been nicer,’ replied Maria sarcastically. ‘Yeah it’s necessary. I told you, that thing generates a lot of heat. Those things are to dump the excess heat away from the ship. Don’t worry, those nice fairy wings we added retract back inside the hull when they’re not in use. There are another two on the underside, but you can’t deploy them whilst the ship’s resting on its landing gear.’

‘Uh-huh. Okay, I guess,’ Isaacs replied, testily. ‘So these things retract once I turn the stealth module off?’

‘Not straight away, it depends how much heat has built up. They’ll retract once it’s safe to do so without frying the powerplant. Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two at the most.’

‘Okay…’

‘Oh, and you need to avoid doing any hard manoeuvring whilst these things are deployed, or else you risk twisting them.’

‘Great. So, this so-called stealth module in fact makes us really visible for short periods to anyone with infrared sensors, or indeed eyesight – so that’s everyone – as well as stopping the ship from making any evasive moves whilst they retract. Fantastic.’

‘Quit your moaning,’ Maria shot back. ‘You’re just upset because I messed with your shiny boy’s toy, even though you asked me to.’

‘Yeah, I did. I guess I should thank you for the hard work.’

‘I guess you should. Use this thing sparingly. Plan your jumps. It’ll pay off.’

‘Well I like it, Cal,’ said Anna. ‘It makes your big bad ship look like a pretty butterfly.’ She smirked. Isaacs scowled back at her.

They grabbed their things and clambered aboard the Profit Margin, taking care to secure the data that the Speaker had given them in the safe in Isaacs’ cabin. As she worked the controls to close the ship’s boarding ramp, Anna noticed that Isaacs was staring at something on one of the cockpit consoles. It was a woman’s bracelet: a simple, cheap thing. The silver plating was coming off it in patches. It wasn’t one of hers.

‘Anita’s?’ said Anna.

‘Yeah,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Poor kid.’ He failed to meet her gaze.

‘We never did find her body, did we?’

‘No, no we didn’t. I expect there’ll be a few things of hers left about the ship. I’ll um… we should…’

‘Look Cal, I know about you and her, but it was a damn shame what happened to Anita. It wasn’t right or fair. She was so young… I don’t mind you being upset about it.’

‘No, no it wasn’t fair,’ Isaacs replied, his mouth compressing into a narrow line. ‘But you know what? The Shapers can be killed too. It’s payback time for Anita, and all the others as well.’

The Profit Margin carefully nosed its way out of the shattered bay doors of Port Royal, manoeuvring thrusters firing in short, corrective bursts to angle the sleek craft through the hole left by the impact of the Shaper warship. Outside, the pale, distant light of Achernar played across the badly damaged, roughly spherical hull of the Uncaring Cosmos. The crippled Nahabe warship huddled close the Hidden Hand base, the numerous wounds in its skin attended by swarms of Nahabe in their sarcophagi as well as larger maintenance craft. Beams of light and the occasional flashes of cutting gear played across its surface.

The comm. crackled into life. It was the Speaker.

‘Captain Isaacs, we are currently relaying sensor data from our systems to your ship.’

Isaacs cast his eye over the relevant screen and scrutinised the map of the system he saw there. There were a large number of angry red dots scattered throughout.

‘As you can no doubt see,’ the Speaker continued. ‘There are a large number of hostile ships still within the system. It is imperative that they do not discover this base. Even with your newly fitted stealth capabilities, it is important that you take precautions. We do not know who may be watching.’

‘Duly noted,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Here’s what I was thinking. I use a quick burst from the ship’s thrusters to get her clear of Port Royal, we drift for a while, then we engage the stealth module and jump away. We’ll plot in a series of jumps in a looping course that will take us on a heading at a tangent to the most direct route to the Solar System at first before swinging back around.’

‘Yes, I think that’s wise.’

‘What if we don’t succeed? What will you do?’

‘We suspect that Port Royal’s drive core has been lost in the Spica system, so we are forced to remain here for the time being. Hopefully the Uncaring Cosmos can be repaired, in time. If so, we will use it to evacuate Port Royal and take this information back to Nahabe space. It is my intention to try and persuade my government to fight more than a defensive war. It is my belief that our military could make a real difference, particularly if they are able to cut the Shaper’s supply lines into this part of space. Good luck Captain Isaacs.’

‘You too,’ said Isaacs. ‘I think we’ll both need it.’

With that, he fired the Profit Margin’s main engines briefly and the ship sped away from Port Royal.

Engines off, the Profit Margin drifted, until the Hidden Hand’s base was lost in the blackness at the edge of interstellar space. Isaacs kept a close eye on the sensor console. So far, none of the Shaper craft or their renegade human allies had turned their attention towards his ship. They remained within the inner system. Oddly, a number of civilian ships were also visible traversing the system and jumping for other destinations within this part of space. This surprised him. Had normal traffic begun to resume already?

No matter, they were now thousands of kilometres away from Port Royal and Anna had finished punching in their jump coordinates. He moved his hand deftly across the controls and engaged the stealth module. There was a dull clunk and a series of other mechanical noises that he felt through the deck as the four large radiator panels deployed and locked into place.

Isaacs took a deep breath, crossed his fingers and engaged the ship’s jump drive.

Chapter 5

It was night time. He sat with his back to a tree and looked up at the stars through a hole in the forest canopy. One of those faint, twinkling points of light was home. He couldn’t tell which one. He could only see a small patch of sky and working out what he was looking at was a virtually impossible task. There were plenty of shooting stars to watch too. Normally, he would have taken a simple pleasure from watching such a display, but not now. The streaking fireballs were not of natural origin. They were the debris of battle burning up in this world’s atmosphere, fragments of once proud warships, broken fighter and bomber craft, spent munitions and human bodies streaking through the atmosphere to annihilation. It was a repeated reminder of his failure.

Other lights moved up there: other ships, the ones who had defeated him. They winked in and out of existence as their hulls caught the light from the system’s sun. Lights could also be seen moving in the sky at lower altitudes as craft swept low across the jungle, their engines whining in the tropical night as their searchlights played across the treetops. They were hunting for survivors.

He had been several days in the seemingly endless jungle and he didn’t really have a coherent plan for what to do next. First of all, he needed to get a message back to the Navy to let them know he was still alive and maybe someone would come to get him off this sweltering rock but that itself carried with it immense risk. The emergency hypercom distress beacon that he had salvaged from the crash site was a one shot device with enough power to send a single message back home without needing to use the local comm. nets, but it would doubtless attract attention from the very enemies that he was trying to avoid. Beyond that, he had some vague notion of finding a working a ship with jump capability and somehow managing to get away, though he suspected that the ships in orbit above him would soon put paid to that.

The pain from his injuries sustained during the crash had abated somewhat, though his nose still throbbed and sent shooting pains through his skull if he touched it. For now, he just needed to stay alive and avoid capture. The information he had in his brain would be very useful to the enemy. Tactics, current deployments, force strengths, encryption passwords, security codes, all of it could be obtained from him, and they wouldn’t need to torture him the old fashioned way, they would just implant him with one of their creatures. It would devour his mind and it would know everything and then they would know everything. He needed to avoid capture until the information he held became outdated, until fleets had moved and codes changed.

He pulled out the pistol he had salvaged and looked at it grimly. If it came to it, this would be his only way out. Better to die by his own hand than become one of their instruments, that way the secrets he held would die with him.

There was a roaring sound above him. An AG transport outlined in winking navigation lights passed over his head, searchlight stabbing down through the jungle canopy below. He watched it as it paused for a moment to investigate something, and then it moved off to the south. There was no point in running and hiding. It was too dark to move and besides, movement would only make him more obvious. He huddled down further beneath the camo-cloak that he had found in his pack – it would shield his body heat to some extent – and waited for morning.

He awoke with a start and saw sunlight slanting down through the trees. Some sudden noise had roused him from sleep. He had dreamt of a piercing cry. There it was again, a blood curdling shriek that pierced the silence of the early morning forest. He squinted in the direction that the sound had come from, and saw a long-limbed furry shape gripping the upper branches of a tree to the south west. The thing gave another cry, and was answered now by other calls from more distant trees. He saw other shapes, moving swiftly across the underside of the tree canopy in a loosely dispersed group, dappled greenish fur causing them to blend in and out of the background foliage.

Local wildlife, huh, he thought. He’d seen enough nature documentaries over the years to recognise the creatures as Orinoco Dryads, a roughly primate symbiont species, but right now his main concern regarding the wildlife was whether any of it was edible. The ration packs he’d salvaged wouldn’t last forever. Eventually he’d need to start killing or picking his own food if he was going to survive out here.

Orinoco was a strange little world, he mused. There were those who pointed out that the system wasn’t nearly old enough to have developed such complex life and that the entire ecosystem must be artificial and had been imported from elsewhere in the distant past. From where and by whom, no-one had yet established, though there were rumoured to be one or two moss-covered ruins in the deep jungle that pointed to earlier colonisation by parties unknown.

As the group of Dryads moved closer to his position, he suddenly saw a flock of bird-like creatures erupt through a hole in the floor of intertwined branches where he sat. Their iridescent plumage caught the sunlight in a riot of colour as a chorus of shrieks erupted from the Dryads. They had seen whatever it was on the lower levels of the forest that had scared the flock of avians.

He shifted his position and leaned forward over the branch in front him so that he could look down through a gap in the foliage to the levels below. Below was another layer of branches then another below that and another and so on. It was difficult to see the ground - the successive layers of tree growth eventually blocking out much of the light to the bottom levels.

He froze. There was something moving down there. A couple of layers down, through a succession of gaps he caught a glimpse of movement. At first he thought it was a swarm of insects hovering under the trees, but as he looked closer he realised that its shape was far too distinctly defined and the concentration of the individuals in the swarm was too great. As he watched, it moved into a patch of dappled light and the motes that made up the swarm glittered as they reflected the sun. He saw it clearly then. It had definite form. It was a dense, upright, ovoid swarm composed of millions of individual creatures. It moved with a definite purpose, sliding over and around obstacles. Just looking at it, he felt a sense of crawling horror moving up his spine. The thing exuded pure terror. It was like he had knocked open a hornets’ nest and found the hornets rearing up as one sentient thing. A voice whispered inside his head, the words indistinct and just beyond hearing. He gazed at the creature, transfixed in horror, unable to move or take his eyes off it. Then it moved out of the sunlight and disappeared from his view.

His heart was thudding in his chest. What the hell was that thing? Was it what he thought it was, one of them? He’d seen reports, unverified, on what they were supposed to look like. There was other movement below now: troopers in the uniform of the Marine Corps moving in loose formation, guns held slackly in their hands. There was something very wrong about the way that they moved. Their movements were slow, almost as if they were sleepwalking. As one marine without a helmet moved into the patch of light that illuminated the swarm, he saw the glint of machinery protruding from the man’s skull.

So, they were hunting him then.

Carefully, he moved back from the lip of the hole in the branches and sat back down in the cubby hole where he had spent the night, covering himself once more with the camo-cloak. As he took a mouthful of water from the bottle in his pack and grimaced at the taste of plastic and sterilisation tablets, he realised that he was shaking with fear.

He huddled there for what seemed like hours, watching the beams of sunlight track across the cavernous space, too wary of moving in case he gave himself away, but all the while fighting the urge to run - run the hell away from here. The Dryads had hung from the branches and watched as the haunting figures departed. He was relying on them to alert him to any other intruders into their territory. AG vehicles sped across the jungle a few times but they appeared not to be looking for him.

Eventually he concluded that it was safe. How had the enemy missed him, with all their technology and resources? Why were they looking for him at the wrong level within the forest? Maybe they were following another one of the survivors from a different escape pod and had simply passed this way? In any case, he figured that he had been extremely lucky not to be detected.

Carefully and quietly he gathered his things and then moved off across the layer of branches, keeping the camo-cloak about him to shield his body heat from anyone watching from the air. He needed to find somewhere fairly remote from any enemy activity from which to use the emergency hypercom beacon he was still lugging around with him. Doubtless its use would attract their attention and he needed time to make a getaway before they managed to ascertain his location and investigate.

The Dryads were a new factor, and a mixed blessing. Their calls would stand a chance of alerting him to anything he might need to be careful of; trouble was, he wondered if they might start calling out to announce his presence also, something he could do without. In any case, he made a mental note to be observant of the local wildlife and whether any of it reacted to his presence, or that of anyone, or anything else. His aged body was still stiff from the night spent sleeping in the trees. It protested with twinges in his joints as he hefted his gear and made his way onwards into the jungle.

He plodded onwards for several hours, the uneven and unsteady surface combined with the heat of the day making the going difficult. As the sun climbed higher into the sky the humidity rose considerably as the moisture that had collected on the jungle’s vegetation during the night evaporated back into the atmosphere. His forehead ran with sweat and he was forced to stop ever more frequently both to recuperate and to collect more water from where it had pooled among the bromeliad like growths attached to the trunks and branches of the endless trees. He grimaced as he picked dirt and dead creatures from the water, before siphoning it into his water bottle and adding sterilising tablets to hopefully kill off anything unpleasant.

Dropping his pack gratefully on the ground, he sat on a thick, knotted branch whilst he gulped more tepid water from his bottle. The water was vital. He was sweating so much from the heat and the exertion that he wouldn’t last long without it before dehydration set in. This old body of his really wasn’t cut out for this. Despite all the rejuve treatments over the years and his efforts to keep fit, he was still in possession of the body of someone aged around sixty-five, and in reality he was much older than that. He figured a twenty year old would struggle in this place, never mind someone like him.

He had not made any more sightings of the enemy, and even the skies above him had fallen silent now. There were no-more signs of the frantic comings and goings of earlier, although when he caught glimpses of the sky he could still see the contrails in the upper atmosphere formed by debris from the battle burning up on re-entry.

The Dryad group had followed him at a distance for a while and then, either because he had left their territory or because they had become bored of him, they left him alone. He had seen a few others flitting among the upper branches since, but if they registered any interest in him, they failed to show it and as the sun rose higher, they seemed more pre-occupied with sheltering from its searing blue-white gaze.

Later into the afternoon, he started to see a change in the forest. The trees became less concentrated and uniform and the gaps in the suspended floor upon which he walked became large and more frequent, enabling him to see down to the ground more easily, but making the going much more difficult. He was forced to plot a zigzag course from one tree to another along branches where they intertwined with one another. From what he could tell and from the angles of the trees and ground below, the land was steadily rising. Presumably this accounted for the thinning of the trees.

Now that he could see the trees in their entirety he could properly ascertain their shape. The upper branches were slender and more sparse and the leaves were dark and needle-shaped, able to photo-synthesise but also shielded by their pigment from the worst ravages of the searing sunlight as well as providing more surface area for the collection of dew during the night and allowing light down to the lower levels. As the levels of foliage progressed downwards the branches grew thicker and the leaves grew larger and paler to gather as much light, and as much precipitation as possible. An alternating pattern of branches ensured that branches from the levels above did not entirely obscure the light to the levels below, the thinner patches of foliage allowing green tinted light through. The trees were almost completely effective at gathering all light and water that fell onto them, leaving the ground below them devoid of all life that directly required sunlight to survive. The ground beneath the densely packed trees was home instead to a food chain based upon forms of life analogous to terrestrial fungi that fed from the decaying matter that had fallen from the branches above. These were fed upon by grazing animals adapted to the low light conditions, which in turn were prey to savage, skulking things that lurked in the shadows beneath the trees.

He saw a few herds of the grazers. They were stocky quadrupeds with wide mouths filled with small teeth, armoured, knobbly hides that varied from species to species and large bulging eyes that gave them low light vision in almost all directions. He also saw a few sinuous dark shapes lurking around the boles of the trees and stalking the grazers, watching for a chance to grab one for their next meal and paralyse it with venomous fangs so that it could be dragged away for the rest of the pack to feed upon.

Animals of all kinds went about their business, seemingly undisturbed. It reassured him that the enemy were nowhere to be seen.

As the land rose still further, the trees began to reduce in stature until their heights began to be measured in tens rather than hundreds of metres and the distinct layers of foliage that had existed in the deep jungle began to break down. The going became much more difficult, but it seemed at last that he would be able to reach the ground and indeed would need to if he intended to progress in this direction. Gingerly he stepped from branch to branch, heading towards those that would take him lower, using the forest like a gigantic set of uneven stairs and treading carefully upon slippery rounded surfaces covered in decades of moss-like growths. A herd of the grazers watched him descend, their dull witted minds distracted for a moment by the curious bipedal creature making its ungainly progress down from the upper forest. Tails flicking with apathy, they returned to their munching.

Eventually he stood upon solid ground once more and sat down wearily amongst a meadow of flowers. He had finally reached the edge of the forest and here there was enough sunlight at the tree-line for other photosynthesising plants to flourish. A multitude of trumpet like flowers, a metre high or more, surrounded him, their mouths tracking the fiery ball in the sky above, the buzzing sounds of insect-like creatures filling the air as winged things hopped from bloom to bloom.

Ahead of him, the land rose to a rocky plateau. Behind him the deep sea green of the forest stretched back seemingly forever, and there were things lurking within it that he’d rather not think about right now. The insects moving amongst the sunlit flowers reminded him of them and he shuddered, despite the heat.

He ate one of the energy bars he had salvaged from the escape pod’s supplies and drank some of his water, then started up the escarpment. Despite the steep climb and the rocky surface, it felt good to have his feet on solid ground again, and not have to pick a way across an uncertain surface wondering if at any moment his foot might fall through into empty air below. There was a breeze too, once he got a little higher, a refreshing relief from the sweltering jungle he had just left. He looked back, and saw the jungle receding into the distance, the height of the trees increasing towards the horizon, back in the direction he had just come from, like a giant green wave about to roll onto the beach of the hillside upon which he now stood.

He continued upwards, hoping that when he reached the top he’d be able to perhaps get his bearings a little better or at least plan the next part of his journey. If he could spot some signs of civilisation it might help, providing that they were friendly. The hillside was covered with low, scrubby bushes and dark, fleshy looking plants and dotted with rocky outcrops and expanses of scree which he was forced to skirt around. Nevertheless, he made good progress. The sun was finally sinking in the sky and the gas giant Tethys was starting to rise over the horizon, the bruise coloured orb resplendent with its extensive ring system and shepherded by the bright points of its small inner moons that glowed with sunlight reflected from their barren surfaces. It looked unreal and ghostly, hanging incongruously in the late afternoon sky. The air was getting a little cooler now, and the breeze was definitely helping. After around an hour he reached the top.

The top of the hill was almost entirely flat, forming a large, windswept plateau strewn with small, broken stones. Here and there were low, regular ridges in the ground forming distinct oblongs and circles that were highlighted by the low angle of the late afternoon light. They were signs that others had once lived here in the distant past. However, these were not the focus of his attention. To the north was a large bay, framed by distant mountains. The shoreline had been devastated by a tidal wave. The remains of broken trees, and huge slicks of black mud extended inland for some miles until the flat shore met a range of low hills, whose lower reaches were now piled with debris. A kilometre or so offshore he saw the culprit.

The remains of a carrier lay nose down in the shallow bay. Somehow she had survived the descent through the atmosphere, though she could hardly be considered to be intact and would certainly never fly again. She had been considerably foreshortened from her original length of around two kilometres. The rear landing deck had been severed aft of the main engines, which themselves had been reduced to slag by enemy fire before she had begun her descent. Much of the ship forward of the bridge superstructure lay underwater. Barely a kilometre of the vessel was visible above the water line and that which remained was scarred from enemy gun fire, the intense heat of re-entry and the shock of its final impact as it came to rest here.

He figured some of the breaking thrusters and stabilisers must still have been functioning during the ship’s descent, keeping her at least roughly level and slowing her fall, or else he would now be looking at a crater several kilometres in diameter and the jungle he had just come from would be both ablaze from the fireball and flattened by the shockwave from half a million tonnes of carrier slamming into the moon. The ship’s name was half visible above the water, emblazoned on her flank in stencilled lettering. It was the Abraham Lincoln. He had found his ship.

Judging from the devastation below him, the impact must have still been considerable, causing the miniature tsunami that had swept inland and scoured the shoreline. It was doubtful whether anyone left on board would have survived. Still, he guessed that was what all the commotion had been about earlier. Why there had been so much enemy activity in this area and why, possibly, they had been scouring the jungle.

He walked quickly to the far edge of the plateau and sat down with his back to the hill so as to hide his outline and then surveyed the scene, watching for signs of movement. The sight of his once proud vessel, his flagship, lying smashed like a broken toy filled him with anger and despair. There had been hundreds of people aboard that vessel when she had gone down. There was no telling how many of them were still alive. Despite the odds that they had faced up there, he still felt that he had failed them all.

He sat and watched the scene of devastation for a while. Of the enemy, he could see no sign. They had been and gone long before he had reached here. The only movement came from the flocks of bird-like creatures now descending to pick through the newly created mud flats. Some landed on the Lincoln too, and appeared to be clustering around the rents in the hull. He tried not to think about what they might be feeding upon inside the ruined vessel. From here he could hear the cacophony of cries as different groups competed with one another over the new source of food and territory. Already, some appeared to be building nests upon the upper hull of the ship as the curious oval shape of the oblate, blue sun began to drop towards the horizon, leaving the ringed splendour of Tethys to dominate the sky above. It would soon be too dark to move. He decided to bed down in the shelter of the hillside and wait until morning.

Morning came soon enough, the first brilliant rays glancing off the wave tops out in the bay and reflecting off the pitted grey flanks of the wreck of the Lincoln. He awoke and ate a meagre breakfast from his scavenged supplies, washed down with a few gulps of stale tasting water. As the sun rose he scrambled to the top of the hill again and looked about in all directions. There was still no sign of the enemy, and from here he could see for many kilometres, out across a sea of trees in one direction, across the ocean itself in another and also north across the crash site and east also to a crescent of looming mountains. Looking across the bay, with the benefit of the bright, early morning light, he could see a straight line running through the jungle, just above the line where the tsunami had deposited its debris. It looked like a road. It would lead him to civilisation.

He pulled out his comm. unit and accessed its inbuilt map. Despite his height in this exposed spot, it was still unable to contact any global positioning satellites. Presumably the network must still be disrupted or out of action completely. He scrolled around the map display, trying to find any bays in the moon’s tropics that resembled the one he was now looking at, but it was a fruitless task and eventually he gave up. The road looked like his only option. Once he could find a place with a name, he could work out where he was.

He’d also come the conclusion that here would be as good a place as any to activate the distress beacon. There were none of the enemy visible in this area and if they pinpointed the location of his transmission and came to investigate, he would be able to see them arrive at this barren hilltop from several kilometres away, giving him enough warning to conceal himself. He would set off the device, destroy it, and then head towards the road, skirting the treacherous mudflats to the north until he reached it. The road would, however, bring its own dangers: he would be more exposed and he ran the risk of running into any of the enemy choosing to use it. However, it still seemed like the best option. He would have to keep his wits about him and dive into the undergrowth at the first sign of anyone approaching.

He placed the beacon flat on the stony ground and opened the lid. Pressing the power switch he activated the device and then studied its backlit screen, shielding it with his hand so that he could see it against the blue-white glare of the sun. The trouble was that this device had never been designed with his current predicament in mind. Its use had been envisaged taking place beyond the Commonwealth’s borders by stranded naval personnel on planets without any settlements or behind enemy lines. It was designed to lock on to the nearest Commonwealth hypercom node and broadcast a short, encrypted message to it of two hundred and fifty five characters maximum. Hypercom systems required immense amounts of power to transmit and receive data via hyperspace and were usually either linked to the reactors of starships or ran off dedicated power generators if located on planet surfaces and part of the static, interstellar network. The distress beacon was a one shot device and contained only enough battery power for a single use. Unfortunately, he didn’t want it to lock on the nearest Commonwealth hypercom node. The nearest was actually on this moon, rather than out in space, and was probably already in enemy hands. They would be monitoring all traffic passing through it and despite the encryption that the beacon provided he doubted that it would prove much of an obstacle to the Shapers with the sheer levels of raw computing power available to them.

He manipulated the beacon’s controls, attempting to shift its focus away from the local node onto one in another system. The device was low powered and hence its range was rather limited. The furthest node it could detect was around ten light years away, a mining installation in the Chengdu system along with the hypercom systems of a few ships closer by. He changed the device’s focus, typed his brief message - in which he attempted to include as much information as possible within the character limit and used code-words wherever possible - and then hit send. The device displayed a progress bar for a few seconds then displayed a completion message, before shutting itself off. It had already run out of power.

Now he just needed to destroy it. The beacons came with a built in self destruct charge, to enable them to be destroyed in case they fell into enemy hands. He turned it over and found a pair of inset buttons on the side of the device, with instructions for its use printed onto the plastic surface. He held his fingers down on both buttons for ten seconds as instructed and the device began to beep. He would have a further ten seconds to dispose of it.

Rushing to the southern edge of the hill he flung the device over the edge. It arced through the air and bounced, spinning on the rocky hillside a couple of times before it burst into flames with a dull ‘whoomph!’ Satisfied with a job well done and grateful that he didn’t have to lug the damn thing around anymore, he gathered the remainder of his things and made his way down the hillside towards the black, tar-like expanses of the ruined bay below.

Moving quickly, it didn’t take him long to reach the bottom of the hill. As he got closer to the area left devastated by the tidal wave his nose was assailed by the stink of the mudflats. The marine life washed on-shore by the surge of water was now decomposing in the heat of the sun. Even the mud itself was laced with algae and plankton putrefying in the heat. Groups of avians could be seen descending onto the mud to pick over the rotten remains, swooping low on double sets of wings like miniature, brightly coloured helicopters to tear at rotten flesh with snouts filled with razor sharp teeth, or to fight with one another over a particular prize.

He hugged the base of the hill, keeping above the line of mud and debris until he reached the start of the tree-line. Soon he was concealed beneath the tangled branches. The going here wasn’t too difficult and it was cool beneath the trees, though had he not had a compass with him it would have been easy to become disorientated. The trees themselves were similar to the mangroves of Earth’s tropical regions, growing up from a tidal flood plain on stilt like roots that over the years had accumulated sand, gravel and other debris to form a complex chain of small, interlinked islands. The trees nearest the shoreline had also served to take the brunt of the tidal wave and catch the debris washed on shore which had piled up in their roots and lower branches and now hung, stinking, in the sun.

He skirted the bay, keeping the sea to his left as he hopped from island to island, occasionally jumping down to the packed mud and sand between them, taking care not to step on the knots of wriggling things that slid through the loose material looking for food. He saw a few Dryads here. A few bedraggled looking creatures could be seen out on the mud, poking at things with primitive tools made from twigs and shells. From the state of them it looked as though they had been caught by the wave and survived its inundation. Their hair was matted and plastered with muck and they called to one another in desultory fashion.

When he got about half way round the bay he heard the Dryads become more agitated. They set up a cacophony of shrieking and jabbering and then as one, bolted for the tree-line. Something was up. He crept to the edge of the trees and looked out across the bay and soon saw what had frightened the creatures. A craft was moving in the sky above the bay in the direction of the hillside from which he had come, now over a kilometre away. One glance told him that it wasn’t human. It was small and almost silent, about the size of a human shuttle, but there was no mistaking the spiny, crystalline form so similar to the warships that had defeated his fleet. It was a Shaper vessel. So, they had detected his transmission after all. He’d hoped he’d have more time before they located the source.

As he watched, the craft slowed and descended to the hilltop, the plates that made up its hull sliding against one another to reshape itself for landing. As it touched down, the front of the craft split open and humanoid forms could be seen jumping down from it and moving out across the hillside. Then something else appeared from the mouth of the craft. It was difficult to see at first, an indistinct cloud that took a moment to solidify. It began heading for the place where he had made the transmission. He didn’t know how well those things could track a man. Pretty well, he suspected. He turned away from the edge of the tree-line and started to run.

He had abandoned all attempts at stealth now. Fear had overtaken him and speed was of the essence. He just wanted to get away from that thing on the hill. His mind imagined its spectral form descending the hill and floating speedily after him through the trees, questing tendrils of glittering motes reaching out to him.

He tripped and fell over a projecting root, his hands plunging into sand and mud filled with writhing worms. In horror he jerked his hands free, bringing a few of the hungry creatures with them, their annular mouths already latched onto this new source of food. He shook the horrid things from his skin and winced as their rows of hooked teeth tore small patches of skin from his fingers. He plunged onwards, scrambling over islands of mud and vegetation and stumbling down the soft beds of tidal channels, his boots splashing in the brackish water and mud. He dared not look back.

Eventually, the ground began to rise. He scrambled out of the last of the water channels and found himself amongst dryer surroundings. Panting, he dragged himself up the slope through dense thickets of vegetation until finally he reached the road. It was the first sign of civilisation he’d seen in days. The two lanes of asphalt stretched east and west into the jungle, gently curving around the hill. West lay back towards the sea, he turned east and kept running.

It was getting too much for him now. The heat of the day and weight of his pack and the fact that he had been running or jogging for several kilometres now were proving more than his aged body could take. His vision was starting to blur. Stumbling, he came to a halt underneath an overhanging tree and leant against a low branch to catch his breath. He felt sick from the exertion, his lungs struggling to pull enough oxygen in from the humid atmosphere, his heart thudding against his chest and his mouth filling with a metallic taste from the adrenaline brought on by his fear. He dropped his pack and plunged his hands inside for the water bottle. Taking grateful gulps of lukewarm water he dared a glimpse across the bay, back the way he had come. The Shaper ship had vanished from the hilltop. He glanced about the sky and could see no sign of it. Whether that meant that they had gone or were simply out of his sight he didn’t know.

Slightly recovered, he replaced the bottle in his pack and hefted it onto his shoulders once more, then continued eastwards. Above him, Dryads moved among the branches of the trees overhanging the road. He could see their greenish forms moving amongst the foliage. They were keeping pace with him, watching him. It was attention he could do without. Anyone watching the creatures would notice that their interest had been drawn by something on the road.

As the road began to bend to the left around the foot of a hill, the Dryads began to hoot and screech to one another. He cursed inwardly. That was all he needed. Suddenly he then realised that it wasn’t him that they were screeching at. Figures were approaching from around the bend, figures wearing combat fatigues and carrying weapons. One of them pointed towards him, signalling to its comrades.

Panicked with the realisation that he’d been discovered, he threw himself into the undergrowth on the left hand side of the road and began scrambling up the overgrown slope. The sound of boots running on asphalt thudded below him along with voices and the crashes of figures following him up the hill. He was so intent on evading his pursuers that he failed to see the other group of armed men moving through the trees ahead of him and practically ran head first into their leader. Now at close range he could see that the men wore Marine Corp uniforms and body armour. In shock, he backpedalled and fumbled for his pistol, pointing it at the leader as he thumbed off the safety, the man’s face unreadable beneath his helmet and goggles. The men from the road were right behind now. He was surrounded.

Chapter 6

Chen’s left arm was almost entirely numb. The dressing that had been hurriedly applied to the wound was beginning to leak and the sleeve of her uniform was soaked with blood. She was starting to feel a little light headed.

Outside the ship, the massive relief operation to rescue the survivors of the Amazonia Port attack was underway. Under Chen’s direction, those warships that had suffered the fewest casualties had docked with the massive structure, allowing hundreds of desperate civilians aboard. The medical bays of the warships were handling the influx of casualties, triaging the wounded and stabilising the more serious cases before they could be transferred to hospitals on the surface. Meanwhile rescue teams probed the interior of the shattered dock, pulling survivors – not to mention large numbers of bodies – from the mangled wreckage.

The total number of casualties was as yet unknown. Chen expected the final figure to run into the thousands and had reported as such to the newly appointed President Sorenson. Sorenson had been the Minister for Trade who had avoided the cabinet purge orchestrated by Admiral Morgan by virtue of being in Esacir space at the time and had found herself the most senior surviving member of the government and thus President by default until elections could be held. She had seemed a little shell-shocked by events when Chen had spoken to her, as was everyone else, but she had a tough reputation that preceded her and lost no time in quizzing Chen on the situation and her requirements. Transport, search and rescue and medical vessels were already en-route both to Amazonia Port and to Jupiter space to hunt for survivors from the earlier attack on Galileo Station.

The Churchill and a number of the more severely damaged ships had hung back from Amazonia Port. The carrier was unable to safely approach the dock under her own power due to the heavy damage she had suffered to her manoeuvring thrusters during the battle and she had enough casualties of her own to deal with, though her complement of transports and assault craft had been despatched to help the relief operation. The carrier’s forward sections had borne the brunt of the enemy attacks during the battle. The upper hull was torn and cratered in dozens of places where kamikaze fighters had struck home and a long, twisted scar of torn and melted metal showed where the Hector had struck the carrier with its main gun. Two ugly, gaping holes like the wounds from recently pulled teeth marked where two of the Churchill’s forward turrets had been obliterated by the impact of the plasma bolt. The remainder of the ship’s fighter and bomber wings had also returned and SAR missions had recovered a number of pilots who had ejected from their damaged craft during the battle.

The carrier’s sickbay was overflowing with casualties, everything from vacuum exposure to burns, severed limbs and dozens of other traumas. Those that could be moved were being stabilised and then shipped down to Earth. The walking wounded would be kept aboard for now, and those that were less severely injured were, where possible, returning to their posts. Part of the hangar bay had been set aside for the bodies after the ship’s morgue had run out of space. It too was rapidly filling up.

Chen was immensely proud of her crew, and those of the other ships under her command. She felt the burden of responsibility for their plight and wondered if she could have done more but, she reflected, if it hadn’t been for the timely appearance of the Nahabe ships she doubted whether any of them would have survived.

The arrival of the Nahabe fleet was still something of a mystery. The Commonwealth had always enjoyed cordial relations with the notoriously secretive and insular aliens, but no military alliances had ever been formalised and the Nahabe had always given the impression that they were uninterested in wider galactic affairs. Still, she knew of the Nahabes’ hatred of the Shapers and their previous, and successful, defence of their worlds against them. Furthermore, their interference in the Hadar system via their proxy organisation known as the Hidden Hand was at least an indication that they had been extending their reach, but she wondered what had happened to finally coax the Nahabe out of their self imposed exile.

Answers had not been forthcoming from the fleet of mysterious spherical warships. They had destroyed or chased off the remaining Shaper ships still within the Solar System and had now assumed what appeared to be a defensive posture between Earth and the Moon, but there had been no further communications from the Commonwealth’s unlikely saviours. Chen knew enough about the protocols of dealing with the notoriously sensitive Nahabe to know that it was far better to wait for them to initiate any dialogue. Whatever their motives were, she was intensely grateful for their intervention.

‘Ma’am?’

She was tired, so unbelievably tired. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had had a decent night’s sleep, or any sleep for that matter.

‘Ma’am?’

She turned, a little groggy; one of the ship’s medics was standing patiently at her side. The woman’s nametag read ‘Collins’

‘Yes, what it is Lieutenant?’ Chen replied.

‘I need you to come down to sickbay so we can have a proper look at that arm.’

‘I’ll be fine. I have… a lot to do here, I…’

‘Admiral, with respect, you don’t look fine. You’re very pale, and your uniform is soaked. You’re losing quite a bit of blood. You were shot, after all. Dr Anderton said that if you didn’t come then he would come up here and order you down to sickbay for your own good.’

Chen knew that her Chief Medical Officer wasn’t kidding. He would come up to the bridge and scold her if she didn’t take the hint, and Collins was right, she was starting to feel pretty bad.

‘Okay, Lieutenant. I take your point. Maybe I do need patching up. Mr Singh, you have the bridge until I return. I’ll be in medical if you need me,’ said Chen and stood up. The room swam and she staggered, hit by a wave of nausea. Collins grabbed Chen’s good arm to steady her.

‘Shit,’ said Chen under her breath as the room came back into focus. ‘Okay Lieutenant, let’s get me down to sickbay. It wouldn’t do to have me passing out on the bridge now would it?’

With Lieutenant Collins’ help, Chen made her way down to sickbay in the bowels of the vessel. By the time she arrived, her forehead was slick with sweat and her arm had begun to throb terribly. Upon entering sickbay, she had to steel herself against the scene that greeted her. The facility was overflowing with casualties. Men and women, some bearing terrible injuries, were crammed together in rows whilst the overworked staff triaged and attended to them. There were screams and cries, pitiful pleas for aid and the sounds of sobbing. Doors leading off the main central space led to the isolation wards, where the burns and vacuum exposure victims were being held. Chen didn’t doubt that they too would be full also.

A number of her crew saluted her as she passed or offered her congratulations on the victory. Despite feeling fragile she returned the salutes and chatted briefly with her injured crew where she could, exchanging greetings or words of encouragement with them, thanking them for their bravery. It amazed her that so many of them could remain in good spirits despite what they had been through, and it made her immensely proud, and a little ashamed that she should be troubling Dr. Anderton with injuries that seemed to slight in comparison, even if he had ordered her down here.

She found Dr Anderton waiting for her at the back of sickbay. He seemed remarkably composed, all things considered, though his eyes betrayed the horror of some of the things he had had to deal with today. He indicated an empty chair and she sat down heavily. Collins saluted and left to attend to other patients.

‘So,’ said Anderton. ‘We finally managed to drag you down here. I was starting to think I might have to shoot you again myself so that it would sink in that you’d been injured.’

‘Sorry,’ Chen replied. ‘There was so much to do, the rescue operation…’

‘The people under your command know what they’re doing for now. Let them get on with it. Now let’s take a look at that arm. Can you take your jacket off?’

Chen tried to move her arm and found that it had stiffened completely. ‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Okay, not a problem,’ said Anderton and produced a small pair of scissors which he used to cut the entire sleeve from her uniform jacket and the shirt underneath. ‘Apologies for the uniform,’ he said. ‘But I think the damn thing was ruined anyway.’

‘I can always get another, don’t worry. Look, doctor, couldn’t one of your staff handle this? I’m not the most badly injured person here. Surely you’d be more useful elsewhere?’

‘I decide who I treat,’ said Anderton, concentrating on his work. ‘Besides, you’re this ship’s commanding officer. I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ensure your wellbeing.’ With infinite care he finished snipping away the fabric of her uniform and then peeled away the temporary dressing, revealing a bloody gouge in her upper arm almost a centimetre deep in places. It was oozing gently.

‘Messy,’ Anderton commented as he started to clean the wound. ‘If he’d used a laser weapon it would have cauterised it. Still, I doubt that was uppermost in his mind.’

‘What’s Haldane’s condition? Did he survive?’ said Chen, suddenly alert.

‘Despite two gunshot wounds to his upper abdomen, yes he did. He had a collapsed lung and I had to pick a lot of bone fragments out of him from a shattered ribcage, but he should pull through.’

‘Is he human?’

‘I could find no evidence to suggest that he isn’t. There’s no sign of parasitic infection anywhere in his body and from what we’ve seen lately, I doubt a couple of bullets would have brought him down if this weren’t the case.’

‘I need to talk to him,’ said Chen and winced as Anderton began to clean the wound with an antiseptic spray which stung as he applied it.

‘You can try,’ said Anderton. ‘He slips in and out of consciousness. Commander Blackman has posted a couple of armed marines outside his room and has tried talking to Commander Haldane a couple of times but he didn’t get very far and I ordered him to stop when it was clear it was becoming too much for my patient. So yes, you can talk to him, but no interrogations.’

‘Doctor, he’s a traitor and he tried to kill me.’

‘True enough, but he’s my patient. Besides, I imagine he’ll be far more use to you alive than dead, so go easy on him. Now, hold still,’ said Anderton and began to close and seal the wound in her arm. ‘You’ve lost quite a bit of blood and this is a nasty hole you’ve got in your arm. A centimetre or so to the left and I doubt you’d have got up again so quickly. You were damn lucky. You need to take it easy, at least for a few hours. Get something to eat and get some rest.’ He began fixing a surgical dressing over the wound.

‘Not yet,’ Chen replied. ‘I have to talk to Haldane. I have to know whether he was telling the truth about his motives, and about Admiral Morgan.’

‘You just don’t know when to quit, do you?’ said Anderton, shaking his head despairingly.

‘Maybe not,’ replied Chen. ‘But it goes with the job, sorry.’

‘Alright,’ Anderton replied. ‘But I insist that I sit in on any questioning of my patient.’

‘Agreed,’ said Chen. ‘We’re finished here. If you’d care to take me to him, Doctor?’

‘Yes ma’am,’ said Anderton, then muttered: ‘This should be fun.’

Chen still felt a little woozy, but determination was driving her on. Anderton led her to a side room usually reserved for patients who required isolation and knocked on the door. A Marine Corps sergeant peered through the door’s glass panel, saw Anderton and Chen and opened it, saluting as his commanding officer entered the room. Another marine stood at the far side of the room along with Commander Blackman. All three men were armed, though the figure lying slumped in the room’s only bed didn’t seem to pose much of a threat.

Haldane lay at the centre of a web of sensors and drips from the medical machines that surrounded his bed. His upper body was swathed in bandages and his skin was pale and wore a sheen of sweat. However, despite being badly injured and pumped full of drugs, he was awake and aware of his surroundings. Chen saw her former XO focus on her as she entered the room. Her arrival caused Blackman and the two marines to salute smartly. Blackman pulled over a small chair to the side of the bed for her to sit on.

‘I’ve tried talking to the son of a bitch,’ said Blackman. ‘But he hasn’t given me anything so far. Says he’ll only talk to you. I’d have pressed him harder but…’

‘But you’ll risk killing him,’ said Anderton sternly. ‘Commander Haldane is a prisoner of war and he’s my patient. There are rules.’

‘Indeed there are, Doctor,’ said Chen. ‘So, Commander Haldane: give me one good reason why I shouldn’t instruct these men here to toss you out of the nearest airlock?’

‘I told you,’ Haldane said weakly. ‘I’m not one of them. I’m not a Shaper agent.’

‘Yes, Dr Anderton has confirmed that for us,’ Chen replied. ‘But you were working for them all along, weren’t you? You and Admiral Morgan and god knows who else.’

‘No!’ Haldane rasped. ‘No we never intended to be… Things… things got out of hand. We were only trying to protect humanity.’

‘Well you’ve got a funny way of showing it, taking a shot at your commanding officer right at the point when the Shapers attacked Earth. You fucking worthless traitor! You were supposed to be my right hand on this ship…’ Chen struggled to contain her rage, fighting the urge to strike her former XO. ‘You’ll be handed over to Commonwealth Intelligence for interrogation, once you’re fit enough to withstand it. You’ll be tried by a military court for your actions as well. I’d start talking now, Commander. Anything you can tell us will maybe make them look more favourably on you.’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ replied Haldane and nodded.

‘Commander Blackman, make sure you record all of this,’ said Chen to her security chief, who produced a small device from his webbing and set it on the bedside table.

‘Okay, talk,’ ordered Chen.

‘Originally I was posted aboard this ship to keep an eye on you,’ said Haldane. ‘Admiral Morgan didn’t like the fact that Admiral Haines was essentially running his own secret army along with the Arkari. It was very irregular and unofficial. Haines’ reputation seems to have allowed him to get away with things that others would not. He certainly had the ear of President Rheinhold and this may have allowed him to appropriate some of the Navy’s black budget for his own use without going through his superiors. Morgan wanted to know what he was up to. Our families go way back so…’ Haldane started wheezing from the effort of talking.

‘I get the picture,’ said Chen. ‘So why had Morgan allied himself with the Shapers?’

Haldane took a moment to recover before continuing.

‘He was forced into it. Command has known, or suspected for years, that there were highly advanced races out there in the unexplored parts of the galaxy. A number of deep space exploration missions had come across things that they couldn’t explain - phantom ships, mysterious ruins and so on, and there were always the usual stories amongst the civilian space communities, particularly along our borders. The Maranos Incident at the start of the Second K’Soth War confirmed this, and of course it made it plain that at least one of these ancient races was hostile to humanity and may have pushed us towards war in the first place. Of course now we know all about the Shapers.’ Haldane sank back further into the bed, gasping for air.

‘It’s alright, Commander,’ said Anderton. ‘You take your time.’

Haldane nodded, wheezing and seemed to wince in pain. He asked for water and Blackman poured him a cup from the jug on the bedside table. Sipping it, Haldane continued.

‘Okay, so now Command are on the lookout for any signs of Shaper activity, technology whatever, anything that would give us an edge if we needed to fight them, plus there’s always been some resentment among the upper echelons, Morgan particularly, that the Arkari are unwilling to share technology. We were still fighting the K’Soth when that ship was found in the Hadar system. Morgan knew what it was, I think. In any case, any ancient advanced alien technology would be a prize worth having and Morgan has always been an ambitious man. He can’t go any further up in the military, but there have been rumours for a while that he was thinking of entering politics, even running for President. A prize like this would have allowed him to leave the military and begin his new career in a blaze of glory. He used Cox, I think…’

‘Seems about right,’ said Chen. ‘Admiral Cox always struck me as an insecure and bitter man. This would have boosted his career as well.’

‘Except it all backfired,’ said Haldane. ‘The damn ship was bait laid by the Shapers. Cox and his fleet were enslaved. I think the plan was to enslave Morgan as well, but it didn’t work out like that.’

‘What happened?’

‘Morgan went to the Spica system to meet Cox who was arriving with his prize. I’m not sure, but from what Morgan told me it seems that he was initially captured by Cox and his men when he first boarded the Germanicus. They revealed what they now were and what the Shapers’ plans for the Commonwealth were and they were prepared to implant him also, but it seems that Morgan begged for his life and cut a deal: that if he helped the Shapers overthrow the current administration and form a puppet government in its place then humanity would be spared mass enslavement. All we had to do was submit, and life within the Commonwealth would continue much as before.’

‘Except without any form of democracy, or freedom and being essentially the proxy soldiers of a malevolent alien empire,’ spat Chen.

‘It’s preferable to the alternatives! Your actions may have doomed us all! Do you think that the Shapers will take this defeat lying down? Morgan convinced them that he could deliver the Commonwealth to them on a plate. All you’ve done is make him look like he was lying to them. The Shapers will return in greater force and this time, humanity will not be spared! They have vast fleets of warships at their disposal, millions upon millions of troops all drawn from the races that they have enslaved. Do you think that the Commonwealth can possibly stand against that? When I tried to stop you, I was trying to save you, save us all, Michelle!’ Haldane cried and subsided into a fit of coughing.

‘I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees, thank you very much. Okay, we’re done here,’ said Chen, turning away from her former XO and addressing Blackman. ‘I’ll need to pass the recording of this conversation up the chain of command. Navy Command, Commonwealth Intelligence and the President need to hear this.’ Chen stood up carefully and without a further glance at Haldane, made for the door.

‘I tried to save you!’ Haldane cried at her retreating back. ‘I tried to save us all! We’re all dead, do you hear me? We’re all dead because of you!’

Ignoring Haldane’s cries, Chen strode from the room.

After checking in with the bridge, Chen retired to her office and fired off a report on Haldane’s confession to Naval Command, attaching a copy of Blackman’s recording and encrypting the message. She then despatched Blackman to Naval Command in London on board one of the Churchill’s shuttles to hand deliver the data. It was too important to risk transmission over the data networks.

Finally, she took Dr. Anderton’s advice and got herself a meal from the galley before retiring to her quarters for some much needed sleep. However, she was awoken a couple of hours later by the chiming of the internal comm. Groggily, she reached for the controls with her good arm. It was Lieutenant Commander Singh, still in command up on the bridge.

‘Sorry to wake you, ma’am, but the Nahabe command ship Shadow in the Void has been in contact. Their leader, the one who calls himself the Lord Protector, wishes to come aboard and meet you in person.’

Chen used one hand to rub the sleep from her eyes. The brief nap had done her some good, but she was still exhausted.

‘Permission granted. I’ll meet him in the hangar bay in ten minutes, just as soon as I’ve found a fresh uniform… preferably one that doesn’t have bullet holes in it. How goes the relief operation, Mr Singh?’

‘Everything seems to be going smoothly. The medical frigates Hippocrates and Mary Seacole have arrived in Earth orbit and are taking on casualties… but there are a lot of casualties, Admiral.’

‘How many so far?’ asked Chen, with a sense of foreboding.

‘Around ten thousand dead, twenty five thousand injured. The rescue teams are still pulling bodies from inside the port… there’s a lot of people still unaccounted for. Ships have also arrived in orbit around Io and are probing the wreckage of Galileo Station for any survivors. So far they haven’t had much success, but there are lot of frozen bodies out there. No casualty figures as yet, but they’re expected to be high.’

‘Jesus… okay. Thank you Mr Singh, Chen out.’

She sat for a moment, trying to digest the true horror of the information Lieutenant Commander Singh had just given her. Tens of thousands of dead or injured. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she had done what she could.

Hampered by the pain and stiffness in her left arm, she changed into a fresh uniform and then made her way down to the hangar deck to greet the new arrivals.

The strange, boxy Nahabe craft moved smoothly into the Churchill’s busy docking bay. Chen watched as it slotted itself between the rows of parked ships and came to rest almost silently. Chen walked over to the craft as its front cracked open and hinged downwards to form a ramp, from which large, armoured forms began to emerge. There were three of the bulky, tank-like figures, each of which were heavily armed with a variety of ranged and close combat weapons. The plates of their armoured suits were richly adorned with alien scripture and scenes of war. The largest, sporting an enormous, complicated looking shoulder mounted cannon and a massive, pistoned arm with a scythe like blade approached Chen on AG fields and hovered before her.

‘I am Admiral Michelle Chen of the Commonwealth Navy, welcome aboard,’ said Chen. ‘On behalf of everyone in the Commonwealth I would like to thank you for your timely intervention.’ She had to raise her voice above the noise of the comings and goings in the bay and the sounds of repair work being carried out on the scores of damaged craft recovered from the battle.

‘I am The Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters,’ rumbled the largest of the three figures. ‘These others who accompany me are the captains of the Shattered Star and the Eternal Silence, two of my finest gunspheres. I thank you for your gracious welcome, Admiral, and your gratitude is appreciated. I wanted to meet you in person, Admiral, warrior to warrior. You showed considerable bravery and skill in facing down the Shapers and their slaves. We have learned of your use of antimatter warheads against their first wave of attackers. Such ruthlessness in the face of the Shaper threat is to be applauded and it seemed you were quite successful in destroying their ships.’

‘Not successful enough, unfortunately,’ said Chen. ‘We’d all be dead if you hadn’t intervened when you did. I’m interested to know how you managed to appear in the midst of the battle.’

‘Our translation drives allow instantaneous travel across the galaxy. Sadly we cannot repeat the trick until our ships’ drive cores are replaced, but it is a useful tactic, and an aggressive one which no doubt you approve of, for in the face of adversity you never stopped fighting. No retreat, no surrender, Admiral. We of the Order live by such watchwords. You have greatly impressed us.’

‘If I may ask, Lord Protector,’ said Chen. ‘Why did the Nahabe choose to help us now? I mean no disrespect, but your people have always very much remained in isolation and have not involved yourselves in the affairs of other races.’

‘No offence taken, Admiral,’ replied the Lord Protector. ‘You are quite correct. For too long our people have shut ourselves away. Our religious teachings tell us to fear the taint of others, but these texts were written many thousands of years ago following our first war against the Shapers. We barely survived and were forced to eradicate a number of other civilisations that had become enslaved and from which the Shaper infection had spread. I believe the correct phrase in your language would be a Pyrrhic victory. However, there have been an increasing number of voices within our civilisation, including within the ruling Theocratic Council who believed, in the light of the renewed Shaper threat, that engagement with other species should be pursued, indeed interpretation of scripture seemed to suggest to some that prophesy demanded it. A number of projects were undertaken to observe our galactic neighbours and work covertly against the Shapers’ influence within them.’

‘The Hidden Hand,’ said Chen.

‘Quite so,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘One of a number of such projects. I’m afraid what we first saw of the Commonwealth disappointed us greatly. Your government was quite obviously corrupt and senior figures amongst your navy were either too naive or too ambitious and greedy to be trusted. Our fears were borne out when that thrice damned Shaper vessel was uncovered in the Hadar system and your navy leapt upon it like excitable offspring being offered treats.’

‘Admiral Morgan was a fool, Admiral Cox doubly so.’

‘Morgan had links to organised crime, did you know that? He tried to use the so called ‘Sirius Syndicate’ to interfere with the Hidden Hand’s activities, little realising what exactly he was dealing with. Unsuccessfully I might add.’

‘Yes, I had heard that. I’ve had dealings with the Hidden Hand. They agreed to share information with myself and act as the eyes and ears of Special Operations Command in the renegade systems.’

‘Good. I must tell you, Admiral, that we were considering giving up on the Commonwealth entirely. There were many in our government who felt that you were too corrupt, that humanity was too vain and selfish and would be easily manipulated by the Shapers, but it has become clear to us through our dealings with the Hidden Hand and via our intelligence networks that there is hope for humanity, that there are enough humans of strength and integrity, like yourself, who are prepared to stand against the encroaching darkness. Our liaison with the Hidden Hand, the Speaker, was a most vociferous champion of humanity. He sent repeated communiqués to our government where he spoke most eloquently of the bravery and daring of the humans under his command. When we learned of the defeat of Admiral Haines in the Achernar system and that Earth lay at the mercy of the Shapers, we could not stand idly by and I was despatched to assist you.’

‘We are most grateful, Lord Protector, truly.’

‘I am only sorry that I could not bring more ships. My government fears that the Shapers will want revenge upon the Nahabe people for their previous defeat and that a massive attack, such as that launched against the Arkari, is inevitable. Hence, the bulk of our forces must remain in or near Nahabe space for the time being. We, on other hand will remain in this system and place ourselves at the disposal of your naval commanders.’

‘Thank you Lord Protector, we’re very honoured,’ said Chen solemnly.

‘The honour is mine, Admiral,’ the Lord Protector replied. ‘You are a formidable opponent for the Shapers. I am pleased to fight alongside you. Now we must take our leave of you and return to our ships.’

‘If I might ask, Lord Protector, you mentioned something about your ancient religious texts prophesying that the Nahabe would require the help of other species in order to defeat the Shapers in the future. I’m curious as to what they say exactly.’

The Lord Protector paused for a moment as if in contemplation, before replying.

‘I… it is unprecedented for non-Nahabe to read or hear the text of our holy scriptures.’

‘My apologies, I meant no offence. I was merely curious.’

‘No, that’s quite alright. After all, these are strange times. I think, given the spirit of the passage in question that it would be permissible for you to hear it. Just a moment, I trust that the translation into your language will not dilute the meaning of the words too much. This comes from Chapter Eighteen, Verse Seven, of the Book of Lamentations. “The darkness will rise again, this the wisest must know. In this time of sorrow, the Nahabe must seek the brotherhood of strangers, for they are like unto the Nahabe as the Nahabe are like unto them. So it is written in the souls of all. All must stand together against the World Killers.”’

Chen watched the strange Nahabe craft as it left the Churchill and pondered the Lord Protector’s words. Whatever the Nahabes’ reasons for helping them, be it politics, prophesy or military expediency, she was grateful for the presence of the curious aliens. Wearily, she made her way back up to the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Singh saluted her smartly as she entered and removed himself from her command chair. Chen sat down heavily and attached her HUD monocle.

‘What updates do you have for me Mr Singh?’ she said, trying to hide the tiredness she felt.

‘The rescue mission is still proceeding ma’am, though the teams inside the structure think that the chances of finding more survivors are pretty slim. Casualties now stand at fifteen thousand confirmed dead and thirty thousand injured, about five thousand people are unaccounted for. We also have a large number of friendly craft entering the system. Looks like five carrier groups from the engine signatures. It seems like the relief has finally begun to arrive.’

‘Excellent.’

‘How’s the arm, Admiral?’

‘Throbs like hell, but I’ll live, thanks.’

‘How did your meeting with the Nahabe go, ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘It was interesting, very interesting. It looks like the Nahabe have finally decided to get involved. Those ships are going to be sticking around for a while.’

‘That’s great news. Those gunspheres are quite something in a fight.’

‘Yes they are. Listen, Mr Singh, in fact, everyone listen up,’ said Chen, raising her voice so that all on the bridge could hear. ‘I’m immensely proud of all of you, the way you have all conducted yourselves these past few days has been exemplary, in the finest traditions of the service. I’ll be addressing the crew later, but I wanted to say this personally to you all, that this is the finest crew in the Commonwealth Navy, and it’s an honour to serve with you.’

Amidst the weary faces she saw smiles at last. She had meant every word.

‘That relief force should be here any minute,’ said Singh.

‘Good,’ replied Chen. ‘I don’t know about you Mr Singh, but I could do with a good long rest.’

Minutes later, space rippled apart and spat out around sixty warships - five carriers and their escort destroyers, cruisers and frigates. They arrived in perfect formation and began approaching Amazonia Port. Chen recognised the lead carrier almost immediately: it was the Trafalgar, Admiral Cartwright’s flagship. Chen had heard of Cartwright, but had never met him. He had served under Haines during the war against the K’Soth, leading a massive flanking manoeuvre against the Empire through dozens of systems and although she knew that Haines and Cartwright failed to see eye to eye on a personal level, she knew that Haines respected his tactical abilities. Promoted to Fleet Admiral alongside Haines during the war, he also outranked Chen.

The comm. activated. It was Cartwright. His stern, patrician features topped with short grey hair appeared in Chen’s HUD as Andrews put him through.

‘Churchill, this Admiral Cartwright of the Trafalgar. You stand relieved.’

‘Admiral Cartwright, this is Admiral Chen. It’s good to see you, sir.’

‘I’m sorry that we couldn’t arrive sooner. My god, it looks like you had quite a fight on your hands. What the hell happened to Amazonia Port!?’

‘The enemy attacked the facility before we drove them off, sir. We’ve been coordinating the rescue effort.’

‘And, are those Nahabe ships I can see in cislunar space?’

‘Yes sir, they arrived to assist us, in the nick of time I might add.’

‘Very good Admiral Chen, we’ll take it from here. Move your ships to Batavia Port for repairs. I’ve already alerted the dock master of your arrival. It looks like you’ve taken quite a beating, but you’re still here and the enemy are nowhere to be seen, so I suppose some congratulations are in order. I’ll need a full report of course, as will Command, but for now I’d suggest that you and your crew get some well earned rest. You look like you’re ready to drop.’

‘That I am sir, that I am,’ Chen replied.

Chapter 7

Fleet Meritarch Lorali Beklide walked slowly over the cracked and broken ground. Her feet sank into the drifts of ash, still hot in places from the inferno. The ash swirled on the wind also in choking clouds that threatened to block the vents of the rebreather unit clamped to her finely sculpted features and stung her eyes that were already wet with tears.

Beklide wept for the death of this world and a hundred others. Gigarethme had been one of the Arkari worlds that had borne the full fury of the sudden Shaper assault. The world had been a paradise, a verdant, planet-wide garden dotted with crystalline cities that had sprouted on slender stalks like massive, sculpted trees, their topmost levels brushing the edge of space. Around its equator had orbited a great ring, an orbital city and space dock for the Arkari Navy.

It had been Beklide’s home, and now it lay devastated. Whilst she had led the defence of Keros, the Arkari home-world, the Shapers had struck in a hundred or so different places simultaneously via the deployment of artificial wormholes. Torrents of ships had poured through the breaches in space-time and whilst Keros had been successfully defended, many worlds had simply been overwhelmed, the Navy spread too thinly to protect them all. Gigarethme’s defenders had fought bravely, but outnumbered hundreds-to-one they had died in minutes and the world’s fate had been eventually sealed by the Shapers’ deployment of planet killing weapons.

Huge areas of Gigarethme had been scoured of life. The planet’s girdling ring had been knocked from orbit by the energy weapons of the alien warships and had fallen from Gigarethme’s sky, the fragments each impacting the surface with the force of many thousands of megatonnes, then the Shapers’ vast warships had turned apocalyptic weapons on the planet, scouring its surface like a blow torch until almost nothing was left except cinders. Pockets of survivors had been found at the poles. They had endured the firestorm, having witnessed the seas boil away, the atmosphere seared and deserts transformed into great plains of cooling glass.

Beklide looked towards the horizon and saw the stumps of the crystal tree cities jutting upwards out of the ash clouds. The atmosphere boiled above her, lightning flickering amongst the rolling clouds. It started to rain. The seas were returning after having been vaporised. Fat, black drops began fall, laden with dust, splashing against her long robes and leaving long, dirty streaks.

She noticed something on the ground by her feet, charred by fire and half buried by the ash. It was the remains of a child. It was impossible to discern whether it had been male or female. Curled up in the terror of its final moments, charred fingers were still clasped over a ruined face in a last futile attempt to shield itself from the intense heat.

Beklide gasped in horror and sadness, and then she turned and headed back to the waiting shuttle. She had seen enough.

‘I don’t know why you insisted on coming here, Meritarch,’ said the voice of Beklide’s ship, the dreadnought Sword of Reckoning, over the shuttle’s comm. The small craft soared upwards through Gigarethme’s turbulent atmosphere as the barren ash wastes of the surface receded behind it. ‘There is considerable danger in coming here. The surface of the planet is far from stable, the atmosphere is barely breathable and the Shapers’ weapons may have left behind hidden dangers that we cannot anticipate. You should leave it to the rescue teams to face the hazards of this place.’

‘I wanted to see it for myself,’ said Beklide, resolutely. ‘I wanted to see first-hand what they had done to us.’

‘There is considerable data available on all aspects of the Shaper attack. Losses both military and civilian, the tactics employed by our enemy, a catalogue of systems invaded, the relative effectiveness of our weapons and defences versus theirs.’

‘It’s not the same. This place was my home, my family… my family lived here for generations. They were still living here when…’ She almost choked on her words and then added. ‘I had to come.’

‘I’m afraid I cannot comprehend the emotional attachment to a particular place, but I appreciate that the deaths of your loved ones must cause you considerable grief.’

‘Yes, it does,’ Beklide replied, stifling the urge to rebuke the coldly clinical AI ‘Billions more Arkari doubtless feel the same way.’

The shuttle was above the atmosphere now. The view ahead was filled with stars and the dull reflected light from the chunks of spinning debris still in orbit above the planet. In the distance she could see the rapidly growing shape of the Sword of Reckoning, the two hundred kilometre long capital ship’s wings beating slowly as it held station in the void. A vast number of other Arkari ships were also in orbit above the blasted world, as rescue teams did their best to extract survivors from the surface. They hung above the planet in a great, gleaming shoal.

‘Irakun Mentith saved us, you know,’ said Beklide. ‘Most of us, anyway.’

‘Yes, I’ve accessed the reports from the survivors from the Black Rock research facility,’ said the warship. ‘They say that he took the Shining Glory through one of the open wormholes and it collapsed soon after. Presumably he must have destroyed or disabled whatever device was generating them.’

‘I wonder if he made it out of there alive? I hope he did.’

‘I suspect that the odds were definitely stacked against such an eventuality.’

‘Then you don’t know Irakun Mentith too well,’ Beklide replied fighting the voice inside her that told her that Mentith and his crew were, in all probability, dead. The ship said nothing. Despite being an artificial intelligence with no real emotions, it knew when to keep silent. The Sword of Reckoning loomed large now, its huge hull forming a curving expanse of metal above the shuttle

‘Mentith has bought us a reprieve,’ said Beklide. ‘For how long, we cannot know, but it gives us a chance to prepare.’

‘To prepare for what, if I may ask?’ said the ship.

‘For our revenge,’ she replied firmly. ‘It’s time to take the war to the Shapers. I dare anyone to stand in our way.’

Chapter 8

Katherine stood at the head of the valley and gazed into the heart of the dead city that lay in the distance on the plain. Serried ranks of smashed and crumbling buildings slumped along the edges of cracked and buckled roads that led towards the horizon under a sky filled with lowering clouds. She was enveloped by the silence. There was no plant life to rustle in the breeze or animal life to fill the air with calls. The only sounds were the crunch of her boots on the endless fields of grey gravel and rock, and the mutterings of complaint from Rekkid as he eased himself into a sitting position on top of a flat lump of debris and contemplated his surroundings.

‘Of all the shithole planets we had to get marooned on, this place really does redefine the term “armpit of the universe.” Could we find a lush, verdant paradise world? No, we had to find somewhere that had been nuked into oblivion. Lucky us.’

‘Oh be quiet, Rekkid,’ chided Katherine, weary of his griping. ‘We’re not marooned. Mentith and his crew will get the Shining Glory up and running again, you’ll see.’

‘And then what? We’re tens of thousands of light years from home. It’ll take us years to get back, and to what? Is there anything left back home, or has it all been destroyed by the Shapers?’

‘I don’t know Rekkid, just… can we deal with things one at a time?’ Katherine replied and looked over at her Arkari friend who was massaging his skull either side of his head-crest, a sure sign as any that he was anxious. ‘We’re alive, we have to be thankful for that, and the ship brought us here for a reason. We need to find out what that reason was. There’s something important about this place, I’m sure. We have to get to the bottom of it.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ Rekkid replied and sighed heavily. ‘Sorry, it’s just that with all that’s happened I’m finding it a little difficult to think clearly. Gets on top of me, you know? I mean look how far away from home we are.’

He pointed at the sky. Even in the daytime the brilliant, lenticular shape of the galactic core laced with dark lanes of dust and gas dominated the patches of grey sky visible between the clouds. Mentith’s crew had established that they were on the opposite side of the core to the western spiral arm, home of the Arkari and the human race. This part of the galaxy - permanently occluded by the densely packed stars and dust and space-time distortion of the core when viewed from Earth or Keros - was uncharted space.

The crew of the Shining Glory had made some progress with the repairs. Power to the manoeuvring surfaces had been restored and the ship’s orbit had been stabilised. A mass evacuation to the surface had been postponed, for now. In addition, they had also managed to coax the nanotech hull to respond to basic commands, allowing the docking bay to be opened and the ship’s complement of smaller vessels to be despatched to survey the system. They had found very little. The star system they now found themselves in was a widely separated trinary system. A pair of closely orbiting G type yellow dwarf stars were orbited by a third at a distance of over nine hundred AUs. Whilst the central binary had no planets, the third star was orbited by five worlds. Three were little more than barren rocks, the outermost planet was a small gas giant with a faint system of rings, whilst the fourth world from the star was the one they now walked upon. There were no signs of settlement on any of the other worlds and none of them seemed suitable for life to have ever existed on their surfaces. There was, however, a large asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets with a high metal content, and Mentith had despatched ships to the belt to begin processing the asteroids into raw materials to repair the Glory.

Teams had also been sent down to the surface of the planet, both to survey for useable resources and to investigate the mysterious dead city from which the endlessly repeating transmissions were emanating. A temporary base had been dropped from orbit inside the Glory’s transport vessels. The lightweight buildings had arrived as flat metallic pallets, which had then unfolded themselves into long, tent like structures with thin, but incredibly tough, nano-form walls that contained heating, power, sanitation and a series of internal rooms. Further ships had then arrived with equipment and supplies to enable a home away from home to be established on the planet’s surface, just outside the edge of the dead city.

The Arkari were being cautious. It was still unclear what sort of weapons had been used to flatten the population centres of this world, and how long ago. It was entirely possible that pockets of radiation or the residues from chemical or biological warfare could lurk in pockets hidden within the ruins and hence they had chosen to place the temporary base, already dubbed Camp Keros, outside the city limits. Teams exploring the surface had been issued with small detectors that would alert the wearer to any dangerous levels of radiation, toxic chemicals or recognisable biological threats, although they were expected to be far less effective at detecting the latter given the wholly alien nature of the planet and any remaining life forms, if they existed.

Fortunately, the environment of the planet was suitable for both humans and Arkari. Gravity was roughly eighty percent of Earth’s and the atmosphere was breathable, though correspondingly thinner, approximating that of a high mountain on Earth. However, the lessened gravity made it a little easier to move around, and compensated a little for the difficulties of physical exertion in such rarefied air.

Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscale were to make an initial exploration of this part of the city, working their way inwards towards the source of the signals before Arrakid, the Shining Glory’s lead scientist, organised teams to follow up on their initial findings. They had been issued with comm. units and had been instructed to request extraction at once if they discovered anything hazardous. Steelscale had seemed to relish the challenge of this harsh environment. Perhaps the warrior instinct of his people encouraged him to pit himself against the rugged terrain. He had bounded off on his own into the ruins, his muscular, centauroid body carrying him across the broken terrain with surprising speed. They had not heard from him since he left Camp Keros at first light, his concubines having been left behind in their own dedicated hut where they ignored all attempts by the Arkari to get them to help.

Mentith, meanwhile, remained aboard his ship, where he coordinated the repairs and the mining operations for raw materials to manufacture new components for the ship. As yet, his crew had not succeeded in reconnecting either the ship’s own AI or the Progenitor entity that called itself Eonara. They remained active, but had resisted all attempts to communicate with them so far.

Katherine took a sip from her water bottle, replaced it in her rucksack and stood up, peering into the heart of the city. A dust storm had blown up, obscuring the distant buildings from view behind whipping grey clouds.

‘Come on Rekkid, don’t look so glum. I’m sure there’s plenty of fascinating things for us to find here,’ she said, trying to cheer up her friend and colleague.

‘You’re probably right,’ said Rekkid, standing and hefting his own pack. ‘It ought to at least take my mind off our current predicament.’

Taking care to avoid slipping on the rolling gravel underfoot, they made their way down the hillside until they reached the remains of a road at the bottom that appeared to head straight into the city. The cracked surface seemed similar to concrete, and had long since been scoured of any markings by the wind and dust. Doubtless it had once been flawlessly smooth, but subsidence and weathering had cracked and twisted the surface until it undulated gently across the landscape. They set off walking along its hard surface, the sound of their footsteps and the whisper of dust in the breeze the only sounds that broke the enveloping silence.

After about a kilometre the first remains of buildings started to appear. They were in various states of collapse. Most lacked roofs and the majority seemed to have crumbled on the side facing towards the centre of the city. The interiors of many were choked with rubble. Eventually they came across one that was more intact. Although a portion of the roof had collapsed and plunged through the floor below, the majority of it remained. The roof had been low and sweeping, as if designed to repel large amounts of rainwater. Katherine and Rekkid pondered this as they looked about them at the lifeless desert that the planet had been transformed into.

They approached the building’s low door and peered inside. It had obviously been constructed to accommodate a physiology rather shorter than humans or Arkari.

‘That’s odd,’ said Rekkid, thoughtfully assessing the state of the structure. ‘See, the roof has collapsed through the first floor, but there’s no rubble inside or outside the building. Someone must have cleared it away.’

‘Some people must have survived for a time after the bombardment, I guess,’ said Katherine. ‘Perhaps whoever owned this building planned to repair it but never got the chance.’

‘I imagine it must have been a long slow death for this planet,’ said Rekkid. ‘A bombardment of this magnitude on a planet-wide scale would have thrown up tremendous amounts of dust into the atmosphere. It would have blotted out the sun for years. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could have survived.’

‘The science teams haven’t found anything larger than microbial life so far, and nothing that relies on sunlight for sustenance.’

‘Hardly surprising. The food chain would have collapsed completely. Anything relying on photosynthesis would have been dead in days or weeks, and higher life forms would have followed once the food ran out. I guess some people could have survived by scavenging dead animals and food stocks for a while, but when they ran out… not to mention the possibility of radiation poisoning on top of it all. No wonder this place is a tomb.’

Katherine ducked inside the entrance to the building. Inside she found a low, L-shaped stone counter and a number of shelves inset into the thick walls. There were rusty marks set at regular intervals indicating where further shelving had been attached to the walls and where power or data sockets had once been situated. Steps at the back of the room led down into darkness.

‘Looks like a shop of some sorts to me,’ said Rekkid, bending low as he negotiated the entrance. ‘A cosy, family run sort of place, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Katherine. ‘Unless this is the food preparation area for a house.’

‘Seems a little large for a building of this size, though granted we know little about these people. Those steps over there, I wonder where they lead to?’ said Rekkid, indicating towards the shadowy stairwell.

‘Let me find my torch and we’ll take a look, shall we?’ said Katherine, fumbling in her rucksack and producing a slim, pen sized device.

They walked over to the stairwell, shining their lights down into the darkness. It appeared that the stairs had originally been barred by a heavy door of some kind. Traces of the hinges could be seen in the walls. However now nothing remained except traces of rust. Gingerly they stepped down into the darkness.

The steps led down into a large cellar. Judging by the large shelving recesses cut into the walls it had served as a storeroom for the shop above. Down here, a little more had been preserved, the cellar sheltering its contents from the ravages of the elements. The remains of broken crates and containers littered the floor, and there were bones. There were bones everywhere.

Katherine and Rekkid shone their torches over the grisly scene, their beams revealing the remains of large skulls amid the scattered bones. The bones had been broken, often into numerous pieces, but from the size and shape of the skulls, there was no mistaking the fact that they had once belonged to sentient beings. Large binocular eye-sockets and oversized brain cases betrayed the presence of intelligence.

‘Looks like we found some of the locals, poor bastards,’ said Rekkid. ‘Perhaps they crept down here to die together?’

Katherine stepped carefully across the bone strewn floor so as not to disturb any of the remains. She crouched down in front of one of the more intact skulls and played her torch over it. The skull lacked a bottom jaw and the upper one contained a number of broken teeth towards the front of the mouth. Looking carefully Katherine could see that these people had endlessly replacing teeth, similar to terrestrial sharks. A number of other partially formed teeth could be seen growing from the jaw, but the front teeth had not had time to re-grow and looking closer she could see that there were fragments of broken tooth still within the upper jaw. There was also the small matter of the massive wound across the creature’s left eye. A sharp edge had chopped down diagonally, embedding itself in the eye socket, biting into the creature’s cheekbone and cracking the frontal bone. The cranium had been broken open. Looking inside it, Katherine could see the telltale scrape marks made by a metal implement of some kind. She looked about at the bones around her from legs, arms and ribs. There were cut marks on them. Somebody had used a blade to strip them of meat.

‘My god, Rekkid,’ said Katherine in horror. ‘These people didn’t come here to die: they were forced down here and butchered like animals. Look at the marks on the bones!’

Rekkid peered closer at a nearby bone resembling a femur and also saw the cut marks clearly visible in the light from his torch. This largest bone had been smashed open, presumably to get at the marrow inside.

‘They must have been desperate,’ he muttered. ‘Imagine what must have happened when the food ran out. Civilisation is just a thin veneer. People will do anything to survive when it comes down to it. The owners of this shop could have been hoarding food down here. They would have been easy prey for any roaming, desperate gangs, and they would have been well fed compared to everyone else, plenty of meat on their bones…’

‘Stop it!’ snapped Katherine. ‘Christ, Rekkid. How can you be so callous?’

‘Sorry,’ Rekkid replied sheepishly. ‘I guess I use black humour as a coping mechanism.’

‘I’d noticed, thanks.’

‘You’re absolutely correct, this is a pretty grim scene,’ said Rekkid, his brow furrowing. ‘Maybe they were killed and butchered down here and the meat taken elsewhere along with whatever food they had hoarded.’

‘We should log this site, it needs proper investigation and maybe we can reconstruct some of these skeletons to get a proper impression of what these people looked like,’ said Katherine.

‘Agreed,’ said Rekkid. ‘But first I intend to get a date on the age of these remains.’

He removed his sample analyser from his pack and after selecting a small bone fragment from the floor of the cellar, placed it within the device. After a few seconds, the analyser displayed a result.

‘The analyser doesn’t recognise the genetic structure of the sample. But it can estimate that it’s about ten thousand years old, give or take a century or two,’ said Rekkid, scrutinising the device’s display. ‘Someone killed this planet whilst the human race was still using stone tools and it’s lain undisturbed ever since. The question is, why?’

‘We need to keep looking,’ said Katherine. ‘Come on, let’s push further on into the city.’

Further in, the buildings became larger and more closely packed. Some had obviously been many stories in height and had come crashing down when they had been hit by the blast wave. Others had survived the attack, but had simply crumbled with the ravages of time. Increasingly the road became choked with drifts of rubble, making the going more difficult. There was far more dust here, and it swirled in choking clouds at the slightest breeze. Katherine and Rekkid removed Arkari made rebreather units from their packs and fixed the slick, flexible devices to their faces, allowing them to breathe and see easily in the filthy atmosphere.

Their comms. crackled into life: it was Steelscale.

‘I’ve found something you might want to see,’ said the flat tones of the translation software. ‘A place of worship of some kind, I think. I’ve marked it for you on your maps and I’ll wait here until you arrive. Plenty of the internal decoration has survived. I’ll think you will find it interesting.’

‘That’s wonderful, Steelscale,’ replied Katherine and checked her comm.’s mapping function where a new icon had appeared. ‘We’re on our way, though the going’s a little rough around here, so we could be a while. See you when we get there.’

‘Interesting,’ said Rekkid. ‘I wonder what he’s found?’

As Katherine predicted, the journey to Steelscale’s position proved difficult. They scrambled over piles of rubble, through buckled and shattered streets, through the remains of collapsed buildings and across what had once been broad public spaces but were now littered with massive chunks of debris and shallow dunes of accumulated grit and dust. More than once, Katherine and Rekkid were forced to assist one another in clambering over huge lumps of fallen masonry, pulling one another up and over cyclopean blocks where entire sides of what had once been skyscrapers had come tumbling down. Eventually they arrived at a solidly built structure with high, narrow windows and the smashed remains of what had once been spires at each corner. The masonry was heavily weathered, but the remains of ornamental carvings depicting various figures accompanied by the faint remains of an alien script could be seen on the exterior. Aside from the damage to the towers, the main building, shaped somewhat like an upturned boat, seemed largely intact. An ornate entrance, the doors having long since disintegrated, was set into the nearest side. Breathless from their exertions, Katherine and Rekkid headed inside and gratefully removed their rebreathers.

The appearance of the temple was deceptive. Inside the entrance, broad stone steps led downwards into the earth until they opened up into the nave, the increased roof height created by sinking the floor giving the illusion that the temple was bigger on the inside than from without. Heavy stone columns supported equally massive arches that held up the roof. The floor was a mosaic of tiny tiles set into complex geometric patterns and was strewn with the remains of what must have once been chairs or pews.

Steelscale was waiting for them. He sat curled, catlike, at the end of the nave where the altar lay, lit by the glow of the torch he had set upon the ornamented stone wall that separated the altar from the rest of the nave, the torch’s beam angled so that it illuminated the end wall.

‘Katherine, Rekkid. So glad you could make it at last.’ Steelscale’s translator was difficult to hear over his natural rumbling, guttural voice that echoed in the vaulted space. ‘I thought you would never make it.’ The last sentence was followed by a short bark, the K’Soth equivalent of a laugh.

‘You should see some of the terrain out there in the city, Steelscale,’ said Rekkid breathlessly, still sweating profusely despite the cool of the temple’s interior. ‘Those ruins aren’t exactly easy to scramble over.’

Steelscale laughed again. ‘Four legs and talons have their uses. Personally, I enjoyed the exercise. Gave me a chance to ‘stretch my legs’ as I believe the humans say.’

‘Yeah well, remind me to grow an extra pair,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Now, what is it that you’ve found here that you just had to show us?’

Steescale gestured at the wall above the altar, where the faint remains of frescos could still be seen, remarkably preserved.

‘As you can see, this building appears to be a place of worship. Many of my kind would simply dismiss this as pagan imagery and burn the place to the ground in the name of the Light, but I think we can learn much here.’

‘Yes we can,’ breathed Katherine. ‘Such as: what the people who built this place looked like. Look, in the lower left corner, there are figures, can you see?’

Rekkid followed Katherine’s pointing finger. Sure enough, there were humanoid figures depicted in the fading paint. Whether the figures were stylised was unclear as they had no point of reference, but the stocky forms were clearly visible. Brown, near black, skin tones contrasted with brightly coloured clothing, the painted textures of the cloth just visible in places. Their arms seemed to be held up in worship of something towards the upper middle of the fresco. Just what they were worshipping was, however, unclear, that portion of the fresco having fallen away, but traces of what appeared to be divine rays could be seen reaching out to the figures.

‘Fascinating isn’t it? We seem to have an image of this planet’s former inhabitants. What is also interesting, however,’ continued Steelscale, ‘is that there appear to be two images on this altar, one painted over the other, the most recent, the one with the figures, having replaced something quite different. Here.’ He picked up the torch and moved the beam so that the right hand portion of the wall was better illuminated. Here, the uppermost layer had flaked away revealing a series of large symbols and columns of smaller, unreadable alien text. There were no depictions of any kind. ‘It is clear that at some point this temple was heavily redecorated,’ said Steelscale. ‘I have examined the rest of the building and found other areas where a layer of frescos displaying symbols and texts had been covered over with an additional layer, in many cases with another set of artwork. Sadly I have not been able to uncover precisely what these figures in the later frescos appear to be worshipping. Some sort of divine being perhaps?’

‘Seems that way,’ said Rekkid. ‘Those rays of holy light, if that’s what they are, would seem to indicate as much. What do you think this over-painting points to? Some sort of religious change or schism or just a change in fashion?’

‘It does bear a resemblance to some of the medieval cathedrals in Europe,’ said Katherine. ‘The colourful decorations of formerly Catholic churches were whitewashed or plastered over to conceal them to create a simpler more ascetic look. So yes, it could point to some sort of drastic religious episode, or as you say, a simple change in fashion in how they liked to decorate their temples. We’ll need more evidence before we could draw any sort of concrete conclusions and so far we know very little about these people.’

‘It would help if we could decipher their language,’ said Rekkid. ‘Some sort of key or primer. But after such a long time I don’t hold out much hope of finding anything useful. Any books would have long since disintegrated.’

‘Some of their machines must have survived,’ said Steelscale. ‘Or else what is generating that signal that the Shining Glory picked up from orbit? Maybe we can find electronic records there. Whatever is beaming out that signal could be in some sort of hardened facility if it still works after the bombardment and after all this time. We should head to the source. We’re bound to find out more once we investigate it, I’m certain.’

‘Agreed,’ said Rekkid. ‘We should record images of this place and move on. We can always return with scanning equipment and see if we can reveal some more of the images on these walls. We need to press on with what Mentith sent us here to do in the first place: find the source of those signals.’

They spent a while taking pictures of the interior of the temple, then after a brief rest and a spartan meal from their ration packs, the three archaeologists continued into the city. They’d been heading roughly northwards into the city centre, however the source of the signals lay within the area that orbital imaging had revealed as being totally flattened by whatever weapon had struck the city ten millennia previously, at the centre of which was a crater around half a kilometre in diameter.

Steelscale led the way, his lithe, muscular body powering him over the rubble with surprising speed as he scouted out easier routes for his two humanoid companions to take. He seemed unbothered by the dusty atmosphere - membranes in his eyes and nose allowing him to cope with the particles in the air.

As they pushed deeper into the city, the state of the buildings began to deteriorate. Here they had obviously been tall, many storied structures,- judging from the sheer volume of debris - but increasingly these former monoliths had been reduced to little more shattered stumps. Occasionally, they came across a lone building that had survived nearly intact. Something about their orientation or construction had saved them. Some leaned at unsettling angles, looking as though they were ready to topple. In other places, the central cores of the buildings were all that had survived, massive pillars of a concrete like substance from which had presumably hung metal and glass floors and walls. They stood over the devastation like stele in an ancient necropolis.

Eventually, they arrived at the edge of the area where the destruction was near total and stood for a moment, looking inwards towards the vast crater at its heart. A sea of rubble stretched for several kilometres to the horizon. The central crater was just visible amid the shifting dust storms.

A single structure remained standing amid the ruins. It was a squat ziggurat several hundred feet in height and about a kilometre distant. Presumably, the solid construction of its sloping walls had saved it from destruction. It appeared to be the source of the transmissions.

Katherine looked at the undulating expanse of smashed buildings between them and their destination and felt doubt creeping into her mind.

‘I’m not sure how we’re going to cross all that,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should contact the Glory and get them to send a shuttle down to take us across all of this.’

‘Wouldn’t that be like admitting defeat?’ said Rekkid. ‘We’ve come this far by ourselves. I’m sure Mentith’s people have got better things to do at the moment than ferry three hapless academics a mere kilometre or so. How would that look?’

‘You have a point,’ Katherine agreed. ‘Okay, come on, let’s scramble for it.’

Once more, Steelscale led the way, clambering to the tops of the highest rubble piles to spot easier paths for his colleagues. The three archaeologists plotted a zigzag path amidst the crazily angled rubble until their radiation detectors began to beep shrilly. Panicked, the three of them backpedalled until the devices ceased their warning signals. Gingerly, Steelscale held his detector at arm’s length and began probing the edge of the radioactive zone. Evidently, it encompassed the ravine between two smashed buildings they were now standing at one end of.

‘So, it looks like this place was nuked after all,’ said Rekkid. ‘Ten thousand years is a long time, but these isotopes must take a lot longer than that to decay. I guess rain and wind must have dispersed a lot of it over time, but down here in these sheltered spots they still remain.’

‘Looks like we might need that shuttle after all,’ replied Katherine. ‘We can back-track and find another way through, but there could be dozens, even hundreds of these hotspots. I don’t know about you, but getting radiation poisoning wasn’t on my list of things to do today.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ said Rekkid.

‘There is another way,’ said Steelscale.

‘There is?’ said Rekkid.

‘Yes. I could… I could carry you both on my back if you wish. I am able to climb over the rubble, avoiding the sheltered areas where the radioactive material is likely to be hiding. I can easily cope with the weight of your bodies.’

‘Why thank you Steelscale, that’s very generous of you,’ said Katherine. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘No it’s no trouble. Just don’t… just don’t tell anyone about this. In my culture… it’s embarrassing, acting like a pack animal for others.’ His normally russet scales rippled with orange pigment for a second in embarrassment.

‘We won’t tell, Steelscale,’ said Katherine. ‘Your secret is safe with us.’

Katherine clung to Steelscale’s torso as the K’Soth leapt and scrambled across the broken terrain, scaling massive, slanting blocks in a single leap and hurtling at breakneck speed along narrow ridges and angled, cracked surfaces. She could feel the sheer animal power contained within the K’Soth’s muscles, the coiled spring of his long, flexible spine, the strength of his mighty legs, the toes that, tipped with wicked, hooked talons, sought purchase on the slightest crevice or ridge to catapult them onwards and the solidity of the muscles in his upper body and forearms as he pulled himself up and over fallen rubble. It put her in mind of riding on the back of a big cat from Earth, albeit one covered in an armoured skin of dark red-brown scales. The harsh environment of the K’Soth home-world had made Steelscale’s people into formidable predators before they had escaped its bonds and unleashed themselves upon the galaxy, seeing all other races as potential prey. Steelscale, and a few others that she had met, were proof that not all K’Soth could be tarred with the same brush, but still, his raw physical strength was a reminder that he was quite capable of tearing them both apart without a second thought if he chose. Quite how men and women had fought the K’Soth at close quarters and survived was a mystery. It was a terrifying prospect.

Rekkid sat behind Katherine, hanging onto her with one hand and onto Steelscale’s equipment harness with another. After a few moments of riding she realised that the Arkari had screwed his eyes tightly shut behind his rebreather and seemed to be muttering something. Knowing Rekkid it was probably an endless stream of expletives in a number of different languages.

Occasionally, their radiation alarms started to beep, and Steelscale immediately changed course, leaping away in a different direction to take them away from danger.

Eventually, they reached the foot of the ziggurat. Katherine and Rekkid dismounted and thanked Steelscale, who stood panting from his exertions, thick tongue lolling between his knife-like teeth. They stood looking up at the structure. It was faced with some sort of jet black material that had survived the bombardment and the long decay of millennia remarkable well. A few of the blocks that formed its smooth exterior had cracked or had fallen away, but other than that the building appeared remarkably undamaged. It, like the temple they had investigated earlier, was covered with carvings. Though they were high up on the structure, they showed the same, squat humanoid figures engaged in what appeared to be both scenes of worship and of war. Figures could be seen battling with one another on the ground and in the heavens. Elsewhere they were depicting kneeling as if in supplication.

‘What do you suppose this place is?’ said Katherine. ‘A place of worship, or a military installation? It’s decorated like a temple, but it’s built like a damn bunker. I can’t see a single window in this place and it’s survived a nuclear explosion that took place only a short distance from here.’

They walked around the base of the ziggurat, trying to find a way inside. Eventually they found the entrance. A shallow ramp led up to the building, but the entrance was barred by massive blocks of the same black material. Each must have been originally moved by machinery within. Obviously weighing many tonnes, the blocks were unmoveable without the use of heavy equipment.

‘Looks like we’ll need the help of the Glory’s ships after all,’ said Katherine. ‘I don’t see us getting inside unless we can lift these blocks out of the way. Rekkid?’

Rekkid hadn’t heard her. He was transfixed by the carvings above the main entrance. It was a repeat of the image that they had found earlier within the temple, but in this case it was complete. Divine rays were streaming from the centre of an elaborately carved circle to touch the figures all around it.

‘Look! Look at the writing!’ said Rekkid, pointing a shaky hand at the carvings. Below the image was a line of indecipherable alien script, the local language of the planet’s former inhabitants that they had seen elsewhere. Below that was another block of characters. There was no mistaking the complex geometric forms. The language was that of the Progenitors.

Chapter 9

At the edge of the solar system, out beyond the Oort cloud, space rippled gently as the Profit Margin slipped back into real space. The vessel hung for a moment, flimsy radiator panels extended in a broad X like the wings of some bizarre insect. They glinted dully in the weak light from the distant Sun, visible as little more than a slightly larger background star here at the cusp of interstellar space. In the infrared spectrum, the Profit Margin’s radiator panels shone brilliantly as they dumped excess heat from the ship’s drive. Thrusters in the nose fired briefly and brought the craft to a dead stop.

Isaacs sat, hands poised over the ship’s controls as Anna scrutinised the displays from the ship’s scanning equipment.

‘Anything?’ said Isaacs, tensely. ‘Have they noticed us?’

‘I’d be surprised if the detection arrays in the system haven’t picked up something, but it’s a question of whether the operators know what they’re looking at, and if they see us as a threat. If they do, they aren’t reacting,’ said Anna.

‘What ships can you see in the system?’ said Isaacs, checking the drive readouts for any abnormalities.

‘Just a second,’ Anna let out a low whistle then said. ‘There are a lot of ships in the Solar System.’

‘How many is a lot?’

‘Well, just around Earth I’m picking up a couple of hundred capital ships of all classes. There’s a lot of activity in Jovian space too, particularly above Io where Galileo Station ought to be.’

‘What do you mean by “ought to be”?’ asked Isaacs.

‘Well, as far as I can see from here, it isn’t there anymore. The traffic control beacon isn’t showing up and there’s a whole bunch of ships in the vicinity.’

‘Jesus,’ replied Isaacs, and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Are they a rescue party, or did they destroy the station?’

‘Impossible to say at this distance. There are quite a few warships hanging around there though.’

‘Of course there’s no way of telling if any of these ships are friendly or not. Hell, even if we found a few names we recognised there’s no guarantee. They could have been taken over if the Shapers have beaten the Commonwealth here. Are any of the ships the same ones we encountered in Hadar or Spica, the ones that Cox was commanding?’

‘Nope,’ Anna replied and shook her head.

‘Well that’s something. It’s not exactly a cast iron guarantee that they’re on our side though. We need to get closer and have a look at these guys, and then get the hell out of here if they turn out to be the enemy. I don’t suppose there’s any sign of Shaper vessels in the system?’

‘None that I can see, but of course our onboard sensors can’t pick them up. We need a data feed from a more sophisticated array, like the one at Port Royal, that’s been modified according to the Nahabes’ specs. So the Shapers could be lurking in this system, it’s just that we can’t see them.’

‘Great. That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,’ said Isaacs.

‘Me neither. Huh…’ Anna’s brow furrowed as she peered at the display, then she added: ‘That’s odd…’

‘What’s odd?’ Isaacs replied, leaning over to take a look at the display himself.

‘Just for a second, I swear the sensors registered a Nahabe gunsphere in the system. No sign of it now though…’

‘Could be a glitch. A false return off some debris or something.’ Isaacs shrugged. ‘Still, the buggers can cloak their ships, you know? Maybe they’re here to hunt Shapers. The Speaker said that the Nahabe were sending a fleet to help Earth.’

‘Maybe. I just hope that they aren’t being hunted themselves. I saw what happened to the Uncaring Cosmos and the Blessed Nothingness. They can take on the Shapers, but they had a hell of a fight on their hands, and they may have got here too late. In any case, we need to get deeper into the system and find out what the hell is going on around here.’

Isaacs had plotted a looping, indirect course away from Achernar to the heart of the Commonwealth, taking the Profit Margin through all manner of backwater systems and little used trade lanes, using the stealth module to mask his ship’s signature when they approached inhabited systems and then dropping out of hyperspace in the depths of interstellar space to dump the excess heat built up in the ship’s drive system. Finally, he had skirted the mining settlements in the Ross 128 system before heading for the Solar System by making a short jump towards Sirius and then another, back across towards the Sun. As a feat of creative navigation it was impressive. Anyone following the ship, if they were capable of tracking its dampened drive signature, would have been unable to guess its final destination until the final jump for Earth. It was unlikely that anyone would have had the foresight to guess where the Profit Margin was going and attempt to prepare an unwelcome reception. So far, it seemed to have worked.

Isaacs was leaning over and squinting at the sensor display, whilst pulling coordinates off into the navicomp. He adjusted them a few times before he seemed happy and then set about prepping the jump drive and stealth module.

‘Okay, you have a plan?’ said Anna, peering quizzically at her husband, busy over the ship’s instruments.

‘Yeah I do,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Jupiter’s on this side of the system at the moment, and like you said, there are plenty of what appear to be Navy ships in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the monitoring arrays at the Pluto-Charon Lagrange point are currently on the other side of the system, making it harder for them to see us. My bet is that sensor coverage in Jovian space is pretty spotty, what with Galileo Station out of the picture, plus there’s plenty of bodies orbiting the planet that we can sneak in behind and then poke our noses out to take a peek at what’s going on. If it all goes pear-shaped, we’re not too deep inside the system and escape should be a bit easier. We’ll have a head start on the rest of the ships in the system and we can use the stealth module to evade pursuers as we head for Arkari space.’

‘Wow,’ said Anna, taken aback. ‘You really do have a plan then. I’m impressed.’

‘Yeah well, planning is the reason I’m not sucking vacuum right now in some godforsaken system.’

‘Really? You’ve been known to cut things a bit fine, you know.’

‘That’s true, I guess, but I’m still alive. Look you’re going into something like this, you need to plan your escape routes. Jupiter or Saturn seemed like the sensible choice to jump to on the way over, what with all the places to hide around them, and there doesn’t seem to be too much going on around Saturn, so Jupiter it is. That’s where all the activity is, aside from Earth.’

‘So what now?’

‘I’ve plotted jump coordinates that will bring us in from the opposite side of the planet to where Galileo Station ought to be, then we do a short jump to behind the sensor shadow of Sinope, one of the outer moons. It’s an uneven rock, little more than an asteroid captured by the planet’s gravity, so we should be able to sneak in close and poke our noses out for a look at what’s going on around Io before we head on in. We’ll keep the stealth module on until we’re tucked in behind Sinope and dump the heat in its shadow.’

‘That’s a pretty small pebble to hide behind,’ said Anna.

‘It’s big enough,’ said Isaacs. ‘Let’s go, before someone sees us.’

A few minutes later and the Profit Margin slipped back out of hyperspace in the sensor shadow of the irregular shaped moon of Sinope. She had briefly emerged above the cloud tops of Jupiter, the great swirling storms seeming close enough to touch outside the cockpit windows before disappearing once more and slipping across the giant planet’s vast system of moons to come to rest behind this small, distant worldlet. Isaacs brought the ship to a halt, relative to the moon, then when it was safe to do so, deployed the stealth module’s radiator panels and sat back in his command chair with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

‘Nice,’ said Anna. ‘I’m impressed. You got it right on the money.’

‘Yep, and you know what the best part is? No-one else can see us. There isn’t a single ship or sensor array in the system that can see us clearly right now.’

‘Really?’ Anna replied, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Of course one of the military arrays might have picked us up, but the question still remains: did they know what they were looking at? If we showed up at all they’d probably mistake us for a much smaller ship,’ said Isaacs, basking in the glow of his navigational achievement. He pressed a couple of controls on the console in front of him and retracted the ship’s radiator panels.

‘Hmm. I don’t know, this is the most heavily defended system in the entire Commonwealth, you know,’ said Anna. ‘Don’t get cocky. This stealth module was fine for getting away from Port Royal without being seen and masking our trail, but there’s some serious hyperspace monitoring kit in this system. I’m still not convinced that they can’t see us.’

‘The Shapers in Achernar didn’t.’

‘We think…’

‘Well, so far so good. Let’s get a look at what’s going on around Io.’

With incredible care and precision, Isaacs brought the Profit Margin in close to the moon, using the ship’s manoeuvring thrusters to gently push her into position. Now, close to the frost rimed surface, where back scatter from the potato shaped moon would hopefully hide their presence, he edged the ship forward until its sensors were able to see over the horizon and deeper into the Jovian system. At this distance, the massive gas giant was visible as a thumbnail sized disk, brilliantly reflecting the light of the sun. Io was just visible as a smaller point of light just off to the left. The Profit Margin’s sensors were, however, able to see much more.

‘Shit, yeah. Looks like Galileo Station’s gone,’ said Anna, examining the feed from the sensors as Isaacs adjusted the attitude and relative velocity of the ship. ‘There’s nothing left where it should be except a hell of a lot of debris.’

‘Shit,’ Isaacs replied. ‘There must have been thousands of people on that station.’

‘Yeah,’ said Anna quietly. ‘I guess there must have been. We’re dealing with monsters here, remember?’

‘How could I forget?’ Isaacs replied, grimly.

‘Want the good news?’ said Anna.

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a medical frigate just arrived in Jovian space, the CNV Hippocrates. I’d say that’s a rescue mission underway around Io.’

‘Which means that they’re likely to be friendly.’

‘Probably, yes. The rest of the ships look like transports and warships. There’s a couple of frigates, a handful of cruisers and a destroyer, the Hadrian, not to mention a whole host of transport and salvage craft coming and going from the area. I’d put money on that destroyer being the command ship.’

‘Okay. I’ll jump us in to the edge of that area and we can hail the Hadrian and see what happens.’

‘Just be careful, Cal. Given what seems to have happened here, they’re likely to be pretty nervous and so, trigger happy. Don’t do anything that could accidentally see us staring down the wrong end of a particle beam cannon. I suggest we turn off the stealth module. We don’t want to suddenly appear on their sensors and surprise them.’

‘Yeah… I think you might be right about that,’ said Isaacs, and activated the Profit Margin’s jump drive.

The Profit Margin sped towards Io, dropping out of hyperspace on the edge of what had previously been the traffic control zone around Galileo Station. The pockmarked, yellow moon hung outside the bridge windows, the banded orb of Jupiter filling the space behind it.

Isaacs and Anna gasped in shock. They had been correct in their assumptions – Galileo Station had been almost totally destroyed. Barely anything remained of the gigantic wheel shaped station, save for the battered remains of the docking hub and a section of the outer habitation ring still attached to it by one of the spokes. It rotated eccentrically, attended by a small fleet of salvage craft who were trying to stabilise it. Space around the destroyed station was filled with debris, not just sections of the station but dozens, if not hundreds of destroyed vessels. A couple of warships patrolled the perimeter, whilst the rest seemed to be assisting in the rescue efforts. The Titan class destroyer Hadrian hung above the scene, apparently coordinating the operation with the medical frigate Hippocrates and a handful of large military transports parked alongside her. A fleet of salvage craft, mainly shuttles and medical evac. vessels, came and went between the larger ships and the debris field. A quick glance at the Profit Margin’s scanners revealed that all of the warships had both their shields up and their weapons charged and ready.

Isaacs brought his ship to a complete stop as the comm. came to life.

‘Independent vessel Fairy Wings this is the destroyer Hadrian. This area is under naval jurisdiction. We have been tracking you since you entered the system. State your business.’

‘Fairy Wings!?’ said Isaacs, shooting a hostile glance at Anna. ‘I take it Maria changed the ID transponder and that this is her idea of a joke.’

‘Well we needed some cover,’ replied Anna with a smirk.

‘Very funny. More to the point, how the fuck have they been tracking us?’

The comm. came to life again. ‘Vessel Fairy Wings, please respond. We are at full combat readiness and are targeting your vessel. Hostile acts will be met with lethal force.’

‘Hadrian, this is the uh, Fairy Wings,’ said Isaacs into the comm. ‘We are here on a matter of some urgency and have information that you will find useful.’

‘Please be more specific, Fairy Wings.’

‘I’d rather not discuss it over an open channel,’ replied Isaacs. ‘However, we have been working with Admiral Michelle Chen and have vital information to give to her.’

There was no reply from the Hadrian for a few, tense moments, then a reply came from the warship. It was a different voice this time, a woman’s.

‘Fairy Wings, this is Captain Ellen Macpherson of the Hadrian. The cruiser Lycurgus is approaching your position. You will allow the Lycurgus to escort you to our position whereupon you are to dock with us. Upon docking you will be met by a team of armed marines and you will follow their instructions. Do I make myself clear Captain…?’

‘Captain Caleb Isaacs. Yes, ma’am. Absolutely clear. We will await the escort.’

‘Very good, Captain Isaacs. Hadrian out.’

Isaacs exhaled with relief and sat back in his couch, running a hand through his short, untidy hair.

‘Well that went pretty well, I thought,’ he said, checking the scanner display which, sure enough, showed the cruiser moving towards them.

‘Yeah, except if they all turn out to be slavering monsters once we dock with the Hadrian we’ll have delivered the data right into the hands of the enemy with no means of escape,’ Anna replied.

‘You said it yourself, this is a rescue operation here. These guys aren’t the enemy. Besides, what choice did I have?’

‘Hmm, I guess you’re right,’ Anna replied, cautiously. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to trust them.’

Escorted in to the Hadrian, the Profit Margin was instructed to dock in the small bay located underneath the vessel’s superstructure between the twin V-shaped keels. Isaacs powered down the vessel, then he and Anna stepped cautiously out of the ship. They were met by a squad of armed marines in full combat armour.

Isaacs and Anna put up their hands and allowed themselves to be searched whilst four of the marines dashed inside the Profit Margin and began to systematically search its compartments. The marine sergeant searching Isaacs, whose nametag read Bryson, held up a hand scanner.

‘Okay, I know the drill,’ said Isaacs to the expressionless visage of Sergeant Bryson’s visor. ‘There aren’t any nasty things inside my head except my catalogue of bad jokes, but you can look anyway.’

Bryson held the device to Isaacs’ head and then Anna’s and scrutinised the display as the four marines that had been searching the ship re-emerged and reported that they had found nothing untoward.

‘Okay, they’re clean,’ said Sergeant Bryson into his suit comm. and then paused as if he was listening to a reply. ‘Do you have any ID?’ he said to Isaacs and Anna.

‘Um, there’s our civilian pilot licenses,’ said Isaacs, fumbling for the battered data card in his pockets as Anna did the same. Sergeant Bryson held up the cards with his bulky, armoured gloves and then slotted them into his scanner and peered at the readout.

‘Caleb Isaacs, registered captain of the vessel Profit Margin and Anna Favreaux, registered captain of the vessel Jilted Lover. DNA matches our scan results. Would you mind telling me who that ship belongs to that you arrived in?’ said Bryson.

‘That’s the uh, the Profit Margin,’ said Isaacs. ‘She belongs to me. We were deep inside enemy territory in the Achernar system and the bastards had my ship ident. We needed to make a clean getaway.’

‘I see,’ Bryson replied. ‘Flying with a false ID is a serious offence. We ought to impound your vessel and arrest you.’

‘Seriously, there are bigger things at stake here than traffic offences. Besides, you haven’t show me any ID yet.’ said Isaacs, interrupting, then wished he hadn’t.

‘Just who the fuck do you think you’re talking to!?’ barked Bryson into his face. ‘You don’t get to make the rules around here son. So shut the fuck up!’

‘Okay, sorry,’ Isaacs replied, a little stunned by the man’s shouted response.

‘As I was about to say, before you cut me off. We ought to impound your vessel and arrest you. But under the circumstances, we’ll turn a blind eye, providing you get that ID changed back at the earliest opportunity.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, come this way,’ said Bryson. ‘The Captain wants to have a word with you.’

Captain Macpherson was a tall, middle aged woman with dark, greying hair, high cheekbones and a piercing gaze. She eyed Isaacs and Anna with a certain amount of suspicion over a desk strewn with papers, datapads and other clutter as they were led into her office, flanked by Sergeant Bryson and another marine.

‘So, Captain Isaacs and Captain Favreaux. Welcome aboard the Hadrian. Now would you mind telling me what this is all about, and what you were doing sneaking around the Solar System with a false ID and an illegal black market stealth module?’

‘We have intelligence on the enemy, on the Shapers,’ said Isaacs.

‘Sergeant Bryson, please wait outside,’ said Captain Macpherson. Then once they had left she continued. ‘Okay, I had my people run your pilot licenses against our databases. You’re on a list of civilian pilots that we should give all possible aid to if requested, I can tell you that. Beyond that, I don’t have clearance, but I’m listening.’

‘How do we know that you aren’t…’ Anna began.

‘Aren’t one of them?’ said Macpherson. ‘Here.’ She passed Anna a scanner, similar to the one that the marines had used on them moments earlier. ‘Best I can do. Scan me.’

Anna did as she was instructed. When she was satisfied with the result, she turned and nodded to Isaacs.

‘Okay. We have been working with the Nahabe in the Hadar, Spica and Achernar systems conducting covert operations against the Shapers,’ said Isaacs. ‘We were feeding intelligence to Admiral Michelle Chen of Special Operations Command, however our base of operations was attacked by the Shapers and many of our people were killed.’

‘And your base is…?’

‘Currently within the outer reaches of the Achernar system.’

‘I see, so presumably you have a pretty good view of what is going on there.’

‘We saw Haines’ fleet get wiped out, yes,’ said Anna. ‘But it goes further than that. The Nahabe sent a couple of their warships to aid us. During the Shaper attack the technicians on board the Nahabe ships figured out a way to detect the Shapers by modifying their ships’ hyperspace sensors to pick up the Shapers’ communications links in higher dimensions. Sadly we can’t decipher what they’re saying to one another, but if you can pick up their communications, you can pinpoint their positions, their principal communications nodes, even their home-world if you could see far enough.’

‘Really? If this is true then that’s incredible,’ said Macpherson. ‘It would give us a massive tactical advantage. Until now we’ve only been able to detect their ships once they emerge from hyperspace.’

‘This works when their ships are jumping. It should also allow us to detect Shaper agents much more easily,’ said Isaacs. ‘You should also be able to tell if a ship’s crew has been enslaved by the Shapers or not merely by scanning it. The Nahabe seemed confident that Commonwealth hyperspace sensor technology could be modified accordingly and they’ve asked that this information be passed to the Arkari and other friendly races as long as secrecy can be assured. We have all the necessary data under lock and key onboard our ship.’

‘I’ll need to pass this up the chain of command, but yes, that would seem sensible. The Hadrian will have to remain on station for now, but I’ll arrange for another ship to take you to Earth. As you probably noticed, we have a lot of clearing up to do.’

‘Captain, if you don’t mind me asking, just what did happen here?’ said Isaacs.

‘The Shapers happened here, Captain,’ said Macpherson. ‘Admiral Cox’s forces destroyed Galileo Station and everyone in it, not to mention the hundreds of ships in the vicinity, and then they headed straight for Earth.’

‘And then?’

‘And then Admiral Chen sent them straight to hell.’

‘Chen? Really? Wow.’

‘From what I gather she was badly outnumbered, but she managed to hold the enemy off long enough for the Nahabe to send their relief force. That woman is a goddamn hero, Captain Isaacs.’

‘I’ve seen what happens to people who get on her bad side,’ Isaacs replied. ‘It almost makes me feel sorry for the Shapers. So, the Nahabe got here in time after all.’

‘Yes indeed. They’re still in the system, cloaked of course. It was they who detected you, Captain Isaacs, not us, though doubtless you would have been picked up in Jovian space had Galileo station and its arrays still been here. We watched you sneaking around and wondered if you were a hostile craft. You were lucky that you weren’t fired upon.’

‘Sorry, we had to be sure that you were all still human before we charged in and handed over the goods. Also, if the Nahabe have sent ships here, they need to see this data too.’

‘Agreed. However, I’d be interested to know where you got your stealth module from, given that it’s obviously stolen experimental tech.’

‘Long story,’ said Isaacs. ‘I’m not even sure myself where it came from and how. Listen we picked up all sorts of strange readings coming from Arkari space. We need to get this data to them, but have you any idea what has happened to them?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Macpherson. ‘The reports I’ve seen pointed towards a massive Shaper attack across many systems coinciding with the attack on Earth, but we’ve had no confirmation. Our hyperspace monitoring arrays picked up weapon detonations large enough to devastate entire planets, but we haven’t heard anything since. Their communications network has been entirely cut off from the rest of the galaxy and not a single ship has emerged from Arkari space since the attack. Something bad happened to the Arkari, Captain Isaacs, something very bad indeed, and so far they aren’t talking to anyone.’

Chapter 10

Admiral Morgan had established his office as de facto leader of the renegade systems in the Governor’s former residence on the outskirts of Bolivar City, on the moon of Orinoco in the Achernar system. Governor Green hadn’t objected. He, like the leaders of all the systems that had either declared for Morgan or had been taken by force, was now a host for a Shaper agent, a puppet to their will. He could still remember the man’s screams as he was dragged away. Those memories came flooding back each time he appeared alongside the man in public broadcasts where Morgan repeatedly promised a bright new future for the Commonwealth. It would be a future free of corruption and lies. He urged the population of his new Freedom Alliance to remain calm and be watchful for any loyalist fifth column. His speeches were often accompanied by footage of the assault on Orinoco Station, a massacre attributed to Admiral Haines, a man that Morgan had repeatedly branded a war criminal. Haines’ defeated forces were scattered all over the surface of Orinoco, following their defeat at the hands of the Alliance’s new hero, Admiral Cox. Citizens were urged to remain vigilant for any survivors, to consider them armed and dangerous and to report their presence to the authorities.

It was a lie. It was all a lie. Morgan existed in a state of constant terror. He had been assigned a staff from the Governor’s pool of personnel, but essentially he was a puppet of the Shapers. Having begged for his life, he was forced to say and do everything that he was instructed to, or else he would also be dragged away and implanted like the others. At times, the depth of his mistake threatened to overwhelm him. He’d considered suicide, but who was to say that the Shapers were not capable of re-animating his body with one of their agents inside his skull? His only instinct now was survival. He must obey his new masters.

Daily, he was brought lists of persons to be arrested: those plotting sedition, speaking out against his new regime, questioning the presence of the strange alien ships in the skies over their worlds. He was forced to sign. Every day the lists got longer.

And now this: Admiral Cox’s fleet had been defeated in the Solar System, the remnants of the fleet limping back to Achernar to lick their wounds. There had been no word from Admiral Cox himself, though his ship, the Germanicus, had been reported as lost. Morgan knew that the vengeance of the Shapers upon Earth would be terrible. It was just a matter of time.

Morgan looked out of his office windows across the skyscraper dotted cityscape of Bolivar City and saw the vast form of the alien transport vessel hanging above the spaceport, ten thousand metres above the ground, partially obscured by the shifting clouds. A swarm of smaller craft moved between the ship and the spaceport as the behemoth disgorged an army of troops. Morgan wondered how his new masters would expect him to explain this one. He was about to summon his speech writer when he heard the door to his office slide quietly open.

Morgan felt a pang of irritation. He disliked people walking into his office unbidden. He was now the President, after all. He was about to turn and remonstrate with the new arrival when they spoke.

‘Admiral Morgan. I wish I could say that it was a pleasure to see you again, but I think we’ve had enough lies between us, don’t you?’ The voice was rasping, metallic, though there was a glutinous quality also, as though the speaker were talking through a mouthful of fluid. Suddenly gripped with fear, Morgan turned his chair around so that he could see the new arrival, and was confronted with a truly nightmarish vision. It was Admiral Cox, or what was left of him.

Cox stood unsteadily before him, dressed in a crisp, clean uniform onto which dripped fluids from the numerous, terrible, open wounds on his body. His skull had almost been cleaved in two by a blow that had sliced though the orbit of his right eye down to his upper jaw. Elsewhere, his exposed head and hands showed signs of massive haemorrhaging, creating mottled patches on his brown skin and rendering his remaining eyeball nearly black with blood. Inside that terrible wound to his skull, something moved. Pale tendrils, like the questing fronds of sea anemones writhed within that bloody cleft, caressing the exposed flesh and bone. Deeper within Cox’s skull, the blood slicked maggot-like form of the Shaper agent within him could be seen, peering out through the wound.

Morgan gasped in horror, and remained rooted to his chair with fear as Cox took several unsteady steps towards him.

‘How could you not have known!?’ snarled Cox, gesturing with the severed stump of his wrist. As he spoke, Morgan could see those horrible tendrils within his mouth also, as well as waving from that bloody stump where his hand ought to be. ‘How could you not have known?’ Cox repeated, spraying fluids from his mouth. ‘Answer me!’

‘Known… known what? I… I thought…’

‘Thought I was dead, is that it? Hoped that we were all dead?’

‘No! N-no of course not. We had a deal, remember? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It takes far more than being cast out of a burning spacecraft into hard vacuum to kill one of us, Admiral Morgan. Unfortunately the agony is still terrible when we are linked to the nervous systems of your imperfect bodies. However, it is nothing compared to the agony in which you are likely to find yourself on the dissection table. It will make an interesting study, to know how a two faced human can exist, especially after we remove his internal organs one by one for study.’

‘No! Oh god, please! I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear!’

‘The antimatter missiles, Morgan. How did you forget that the Commonwealth Navy has in its possession a fleet of ships armed with antimatter missiles equipped with jump drives? How did you not know that they had been stationed in the Solar System?’ Cox was shouting into his face now as he leaned over Morgan’s desk, Morgan reeled from the stench of blood and decaying flesh.

‘I swear, I had no idea. Those ships were supposed to be stationed near the border with the K’Soth Empire in case they were ever needed. It must be Haines! He must have ordered their redeployment!’

‘And gone over your head? You, Chief of Staff of the Navy?’

‘It’s possible, yes, especially after we rebelled against Earth. Those ships are very fast, there may just have been time to redeploy them.’

‘I still think that you are lying to us, Admiral Morgan. But it makes no difference. You will remain our puppet one way or another. You will have your uses just like this body I inhabit. The people need their hero, the fearless Admiral Cox, or else we may have to take over more ships in order to get them to follow orders. Why do you think I bothered to repair this shattered husk?’ said Cox, pointing to the activity within the terrible wound in his face.

‘We had a deal: no more enslavement of our people!’

‘Yes, we did, based on your promise of obedience.’

‘But these lists…’

‘There is an unfortunate period of adjustment. The people will learn to obey, or they will become hosts to our lesser creatures to make them obey. Hopefully, they will learn to fall in line. You must educate them, or we will take measures into our own hands. However, these recent developments cast doubt on the whole state of affairs. If you have betrayed us, we will take them all, starting with you, puppet!’ snapped Cox, jabbing the bloody stump of his wrist into Morgan’s chest.

‘I’m telling the truth, you have to believe me!’ Morgan begged.

‘We’ll see about that,’ came the curt reply.

Something was entering the room behind Cox. Morgan barely noticed it at first and mistook the motion for the random movements of a tiny fly, but more and more of the motes were becoming visible. Morgan watched as the glittering creatures poured under the small gap beneath the door before taking to the air and assembling themselves into a buzzing cloud before him. The door slid open and two marines from the residence’s security detail entered, walking in step like automatons, their faces blank and expressionless. A torrent of the creatures followed in their wake. The cloud was now fully assembled. Something began to form from the swarming creatures, a crude mockery of a human face with two hollow eyes and a wide, leering slit of a mouth.

‘Oh god!’ Morgan managed to say, despite fear almost rendering him speechless. ‘It’s one of them!’

The Shaper spoke. Its voice was inside his head, like the droning of a billion insects tuned to produce words. Morgan registered that he had pissed himself in terror.

You will submit to interrogation, said the Shaper inside his mind. We will rip your thoughts from you, slave. Do not think that you can lie to us. There are none who can resist our will.

The cloud surged forwards, enveloping Morgan, coating his head and body in millions of the tiny creatures, some of them only a millimetre or so in size. They swarmed into his mouth, up his nose and into the interstices of his ears, even into his eye sockets where the tiniest of the creatures scurried behind his eyeballs on minute jointed legs and attached themselves to his optic nerves. They were trying to find weak spots in his anatomy where they could burrow into his brain and access his neural pathways.

Morgan began to scream through the swarm of glittering creatures. It would be some time before he stopped.

Chapter 11

The gun wavered unsteadily in his hand. He was surrounded. Maybe he could take down one or maybe two of them before he bought it. It would be a final gesture of defiance, no more, but he was damned if they were going to take him alive. He saw himself reflected in the visor of the light combat armour of the marine directly in front of him - haggard and wild eyed, pistol gripped in a shaky right hand. There was nothing visible of the other man’s expression save for his mouth, a tight line between the chin strap and visor of his helmet. He waited for them to make a move, braced himself in anticipation of his own violent death. At least he would go down fighting.

‘Sir?’ said the marine. ‘Sir, it’s me, Captain Dawson. Sir? Admiral?’ The man slung his weapon over his shoulder and held up his hands to show that he was no longer armed.

He kept the gun pointed at the marine, whose nametag indeed read ‘Dawson’. He remembered now.

‘Sir, don’t you remember me from the Lincoln? We’ve been looking for you, sir.’

He eyed the gaggle of armed figures around him with suspicion. Dawson began to remove his helmet, revealing a broad, tanned face topped with a dark crew cut. He recognised the man alright.

‘Goddamn it, son,’ he said finally to Dawson. ‘I thought… I thought you were the enemy. The bastards have been hunting me for days.’ He lowered the gun slowly and let out a sigh of relief.

‘We thought as much, sir. We saw all the activity in this area and figured that they were looking for crashed escape pods and any survivors,’ said Captain Dawson. ‘Come on, we need to get away from the road and deeper into the jungle before they see us.’

‘Agreed,’ he replied. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Admiral Haines?’ said one of the other marines, Sergeant Philips. ‘It’s good to have you back, sir.’

They made their way quickly up the hill, away from the road and into the deeper parts of the jungle. Two marines went on point, scouting the way ahead through the dense undergrowth. Behind them, in the swampy, tsunami trashed bay behind them, invisible through the thick tree canopy, the sounds of aerial vehicles moving to and fro could be heard. Haines kept his camo-cloak drawn over his shoulders to mask his heat signature, whilst the marines in their light recon armour were using their suits’ systems to mask their thermal profiles. They needed to avoid combat at all costs. The sounds and heat signatures of weapon discharges would surely bring the enemy down on their heads with lethal swiftness.

Haines still had his doubts. These were definitely his men, part of the Abraham Lincoln’s complement of marines, but he was still unsure if he was being led into a trap. It had been several days since the Lincoln’s destruction. There was no telling what might have happened to any of these men in the meantime, no way to be sure if the enemy hadn’t captured them and implanted them. For what good it would do him, he kept the pistol handy, just in case.

After about an hour of scrambling through the tangled undergrowth they finally happened upon a small ravine with a narrow stream running down its centre. Dawson called a halt and Haines sat down gratefully on a flat rock, speechless with breathlessness for a moment before he recovered.

‘Are you alright, sir?’ said Dawson, removing his helmet and looking at his commanding officer with concern as the older man wheezed and coughed a few times before clearing his throat and spitting on the ground.

‘I’ll be… alright in minute, Captain,’ said Haines between breaths. ‘Guess this old body of mine ain’t used to the pace.’

‘Sorry, sir. If you’d said…’ said Dawson and looked apologetic.

‘Don’t worry about it, we needed to get away, like you said. Can’t have an old man holding you up.’ Haines reached for his water bottle and drained it, then refilled it from the stream and popped a couple of purification tablets inside. ‘So,’ he continued. ‘I’ve been a little out of touch these past few days. Anything you can tell me about what’s been going on around here? How’d you survive?’

Dawson sat down on a boulder opposite Haines and began to relate his tale.

‘Well, the Lincoln was going down and the call went out to abandon ship. We managed to get a couple of dropships off the bow without use of the catapults: mostly full of marines, plus some technical staff from the flight deck. Enemy fire had taken out a whole bunch of the escape pods so it was the only way. Both ships took enemy fire on the way down and mine crash landed just east of here. I don’t remember much, except I woke up outside the ship at the foot of a tree. Guess I must have stumbled out after we hit the ground. Most of the others in that ship didn’t make it. The other ship had made an emergency landing without any fatalities. They saw where we went down and managed to reach us after hacking their way through the jungle for two days. We managed to salvage a fair bit of gear from both ships. Neither would ever fly again so we destroyed them with demo charges to prevent the enemy from getting hold of them, then we disappeared into the jungle. We’ve set up camp ten clicks north of here for the time being. We move it around every few days to stop the enemy from locating us. How about you, sir?’

‘Well my memory’s a little patchy. I stayed on the bridge as long as I could. I wanted to make sure everyone got away before I did, but life support was failing and I blacked out. I think eventually someone dragged me into an escape pod. I remember… well I don’t remember much about the descent,’ said Haines and shrugged. ‘When I came to I was hanging in my restraints inside the escape pod. Everyone else had been killed by the crash. I grabbed what I could from the pod and spent the next few days in the jungle. I had no idea where I was headed. I guess this direction seemed as good as any. How’d you find me?’

‘To be honest sir, it was luck, more than anything. We’d noticed a lot of aerial activity in this region and figured that the enemy were up to something. At first we thought that they might be investigating the wreck of the Lincoln out in the bay, but they seemed to be searching the jungle. It seemed logical that they were looking for survivors from the fleet, maybe senior officers, so we decided to take a look. It was pure chance that we ran into you, however.’

‘Well, despite my initial reaction, it’s good to have company,’ said Haines. ‘I couldn’t ask for a finer bodyguard than the Marine Corp.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘But there are things in these jungles that I don’t think even you boys can handle.’

‘Sir?’

‘Shapers, son. The damn Shapers are here on this moon. Not those agents and other puppets that you’ve heard about, the actual beings themselves, if you can call them that. I saw a couple whilst I was out on my own, or maybe it was the same one both times. I think they were hunting me. Will all due respect, I don’t think bullets would do much good.’

‘How did you manage to escape them, sir?’ said Dawson.

‘Luck, I think,’ Haines admitted. ‘I’m not sure. I had my camo-cloak on, I was a long way off the ground in the tree branches at the time and there were a lot of those Dryad things in the trees around me. Maybe they mistook my heat signature for one of the creatures.’

‘Dryads. Those ape things?’

‘That’s the ones. They’re pretty good as an early warning system, to be honest. They were interested in me, but the Shaper had them really spooked. They kicked up a hell of a racket when it came into view. Something to bear in mind.’

‘If I might ask, sir. What did the Shaper look like?’

‘Did you ever disturb a hornets’ nest by accident when you were a kid?’

‘Uh, no sir I grew up on Elysium. No hornets there. I think I know what you mean though. Needle bug nests were a problem.’

‘Okay well, imagine you kicked over a nest of those needle bugs of yours, and the whole swarm of them rose up as one and moved like a single creature.’

‘What, like a hive-mind?’

‘More than that, son. There was a single controlling will behind that swarm. I could feel it, I could see it, and it gave me the creeps, I can tell you.’

After their brief rest stop, Haines and the marines continued up the slope and headed deeper into the jungle. Eventually they crested the shoulder of the tree-swathed hill and began to descend into the broad valley beyond. Here, the moist air hung heavy under trees that dripped with moisture. The ground was slippery with mud, and rocks, treacherous with moisture and moss-like growths. All around was the scent of decaying vegetation and the heady perfumes of the many flowers that grew from drooping branches, clinging vines and the boles of trees, and which flourished on the ground in patches where the sunlight managed to penetrate through the greenery. Haines and the squad of men accompanying him were soon slick with sweat, the soldiers unable to allow their suits to vent too much heat for fear of discovery and Haines unable to remove his camo-cloak for the same reason.

Eventually, they reached the banks of a wide, sluggishly flowing river that wound its way lazily across the valley bottom. They kept well behind the tree-line, far away from the broad expanse of brown, muddy waters and followed the river upstream. Here, the heat and humidity was even worse and to add to their discomfort, the damp air beside the river brought with it clouds of biting insect-like creatures who filled the air with angry, shrill buzzing and settled on the exposed, sweat-beaded flesh of anyone within range. Soon, almost everyone sported fresh, livid, itchy lumps at least somewhere on their body, some even finding that the creatures had managed to penetrate clothing and armour joints with their needle-like mouthparts. It made the going miserable, and soon the marines started to bicker with one another and curse the insects, the jungle and anything else that they could think of that annoyed them.

They were five kilometres from the location of the camp when Haines heard a sudden shrieking from the opposite bank of the river. He recognised the sound from his time alone in the jungles south of the bay - it was the Dryads calling to one another in alarm. He ordered Dawson to tell his men to halt and find cover. With whispered commands and hand gestures they quickly did so, concealing themselves behind rocks and tree-roots.

Haines hunkered down behind the bole of a tree with Dawson and peered out through the gaps between the tangled undergrowth across the broad expanse of water to the opposite shore.

‘Sir, what did you see?’ said Dawson, fishing in his equipment pockets for a small pair of binoculars which he focused on the tree-line on the opposite bank.

‘Nothing yet, but those calls, can you hear them?’ said Haines. Dawson nodded. ‘Dryads. It’s just like when I was in the jungle and they spotted the Shapers. They’re making the exact same sounds.’

‘Maybe that’s the sound that they always make when they spot danger?’

‘Maybe. Can’t be too careful though, Captain.’

They waited for a few tense minutes. The shrieking from the other side of the river continued in sporadic bursts of noise. So far, they had seen nothing. Haines was starting to wonder if he had been mistaken in calling a halt when Dawson pointed at something on the opposite bank and silently passed him the binoculars.

There were figures moving under the trees. They were soldiers dressed in the uniforms and light body armour of Orinoco’s Planetary Defence Force. They moved oddly, like automatons, each with rail rifles gripped stiffly across their chests in the exact same position. Dawson began using hand gestures to signal to the other marines about the presence of the new threat across the river. They remained utterly silent. Only a few hundred yards separated them from the enemy. The PDF soldiers seemed to be searching the riverbank for something. Haines saw a couple wade into the sluggish brown waters before they returned to the tree-line and vanished from view.

‘What d’you think, sir? Do you think that they were looking for us?’ said Dawson, keeping his voice low.

‘Undoubtedly,’ Haines replied. ‘But it looks like they misjudged our location and ended up on the wrong side of the river. Are there any crossing points near here?’

‘There’s a bridge across the mouth of the river where it reaches the ocean to the west, but there’s not a lot of human settlement in this area, according to the maps that we have,’ Dawson whispered. ‘There’s no bridge across for about another thirty clicks, of course that doesn’t preclude there being places where it might be shallow enough for them to wade across.’

‘I doubt that would stop the Shapers themselves, and they have air support too. We need to keep moving… shit, look!’ Haines ended the sentence in a hiss and pointed. One of the soldiers had reappeared at the opposite river bank. Another appeared behind him, then another and another. The first man stepped forward to the edge of the water and began to wade in. Soon, the water was above his waist and rising. The others followed him.

‘What the fuck are they doing?’ whispered Dawson. ‘It’s too deep to walk across and they can’t possibly swim with all that equipment, they’ll be dragged under.’

‘I think,’ said Haines. ‘That that may not present them with a problem. Look.’

As they watched, the first man’s head disappeared under the murky water.

‘Shit!’ whispered Dawson. ‘How the hell…?’

‘They’re no longer really human, Captain,’ said Haines. ‘I don’t think the usual rules apply any more. They must have spotted us. Air support is likely to be incoming. So far I can’t see any actual Shapers at all.’

‘What do you want to do, sir?’

‘We can’t have these guys tailing us through the jungle back to your camp. We need to take them out quickly and then melt away into the undergrowth. If we’re lucky, we’ll manage it before any reinforcements show up. Do we have anything that can take down an aerial vehicle?’

‘A couple of my men have been lugging man-portable anti-tank missiles around,’ said Dawson. ‘They might work, I suppose, though they might just go straight through un-armoured vehicles without exploding.’

‘Well it’s worth a try if it comes to it. Okay, Captain. Have your men take up defensive positions. We need to take them down as they come out of the water. They need to aim for the head, wounds to the rest of the body won’t do a great deal, trust me.’

With Sergeant Philips organising them, the marines moved quietly amidst the undergrowth. Though some remained in the positions that they had previously chosen, others move forwards to better firing positions. One man, Corporal Antonov, carried the squad’s support weapon, a heavy rail gun. He found a suitable rock to steady the rapid firing gun’s bipod against and trained it at the waterline, waiting for the enemy to emerge. Haines reloaded his pistol and thumbed the safety off, feeling a little under-equipped next to the marines with their rifles, grenades and anti-armour weapons. Eventually, they witnessed two dozen PDF troopers enter the river from the opposite bank. There was a tense wait of several minutes before lines of bubbles began to break the surface of the muddy waters, and then the enemy attacked.

Haines had supposed that the enemy would wade ashore, slowed by the water and weighed down by the weight of their equipment and their water sodden uniforms. He was wrong. The leading troopers exploded out of the deep water with superhuman speed and power, landing well out of the waterline and taking the marines completely by surprise. There was a crucial split second pause before the stunned defenders began to fire back. Antonov’s heavy rail rifle cut the first man in half in a welter of blood. The severed torso thudded heavily to the ground on the thin, sandy beach, and then began to claw its way forward with its hands, bloody entrails dragging behind it, until a further burst exploded its head, bringing it finally to a halt.

The second man staggered under the weight of fire, multiple headshots blowing what remained of his brains and the Shaper parasite that had violated them out of the back of his skull in a burst of gore and fragments of alien machinery. But by now the other enslaved PDF troopers had emerged and were scrambling forwards, firing wildly from the hip as the marines returned fire, cutting down another two. In a few moments, the enslaved troopers reached the edge of the tree-line, making them more difficult to hit. The marines were finding it harder to get clean headshots off. Haines saw several PDF troopers thrown backwards from the impact of high velocity rounds, and then get straight back up again, despite the fact that they were now bleeding profusely or in some cases, where the heavy rail gun had struck them, were missing limbs or chunks of torso altogether.

Haines squeezed off a few rounds at the dodging, weaving shapes and was gratified when he saw one man fall and fail to rise, but the enslaved troopers were getting closer, and some were darting off to both sides amidst the trees.

‘Prepare for close combat!’ cried Haines. ‘Don’t let the bastards flank us!’ He shot a man in the face at close range, taking off the left side of his skull. It was a glancing blow. With dismay he saw the poor wretch struggle to his feet before Dawson finished him off.

Now there was movement in the shadows to both sides of them. He saw one marine go down as a figure charged from behind the cover of a tree, tackling him to the ground before bludgeoning the man with the butt of its rifle before anyone could bring the creature down. Another tried to ambush Antonov from the side. Fortunately the big man saw him coming from the corner of his vision and was able to swing his heavy gun round and fire a burst at the charging figure, bisecting its torso below the chest and showering Antonov in entrails and blood. The head and upper body remained horribly alive, the hands clawing at Antonov’s legs as he recoiled in horror and then ended the enslaved man’s existence with a final burst to the head.

‘Order your men to pull back,’ said Haines to Dawson. ‘We can’t let the bastards surround us.

With verbal commands and hand signals, the marines began to fall back deeper into the jungle. Haines saw Antonov heft his larger gun and move with surprising speed through the trees before he found a suitable position to lay down some covering fire for his comrades as they moved backwards in pairs, each man covering for the other with suppressing fire as his comrade dashed to the new defensive line they were establishing. By Haines’ estimate about half of the enemy force had been eliminated, which made the enemy numbers about equal to their own. The enslaved troopers had divided themselves into two groups and were moving toward the marines’ position in a pincer movement. Bursts of fire from the marines towards both groups caused the figures of the troopers to fall, but in most cases the men got back up again and continued.

Return fire hammered back from the undergrowth, felling two marines. One died instantly, shot through the chest. The other took a round through his spine. He lay struggling and screaming upon the ground for a few moments as his comrades desperately tried to save him to no avail. His cries ceased and he bled his last.

It was impossible to pick out the enemy amidst the undergrowth. It was so hot that there was nothing visible through the infrared gear built into the marines’ helmets except a confusing riot of colour.

‘Use your grenades!’ yelled Dawson to his men above the noise of the fire fight. ‘If we can cut them apart we can slow them down!’

Grenades were duly lobbed into the undergrowth at the skulking figures, the blasts tearing apart the vegetation. The firing seemed to lessen for a moment, before it resumed again with equal ferocity. Antonov began to sweep the jungle with extended bursts of fire from his heavy weapon whilst others picked individual targets with care.

Haines listened. Amidst all the firing, shouting and explosions there was another sound. It was the whine of engines from some sort of airborne vehicle. Glancing upwards he caught sight of a dark shape sweeping above their position. He glimpsed an angular looking fuselage and stub wings. It was a human craft, a light gunship of some kind, probably a scout variant.

‘We’ve got company!’ yelled Haines to Dawson above the din. ‘Enemy air support above our position, Captain! We need to take it out!’

At that moment the enslaved troopers chose to charge as one towards the marine position. The two groups emerged from the jungle simultaneously, firing from the hip as they scrambled over tree-roots and boulders. The marines fired back furiously, felling the leading troopers. About half a dozen of the enemy now remained. Many showed signs of having been caught by the grenades. They struggled onwards, despite missing limbs, severed arteries and bloody flaps of torn flesh that hung from them like rags. One man lacked forearms, another his jaw, whilst another’s abdomen had been ripped open, exposing glistening organs. Those no longer able to wield weapons were simply charging onwards like wild animals, attempting to overrun the marines’ position. They were cut down amidst a ferocious barrage of fire. Those bodies that still twitched were finished off by the marines who leapt forwards and administered kill shots to their skulls.

‘Nice work!’ said Haines. ‘But we need to move. The enemy knows where we are now. We need to lose him again.’

‘We should head away from the river,’ said Dawson. ‘We’ve scouted this area before. If we can climb the sides of the valley we can conceal ourselves in the cave systems up there.’

‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Haines. ‘Now where the hell is that damn gunship?’

Leaving their three dead comrades behind them, though not before quickly stripping them of equipment, weapons and ammo, Haines and the marines moved quickly through the jungle in a direction that would take them to where Dawson had indicated on his map. Somewhere in the sky above them they could hear the sound of the gunship’s engines, although they were unable to see the craft through the dense tree canopy. However, there was little doubt that those piloting the craft could see them. Judging by the sound of its engines, the gunship appeared to be circling, keeping a fix on their position.

‘Why haven’t they fired on us?’ said Sergeant Philips, panting with exertion in the cloying heat. ‘The bastards can obviously see where we are.’

‘My guess is that they don’t want to risk hitting the Admiral,’ replied Dawson clambering over a large tree root. ‘They must be waiting for more troops to arrive so they can try to take him alive. We need to keep going, reach higher ground where there’s less tree cover so we can see that thing.’

‘Won’t they see us?’

‘Sure, but I say we distract them and then you and McCabe can try and take it down with your anti-armour missiles. What do you think, Admiral?’

Haines nodded. He was short of breath and struggling to keep up with the pace of the younger men. He wasn’t in bad shape, considering his age, but the marines were at the peak of physical fitness, whilst he had spent most of his time aboard ship in the past few years.

‘Sure,’ he managed to say. ‘I say we split in two: one group with me, the other with the heavy weapons. They’ll still be able to see all of us, but maybe they’ll focus on me long enough for the other group to bring ‘em down.’

As they climbed, the trees started to thin out a little, allowing a cooling breeze to circulate beneath the branches, providing a little respite. They could glimpse the gunship now through the branches as it circled, hovering like an angry hornet.

‘Okay,’ said Dawson. ‘Philips, McCabe, Antonov: split off and move up the slope to our left. Everyone else, remain with the Admiral and me. We’ll make a run for it up the hillside. You three, try and bring that bird down.

Haines looked up the slope ahead of them with trepidation. The ascent was becoming steeper. A little way ahead of them the trees began to peter out leaving little cover on the rocky hillside, at the top of which loomed a near vertical crag. He willed himself to climb, stumbling after Dawson as the Captain led the marines onwards, knowing that if he ordered the marines to slow down for him it could mean death or capture. Time was of the essence. They had to bring down that gunship and disappear before backup arrived. It might only be a matter of minutes before that happened.

Haines forced himself up the hillside, Dawson pounding ahead of him up the slope. The sound of the gunship’s engines was louder now, the source of the sound much closer. He glanced backward over his shoulder as he ran and saw the craft hovering behind him on its AG engines, near level with them as it hung over the jungle. It was black against the sky, the air from its manoeuvring thrusters causing columns of air to shimmer beneath it.

There was a dull bang, and a slender, black shape shot past the gunship, narrowly missing the cockpit. The marines had missed with their first attempt. Not focusing on where he was going, Haines tripped and stumbled. Throwing his hands out in front him to break his fall he grabbed handfuls of the short, scrubby vegetation and pulled himself back up as the sound of automatic weapons fire erupted from the hillside to his left. It was Antonov. Haines saw the rounds from the heavy rail gun strike the cockpit canopy of the gunship, but they seemed to be having little effect against the tough material. The craft was turning to engage the new threat. He saw its chin mounted gatling gun start to swivel to engage the new threat to its left.

There was another dull thump. This time the marines didn’t miss. The anti-armour round struck the gunship’s engines and detonated with a deafening bang. The craft lurched sideways from the impact and then dropped from the sky onto the rocky hillside like a stone. Hitting the ground, it started to roll down the slope, then exploded, scattering debris far and wide and producing clouds of roiling black smoke. Two burning figures could be seen struggling from the inferno. They made it out of the ruined craft before they collapsed, in flames, upon the hillside.

‘Great,’ muttered Dawson. ‘That cloud of smoke will be visible for miles.’

‘We need to move,’ said Haines. ‘Order your men to rejoin the squad, and then let’s get out of here.’

‘You okay, sir?’ Dawson asked, a look of concern on his face.

‘I’m fine, soldier. Now let’s go, before more of the enemy show up.’

Leaving the burning gunship behind them, Haines and the marines began to quickly skirt the edge of the hill, following the edge of the tree-line in the hope that it would conceal them from the air. When they had travelled about a kilometre, a sonic boom split the air in the distance. Seconds later, a small crystalline craft appeared, similar to the one that Haines had seen land on the hilltop overlooking the wreck of the Lincoln. It braked hard, then hovered over the gunship crash site. Instinctively, the marines moved deeper under the trees. Haines did likewise.

‘Shapers?’ whispered Dawson, fearfully. Haines nodded. Dawson swore under his breath.

‘How far to the caves, Captain?’ said Haines, keeping his voice low.

‘About half a click, but we need to climb back up the side of the hill again. The entrance is inside a small gully.’

‘Is there any other way out of the caves? I don’t want us to get trapped inside. If the Shapers find the cave entrance, it would be a logical place to look for us.’

‘A small river runs out of the cave mouth. So I suppose somewhere it must run in. We haven’t mapped out the cave system, sir. Last time we came by here we only moved inside a hundred metres or so. It looked like an ancient lava channel or something. Sir, our map shows that this escarpment is the edge of a large caldera. There’s a small river at the top that disappears underground. It could be the same one that emerges here.’

‘Okay, we don’t have a lot of time. I guess we can risk it,’ said Haines, weighing up their options. ‘If it comes to it, your suits’ IR and low-light gear should make it easy to defend ourselves inside the cave. I’d prefer it if we were sure that there was another way out. Just because water can flow through the cave doesn’t mean that we can get through without breathing equipment, but it should conceal us from the enemy for a while. Let’s go.’

They hurried on, the Shaper craft hanging in the sky behind them. When they dared to look back it seemed to be moving back and forth over the scene of their recent battle. First, to the crash site, then to where Philips’ team had launched their attack and then back to the escarpment where Haines and the others had made their diversion. It was like seeing a bloodhound sniffing out a trail.

Eventually Haines and the marines reached the ravine. Mercifully, it was heavily overgrown – the damp sheltered place was a haven for plants of all kinds. Quickly, they splashed up the river bed until the dark cave mouth gaped before them, fringed with trailing vines. Hurriedly, they made their way inside.

The darkness inside was absolute. Aided by their low-light helmet goggles, the marines had splashed up the rushing stream, the water swirling around their boots, until even the goggles were no use and they were forced to resort to the pencil thin torches that each man carried. They moved in as near silence as was possible, hoping that the sounds of tumbling water would mask what little sounds they could not help but make as they pressed onwards into the hillside.

The cave walls were smooth and curving, the black, volcanic rock worn by water over countless millennia to a reflective sheen. The cave itself meandered steadily upwards into the hill towards the source of that torrent. The fact that for much of the way the tunnel was large enough for men to walk fully upright gave Haines and the marines hope that they would be able to find their way out at the other end. It seemed possible that the water had perhaps widened the cave to such an extent all the way through.

Eventually, they reached a wider section where the tunnel expanded into a wider cavern with sloping sides where the lava flow that had originally formed it had been temporarily halted in its progress. The stream still flowed swiftly along its channel in the bottom of the cavern, but the sloping sides were dry and smooth. Haines called a halt.

‘So far, so good, Captain,’ he said quietly to Dawson. ‘The way seems clear so far. What I’d like to know is: are we being followed?’

The marines were listening for pursuers, but in the echoing space of the cave, all they could hear was the sound of the flowing water.

‘I could leave a man behind to watch our rear,’ Dawson suggested.

‘No, not a good idea,’ Haines replied. ‘We can’t risk the enemy seeing any of us and besides, what if they catch him? He could come back to us and… well he’d no longer be one of us, if you catch my drift.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We need something that will trip if anything passes a certain point,’ said Haines. ‘Do your men have anything suitable?’

‘We have the infrared sensors that we put around us when we make camp for the night,’ Dawson replied. ‘We also have some anti-personnel mines.’

‘Save the mines for now. My bet is that the Shapers themselves can easily see an infrared beam, but maybe the enslaved troops they keep sending after us can’t. I say we set up some of those sensors across the entrance to this cavern. If they’ve come this far in, then they must still be on our tail. If the sensors do trip, then we lay mines to take ‘em out.’

Dawson set about ordering his men to do as Haines instructed. McCabe and Philips took a couple of sensors each from their packs and placed them within crevices by the lower entrance to the cavern so that the beams would intersect in different places to cover the entrance and make it impossible for anyone to enter and not trip at least one of the devices..

They had almost finished working when Haines noticed something moving in the beams of torchlight. It was a tiny, shining mote that flew in lazy circles above the men. He focused his torch beam on the flitting creature. It seemed far too bright and reflective to be a cave dweller - such things were usually pallid, transparent things that shied away from the light. Another appeared, joining the first, then another, and another. With horror, he realised what was entering the cave.

‘All of you! Fall back!’ he barked. ‘Now!’

Chapter 12

Chen stood at the windows of the observation deck overlooking the dry dock where her ship lay, battered and wounded by its recent ordeal and holed in more places than she dared contemplate. The massive carrier had limped into the dock. Unable to manoeuvre properly under its own power, the Churchill had been nudged into its berth by several tugs from Batavia Port’s fleet. The carrier was now swaddled in maintenance gantries, docking umbilicals, looping cables and lines of all kinds like a patient on life-support. Maintenance crews, flitters and heavy equipment moved about the damaged vessel like a swarm of industrious bees, their bright yellow colouring making them stand out against the Churchill’s grey, carbon scored hull plating. As the repair crews worked, the massive rents in the carrier’s hull were lit by the intermittent flashes of cutting gear as the damaged structure and components of the ship were stripped away to make room for replacements. In adjoining bays, the other ships that had fought alongside the Churchill to defend Earth were undergoing similar repairs as the Navy’s maintenance crews worked overtime to get the warships back into service as quickly as possible, though some, like the Lexington, were too badly damaged to be repaired and would be stripped for parts, their surviving crew members transferred to other vessels.

Chen’s gaze lingered on the wounds in the hull of her ship. Every single one had almost certainly resulted in deaths or injuries amongst her crew. She had done her best, she knew that, but she couldn’t help but punish herself with the feeling that maybe she could have done better, even though she knew that she had done well to even survive the battle. The Commonwealth Navy was hopelessly outclassed by the Shapers’ vessels. If another attack came, and she knew that it would, she didn’t fancy humanity’s chances one bit.

The previous day, she had managed to contact her parents. Thankfully, they had taken her advice and had left their home in San Francisco to stay with friends in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Though she had spared them the details of the battle, they had both seen the extensive news coverage and the footage gathered from space and ground based observers and had been overjoyed to learn that their daughter had not only survived, but was being hailed by the media as Earth’s saviour. Her mother had wept. Both she and her father were only interested in when they would see her again, and when this would all be over.

She had glanced at some of the news stories. Most were a mixture of grainy footage of the battle and the details of her career that were public knowledge. Her parents were correct: she was being hailed as a saviour. It all felt a little unreal. She knew that it was the Nahabe who had really saved the day, and that the mysterious aliens really deserved all the credit. All she had done was make a desperate last stand against the Shapers, one which she could not have survived without their help. She had brooded on this as she watched footage from the ground of the moment the antimatter missiles had detonated, wiping out the advance wave of Shaper vessels. The brilliant flash turned night into day for a brief moment, before the burning cinder-like specks of shattered ships could be seen faintly in the dark sky.

She was shaken from her reverie by the shrill chiming of her comm. She fished it out of her pocket and answered.

‘Admiral Chen?’

‘Speaking.’

‘This is Sergeant Hollis of Naval Port Security. I’ve been ordered to contact you. A ship has docked after being escorted here by the cruiser Lycurgus. The captains of both vessels insisted that we contact you immediately.’

‘What’s the name of the ship, the one that has docked?’

‘She’s called the Profit Margin, ma’am. She’s a Stallion class cargo cutter. Naval bay eleven.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ said Chen, already heading for the transport tubes.

The sleek form of the Profit Margin looked tiny, all alone inside a bay big enough to hold a troop transport. Two weary looking figures could be seen emerging from her boarding ramp as Chen entered the bay. She walked quickly over to them.

‘Mr Isaacs, Ms Favreaux. It’s good to see you again.’

‘Likewise,’ said Isaacs. ‘We’re still in one piece, despite everything. I hear you gave the Shapers what for. Good job.’

‘You could say that. The truth of the matter is that the Nahabe turned up just in time to pull our collective asses out of the fire,’ Chen admitted. ‘How are things in the Spica system?’

‘We got out,’ said Anna. ‘Just. We lost a lot of good people, and a lot of ships. The Shapers tried to storm Port Royal. We fought them off and jumped to Achernar. It gave us a grandstand seat for when the fleet met the Shapers head on. Admiral, we have something of the utmost importance to tell the Navy, something that could swing the war in our favour.’

‘You do? Then let’s hear it,’ said Chen. ‘Not here. Somewhere secure.’

Somewhere secure turned out to be Chen’s quarters aboard the Churchill. Here, amidst the ambient noise of the repair work going on all over the ship, in a room that had remained locked since the ship had entered port, Isaacs and Anna told Chen everything that the Nahabe had learned about the Shapers’ communication methods and how to track them in hyperspace. Having listened carefully and viewed the sensor data of the battle between Haines’s fleet and the Shapers, Chen summoned Lieutenant Commander Singh and Chief Engineer Kleiner to examine the Nahabes’ findings and the technical specifications of the sensor modifications required to reproduce the results.

‘Well I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think it’s going to work. Not on this ship anyway,’ said Singh. ‘Our sensors don’t have the resolution to make this happen. What do you think Chief?’

‘I have to agree,’ said Kleiner, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand as he scrolled through the data with the other. ‘The standard shipboard hyperspace sensor suites just aren’t up to it. I suppose if a whole fleet of ships were working in tandem, then maybe it would work.’

‘So in other words, we’re screwed?’ said Isaacs, exasperated.

‘No. No, I don’t think so,’ said Kleiner. ‘I reckon we could get this to work using the sensors on a Thea class recon cruiser. Half of the damn ship on those things is one great sensor suite. Bigger arrays, better resolution, yeah I think it could work. The same goes for the static arrays we have dotted about the Commonwealth. As long as the other ships in a fleet containing Theas are getting the data from those recon cruisers I don’t see a problem, theoretically speaking of course.’

‘We need to get this to the Navy’s R&D guys,’ said Singh. ‘Though god knows how we test it outside a combat environment.’

‘I need to take this to Command,’ said Chen. ‘They need to know about this if they’re to plan the war. You were absolutely right, Captain Favreaux, this could give us the advantage we need.’

‘We can’t just keep it to ourselves,’ said Isaacs. ‘The other Nahabe in this system, the Arkari and the Commonwealth’s other allies all need to know about this.’

‘You may be correct, Mr Isaacs,’ Chen replied. ‘The trouble is, how do we tell them all without giving the game away? One leak to the Shapers and we’ll lose our advantage. We have to be very careful indeed, and I’m afraid that decision won’t be up to me, it’s a matter for the government. However, I’m going to pass on the recommendation to my superiors.’

‘What about the K’Soth?’ said Anna. ‘Are we going to tell them?’

‘They are still the enemy, you know,’ said Isaacs. ‘So I doubt it. Hey, you bunch of murderous, scaly bastards, would you like to hear about our shiny new sensors, or would you like to try and murder us all again?’

‘I’m not so sure either,’ said Chen. ‘Listen, I’d appreciate it if you two would stick around for a while. I may need to call on you to go over this again with my superiors. We can find accommodation for you here in Batavia Port, if you like, and who knows, we may have further work for you.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Isaacs.

‘Sounds good to me too,’ said Anna. ‘Somewhere with showers, soft beds and room service would be nice.’

It was later in the day, and Chen stood in Admiral Cartwright’s office aboard the Trafalgar in dress uniform. So far he had not asked her to sit. A paper copy of her report lay on his desk. He picked it up and flicked through, scowling as he did so.

‘It seems that we’re up against heavy odds, Admiral Chen,’ he said at last, peering over the document. ‘The press seem on the verge of actually beatifying you, “The Saviour of Earth” I believe the headline read. No doubt the President will want to reward you in some ways. I think you can expect a medal of some kind. Of course you and I both know that it’s pure luck that you’re still alive at all.’

‘Yes sir. The Nahabe deserve the credit, not me.’

‘Of course they do. The civilian deaths sustained whilst you were in command of our forces in the Solar System were unacceptably high. You left both Galileo Station and Amazonia Port completely undefended. In fact you didn’t attempt to defend any of our civilian facilities at all!’

‘Sir, with respect…’

‘I haven’t finished,’ he snapped, cutting her off. ‘You did nothing to help those people at Galileo, and you only moved to defend Amazonia after the attack was long underway. Why?’

‘As I said in my report,’ replied Chen, struggling to contain her anger. ‘The Shapers attacked Galileo Station to try and draw us out, away from our defensive line. If we had jumped, they could have laid an ambush and destroyed us just the same as they did to Haines in Achernar, or they could have jumped towards Earth as we were jumping away leaving our home world completely undefended whilst they attacked! Sir, we did not have sufficient forces to defend this system properly. The trap I laid for the Shapers evened the odds a little, but we were still heavily outnumbered and outgunned. I could not have sprung the trap if we had moved from our defensive position, sir.’

‘And why did you not move to defend Amazonia Port when the Nimitz and Marathon moved to attack it?’

‘We were heavily engaged with the other ships and suffered heavy kamikaze attacks, which narrowly avoided destroying the bridge of my ship. After that, we got jumped by the Shaper vessels themselves who immobilised our jump drives. We were fighting for our lives, sir. Don’t think I don’t regret that we didn’t see what was happening until it was too late, but I don’t see what other choices I had at the time.’

Cartwright regarded her sternly for a moment before he spoke.

‘There are always choices, Admiral Chen. The question is, can you live with the ones that you made?’

‘Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.’

‘Good. Because I’d have made the same ones.’

‘Sir?’

He was toying with her, she realised, cutting her down to size and reminding her who was in command now. Even so, she was still galled by the way that he was scolding her like she was a cadet.

‘Don’t let what the press are saying about you go to your head, Admiral Chen. It wasn’t a victory, it was a reprieve. The Shapers will return in greater force, of that I have no doubt. Now, you said that you had something important to show me? Out with it.’

‘Yes indeed, sir,’ said Chen and seated herself in front of Cartwright’s desk.

Isaacs looked out of the windows of the hotel suite and admired the view. Gazing upwards, the space elevator that connected the port to the Indonesian archipelago below disappeared into the distant clouds that swirled above the patchwork of land and sea, perspective rendering it a barely visible shining thread. Closer by, a forest of skyscrapers, similar to the one in which he now stood, projected from the planet-facing side of Batavia Port amid a network of streets and parkland beneath a thick, shielding dome, shining brightly in the sunlight.

‘Some hotel,’ he said, before walking over the double bed and flopping gratefully down on to the blissfully welcoming mattress. ‘Jesus. Feels like I could sleep for a month.’

‘Not before you change out of that dirty flight gear,’ said Anna, as she stepped out of her worn overalls. ‘You know, you could at least keep your boots off the bed.’

‘Sorry, bad habits from a life of slumming it aboard ship.’

‘Don’t I know it? Aren’t you just every girl’s dream?’

‘Seems to work on you,’ he replied, grinning crookedly as he started to pull off his boots, dropping one on the floor with a dull thud.

‘You have me there,’ she admitted. ‘So, what do you think about Chen mentioning that there might be more work?’

‘Depends what it is, I suppose.’

‘What, you haven’t experienced enough danger lately? I always suspected that you were some kind of thrill junkie.’

‘No it’s not that. I mean come on; we still have our base in Achernar, surely that’s got to be some use to the Navy. Plus, we need to help the rest of your people in the system.’

‘Our people, Cal? I think you can count yourself a fully paid up member now.’

‘Whatever. Look it’s… I dunno. It feels good to be part of something, you know? Fighting the good fight and all that. We actually made a difference today. I don’t think I can say that about anything else in my life. For the meantime, I say we hang around here for a while and see if the top brass want to hear our insights whilst taking advantage of room service and that Jacuzzi in the bathroom. I think we’ve earned it, don’t you?’

Anna stood for a moment with her arms folded across her chest, regarding him intently.

‘It’s good to see you like this again, Cal,’ she said. ‘You’ve got that gleam in your eye again that you had when we first met. Looks like I finally got you back after all this time.’

‘Yeah, you could say I’ve had the chance to slay a few demons - with antimatter bombs and automatic weapons, mind.’

‘How about we go slay a few more then?’

‘You up for it?’

‘Hell, yes.’ She walked slowly to him and sat on his lap, straddling him. ‘Now,’ she said softly in his ear. ‘I told you to get out of those dirty clothes.’

The following day, Chen found herself summoned to Naval Command Headquarters. Clad in her dress whites once more, she took a shuttle directly from Batavia Port to the surface, since time was of the essence. As the vessel broke through the cloud deck over London she saw the massive star shaped building gleaming in the sunlight to the west of the vast, sprawling city. The shuttle landed quickly, touching down on one of the many landing pads that ringed the complex. Chen was met by an aide as she exited the craft and was hurried inside, through security barriers and then down into the bowels of the building into a secure briefing room-cum-command centre. The room was dominated by a large, oval conference table and a bank of screens covering one entire wall. Admiral Cartwright was already present, as was the Deputy Director of Commonwealth Intelligence, Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Marines Corp, the recently appointed Defence Minister and a number of other figures whom she didn’t recognise as well as a handful of aides. She saluted and was shown to a chair with her name on a little plaque on the table before it and noticed that the chair at the head of the table and one nearest it on her side were still vacant. The plaques read President of the Commonwealth and Secretary of State respectively. Chen felt a slight lump in her throat.

The door opened. Everyone stood and saluted as President Sorenson entered, accompanied by Secretary of State Dickinson and Admiral Hawkwood, Chief of Staff of the Navy following Morgan’s defection and now the highest ranking naval officer in the Commonwealth. Chen eyed the new President as she entered. Sorenson was a slightly stocky, middle aged woman and was shorter than she had imagined. However, she had a purposeful air about her, despite her inexperience in the role. Admiral Hawkwood was a man that Chen had never met personally, but whose career was well known to her. His qualities of leadership and tactical acumen were in no doubt and had resulted in a meteoric rise to the very top from humble beginnings. Despite years behind a desk and the onset of middle age, he was still a tough looking, wiry man. He had grey receding hair atop a high forehead, and a piercing gaze that settled on Chen for a moment.

Sorenson sat and bade the rest of the room do the same. The aides left and waited outside with the Marine Corps guards, who closed the bulletproof doors behind them.

‘So,’ said Sorenson. ‘What are our options, Admiral Hawkwood?’

‘Madam President, essentially we have two courses of action open to us: tighten our defences around the Solar System and attempt to fend off another Shaper attack, or take the war to the enemy.’

‘Well I don’t fancy sitting here waiting for them to have another go, Admiral. My ministers and I are in agreement, we need to counter-attack if at all possible.’

‘It is a course which is fraught with danger ma’am. As was quite clear during the last attack, the Shaper vessels themselves are superior to our own in every way. Our weapons were barely able to damage them at all, except for our limited stocks of antimatter missiles, all of which have already been used until we can manufacture more. However, we do have several aces up our sleeve. Firstly, we have the co-operation of the Nahabe, who so gallantly stepped in to deal with the Shapers attacking Earth. We have managed to speak with the leader of the fleet sent to assist us. They have embarked upon what can only be described as a holy war and are eager for more action against the Shapers. They have agreed to take part in combined military operations with ourselves. Meanwhile, it appears that the rest of the Nahabe forces are preparing to engage in large scale military operations beyond our southernmost borders against the Shapers. Hopefully, this ought to buy us some time and divide the enemy’s forces. In addition, we have a couple of technical solutions that ought to aid us greatly in our fight. Admiral Takahashi from the Navy’s R&D division will be able to fill you in better than I, Madam President. Mr Takahashi?’

Takahashi, a balding middle-aged man in a black naval uniform, cleared his throat and then spoke, consulting a sheaf of notes as he did so.

‘Yes indeed, Madam President. In both cases we are indebted to Admiral Chen, present with us today. Ma’am, for the first time we have an example of Arkari naval weapons technology in our hands for study. The Churchill has, up to now, served as part of Special Operations Command, the black ops unit established by Admiral Haines and War Marshal Irakun Mentith of the Arkari Navy. As such, she was fitted with an Arkari spatial distortion cannon, a weapon more than capable of taking down a Shaper vessel. Until now, the working of such devices was a closely guarded secret, however we have had time to study the example attached to the Churchill and we believe that we can replicate the technology. We are already working on constructing a working prototype.’

You sly old goat, Mentith, thought Chen. You knew that your government would be too slow in allowing the Commonwealth access to Arkari weapons technology to fight the Shapers and you knew also that we didn’t stand a chance without it, so you gave the Navy one to play with anyway, using the black ops nature of SOC for cover.

‘What about deployment of this new weapon, Admiral?’ said the President. ‘What sort of timescales are we looking at? How widely can it be used?’

‘Pending successful testing of the prototype, we believe that by working around the clock we could have a working weapon by the end of the month, possibly sooner. We won’t be able to fit it to all of our ships as the power requirements are too great, however we can certainly replace the plasma cannons of our carriers, as was done on the Churchill. In time, it may be possible to produce a lighter version to replace one of the turrets on the Titan class destroyers, possibly the keel mounted cutting laser. Further work would be required to reduce the energy consumption of the weapon if we were to produce versions that the cruisers and frigates could carry.’

‘Whatever you need, it’s yours Admiral,’ said the President. ‘What was the other “ace up our sleeve” that Admiral Hawkwood mentioned?’

‘We have information that Admiral Chen has obtained from human agents of the Nahabe who have been working behind enemy lines and passing intel. to SOC. In this case, it appears that the crews of a couple of Nahabe vessels succeeded in obtaining samples of Shaper parasites and figured out a way to detect the Shapers in hyperspace by modifying their sensors to detect the Shapers’ communications, enabling them to build up a map of the Shapers’ networks and plot the positions of their ships and possibly their agents. For the first time we have a way of spotting the enemy.’

‘And does it work with our equipment?’ said the President.

‘In theory, yes it will, though only with the more sophisticated arrays. We should complete the modifications on a couple of candidate vessels by the end of tomorrow. Of course ,we have no way of testing the equipment except in an environment that is likely to contain Shapers. We will require a combat field test if we are to proceed further,’

‘Very good. See to it, Admiral Hawkwood. Admiral Takahashi, I have a further question: will this enable us to screen individuals?’

‘It may be possible, yes. At the very least, it ought to enable us to identify ships that have either been infiltrated by the enemy or taken over entirely and either target or quarantine them depending upon the severity of the situation.’

‘Excellent. So what do you propose, Admiral Hawkwood?’

‘With your permission, Madam President, I propose moving what fleet resources we have available to a forward position in the Beta Hydri system. From there we can move to intercept further attacks emanating from Achernar and prepare a counter-strike, pending successful testing of the new cannon and sensor modifications. I also propose that we pass the information regarding how to detect the Shapers to our allies. They’ll need this information as much as we do.’

‘Alright, do it. What about our allies, what information do we have on their current status? Deputy Director Forrest?’

The Director of Commonwealth Intelligence leaned forward a little as he spoke down the length of the table.

‘Madam President, it appears that so far that many of our allies remain untouched by the Shapers. Perhaps they are dealing with the bigger powers first before they move onto the smaller players, however, the Vriint, the Hyrdians and the Xeelin have all offered ships to aid us in patrolling shipping lanes whilst the Navy is otherwise engaged, freeing up more of our ships. The Esacir remain neutral as ever.’

‘What about the Arkari?’

‘We don’t know. All communications with the Arkari have been severed since the attack and all ships that we have sent to Arkari space have been turned back at the border. Politely but firmly, I might add. Even their embassy here on Earth say that they don’t know what’s going on back home.’

‘Yes, I spoke with Ambassador Eralik this morning. He claimed ignorance of events in the Sphere, save what is public knowledge, though he expressed the opinion that the Shapers may have taken down the Arkari hypercom sphere via a mass infiltration of some kind, possibly some sort of sophisticated virus,’ said Sorenson.

‘He’s telling the truth to a certain extent. The entire Arkari Sphere is in lock down. Of course we know that there was some kind of mass attack against a large number of systems, but that’s it,’ Forrest replied. ‘I find it hard to believe that the Shapers could pull off a virus attack. Even our own military and backbone civilian systems are immune to such things and have been for decades. Unless they somehow got inside and took over the Arkari systems first…’

‘Make sure the Ambassador gets a copy of this sensor data. I’m sure his superiors back home would be grateful to receive it. Who knows, they might even start talking to us again,’ said Sorenson.

‘What about the K’Soth?’ said Chen, interrupting. Cartwright regarded her coldly.

‘What about the K’Soth, Admiral Chen?’ replied the President.

‘We’re still tied down defending our borders, even though the war with the K’Soth is over, correct? We know that the Empire is tearing itself apart in a civil war that the Shapers caused, just like they did the war with the Commonwealth. Why don’t we give the K’Soth the means to detect our mutual enemy? It would act as a good will gesture to cement the ceasefire, and would reduce the possibility of a Shaper dominated Empire launching a fresh attack against our northern border.’

‘We don’t share intelligence data with the enemy, Admiral Chen,’ said Cartwright.

‘No wait, she has a point,’ said the President. ‘It would give the Navy far more ships to use against the Shapers if we could stop worrying about the K’Soth. Mr Forrest, could this be achieved?’

Deputy Director Forrest shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Yes, it could. We do have a back channel to the K’Soth via the Esacir. However we’d have to be very careful that the data didn’t fall into the hands of the Shapers. The situation in the Empire is a real mess, there are two broad factions, but each contains a number of clans all settling old scores and from what we know, it seems that the Shapers appear to have infiltrated both sides. We have contacts with the more liberal elements in the Empire, but even they have been heavily compromised in recent months. It’s something we could look at though. Admiral Chen’s suggestion is basically a sound one, from a strategic point of view.’

‘Please do. Now, about this proposed plan of attack: where do we even start? Which systems are still ours and which have gone over to the enemy?’

‘That is far from clear,’ said Admiral Cartwright. ‘Admiral Hawkwood, if I may?’ Hawkwood indicated for him to proceed. ‘The Navy has intercepted messages broadcast by the traitor Admiral Morgan from the moon of Orinoco in the Achernar system. He states that he has set up an alternative seat of government in the system for what he calls his “Freedom Alliance”. He also gave a list of systems which he says have declared for his new regime, rather the Commonwealth.’ With this, Cartwright called up a map of the Commonwealth on one of the screens on the wall at the end of the room. A great number of systems in the southern portion of the Commonwealth had been highlighted with pulsing red icons, forming two large spheres roughly centred on the Achernar and Spica systems. ‘What is not clear at the moment is whether Morgan is telling the truth and if he is, what proportion of these systems have populations who are either directly under the sway of the Shapers or have been coerced or manipulated into supporting the actions of their local administrations. We also don’t know the enemy’s exact deployment, nor do we know the proportion of ships who have genuinely been enslaved versus the ones who are merely mistakenly acting under illegal orders. Again, we need better intelligence data, something the new scanner modifications should be able to assist us with. Safe to say however, that systems for about ten light years beyond the Beta Hydri – Delta Pavonis line should be considered contested space and all systems further out should be viewed as enemy territory. My intent is to make a number of thrusts into enemy held systems and try and break their hold on these regions, before attempting to take back Achernar, but we need more intel. We need to know which systems are being held and used to supply the enemy before attempting to cut off Achernar and deal with Morgan and his “Freedom Alliance”.’

‘So in other words, our hands are tied until we have better intel.,’ said the President and steepled her hands. ‘Deputy Directory Forrest, what about the CIB’s assets in the renegade systems? What information do we have from your agents?’

‘Nothing that can be relied upon at the moment, Madam President,’ said Forrest, shaking his head sadly. ‘It has become clear to us that many of our agents have been compromised, captured or have even gone over to the enemy, willingly or not. Unfortunately we lost a number of our agents following false information that was submitted by other operatives. We’re in the process of recalling our agents and initiating a screening program to weed out those who have become hosts to the Shapers.’

‘Presumably those who fail to comply with the recall order can be written off as having been implanted by the enemy’s agents?’

‘It is possible, though as Admiral Chen discovered, there are a number of personnel within the Commonwealth armed forces and the intelligence community who have been swayed by Admiral Morgan and have sided with the Shapers out of their own free will, seeing an alliance with the enemy as the only way that humanity can survive. We could be dealing with many enemy agents and double agents within our ranks. The CIB is not secure Madam President, though it pains me greatly to admit it, and the information that we have regarding the enemy is not reliable.’

‘Very well,’ said Sorenson. ‘Admiral Cartwright, you have permission to begin moving fleet assets to forward positions as long as defence of this system is not compromised. We’ll reconvene to discuss our next course of action once we have more information. Thank you everyone, that’s all. Admiral Chen, if I could have a moment?’

As the others in the room gathered their things, President Sorenson moved around the end of the table and approached Chen. She shook Chen warmly by the hand and beamed at her in admiration.

‘It’s good to finally meet you, Admiral,’ said the President. ‘I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.’

‘Thank you Madam President,’ said Chen, a little taken aback.

‘You did a hell of a job defending Earth. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.’

‘I was just doing my duty, ma’am,’ Chen replied modestly.

‘Yes you were, to the highest standard. Mark my words, your bravery will be duly recognised.’

‘Ma’am, it was the Nahabe who saved us in the end. I made a stand, but we couldn’t have won without them. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be standing here.’

‘Maybe, but these are dark times, Admiral Chen. The people need heroes, someone to look up to, someone to give them hope. Winning wars isn’t just about guns and ships, it’s about morale, it’s about giving people the will to fight. My father taught me that.’

‘Your father, ma’am?’

‘Sorenson’s my married name. President Cook was my father.’

‘He was President during the First K’Soth War.’

‘He was, and he never gave up no matter how bad things got - and they did get very bad before the end, - and neither did the people, thanks to him. I hope to live up to his memory. Did you have any relatives who fought in that war?’

‘Yes ma’am, my grandfather was a captain in the Navy.’

‘And I bet he’d be proud of you, Admiral Chen.’

‘Yes,’ said Chen, looking at the President of the Commonwealth smiling back at her. ‘I think that he would.’

They were about to leave when there was a commotion in the corridor outside. An aide, breathless from running and clutching a document, had collared Admiral Hawkwood and was hurriedly trying to explain something to him. She saw Hawkwood turn and re-enter the room. Everyone else in the process of leaving did likewise and began to resume their seats.

‘What is it?’ said the President. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s Haines,’ said Hawkwood. ‘We received an encrypted emergency transmission from a distress beacon in the Achernar system. He’s alive.’

Chapter 13

Deep in the asteroid belt, squadrons of ships from the Shining Glory moved like bright schools of fish amidst the scattered metal-rich rocks. The graceful fighter craft were using their weapons to smash the larger boulders into more manageable chunks, which were then moved by the tractor beams of heavier utility vessels into the waiting maws of two ore harvester vessels, whose flat, disc shaped bodies and long, manipulator arms gave them the appearance of giant, glittering crabs as they fed the raw material from the asteroids into their gaping loading bays to be broken down into their constituent metals. A long stream of ejected waste material issued from the back of each craft as stone and ice were discarded.

The mineral content had puzzled the crews of the harvester craft. A lot of the rock being discarded was of types not commonly found except within the crusts of planets. There was sedimentary rock here in abundance as well as deposits formed by volcanic action. There was also an awful lot of water mixed in with the various types of stone and metal, indeed entire mountains of ice had been spotted floating amidst the rocks, gleaming blueish white in the light from the binary. Complex carbon compounds were also in abundance. Clearly there had once been a planet here and something catastrophic had happened to it - that much was clear. The distribution of the asteroids in their orbit and their dense concentration into a crescent shape rather than being evenly spread in their orbital path around the parent star also pointed to the event being the relatively recent past, geologically speaking, though exactly how long ago it was difficult to say. Perhaps a rogue body had passed this way and collided with this one, shattering it into a billion pieces? This close to the core, the skies were densely packed with star systems and such events must surely be more common than way out in the relative safety of the spiral arms.

It was then that they began to find the remains of artificial structures amidst the tumbling rocks, regular forms that could not possibly have occurred naturally, shapes formed from purified metals half melted by intense heat. It wasn’t until they cracked open one particularly large boulder and discovered the remains of an underground bunker, perfectly preserved within like an insect in amber, that they found the bodies.

Katherine placed her hand against the glassy, black surface of the building and gazed up at the symbol carved into its surface. The details of the carving were still clear and sharp, the building itself almost pristine after ten thousand years and a nuclear bombardment. The alien script formed a double line underneath a circle emitting rays that touched the stylised figures that were arrayed before it. She stared at it, wondering what it represented. A holy symbol of some kind, that much they had deduced from its presence in the temple that Steelscale had discovered, but anything more was still a mystery.

‘Rekkid,’ she said. ‘What does it say? The line of Progenitor script, can you read it?’

‘Ah, yes I can actually,’ said Rekkid, shaken from his trance-like state as he too scrutinised the carving. ‘Hmm. Their use of the Progenitor language contains some inaccuracies with regard to the grammar, as though the carvers were not native speakers, but as far as I can render it into English, the inscription reads: “Fortress of the Soldiers of the Sacred Way” or something similar, although the word that they’ve used for “way” could mean a number of other things. In any case, this is, or rather was, a place filled with holy warriors, and I’m assuming that it wasn’t built by the Progenitors.’

‘But it doesn’t belong here,’ said Steelscale. ‘This building: look at it. It’s so different to the others in this city.’

‘You’re right,’ said Katherine, pressing her palm against the smooth, shiny surface. I don’t know what this material is. It feels like glass to the touch, but it’s obviously far stronger than that. It’s been used in these great blocks to construct this fortress and there’s barely a mark on it, when the rest of the city lies in ruins.’

Rekkid was hunting around on the ground, searching for something amid the dirt. Eventually he found a tiny chip that had fallen from the fortress wall and popped it into his sample analyser. He looked at the result and furrowed his brow.

‘This stuff is exactly the same as the base material used by the Progenitors to construct their mega-structures such as the Dyson Sphere we excavated,’ he said.

‘Is this a Progenitor structure? Did the locals build their city on top of an ancient site, do you think?’ said Katherine.

‘I’m not sure. The analyser places the age of this sample at over four billion years old, but this doesn’t look like Progenitor construction to me. Everything that we’ve seen constructed from this material so far was seamless, as if it had been grown in one piece. This ziggurat is very neatly constructed, but it’s made from separate blocks, albeit very large ones.’

‘There’s also the small matter of the age of the star system,’ said Steelscale. ‘If this planet was in any way habitable four billion years ago, I’d expect the stars in this system to be rather older looking; as it is, they look like any other yellow dwarf star in the middle of its life cycle. I’d suggest that we check with the ship.’

Katherine looked closer at one of the blocks where a piece near the edge had fallen away, cracked by frost or flying debris during the bombardment, revealing the side of the adjacent block. Though almost perfectly flat, it felt rough and unfinished, with a definite pattern of shallow ridges in contrast to the almost mirror-like sheen of the outside face.

‘These blocks were definitely cut to size,’ she said. ‘Come and feel this.’

Rekkid stepped over and ran a fingertip over the rough surface and nodded in agreement.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Something has been used to saw through this. Maybe they found some Progenitor ruins and used them as building material?’

‘Like the churches in Europe built out of ancient Greek and Roman buildings?’ said Katherine.

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘It still doesn’t explain why these people were using the Progenitor alphabet as well as their own,’ said Steelscale.

‘No it doesn’t,’ Rekkid replied. ‘There’s something here that we’re not seeing.’

‘We need to get inside that building,’ said Katherine. ‘If it’s this intact on the outside, the interior could also be well preserved. Maybe we’ll find the answers we’re looking for inside?’

‘Not to mention the source of that mysterious signal,’ Steelscale added.

‘Agreed,’ Rekkid replied. ‘We’ll contact the ship. Maybe they can render us some assistance.’

The small image projected from Rekkid’s comm. was heavily distorted, the sound scratchy and sometimes indistinct, but Mentith’s face could still be seen. He looked tired - worn out by recent events –but he still listened carefully to the three archaeologists as they explained their discoveries so far.

‘So, there is evidence that points to Progenitor influence in this system,’ he said. ‘I think we can all agree that Eonara brought us here for that reason.’

‘Unfortunately we’re still not much closer to working out exactly why,’ Rekkid replied.

‘And sadly we’re not much closer to reactivating Eonara to ask her why,’ said Mentith. ‘We have detected changes in the surface of her AI core, but whether that points to some sort of self repair underway, we simply don’t know. We may have more answers once the ship’s own AI core has been reconnected. My engineers assure me that we are getting closer to getting the Glory back online, pending a full purge of the ship’s systems.’

‘A purge, War Marshal?’

‘Shaper viruses have been found throughout the ship. We reactivated a number of areas of the internal network and found them infested with intelligent and malevolent programs. Quite how they got there and circumvented our countermeasures is a mystery, though presumably it occurred during our attack run on the Shaper portal and our subsequent escape. All areas of possible storage are being wiped and rebuilt before we reconnect the ship’s AI. It’s a laborious task for my engineers, but they are making good progress.’

‘We would appreciate any assistance that you could spare to help us get inside this structure we’ve discovered,’ said Katherine. ‘Any heavy cutting or lifting gear would be a great help in gaining entry.’

‘Agreed,’ said Mentith. ‘I’ll see what I can do about that. However, the mysteries you have uncovered are not the only ones that have come to light.’

‘Oh?’

‘We dispatched a fleet of ships to the asteroid belt around this star in order to gather raw materials so that the Glory can manufacture replacement components for itself. However, the crews made a number of interesting discoveries. Judging by composition and distribution of the debris it would appear that the belt is in fact the remains of another planet and moreover that it was inhabited. A number of bodies and the remains of artificial structures have been found amidst the rubble, miraculously preserved since the planet’s destruction. Here, let me show you:’

A static image appeared alongside Mentith’s. It showed a number of contorted and desiccated humanoid forms floating free inside a hollow space.

‘We have carbon dated the remains,’ said Mentith. ‘These people died about ten thousand years ago.’

‘I wonder if they’re the same people that inhabited this planet?’ said Katherine. ‘We found the butchered remains of a number of people in the ruins, but it was difficult to tell what they originally looked like. We did find depictions of humanoid figures down here though.’

‘It’s very possible that they are the same race,’ said Mentith. ‘Even a civilisation with relatively primitive space flight technology would not have found it too difficult to make the crossing from one world to the other. We won’t know for certain until we have samples from both to compare.’

‘What the hell happened to these people? What could destroy a planet so utterly?’

‘A chance collision with another body is one possibility,’ said Mentith. ‘Perhaps a rogue planet, thrown out by its parent star entered the system and collided with this one? We are very close to the galactic core. The chance of such an event occurring is much greater here.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Katherine replied. ‘This planet that we’re standing on was nuked over and over. Somebody wiped these people out deliberately. I don’t think that the destruction of its sister planet was an accident, I think someone blew it to pieces.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Mentith. ‘With enough time, one of our dreadnoughts would be capable of such a thing. But why destroy one planet completely and nuke the other? It makes no sense. More to the point, it smacks of wildly differing levels of weapons technology being used.’

‘Perhaps the Shapers did this,’ Steelscale suggested. ‘Perhaps they destroyed one world whilst their minions dealt with the other?’

‘Well, maybe we’ll have more of an idea once we’ve gained entry to this building,’ said Rekkid. ‘Incidentally, War Marshal, are the Glory’s sensors able to estimate the age of this star system?’

‘Yes of course,’ Mentith replied glancing to one side as he obtained the data from the ship’s sensors. ‘This is only a rough estimate,’ he said. ‘But based on the mass of the stars, their current energy output and their spectroscopic signature, this system appears to be slightly under three and half billion years old.’

‘So the Progenitors could never have come here in person,’ said Rekkid. ‘They left the galaxy before this system had even formed. Which begs the question: what is a building constructed out of Progenitor materials doing on its surface?’

The shuttle, sleek looking despite its wide bodied design, landed carefully on the flat, broken ground next to the ziggurat and folded its wings like a bird settling onto its nest. It had descended from the Shining Glory, bringing with it what technicians Mentith was able to spare and their equipment. It had first landed at Camp Keros to collect Arrakid and then made the short hop to the ziggurat.

A boarding ramp formed in the craft’s rear and slender figures began to exit, carrying boxes of equipment on AG pallets and shielding their eyes against the fierce wind that had blown up, filling the air with grit as it howled around the broken buildings of the dead city. There was another figure too, a slender, snake-like thing that shone silver in the wan sunlight as it studied its surroundings with compound sensor clusters. It was a combat drone.

‘I don’t know why they’ve brought that thing,’ said Katherine, eyeing the drone with suspicion through the eyepieces of her rebreather as the mechanoid retracted the multiple weapon arms it had deployed upon exiting the shuttle. ‘There’s nothing alive down here but us.’

‘Maybe they’re erring on the side of caution?’ Rekkid suggested. Katherine snorted derisively. Steelscale gave a low growl as he eyed the metallic thing moving unnaturally across the rubble.

Arrakid approached and waved in the Arkari fashion at Rekkid. Rekkid returned the gesture.

‘We got a good look at this place from the air,’ said Arrakid. ‘Very impressive. We tried to get a good look from the Glory but the damage to the sensors and the state of the atmosphere made it difficult. There’s so much dust and cloud at high altitude that it’s difficult to get a clear view of the ground at times.’

‘We may have found the source of those transmissions, but we can’t get inside it,’ said Rekkid.

‘I’m sure we can find a way. Odd looking building though. It doesn’t seem to fit with the others that we saw on the way in. Mentith said that it has connections to the Progenitors?’

‘Yes, there’s Progenitor script over the door along with an inscription in the native language and the construction material appears to be of Progenitor origin. I’m hoping that we can find more bilingual inscriptions inside and figure out the language of this planet’s inhabitants.’

‘Well, we found a few fragments of the native script along with the bodies in the asteroid belt. Given that they were found in what looks like the remains of a deep shelter they’re probably just instructional or warning signs, but I thought you might like to see. No examples of the Progenitor language though. Here, have a look.’

Arrakid produced a slim datapad and handed it to Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale who passed the device between themselves and squinted at the images of writing stencilled onto a metallic looking wall. It was immediately obvious that the script in the pictures and the script over the entrance to the ziggurat shared a common set of characters.

‘Are these the same people though?’ said Katherine. ‘We need to know if the remains that we found match the bodies that you pulled out of the middle of that asteroid.’

‘I took the liberty of sending teams to the coordinates you provided for the cellar where you found the bodies and the temple also,’ said Arrakid. ‘We’ll get samples and do tests and we’ll know soon enough. It does seem likely though, based on the images of the skulls that you found and the appearance of the bodies that we uncovered. They do seem very similar.’

‘So how do we get inside this place?’ said Katherine, jabbing a thumb at the ziggurat. ‘And why have you brought that thing?’ she added pointing at the combat drone which even now was attempting to scale the smooth, sloping side of the ziggurat’s lowest level.

‘For its advanced hacking abilities, and for protection,’ said Arrakid.

‘Protection against what?’ said Katherine. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed we’re in the middle of a dead city.’

‘Filled with pockets of radiation and who knows what else,’ Arrakid replied. ‘Besides, you did suggest that this might be some sort of military installation. It is not inconceivable that we might encounter automated defence systems that are still active after all this time.’

‘He has a point, Katherine,’ said Rekkid. ‘We don’t know what might be holed up inside, plus that thing might be able to find a way in.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, I guess,’ she replied. ‘It’s just that it gives me the creeps.’

The drone had reached the top of the ziggurat. Having climbed the third and final of the stepped levels, it stood on the tip of its articulated tail for a moment, scanning the horizon with its sensors before it began to scrutinise the surface of the roof. Then, having seemingly seen enough, it started to make its way downwards again.

‘Come on,’ said Arrakid. ‘Let’s take a look at that entrance. I want to see those carvings for myself.’

The massive blocks that shielded the entrance to the ziggurat stood before them once more, looking as impenetrable as ever, topped with the enigmatic carving. The drone, meanwhile, was slithering along the first level above the entrance, weaving back and forth and moving its sensor encrusted head from side to side. As the four archaeologists watched, it began to climb down the surface of the blocks, repeating the same motion as it went. Finally, it reached the ground and undulated towards the group, stopping in front of Arrakid like a dutiful dog having returned a stick to its master.

‘What did you find?’ said Arrakid.

The drone replied in the Arkari language, its voice flat and emotionless. As it spoke it projected a three dimensional rendering of what its sensors had found.

‘The blocks barring the entrance are hollow,’ said Arrakid, for the benefit of the others. Each contains parts of the door mechanism as well as a magnetic lock probably controlled by a computerised system deeper within the structure. However, the blocks are moved by a cantilevered arrangement which should swing them clear if the lock is released. The drone thinks that it should be able to blow the lock from the outside with its spatial distortion cannon.’

As he spoke, Arrakid pointed to the various components highlighted within the projected scan results.

‘Why doesn’t it just blow a hole in the door?’ said Steelscale. ‘It would seem the easiest solution.’

‘It would lack finesse,’ Arrakid replied. ‘The drones have a limited intelligence, but they do take pride in their work. Besides, it would constitute the vandalism of an ancient monument.’

‘Just tell it to get the door open, Arrakid,’ said Katherine. ‘And tell it we appreciate the level of care it is taking. Also, ask it if it can scan the rest of the building, it might be nice if we knew what to expect once we step inside.’

‘Sadly, the walls and roof are much thicker than the entrance and are solid all the way through,’ said Arrakid. ‘The drone tried to scan deeper but it was unsuccessful. We’ll have to take a look for ourselves I’m afraid.’

At Arrakid’s command, the drone made its way back to the ziggurat and climbed up onto the entrance once more. It stood poised over the hairline crack between the two massive blocks, its upper right weapon arm extended and poised as if it were lining up its shot. Then they saw it fire. There was a sharp bang that echoed across the silent city and a ripple in the air that shot downwards into the crack in the blink of an eye.

Then there was an awful groaning noise. Slowly, the blocks began to slide upwards and apart. The drone slithered quickly down to the ground as the entrance opened like a set of massive jaws before coming to rest with a dull boom. As the door opened, a draft of cold air issued from the depths, like a dying breath.

‘There must be another entrance or air vent somewhere that’s causing a through draft now we’ve opened the door,’ said Rekkid. No-one replied. All were gazing into the shadowy depths, where a ramp angling steeply downwards into the darkness could just be seen. The wind whipped across the open entrance with a low moan. ‘I suppose we should go inside and have look,’ Rekkid continued. ‘Arrakid, would you like to lead the way?’

Inside, the top of the ramp was covered with centuries of accumulated dust and grit that had worked its way through the narrow gap between the blocks covering the entrance. Rekkid, Katherine, Steelscale and Arrakid led the way, the combat drone undulating along at Arrakid’s side like an obedient pet, its body held in an upright S shape. The rest of the team would follow with the heavier equipment once they had made an initial investigation of the site, though for now it was being moved inside the entrance out of the howling, grit laden wind.

The ramp pointed steeply downwards for a couple of hundred metres or so after which it turned a corner. Its ridged surface was constructed not from the Progenitor material but from a relatively ordinary looking concrete-like substance, as were the walls and ceiling, which, sheltered from the elements, had remained almost totally intact save for a few cracks here and there caused by subsidence. The torch-beams of the team appeared feeble against the all-encompassing gloom.

‘What the hell is this place?’ said Katherine. ‘I was expecting to walk inside and find another temple. This looks more like a bunker.’

‘Maybe that’s exactly what it is,’ said Rekkid.

‘Perhaps the ziggurat is a temple,’ said Steelscale. ‘On my worlds there are many similar structures, where prisoners may be executed to the glory of the Light and devoured in full view of the faithful.’

‘That does sound like a charming old custom,’ said Rekkid dryly. ‘But you may be right. Perhaps worship took place on top of instead of inside of this structure.’

‘It doesn’t fully answer my question though,’ said Katherine. ‘Where on earth does this lead? Moreover, do we have any proper fix on where exactly that signal is coming from?’

‘From somewhere in the structure above us, though we are unable to penetrate the material to a sufficient depth to get an image from inside it,’ said Arrakid. ‘It’s conceivable that the ziggurat may house equipment controlled from somewhere else, perhaps from control rooms beneath us?’

‘So why build a temple on top of the bunker?’ said Katherine.

‘Because it belonged to an order of holy warriors,’ said Steelscale. ‘The Soldiers of the Sacred Way? They sound like holy warriors to me. We have many such orders amongst our forces. They are the die-hard fanatics, the most savage warriors. People come from far and wide to pray at their fortresses, warriors hoping for good fortune in battle, fathers and mothers seeking protection for their offspring. Maybe this is something similar?’

‘Either that or it’s a brilliant disguise strategy,’ Rekkid suggested. ‘I mean, only a really sick and twisted species would deliberately bomb a building of such sacred and cultural value?’ He looked at Katherine and Steelscale. ‘Not that I was suggesting…’

‘Poor taste jokes about the histories of other species aside, Rekkid. This material above us makes a very effective defensive shield,’ said Arrakid. ‘We did some tests on samples that we took from the excavations on Bivian. You’d be hard pressed to do much damage with conventional weaponry. The fact that this place survived almost unscathed when the city around it was flattened is proof enough of how tough this material above our heads actually is.’

‘We’ll find out when we reach the bottom, I suppose,’ said Katherine.

They reached the bottom of the first section of the ramp, whereupon it became clear that it fact it doubled back on it itself before continuing downwards. As they turned the corner and looked down into the darkness, Katherine spotted something at the bottom of the slope in the stygian gloom. It was a ghostly figure, humanoid, floating in the darkness for a split second and then it vanished.

‘Shit!’ she exclaimed and grabbed Rekkid’s arm. ‘I swear to god I just saw something moving down there!’

‘Where?’ said Rekkid, puzzled and somewhat perturbed by the announcement.

‘Down at the bottom of the ramp! I’m certain I saw the figure of a man… well not a man, but it was humanoid. It was just there for a second and then it disappeared!’

‘Bugger, maybe there is somebody down here after all this time,’ said Rekkid.

‘After ten thousand years?’ said Arrakid.

‘Believe me, we’ve seen stranger things,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Arrakid, can you command your little pet to see if it can detect any signs of life down here?’

‘Of course,’ Arrakid replied and issued a series of commands to the drone, which then replied in its flat monotone. Arrakid scratched his head crest. ‘The drone reports that it is unable to detect any other living things down here other than ourselves, however it did detect movement at the bottom of the ramp at the same instance that Doctor O’Reilly cried out. It will now show us what it recorded.’

A projected image appeared in the air in front of the drone, showing a recording from the drone’s eyes as it rounded the corner and looked down the ramp. An indistinct figure could be seen in the darkness for a second before it vanished. At Arrakid’s command the drone replayed the recording and froze as soon as the figure appeared again. Then it zoomed in to display the slightly fuzzy image of a humanoid dressed in some form of military regalia, right arm stretched out towards the camera. Its eyes and mouth were pools of darkness and the bottoms of its legs were lost in shadow.

‘What the fuck is that!?’ said Rekkid, a slight quiver detectable in his voice.

Arrakid commanded the drone to show the same sequence as seen from its other sensors. What was clear was that the figure was undetectable in all but visible wavelengths of light. It gave off no heat and was invisible in ultraviolet wavelengths and moreover, could not be detected by any of the drone’s acoustic, radar, lidar or other range finding equipment. For all intents and purposes, there appeared to be no-one there.

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Rekkid?’ said Katherine, quietly.

‘No,’ Rekkid replied, his voice sounding a little strained. ‘You?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s good then.’

‘Okay, let’s think about this rationally,’ said Rekkid. ‘It’s visible in the same wavelengths as those detectable by our eyes, but by no other means. It’s got to be a projection, a recording of some kind. Maybe we tripped some dormant system or something?’

‘Or maybe… we woke somebody up?’ Katherine replied.

‘Maybe so, but we have the drone and I am more than willing to defend us,’ said Steelscale. ‘In any case, the shades of the dead do not frighten me. My people believe that the living dead should be treated with respect. They may have wisdom to impart to us.’

‘I think I’d rather work on the assumption that it’s a recording,’ said Rekkid, sounding a little unsure of himself. ‘Nevertheless, we have no idea what other systems might have woken up at our arrival. There may be defences down here to deter intrusion. We should have the drone walk ahead of us. Maybe it can use its sensors to uncover any hidden traps or devices.’

‘A sound idea, Professor Cor,’ said Arrakid, and spoke to the drone. The mechanoid slid forward and proceeded down the ramp ahead of them. They began to walk after it, probing the darkness with their torch beams. Eventually they reached the bottom of the ramp where the passage again executed another switch back before heading downwards again. This was the spot where the apparition had appeared. Arrakid ordered the drone to search for any hidden projection devices. It found nothing in the walls around them except for featureless concrete.

‘Still think that it was a recording, Rekkid?’ said Steelscale, looking about himself as his torch beam angled from one point to another.

‘It’s the only rational explanation,’ Rekkid muttered.

‘I have been pondering the nature of this place,’ said Steelscale. ‘Perhaps it is a tomb for the warriors of these people. It would not be unusual to find the spirits of these long dead soldiers guarding their remains. We should be careful not to anger them.’

‘I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that Steelscale,’ said Rekkid. ‘Partly because I’m not the superstitious type, but mainly because you’re implying that we’re on a dead planet, deep underground with a load of angry undead and despite my cool, calm and rational exterior I have to admit that the idea is a tiny bit terrifying.’

Katherine detected the strain evident in Rekkid’s voice.

‘Scared of the dark, Rekkid? After all we’ve been through…’

‘Let’s just say that our K’Soth friend is playing on my over active imagination,’ Rekkid replied, looking uneasy.

‘You’re probably right. It has to be a recording. I mean come on, ghosts? Really?’

At that moment the air was filled with whispering voices, like half heard sentences carried on the wind. They overlapped with one another in a confusing susurration of unintelligible words, the sounds of a language that had been unheard for ten thousand years. The sounds seemed to come from further down the tunnel. Then as soon as they had started, the voices stopped.

‘The voices of the dead,’ said Steelscale, with conviction. ‘They are calling to us.’

‘Would anyone object if I sat in the corner and went completely to pieces?’ said Rekkid, his voice a number of octaves higher than normal. ‘It’s a recording, I know… it has to be.’

‘It is, I’m sure of it,’ said Katherine. ‘I have to admit though, down here in the dark with strange voices and apparitions… It does have a certain effect on the imagination.’

She looked down the next section of the tunnel. Shining her torch down she could see that instead of doubling back on itself again, the tunnel appeared to head straight forward. There was something else too. The figure had reappeared. She could see it clearly in the darkness, its right arm outstretched towards them as it silently mouthed unknown words.

‘It has to be a recording,’ said Katherine. ‘Look Rekkid, it’s repeating the same motions as the one we saw earlier. It’s exactly the same. It has to be a projection. The things is: is it welcoming us to this place, or is it warning us to stay away?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Arrakid, can you send the drone down to take a look?’

At Arrakid’s command, the drone slithered off down the ramp, its sensors probing the walls for any electronics or machinery of any sort. When it reached the bottom, it stopped and began to investigate the walls on both sides. The results of its search appeared in Arrakid’s datapad.

‘It’s found something,’ said Arrakid. ‘There are automated weapon systems buried within the walls. Some examples of what look like laser weapons and rail guns too. All of them are active – obviously the people who built this place built things to last – but so far they haven’t deployed.’

‘Could there be a malfunction, perhaps?’ said Katherine. ‘After all this time it would hardly be surprising.’

‘Difficult to tell,’ Arrakid replied. ‘But the drone has also spotted a doorway that lies further down the tunnel and is currently out of our sight. The door’s systems are also active, and it looks like it’s been recently opened. Here:’

He handed her his datapad, currently showing a feed from the drone’s cameras. It clearly showed a thick framed doorway with tracks in the floor where armoured doors would run smoothly aside. The tracks were completely free of dust or debris, the metal gleaming as if new.

‘I think someone wants us to keep going, don’t you?’ said Katherine.

Finally, they reached the very bottom where the drone waited patiently for them, its weapons deployed in case any of the concealed defences showed any signs of activity. The corridor continued onwards, through the open door where it was lost in the gloom. They studied the door more closely when they reached it, confirming their suspicions that it had only recently been opened and then made their way onwards into the waiting darkness.

The darkness ahead was total. The corridor came to an end a couple of hundred metres ahead, and opened out into a larger space that their torches were having trouble penetrating. Eventually, stepping out into this cavernous chamber they cast their torches about them, the feeble beams lost in the blackness, casting wan circles of light on the vaulted ceiling and walls.

The chamber was enormous, a vast cathedral like space with richly decorated walls of cut stone and a ceiling carved with complex interlocking designs. The floor was tiled with black and white marble that formed swirling, geometric patterns of alternating panels. Along both edges of the chamber were rows of statues; sombre figures dressed in weapons and armour from different ages. Some bore swords, shields, spears and other ancient equipment, whilst others were dressed in what looked like sophisticated armoured suits and carried guns of various kinds. The pedestal of each bore the name of each individual in both Progenitor script and the as yet only partially decipherable language of the planet’s inhabitants. Between some of the statues, corridors led off from the main chamber to other subterranean rooms and passageways.

The far end of the chamber was filled with an enormous dais. Broad steps led up to an altar carved with fabulous designs and intricately worked figures in scenes of battle. Above it, carved in a relief into the rock that formed the back wall, the image of the ring and figures that they had seen on the outside of the ziggurat and the temple in the city was repeated. To each side of it, were two long columns of dense text, one in the Progenitor language and one in the native language of the people who had built this place.

Rekkid stepped forward and asked for more light to be directed at the words carved into the rock. He compared the two columns of text and referred to the list of words that they had already acquired from the scant bilingual inscriptions. He found matching words in both columns. Each column bore the same message, inscribed in both languages. Rekkid took a deep breath and then began to decode the language of the dead planet.

Chapter 14

The Meritarch Council vessel - a huge, fat bellied craft - hung above the ruined world of Gigarethme, flanked by four Navy dreadnoughts that sculled lazily as they maintained orbit. Within, the remainder of the Meritarch Council sat in a smaller version of the Council Chamber on Keros. There were empty seats as the positions of many of the murdered Council members had not yet all been filled and others were still recovering from their neural trauma. The vacant positions were instead filled with small bouquets of black tear blossoms as a mark of remembrance for the deceased or wounded. The Council had been in debate for some hours regarding the recent Shaper attack. It was now Beklide’s turn to speak.

Beklide stood at the dais in front of the amphitheatre of seats, the wall behind her displaying a feed from the ship’s external cameras that showed the ruined world beneath them. Even from this height, the cataclysmic damage inflicted by the Shapers was clear to see. The atmosphere was choked with clouds of dust and ash as well as vast cloud banks formed from the evaporated oceans. Through gaps in the pall of smoke, continent-wide fires could still be seen burning below, despite the attempts of the relief effort to quell the infernos. Rippling chains of lightning punctuated the black clouds in flickering patterns of light. It was a hellish scene, one which had been repeated across dozens of Arkari worlds.

‘What you see before you is the death of the Arkari race,’ Beklide began. ‘If the Shapers return, and they will, the fate of Gigarethme will be repeated across every Arkari planet until we as a species have been exterminated or cowed by the might of the invader. I invited you all here to see for yourselves the destruction that they have wrought.’

‘We are all aware of the carnage inflicted during the recent attack,’ said the Council Speaker. ‘Almost all of us have lost someone dear to us. I know that you had family here on Gigarethme, Beklide. You have our sincere condolences, but I fail to see what the true purpose of this excursion is. We should be concentrating on how the Shapers managed to subvert our hypercom systems. How could they perform such a feat? Virus programs are a relic of the distant past. Even the humans’ systems are relatively immune and they lack our much vaunted AI technology.’

Beklide’s hands gripped the lectern. ‘To answer the Esteemed Member’s last question, our initial assessments appear to show that this was not the work of a mere virus, more the work of carefully constructed AI programs inserted gradually into our systems over some length of time - hence why the Shapers cannot attack our ships in battle in such a manner. To answer the first question: the purpose of this excursion is for you all to see first-hand what war means. This Council has become complacent and timid. For too long we have cowered behind our defences, defences which have been shown to be lacking. For years now, we in the Navy have urged this house to take greater, decisive action against the Shapers. We have sat here and let the enemy walk up to our gates whilst the civilisations around us, some of whom we call friends, are convulsed amidst the turmoil of civil wars that the Shapers engendered. Now I say: no more. I implore you to unleash the full military might of the Arkari people against the enemy. Let us take the battle to them, let them cower in fear at our approach, let their worlds burn, let them weep for the slaughter of their people!’

‘What do you propose? That we send ships to aid the Commonwealth?’ said the Speaker.

‘Not directly, no. We can serve both ourselves and our allies better in another way. Since the attack, I and my closest advisors have been working upon a plan of action to strike at the heart of the Shapers. With the centre of their empire and their controlling intelligences destroyed, the Shapers’ control over their dominions will begin to loosen and eventually fall apart. To this end, I put before you the following motion: that this house votes to place the Arkari Sphere and its people on a footing of total war. This is to be a war of annihilation and it is the Shapers, not the Arkari, who deserved to be wiped from the face of this galaxy so that the freedom of all races can be upheld!’

Her words were met with the sounds of cheering from the assembled ranks of delegates. The Speaker called for order amidst the cacophony of voices.

‘This council will now vote on the motion put before it by the Esteemed Member, namely that this government should formally declare war on the alien civilisation known colloquially as the Shapers and that as such, this government should grant itself emergency powers placing the Arkari Sphere on a war footing until hostilities are deemed to have ceased.’

There was a brief moment of silence whilst the assembled Meritarchs placed their votes. When all votes had been submitted, the Speaker examined the small holo-display by the arm of her chair and announced the results.

‘Results are as follows: Those in favour, nine hundred and three. Those against, one. Five abstentions and ninety one members absent due to recent death or injury. Motion is carried. Esteemed Members, from this moment we, the Arkari people, are at war with the Shapers. Fleet Meritarch Beklide, you are hereby ordered to use all necessary means to ensure the destruction of the enemy.’

Beklide stood in front of the Council to the sound of rapturous applause.

The dreadnought Sword of Reckoning was powering away from the Gigarethme system at maximum velocity, the enormous warship’s engines straining at full power. Beklide sat in her command couch in the middle of the vessel’s bridge, course and systems data projected in front her in holographic displays. Her second in command, Ship Master Urkild finished talking with a group of junior officers as he entered the bridge and strode over to her.

‘Welcome back Meritarch, I gather that your meeting with the other Council members went well. It seems you finally convinced them of the need for decisive action.’

‘I let the Shapers do most of the talking,’ Beklide replied. ‘Even now the Council are being shuttled down to the surface of Gigarethme to see the destruction of the planet up close. In case any of them have any lingering doubts about their decision.’

‘I believe that the humans have a saying appropriate to these situations: now the gloves come off.’

‘Yes, indeed. How long until all ships that I have summoned arrive at the rendezvous coordinates?’

‘Most ships have already arrived, Meritarch. They merely wait for our arrival.’

‘Excellent.’

‘If I might ask, where will we be headed once we join them?’

‘The planet Maranos, in the Fulan system.’

Chapter 15

Haines stumbled through the darkness, his boots slipping on rocks that were slick with water and worn smooth by its passage. The beam of his torch wavered crazily ahead of him as he attempted to run headlong into near pitch darkness. More than once he had banged his head on low hanging protrusions and barked his shins on boulders hidden in the shadows. He could feel a trickle of blood working its way down his left temple, and another creeping down into his boots. It didn’t matter, he had to keep running.

Dawson was close behind him, running also, pausing only to glance backwards for signs of their pursuers and once, to pick Haines up off the cave floor where he had fallen. With his helmet’s vision aids, Dawson found the going a little easier than the Admiral, but it was still difficult for him to clearly distinguish the outline of the tunnel’s interior and the rocks that were strewn around the floor through the monochrome image offered by his visor.

They had lost contact with the others in the tunnels and the two men had become separated at first, before they had stumbled into one another in the dark, Dawson charging headlong from a side tunnel and almost bowling Haines over as he collided with him. Down here, their suit comms failed to work properly most of the time - the signals could not penetrate so much solid rock and the smooth, volcanic rock that formed the tunnel walls had a habit of crazily reflecting them. Occasionally, they had made brief contact with the others, only to have it snatched away from them. They caught snatches of urgent cries, the sound of gun fire and explosions. The only possible plus side was that the reflective nature of the cave walls appeared to be also affecting the ability of the Shapers to locate them effectively.

Occasionally the sounds of battle would echo down the passageway after Haines and Dawson, booming off the black, glistening walls. At one point, a hot wind had gusted down the tunnel following a particularly large explosion that had caused the cave to shake around them as they ran. After that, there was no more contact with the others, no more sounds of a struggle. They had pressed onwards in silence, the only sounds now being the splashing of their boots in the shallow stream that ran along the bottom of the passage and their own laboured breathing.

Haines tripped and fell again, catching the toe of his boot on a jutting lip of rock. Dawson reached down and pulled the older man to his feet.

‘Sir, we have to keep going,’ said the marine captain. ‘It’s you that they want.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ Haines replied, struggling for breath. ‘If you had any sense, son, you’d make a run for it.’

‘Can’t do that, sir. You’re too valuable. If the Shapers get hold of you…’

‘If it comes to it, Dawson, I’ll end things myself,’ Haines replied and gestured with his pistol. ‘I’d rather shoot myself in the head than let those things get inside it. Come on, let’s move.’

They stumbled on through the darkness.

In truth, Haines knew that if caught he might have little chance to do such a thing as kill himself. The enemy moved with a shocking speed. The Shaper had rushed the marines like a swarm of angry bees and - he still shuddered to recall it – the creature had literally taken McCabe apart. The insect-like creatures that made up the sentient swarm had covered him in a split second, even forcing their way down his throat, and then the swarm had scattered in different directions and poor McCabe had exploded in a welter of blood and gore as enslaved PDF troopers had entered the cavern and begun firing. Haines and the others had started running in a blind panic and in the confusion they had become separated from one another in the passageways and chambers of the subterranean labyrinth.

Haines had made the sensible decision of sticking to the route that the stream had carved through the ancient lava tunnels. Surely, he had reasoned, it had to emerge into the open air sooner or later, and the trickle of water shone in his torch beam and was easy to follow. Still, it was the most obvious route for him to be following. There was always the possibility that someone might be waiting at the other end, assuming that there was a way out of course. He had considered the possibility that maybe the water seeped down through cracks in the rocks and collected underground before flowing out of the tunnels and that maybe they were trapped underground with the enemy between them and the only exit. He swore he could hear whispered voices, the presence of another consciousness searching for him down here, a predatory thing enjoying the thrill of the hunt.

The tunnel was definitely heading upwards now. Though it made the going more difficult as they were forced to pick their way up and over a series of underground waterfalls, and boulders made slippery with spray and pallid, slimy growths, it gave them hope that they were heading for the exit. Dawson was helping Haines up a particularly tricky set of falls where the water plunged over a shelf of lava when a horrifying scream echoed back up the tunnel towards them from the direction they had just come from. It was the prolonged sound of a man in unbearable pain, dying in this lightless place at the hands of an implacable foe.

‘Jesus,’ said Dawson. ‘My men, I…’

Haines saw the expression on Dawson’s face. He knew that look. The Captain wanted to go back in search of his lost men, wanted to save them from the entity that was killing them one by one in the tunnels. It would be a fruitless exercise.

‘Your men are most likely dead,’ said Haines. ‘Hell, they’re my men too. Captain, I’m sorry but you can’t save them. Going back down that tunnel is suicide. We have to keep going. You saw what that thing did to McCabe. We can’t fight that. Not now.’

‘Yes sir, I know. I’m sorry it’s just…’

‘Captain, I’m truly sorry, I am. It’s a terrible fact, but since we all got separated it’s every man for himself down here. Help me up. There’ll be time enough for revenge later.’

Dawson nodded, his face ashen with fear and grief as he took Haines’ hand and pulled him up over the black, wet rocks. The whispered voices at the back of Haines’s mind spoke of relishing the kill, the pathetic struggling and whimpering of the prey, and then the devouring of its pathetic, biological mind. He saw Dawson shudder. Evidently he heard those voices too.

They struggled on, the tunnel’s angle of ascent becoming ever steeper until they were climbing hand over hand up an eroded cliff composed of hexagonal columns where the lava had cooled and cracked into regular, geometric shapes. The stream splashed over these, spattering them with moisture as it fell. Finally, reaching the top, they could see a dim patch of lesser darkness against the utter blackness of the cavern that contained scattered points of light. A cool breath of air touched their skin. At last, they had found their way out of the tunnels.

Resisting the urge to rush forwards to the exit, Haines and Dawson moved carefully towards the mouth of the cave, weapons drawn in case of ambush. Dawson led the way, searching with the aid of his suit’s inbuilt sensors for signs of movement. Satisfied that there were no obvious signs of enemies lying in wait, he moved forward, weapon at his shoulder ready to fire in case of ambush. Haines followed him, his pistol cocked and ready.

They emerged into the cool of the night air. Scanning around to left and right they found themselves within the caldera of a long extinct volcano. The walls, long eroded over time and covered with scrubby vegetation, curved away on all sides. Much of the caldera floor was filled with a lake of still water that reflected the sky, and which drained into the cave system that they had just exited. There were no enemies in sight. Dawson looked at his map display and got a fix on their position.

‘This way, sir,’ he said and indicated northwards with his hand.

Haines nodded and followed him. There was no time to wait for the others. Surely it wouldn’t take the enemy long to figure out where they were. Haines and Dawson would have to hope that if any of the other members of the squad escaped they would have the sense to head in the same direction.

Walking quickly in the light from Tethys, high and gibbous in the sky above their heads, they made their way up the sloping sides of the caldera. Though the gas giant dominated the heavens, Haines’ attention was drawn to the other lights up there, the ones that moved quickly alone or in groups, winking in and out of visibility. They were ships; large ones judging by how easily visible they were from the ground. Morgan must be reinforcing the system’s defences, he mused. He couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in the rest of the Commonwealth. What of the Solar System? What of Earth? He longed to get off this moon and back into space with a good ship under him, where he could make a difference.

They climbed the rocky lip of the caldera and flopped down amid the wind-blown scrub that clustered around the few scraps of cover. Keeping low, Dawson peered over the edge and used his helmet’s magnification to look back at the mouth of the cave. For a moment he saw nothing, and then there was movement. A figure was emerging from the cave. Dawson signalled to Haines then zoomed his view in closer and saw a man dressed in Marine Corp fatigues. Dawson’s comm. crackled in his ear.

‘Captain, this is Philips. I made it out of the caves. If you can hear this signal, please report your position. Over.’

‘I’m getting a transmission. It’s Philips,’ said Dawson. ‘He’s requesting that we report our position so that he can find us. Something isn’t right.’

‘It’s not him, at least not anymore,’ said Haines. ‘Or if not, he’s lost his mind requesting that we send information like that over an open channel.’

‘My thoughts exactly, sir.’

‘It’s a pretty cheap trick to pull. They can’t think very much of us if they think we’ll fall for that.’

‘Captain Dawson, this is Philips, please respond. Over.’

Haines heard the faint squawking in Dawson’s ear and nodded once.

‘Turn that thing off, son. Let’s get the hell out of here before they send in air support again to look for us. Now that they know where that cave system came out, it won’t take them long.’

Heading north, they scrambled down the steep slopes of the extinct volcano towards the welcome cover of the jungle below. Fortunately, there was enough light from the gas giant in the sky above them to light the way, but even so the going was difficult. Broken rocks and slopes of scree made the terrain treacherous underfoot. Haines fell first, slipping backwards on loose gravel as he half-walked half-ran down the steep mountainside. He picked himself up again with barely a pause then continued his headlong rush towards the welcoming trees below him. Dawson fell a few minutes later, slipping sideways into a hidden hole beneath his feet. Haines saw him go down and feared the worst, that Dawson might have snapped his ankle and thus be unable to walk. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the man get up, gingerly put his weight onto his right foot and then, satisfied there was no serious damage, continue on his way.

Finally, gratefully, they reached the trees. Haines recognised them in the darkness - these were the same as the species that formed the great forest to the south that his escape pod had landed in, their oddly regular pattern of branches visible in the pale planet-light. He welcomed them like an old friend, only stopping when the trees grew dense and tall and the night sky above was no longer visible. Hopefully the dense, moisture-soaked undergrowth would interfere with the instruments of anyone looking for them.

‘Okay,’ said Haines, his breath rasping in his throat. ‘This old man needs to rest a moment.’

‘No problem, sir. I don’t think they’re following us.’

‘Me neither, for the moment. Jesus, I thought the bastards had us back there. I’m truly sorry about the rest of the men, Captain. Really, I am. But it wouldn’t have done us any good.’

‘It’s my fault sir, they’re my guys and morale just collapsed when that thing that… that…’

‘That Shaper, son.’

‘Yes sir. When the Shaper tore McCabe apart… all I could think of was getting away, getting as far away as possible. The others turned and ran too. We ceased to function as a unit and we paid the price, sir. It’s my fault, I was their squad commander. Their deaths were my responsibility.’ Haines noticed that the younger man’s hands were shaking.

‘No, son. If we’d have stood and fought, we’d all be dead by now or in captivity, or worse. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I brought us here in the first place. You were all aboard my ships when the Shapers won the battle up there.’ He jabbed a finger skywards. ‘It’s my failure if it’s anybody’s. I’m the senior officer here.’

‘How can we kill them, sir? There has to be a way.’

‘Yeah, there has to be,’ said Haines. ‘We can’t run forever. Sooner or later we’ll run out of places to run to. How far to the makeshift camp?’

‘Not far, sir. We should be there in a few hours, all being well.’

‘How’s the ankle? That looked like a pretty nasty fall back there. I didn’t expect you to get up so easily.’

‘I’ll live. Guess I got lucky. There doesn’t seem to be any serious damage.’

‘Good. Okay, let’s move out. First we need to reach that camp of yours, get any survivors we have left together and then we can start making plans.’

‘What sort of plans, sir?’

‘I intend to get off this rock as soon as possible.’

Hours later and the two exhausted men stumbled wearily into the makeshift camp deep under the trees in the heart of the forest. Camouflage netting was strung between the kilometre high tree trunks, below which a collection of tents huddled in the dark, green tinted gloom. They were greeted by the men and women on watch around the perimeter of the camp, their faces broadening in grins as they saw the Admiral and saluted, though when they saw Dawson without the rest of his squad, there were many urgent questions and reactions of shock and grief. All in all, there were around thirty survivors in the camp. The loss of Dawson’s squad was a bitter blow, both in terms of numbers and psychologically.

Dawson and Haines had walked to the camp unhindered. Occasionally they had been forced to huddle in the darkness beneath the trees as aerial vehicles, both human and Shaper, had passed overhead going southwards, but no craft appeared to have followed them and no-one appeared to be following them into the forest. Haines had privately wondered about that. Surely if Dawson’s squad had been captured by the Shaper and subjected to whatever horrors it had in store for them as it devoured their minds, the enemy would have learned the location of the marines’ camp by now? Nevertheless, when Haines quizzed the marines in the camp, none of them had seen any enemy activity in the vicinity. Dawson assured him, however, that plans would be made to move the camp to a different location. Haines wearily agreed. He needed sleep more than anything. He couldn’t remember the last time he had in fact slept properly at all, save for a few snatches of shut eye before he had encountered Dawson’s squad. He had been too on edge, too fuelled by adrenaline, and though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, too afraid to sleep properly.

Dawson had one of his men show Haines to a vacant tent with an unused bedroll inside and Haines felt into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.

Haines was awoken by the sight of a young private standing over him clutching a cup of coffee. Haines took it from him gratefully and sipped at the hot drink. It was the instant stuff from the ration packs. It had an acrid taste, but he didn’t care, it was warming and it would wake him up. The private left and returned a few moments later with some heated rations. Haines balanced the plastic tray on his knees and began to wolf them down, his stomach suddenly realising how long it had been since he’d had a proper meal. Normally these dried emergency rations tasted terrible to him, lacking the flavour and consistency of fresh produce, but right now the reconstituted egg and cubes of processed meat tasted like the best thing he’d had in ages.

‘How long have I been asleep?’ he asked the private.

‘About eight hours sir,’ the man responded. ‘We’re almost ready to move out.’

‘I hope you weren’t waiting around on my account,’ Haines replied.

‘No sir. There was some enemy air activity during the night. Captain Dawson thought it prudent to wait until the coast was clear.’

‘Tell him I’ll be out as soon as I’ve finished this.’

‘Yes sir.’

The private left Haines to finish his meal.

Feeling somewhat refreshed, Haines stepped out of the tent into the dimly lit campsite, now largely packed away into the backpacks of the men and women awaiting his leadership, and onto two heavily laden AG pallets that had been salvaged from one of the downed dropships. Captain Dawson stood in the middle of the group, looking similarly recovered from his ordeal. He saw Haines and saluted.

‘How do you feel, sir?’ he said.

‘Much better, Captain. I never thought those ration packs could taste so good. How about you?’

‘I’m okay, sir.’

Haines took one look at the man’s expression and could tell immediately that he really wasn’t.

‘I take it none of the squad showed up?’

Dawson nodded sadly.

‘You did the best you could, so you didn’t fail your men,’ said Haines, keeping his voice low. ‘We were cornered by a much superior opponent. You’re still alive, and you got me this far. You did nothing wrong.’

‘Morale broke down, everyone ran.’

‘Your commanding officer included,’ Haines replied. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. Sometimes these things happen in war. There’ll be a time for payback, but you’ve gotta keep it together until then. Okay?

‘Yes sir. Thank you sir.’

‘How’s the leg?’

‘A little stiff, but I’m okay. We have a medic with us, sir. I can have her look you over.’

‘Just cuts and bruises son, save for this broken nose, and that doesn’t stop me from walking. I’d rather just get moving.’

‘They sent out a couple of scouts from the camp just before we arrived. There’s a good site about twenty clicks north east of here. It’ll put us within striking distance of a small commercial freight terminal. Our scouts spotted a couple of small freighters parked on the landing pads there. We can try and seize one and pilot it out of the system. You said you wanted to get off this rock, sir. We may have a chance to do so.’

‘Sounds like a plan to me, Captain,’ said Haines turned to address the others. ‘Okay people, we’ve been presented with an opportunity. I intend to take it. I want you to know how grateful I am to have such dedicated men and women under my command. You survived, you kept up the fight against the enemy and you succeeded in pulling my ass out of the fire and bringing me here. Your hard work and your tenacity is to be commended and you may have given us a chance to get off this moon and back to our friends. Let’s move out!’

They moved off in column. Haines, Dawson and the supplies at the centre, scouts probing ahead and guarding the flanks and a couple of men trailing to watch for anyone, or anything, following them. All of them maintained radio silence in case of detection by the enemy. In the deep forest, the sea green light filtering through the many layers of foliage above illuminated the vaulted spaces through which they moved in near silence. The vast trunks of the trees, tens of metres in diameter, marched off into the dimly lit distance on all sides like the columns of an enormous cathedral. There was very little undergrowth down here, save for large patches of fungus-like growths that fed on the dead plant and animal matter that sifted down from the upper levels of the forest, and there were few animals to be seen either except for the large insects that scurried amongst the fungus beds and the occasional large eyed, sharp toothed, timid creatures that fed upon them and fled at the first sign of the humans’ approach. An all pervading mist rose from the damp leaf mould, hampering visibility and lending the entire scene an even more unearthly air and filling their nostrils with the rich scent of decomposition. Shafts of sunlight occasionally managed to pierce the gloom, their golden rays stabbing downwards through the mist whilst the figures of the men far out on the flanks could be glimpsed through the mist, appearing insubstantial and ghostlike.

The marines talked little. It was partly out of caution, but mainly because the oppressive atmosphere down here hushed everyone into silence. Even when they spoke, they kept their voices low, lest they disturb the deathly quiet of the forest.

Haines had exchanged a few words with the other officers present, a Lieutenant by the name of Bagley and her counterpart from the other dropship called Cortez. They had filled him in on their experiences since they had landed on the moon: The constant need for vigilance, night-time guerrilla warfare against the patrols that had been sent to track them down and the need to remain constantly on the move, changing their position for fear of discovery. He had related the story of his journey from the escape pod, how he had been found by Captain Dawson and his men and how they had been pursued and eventually cornered, he and Dawson barely escaping with their lives, the fate of the others as yet unknown. That had been hours ago. Now everyone trudged along in near silence.

Eventually, they began to pass ruins, half concealed beneath the leaf mould and fungal growths on the forest floor. They were barely visible at first, just geometric shapes on the ground, but soon low, broken walls could be seen amongst the trees, their ancient surfaces heavily eroded by untold aeons and slick with moisture and slime. The ruins grew more frequent until soon it became clear that they were walking down the ancient remains of a broad boulevard. They had stumbled into the ruins of a long dead city, concealed for who knows how long beneath the towering trees.

As the walls grew progressively higher, the marines began to grow nervous. The ruins provided places for potential ambushers to lurk. Gripping their weapons tightly and using what instruments they had available they pressed onwards, watching and listening for signs of the enemy. They heard nothing except for the constant dripping of water from the upper branches and saw nothing moving amidst the silent trees and ancient ruins.

Dawson tapped Haines on the shoulder and pointed at a nearby wall. There were carvings on its surface depicting ape-like forms in armour. They were depicted hanging from their muscular arms, weapons gripped between prehensile toes. Part of the wall was coated with accumulated debris and fungus. Dawson stepped over and brushed some away to reveal the rest of the relief work. The figure of an Arkari was clearly visible carved into the stone, its weapon raised against the ape creatures. Dawson ran a hand over the weathered design, the brittle stone crumbling slightly at his touch.

‘So, the Dryads built this place,’ said Haines, inspecting the carvings.

‘The Dryads?’ said Dawson, incredulously. ‘But they’re just animals, aren’t they?’

‘Either them or another species related to them, judging by these carvings. Something catastrophic must have happened to them in the distant past. My guess is that the Arkari happened to them,’ said Haines and pointed at the carved figure.

‘The Arkari? But the Arkari would never…’

‘Not now they wouldn’t, but they haven’t always been so benign. There’s a lot you don’t know… hell, there’s a lot most of the Arkari didn’t know about their own past until quite recently. It’s how this whole mess that we’re in got started. Do you know much about history, Captain?’

‘A little, sir.’

‘Sometimes I think we humans are like medieval peasants wandering amidst the ruins of Rome, gawking open mouthed at the remains and wondering who could have built such places. There are countless ages of galactic history, filled with civilisations that came and went in an eye-blink. The Dryads built this city, hell they may have terraformed this moon, but they too disappeared from history. We may be one such race, Captain. Perhaps we need to face that.’

‘You said the Arkari had a hidden past.’

‘I’ll tell you about it some other time. We need to keep moving.’

They moved onwards through the ruins, beneath the silent, dripping trees. The mist was getting thicker now. The ruins loomed out of the thick enveloping fog, the overgrown lumps of stone and concrete taking on the ghostly shapes of weird, impossible creatures lurking on the forest floor. The men were tense. No-one spoke. Marines fingered their weapons nervously.

Just for a second Haines spotted the man out on the left flank through a gap in the mists, a shadowy figure beneath the trees. Something wasn’t right. Something about the way that the man moved set alarm bells ringing in Haines’s head. The man walked like an automaton, rather than the natural, fluid movements of a soldier on patrol. At the back of his mind Haines heard the whispers again. It was the same voice he had heard in the tunnels, as if someone were uttering words just out of range of his hearing. He reached for his gun.

‘Do you know something Admiral?’ said Dawson, in a matter of fact tone of voice. ‘I’ve been walking on this broken ankle since yesterday. Now, how do you think that that’s possible?’

Haines turned and looked at Dawson. The man’s expression had changed. Someone else, something other than the Marine captain was looking back at him through Dawson’s eyes, something pitiless and predatory.

‘Jesus…’ breathed Haines as monsters exploded out of the forest around them.

Chapter 16

Chen watched the flotilla of ships as they departed the system from the ward room of the Trafalgar and felt a twinge of regret that she was not going with them. The massive carriers moved in formation with their escorts as they powered away from Earth, the engines of the warships forming a bright constellation against the backdrop of stars. The first of the carrier battle groups were being deployed to Beta Hydri system to hold the line against any further enemy incursions. Half of the Nahabe ships belonging to the Order of Void Hunters had already left for these systems to provide support against Shaper vessels. The other half - including the gunsphere of their commander, the Lord Protector, had remained in the Solar System for the time being.

The past few days had been quite eventful. First she had been required to attend the memorial services for the victims of the attacks on Galileo Station and Amazonia Port. The President’s own personal liner, a heavily customised Stork class vessel, had proceeded first to Jovian space and then back to Earth, flanked by an honour guard of ships that had survived the battle. Chen had been aboard the liner as an honoured guest. In full dress uniform amid an audience of dignitaries both civilian and military, she had watched the memorial services at both sites. The President’s speeches had been moving, heartfelt and defiant, but Chen felt sick to her stomach. The deaths of so many innocents had been on her watch. She had tried to tell herself that she had done the best that she could with the ships that she had had available, but it didn’t take away the awful hollow feeling inside her.

A couple of days later she had again been invited to Naval Headquarters where the President had publicly awarded her the Medal of Valour, the Commonwealth’s highest military honour. Chen had accepted the medal, and had her hand shaken warmly by the President in front of a legion of press eager to see the heroic defender of Earth. She had smiled and answered their barrage of questions as best she could, replying that it was a great honour, how she was proud to do her duty and she paid tribute to her crew and those of the other vessels who had fought alongside her, and to those who hadn’t made it. Her face was all over the news. Apparently she’d become something of an icon.

But deep down, she felt that she didn’t deserve it. She had failed those people trapped inside Amazonia Port when the Shapers had struck. All the medals in the world wouldn’t help those who had died amidst the storm of enemy fire or in the cold vacuum of space and it was the Nahabe, not her, who had finally driven the enemy away. The bright blue ribbon of the Medal of Valour with its stylised Earth symbol stitched at the centre adorned the left breast of her uniform along with the others that she had acquired over the years. It was everything that she had ever hoped for when she had joined the Navy all those years ago and now she had won the ultimate prize, her achievement felt like a hollow one.

Admiral Cartwright entered the room behind her and followed her gaze out through the thick, armoured windows to the ships now disappearing one by one into hyperspace.

‘Wish you were going with them?’ he said.

‘Yes sir,’ Chen replied, turning to face her superior and saluting.

‘You’ll get your chance soon enough, Admiral Chen. How are the repairs to the Churchill coming along?’

‘The structural damage has been repaired. The repair crews are in the process of fitting new outer hull sections and we’re waiting on the replacement turrets. My Chief Engineer estimates another three days if the turrets arrive on schedule.’

‘Excellent. Well, you’ll be back in the fight soon enough in that case.’

‘Yes sir. Sir, I’ve seen the lists of replacement crew assigned to my ship to replace the casualties we sustained. I don’t see a new XO amongst them.’

‘Yes. I did have a list of possible candidates for you to choose from, however I think I’ve found just the man for you.’

‘Sir, with respect. I’m tired of having executive officers who have been sent to report on me to others higher up in the chain of command.’

Cartwright looked a little taken aback. ‘I think you misunderstand me. You of course reserve the right to choose your own XO. I was merely recommending this man to you as a favour to you, and to him. Here, I have his records to hand as it happens.’

Cartwright handed her his datapad. Chen cast her eye over the file he had pulled up for her. Commander Robert McManus. The accompanying photo showed a bearded, middle aged man with a scar above his left eye and greying, receding hair. She looked down his file, at the list of various citations and commendations, and then one final entry.

‘He’s suspended?’ said Chen, in disbelief.

‘Yes, well… Captain McManus was suspended and demoted for drunkenly assaulting a superior officer, Admiral Deuchamp.’

‘I see.’

‘However, Commander McManus is a man of unique talents, immense bravery and has a history of devoted service to the Navy. He also saved my life on at least one occasion during the K’Soth war. Of course, we can’t tolerate such a breach of discipline, hence his punishment, but I do believe that everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you, Admiral Chen? You of all people should understand that much.’ Cartwright looked at her intently as he uttered those last sentences.

‘Yes sir, I do.’

‘Glad to hear it. You have led a charmed life Admiral, but it seems that Haines was lenient in his treatment of you for good reason.’

‘Sir I was absolved of any…’

Cartwright silenced her with a dismissive wave.

‘It doesn’t matter, not now. You’ve won. Now it’s time for you to show the same magnanimity. Commander McManus is an experienced officer. During the war with the K’Soth he ran a number of deep strike missions against the enemy, attacking convoys and undefended facilities, pulling recon and black ops teams out from under the enemy’s nose, that sort of thing. He’s tough and used to unconventional warfare and he always ran a tight ship when he was captain. He deserves a chance to redeem himself. I think you two will get along like a house on fire, and right now we need all the capable commanders that we can get.’

‘He sounds like the kind of XO that I’m after.’

‘My thoughts exactly. I do hope you give Commander McManus due consideration. He’s been fully vetted. We don’t want a repeat of what happened with Commander Haldane, do we? As soon as your ship is back in one piece and you have a full crew, you’ll be ready to go.’

‘Yes sir. Go where, sir?’

Cartwright cleared his throat. ‘We need you for a rather special mission.’

‘Sir?’

‘Your time as part of Haines’s private black ops force has given you experience of operating deep in enemy territory with little backup and has made you rather more independent and creative than other commanders. As you’re aware, we’ve been attempting to modify our Thea class frigates to accommodate the technical modifications recommended by the Nahabe in order that we might attempt to detect the Shaper vessels before they emerge from hyperspace. Those modifications have been completed on two vessels and we require a field test of both vessels before we proceed with modifying further ships as well as the deep range monitoring arrays scattered throughout the Commonwealth. Once the repairs to the Churchill are complete, you are to accompany the Nahabe command ship Shadow in the Void to the Delta Pavonis system where you will rendezvous with the two modified ships. You will then receive further orders as to your final destination.’

‘Yes sir. Thank you sir.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. We’re are talking about the use of unproven technology against an enemy that has, so far, proven itself to be far superior to our own ships. Recon flights are yet to determine a suitable candidate system. Suffice to say that your mission will be to proceed to said system and test the modified sensor arrays in conjunction with the Churchill’s own systems. We want to see how our modifications perform. Engineering teams will be aboard both vessels to make adjustments on the fly if need be. The Nahabe vessel will act as back-up in case you need to make a quick getaway and the Churchill’s own spatial distortion cannon ought to be able to deal with Shaper vessels if necessary as a last resort. Sadly, manufacturing our own weapons of that type will take a little longer. Furthermore, I’m conserving ships for the time being until we can recall more from the territories liberated from the K’Soth and I’m unwilling to risk any more vessels against the Shapers if they can’t defend themselves. Four ships, Admiral Chen, that’s all you get.’

‘I’ll attempt to make the best of it, sir.’

‘I should hope that you will. There is one other thing you might be able to help me with…’

‘Sir?’

‘You are of course aware that Admiral Haines is apparently still alive. Though the message we received appears genuine we have kept its existence secret due to the fact that we are unable to wholly trust our own people. We do not wish this information to fall into enemy hands, lest they become aware of his survival and attempt to capture him. I’m sure you can appreciate the implications were the knowledge held within Admiral Haines’s mind be made available to our foe, not to mention his tactical acumen and years of experience.’

‘To be honest sir, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I am very glad to hear that he’s alive though. When I heard that final message from the Lincoln…’

‘Yes well. No-one is immortal, not even Admiral Haines, despite his best efforts to convince everyone otherwise. However, he has apparently somehow managed to survive. We need to locate him within the Achernar system and get him out of there. We owe him that much. All we know is that he sent the message from the moon of Orinoco. Whether he’s still there and still at large is anyone’s guess. The trouble is, that the CIB can’t even trust its own agents for the time being. I had hoped, since you spent much of the past two years as part of Special Operations Command, that you might be able to point us in the direction of individuals who might be suitable for a mission to locate and extract the Admiral. It is my understanding that screening for Shaper agents was undertaken regularly in SOC.’

‘We didn’t spot Haldane. Who knows how many more misguided fools like him are within our ranks?’

‘Then it has to be people you trust implicitly, people that you know intimately if need be. We need individuals who can get into Achernar unnoticed, move around the system unnoticed, gather information on the whereabouts of the Admiral and if possible, get him out of the system and back to friendly space.’

‘I think I may know just the people that you’re looking for,’ said Chen. ‘I’ll have their full records provided to you. As part of SOC I have clearance to some things that you do not, even though you outrank me, sir’

‘Of course you do, I was counting on that. Excellent. There is of course one thing, Admiral Chen.’

‘Sir?’

‘If they cannot prevent Haines from falling into enemy hands or they discover that he has become host to a Shaper parasite, the individuals that you select for this mission should be prepared to terminate him without hesitation.’

McManus had been confined to quarters aboard Batavia Port. Chen returned to the vast orbital dock from the Trafalgar and, following directions from Cartwright, eventually located McManus’s quarters amid the labyrinthine corridors. A bored looking marine corporal was stationed outside. He saluted smartly as Chen approached.

‘I’m here to see Commander McManus. Orders from Admiral Cartwright for his release if he agrees to my offer,’ said Chen and showed the corporal a printed copy of Cartwright’s orders. The man scanned down them briefly then returned them to her and unlocked the door.

‘Yes ma’am. You can go inside,’ he replied and stood aside to allow Chen past.

She found McManus reclined on his narrow bunk, peering through small square glasses at an age-worn book. He looked up as she entered, noticed her rank, then hurriedly stood up and saluted her.

‘Admiral Chen. An unexpected pleasure.’ A native of Earth, McManus had a thick, Scots accent. A grin split his broad, neatly bearded face. ‘You’re something of a celebrity, I hear. To what do I owe the honour?’

‘I have a proposition for you, Commander. My old XO turned out to be a traitorous son of a bitch who tried to shoot me on my own bridge. I need someone dependable, someone who’s not afraid of a fight, but someone who’s used to out-thinking their opponents. Are you that man?’

‘Well, I am a son of a bitch, but you’ll be pleased to hear that I’m no traitor,’ McManus replied. ‘Also, I’d love to stick it to that bastard Morgan. I never had much time for the stuck up arsehole anyway, but now I hear he’s in league with an alien race out to enslave us all, well it’d be my pleasure ma’am. Only one problem see? I’m stuck on here till they bring me up on charges.’

‘You want to tell me about that?’

‘Aye, why not? I spent a couple of years away from home, running the sort of missions that you don’t get to talk about: dangerous stuff, behind enemy lines for weeks at a time. The Actium is a good ship, a good crew. We went to hell and back and most of us made it out alive. I was damn proud of that. Then the war was over and we went home and guess what?’

‘Go on.’

‘I found that slimy shite Admiral Deuchamp had been fucking my wife for the past two years. Whilst I’d be out on the sharp end risking my neck every day he’d been having it away with my missus. That fucking desk bound arsehole has never been near a battle - they moved him into a desk job years ago. Oh he’s very charming, very sophisticated. He decided to tell me man-to-man so it was all out in the open and above board. He said it was the honourable thing to do because we were both officers and gentlemen.’

‘I can’t imagine that went well.’

‘Not really. I pointed out that gentlemen don’t go shagging other gentlemen’s wives whilst their husbands are away fighting a war. He said the old line about “all’s fair in love and war,” so then I stuck ma heid on the bastard. It wouldna have been so bad, except he fell off my front steps and broke his arm as well. I’m pleading diminished responsibility.’

‘Has this sort of thing ever happened before?’

‘You’ve seen my record. No.’

‘Off the record?’

‘Absolutely not. I have never raised my hand to another crew member, my voice aye, when it’s needed, but not my fists.’

‘Or your “heid” as you put it.’

‘That neither.’

‘Mr McManus. Right now the Commonwealth needs all the able bodied personnel we can lay our hands on. I’ve seen the list of commendations on your record and I’ve some idea of the sort of work you’ve been involved in. We need you. Admiral Cartwright is prepared to make all of this go away. If you agree to be my XO the charges will be dropped, you’ll be returned to active service immediately and you’ll have a shot at getting your own command again in the future.’

‘Cartwright? Aye, he’s one of the good guys. Bit of a cold fish, kind of talks to you like he’s a school teacher and you haven’t done your homework, but he’s alright by me. Hard but fair. He owes me a few favours. Let’s see, I get my job back, and I get to kill some Shapers too. I’ve been itching to get back in the action. Sounds good to me. You’re on.’

‘Excellent. Glad to have you as part of my crew. We’ll have you out of here within the hour.’

Chen’s eye strayed to the book that McManus had left on the bunk. She couldn’t make out the title from here, but the faded dust jacket showed a vessel from the great age of sail, its cannons blazing away at an unseen enemy.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked.

‘That? Oh, it’s a biography of Thomas Cochrane. He was a Napoleonic era captain in the Royal Navy. The man was either a military genius or a total crazy bastard, no-one was really sure. A man after my own heart. I’ll lend it to you after I’ve finished it if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Chen. ‘He sounds like a man after mine too.’

Chapter 17

‘I’ve got a proposition for you both,’ said Chen, standing inside the cargo bay of the Profit Margin as Isaacs and Anna downed tools and broke off from their work repairing the loading conveyer.

‘You have?’ said Isaacs. ‘More work?’

‘Yes, I have a job for you. That is, if you’ll take it.’

‘Is it dangerous? I mean compared to what we’re used to. Danger has become a somewhat relative concept of late. Personally, I’m just relieved if a day goes by without someone trying to kill us.’

‘It is dangerous, yes. I realise I can’t compel you to follow orders. But we really need you this time, and you’ll be well compensated. You’ll be looking at five million each.’

Isaacs let out a low whistle.

‘You know, I do find numbers with lots of zeroes on the end to be a major motivating factor in my work.’

‘Come on,’ said Anna. ‘What was all that you said the other night about “being a part of something,” or were you just trying to sound all heroic?’

‘Well…’

‘Admiral Haines may still be alive,’ said Chen. ‘We received a message from an emergency beacon. The transmission came from the surface of Orinoco in the Achernar system. We need to find out where he is and see about a rescue.’

‘Wait a second,’ said Isaacs. ‘That’s a little out of our league. Shouldn’t the CIB or Spec Ops be handling this? We wouldn’t even know where to start.’

‘CIB may have traitors in their own ranks. Special Ops need to know where he is before we can launch a rescue op. We need you. You won’t have to do anything except get one of our SOC operatives onto the surface of Orinoco and then support him with whatever he needs once you get there.’

‘Okay, but won’t the enemy be on the lookout for ships entering the system?’

‘Our recon flights have indicated that traffic in the renegade systems appears to be returning to normal, although ships coming directly from systems still loyal to the Commonwealth are being stopped and boarded before they can dock. We have arranged for you to meet our man in an unclaimed system near Vreeth space, far out to the east. I’m sure with your skills you can disguise where you’ve been, and you have your ship’s new found stealth capabilities to assist you. We’ll see to changing your ship ID again as well as making changes to registration databases. It won’t be as easily traceable as a fake this time.’

‘Well yeah, I have managed to acquire the knack of keeping a low profile, I suppose,’ said Isaacs.

‘You managed to escape Achernar and arrive here without being followed.’

‘True. Listen, Admiral. The truth is: we’re anxious to find out what’s happened to our comrades in Achernar. We’d planned on heading back there anyway. I don’t suppose you could render them some sort of assistance? They’re sitting ducks. Ours was the only ship that survived the Shaper attack undamaged. It’s possible that they may have managed to repair the surviving Nahabe ship and escape, but we’re worried. I’m sure you can understand.’

Chen looked thoughtful. ‘Why don’t I sweeten the deal a little further? We’ll be issuing you with a secure comms unit. I take it that this ship of yours has hidden compartments that you use for smuggling?’

Isaacs looked a little sheepish. ‘Kind of, yeah. Some of the internal wall panels can be removed. I used to stash stuff behind ‘em. It won’t stand up to a detailed scan though.’

‘Fine, we can have some of those spaces lined and make them opaque to cursory scans. As well as giving you the secure comm. unit, we can then fill those spaces with weapons and ammo for your friends. What do you say?’

‘Okay, what the hell. Deal,’ said Isaacs. ‘Anna, are you in?’

‘Hell yeah,’ Anna replied. ‘I mean, who wants to live forever anyway?’ she said dryly. ‘So, how do we find this guy?’

‘I’ll provide you with the system details. You get yourselves there without being followed and he’ll find you. You get picked up by the enemy, and we’ll have to think of something else. Just act natural. Pretend that you’re doing what you used to do before you got mixed up in all this. Our operative will have your details. Obviously we can’t divulge his in case you’re captured en route.’

‘Just like that, huh?’ said Isaacs.

‘Just like that.’

‘You trust this guy?’

‘As much as I trust anyone these days, yes. He’s one of SOC’s best. He’s very good at what he does and we go back a long way,’ said Chen.

‘Has he fought the Shapers before?’ Anna enquired.

‘Yes he has. As long as I have, in fact.’

‘Okay, good,’ said Isaacs. ‘So, when do we leave?’

‘As soon as humanly possible.’

Chapter 18

Morgan poured whisky from the bottle into the tumbler on his desk. His hands shook involuntarily and he spilled some. The glass half full, he lifted it to his lips and took a mouthful. The alcohol would steady his nerves. He had to numb himself to the fear clawing at him, clutching at his guts. He was too scared now to contemplate leaving the residence. Most of the time he was too terrified even to leave the suite of rooms that had belonged to the Governor and which he had taken over. He heard noises in the night. Terrible noises coming from the basement. He saw them taking people down there. The ones that came out were no longer human, he knew that. The ones that didn’t… he saw covered trucks leaving under cover of darkness, and smelt the butcher’s stink that rose from them: offal and burnt meat.

He wanted to make a run for it. He fantasised about making it to the spaceport and boarding a ship and escaping back to the Commonwealth to face whatever charges they could dream up to pin on him. Anything was better than this. But he knew that he’d never make it out of the grounds of the residence and what his new masters would do to him then didn’t bear thinking about. He knew that he would be the one doing the screaming in the basement, before they put one of those things into his head, and he ceased to be himself anymore, just a husk for some alien thing to walk around in. He felt the warmth from the whisky spreading outwards from his stomach as he took another gulp, easing the pain and terror he felt inside.

After the Shaper had invaded his skull and read his thoughts, he had woken up hours later, sprawled on the carpeted floor of his office in clothes sodden and stinking with his own effluvia. The thought of that swarm of things inside his head still made him shudder with revulsion. The last thing he had experienced before he passed out was their millions of tiny limbs scrabbling inside every orifice in his head, in the interstices of his brain. He had told them the truth, something that their invasion of his skull had verified. If he had been lying, he knew that he would be dead by now.

Since then, he increasingly lived in a bizarre, parallel world. Outside, life on Orinoco appeared to return to normal. Businesses re-opened, trade resumed with the other systems in his new Freedom Alliance and people began to go about their daily lives once more. Many, it seemed, supported the new regime. There was a great deal of criticism of the old, corrupt Commonwealth, whose Earth based government cared little for anything outside the richer, core systems. It was time, said many, for dynamic and inspiring leadership in the newer, more distant colonies.

Morgan knew why they said this. The local media outlets were being controlled by his new masters, their directors replaced by agents. Dissent was being crushed. Those who spoke out were disappeared or replaced until the majority of the people began to fall in line with the message of their new government, a government that was itself a sham. They were all puppets, nothing more. Morgan knew this too. Some, having been made hosts, were literally so. Others like himself, were controlled through fear alone. He made speeches, read the words that they wrote for him and said what they told him to say, smiled for the cameras and publicly shook hands with men he knew were no longer to be considered human.

It was Cox who terrified him the most. The man who had been Cox, he corrected himself. He was almost fully healed now, and would soon be able to appear in public if he wore bandages over the wounds. Only Cox’s right eye and hand remained to be repaired, and those could be explained away as injuries sustained during the alleged defence of the system when he had bravely attempted to stop Admiral Haines attacking Orinoco Station, or so the lie went. However, if anyone were to look too closely they would see the horrid tendrils moving back and forth inside the socket as they rebuilt the tissues. Sometimes the bandage over his eye moved.

The creature inside Cox was cold blooded and sadistic in the extreme. It loved to torment him daily with reports of what punishments had been meted out to the citizens of the Freedom Alliance who failed to comply with the new regime, lingering on the minutiae of their torture, dangling in front of him the possibility that this would be his fate too if he stepped out of line, knowing that the face of an old friend now subverted by an alien organism made the experience even more horrifying.

Morgan thought of suicide. He fantasised that if they came for him he would have time to shoot himself, or throw himself from a window. Deep down, he knew that he would never get that chance. They would come for him in the night, like the others, and he would know nothing beforehand. He’d do it now. He ought to do it now. But he knew that he was too much of a coward to do it, and in any case, they had taken all weapons from him in case he tried anything like that. All he had left was the solace of the bottle and he drank himself into a stupor each night, falling into a nightmare filled sleep and often waking up sprawled in the rumpled uniform he had been wearing the day before.

He could hear footsteps approaching in the corridor outside. He knew the sound of the heavy tread. It was Cox. He felt his bowels loosening as the man who was no longer human approached and flung open the door without knocking and strode into the room, stopping in front of Morgan with a satisfied look on his ruined face. The right eye socket was un-bandaged. Morgan tried to avoid looking at it. He knew that if he did he would see the horrid white things moving inside. He suspected that Cox did it just to unnerve him.

‘We have Haines,’ said Cox simply.

‘Haines?’ Morgan replied. ‘But I thought he was dead. The Lincoln was destroyed, wasn’t it?’

‘Not entirely. She fell to earth about two thousand kilometres south of here, but she hit the ground with enough force to kill anyone on board. However, Haines survived. He failed to go down with his ship. We found a number of escape pods and landing craft in the deep jungle from the Lincoln and the other ships that we destroyed. No doubt, we will find more. Haines was captured by our forces less than an hour ago. He was with a band of other survivors from his fleet. Our forces killed the others and captured the Admiral. They’re bringing him here.’

‘What do you intend to do with him? Or is that a stupid question?’

‘Haines’s mind will provide us with a wealth of knowledge. He will be implanted with one of our agents as soon as possible.’

‘Are you sure that that’s necessary? Can’t we just interrogate him the old fashioned way? Can’t you just read his mind like you did mine?’

‘We deployed considerable resources in capturing him. We intend to implant him and then convince the people that he has seen the error of his ways and joined us.’

‘No, please. You can’t do this!’

‘And why not?’ sneered Cox. ‘This is pure human sentimentality at work, a deplorable weakness that holds your species back from greatness. You feel sorry for this man you once called a friend. You actually want to save him, don’t you?’

‘Alright, yes. Yes I do! I can’t bear the thought of him being destroyed like this. The man deserves a dignified death at least! Why does Haines matter so much to you? He has no fleet to command now, and even if he did, the remainder of your warships are more than a match for them.’

‘When it became clear that Haines had survived, we became concerned that he might try to organise some kind of guerrilla war in the system. When we found him in the company of around thirty fully armed marines our suspicions were confirmed. He’s a very capable man, a born fighter. We knew that he would never give up. We have almost come to admire him.’

‘Why would a rebellion bother you so much? The Commonwealth hurt you more than you’re willing to admit, didn’t they?’

Cox started pacing the room, his face like thunder. It was a surprisingly human reaction for someone who was no longer technically human.

‘Not the Commonwealth!’ he spat. ‘The Nahabe! Those sanctimonious… we had not anticipated…’

‘What?’

‘The Nahabe have gone to war! After millennia of navel gazing, they have finally crept out of their corner of space. Our supply lines have been attacked and we are forced to redirect our assets to deal with them. This, the disaster in Arkari space and the reversal in the Solar System…’

‘They’ve disrupted your plans, haven’t they?’ said Morgan, finally gaining some confidence from the alcohol and the sight of Cox enraged at something that had beaten him. So, the Nahabe had sprung a surprise on the Shapers. That was something, at least. Morgan had heard stories that the enigmatic aliens had fought the Shapers before, and survived.

‘It is a temporary setback!’ snarled Cox, pointing the stump of his severed hand at Morgan. Part of the hand seemed to have grown back along with Cox’s thumb. The stump was swathed in bandages which pulsed with movement. ‘We are putting measures in place to ensure our victory! Currently, we do not have sufficient craft in this area of this spiral arm to continue our campaign at the present, but that will change, we will have reinforcements from the core soon enough. A torrent of ships and troops will be unleashed upon the Commonwealth and all resistance will be crushed! The pathetically primitive ships of the Commonwealth Navy will be pulverised!’

‘But until then, your forces are stretched too thinly to properly defend what you’ve taken so far… you can’t be everywhere at once so you’re consolidating your hold in a few systems. You can’t enslave the populations as the Commonwealth would use antimatter warheads to wipe them out and you with them and I bet that there’s a limit to how many people you can control at once. There is always the possibility that the Commonwealth could get those stealthed ships past your widely scattered forces to launch a strike. Keeping the majority of the population compliant but still free actually works in your favour until you can bring overwhelming force to bear. You can hide behind civilian populations.’

‘Very perceptive. The Commonwealth would never countenance wiping out a planet full of its own citizens. Their lack of resolve is our advantage.’

‘In that case, Haines can be turned to a greater advantage! If we break him, let everyone see what has become of the great hero of the Commonwealth. Let them see that even he can’t stand against us, against you! If he suddenly seems to support us, no-one will buy it, trust me. He’d rather die, you know that and so does everyone else. Let them see the great man laid low. Better still, why don’t we put him on trial for his crimes, for the civilian deaths that you’ve attributed to him in this system? Why don’t you make him a war criminal, someone for the people to hate?’

Cox looked distracted for brief moment. Morgan had learnt to recognise this as a sign that the organism within him was communicating at length with the others of its kind. He imagined some sort of high speed debate going on amongst the awful things.

‘Your idea has some merit, Admiral Morgan,’ said Cox. ‘It has been decided for the moment that we will proceed with your idea, sentimentality notwithstanding. Haines will be taken to a secure facility. He will be broken, and whether or not he confesses to anything, he will stand trial for his crimes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Why should you thank me? This is only a brief reprieve. Haines will be found guilty and then he will be executed. You should concern yourself with your own prospects. This scheme of yours has impressed us. Perhaps you are not so useless after all. You are safe, for the moment at least.’

There was the sound of engines outside. A transport was arriving, its headlights casting sweeping beams across the courtyard outside.

‘I have to leave you now. Another batch of prisoners has arrived for processing and I do take pleasure in my work. Care to join me?’ Cox grinned evilly. Morgan shuddered and shook his head wordlessly.

‘I thought not,’ said Cox, with a note of mock disappointment in his voice. With that, he turned and strode from the room, leaving Morgan alone with his booze and the screams coming from the basement as the creature once known as Admiral Cox got to work on his latest batch of prisoners.

Chapter 19

Rekkid sat cross legged in the middle of the floor in front of the huge wall carving, his computer balanced carefully on his knees. There was more light in the chamber now. Arrakid had sent word to the surface and more equipment had been brought down the ramp including a number of lighting rigs to illuminate the huge, vaulted space and communications relays to provide a link to the surface and to the ship. The previously silent chamber now echoed to sounds of overlapping Arkari voices and the clatter of gear being unloaded and set up.

Katherine and Steelscale returned from one of the side passages, Katherine wiping dust and dirt from her hands as she entered.

‘Find anything?’ said Rekkid, looking up from his work.

‘It’s a labyrinth through there,’ Katherine replied. ‘The passages and chambers seem to go on forever. We had a brief look around, but to be honest, we were afraid of getting lost.’

‘We did however see a number of ramps and stairwells leading down to further levels below this one,’ said Steelscale. ‘This underground complex is truly enormous. It could take us days to explore it.’

‘How are you getting on with the translation?’ said Katherine, pointing at Rekkid’s computer.

‘Oh, quite well. I’ve fully translated the inscription on the wall. It’s given me a fair chunk, possibly all, of their alphabet, and a lot more words to be going on with. It’s a start, at least. I’m hoping that we can find more dual language inscriptions like this one to help us fill in the gaps, of which there are a great many.’

‘So what does it say?’ said Katherine.

Rekkid cleared his throat. ‘Well, this is all very interesting actually. It says “We, the Soldiers of the Sacred Way, dedicated this place to the glory of the Ones Beyond the Gate, the Gods Made Flesh, the Ones Who Came Before. They who moulded our souls, they who bestrode the stars and shaped the very worlds of heaven, they who departed our mortal plane. Ever we pray for their return. Ever we search for their path to paradise. Our quest is holy. Our war against the unbelievers is blessed and just. We, the Soldiers of the Sacred Way, are the salvation of our race. We have been to the Home of the Gods. We have witnessed their greatness in ages past. We have taken the gifts left to us and armoured ourselves with our faith. We shall not falter or fail. Death or salvation.” Well I think they achieved the former rather than the latter, don’t you?’

‘It’s talking about the Progenitors, isn’t it Rekkid?’ said Katherine.

‘Yes, I believe so,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Reading into this, it seems that they discovered evidence of the Progenitors’ existence and decided to worship them as gods. This also sounds like the language of holy war. It could explain what happened to the inhabited worlds in this system.’

‘Possibly, but there’s nothing that we’ve seen so far that indicates that this civilisation possessed the sort of technological level capable of shattering planets. This sentence here that talks about “the glory of the Ones Beyond the Gate”. Surely they can’t be talking about the Progenitor portal? Maranos is tens of thousands of light years from here.’

‘I agree that it seems unlikely. It could just be a turn of phrase that we’re unfamiliar with. It could refer to death, for example. Either that, or they found another portal that we don’t know about.’

‘There’s also this sentence: “We have been to the Home of the Gods,”’ said Steelscale. ‘That sounds like they discovered a Progenitor world or habitat… or something.’

‘Yes it does. I think we need to keep looking to get to the bottom of this. I think we’re getting closer to the reason why Eonara brought the Shining Glory to this system. There must be more clues within this place that can tell us more.’

‘Yes, I believe there are,’ said a smoothly modulated voice from behind the trio. In surprise, they turned quickly and saw the drone standing close by. It had approached in complete silence.

‘Forgive me,’ said the drone. ‘Where are my manners? It is I, the Shining Glory. I took the liberty of taking over this simple creature as soon as my faculties were restored. I thought that you could use my assistance down here.’

‘Yes, yes we could,’ said Rekkid hurriedly. ‘So you’re fully repaired?’

‘Not fully. My AI core has now been reconnected to the rest of the vessel’s systems after they were purged of Shaper viruses. However, the repairs to the drive systems have yet to be completed.’

‘Well that’s something at least. It’s good to have you back, ship.’

‘Believe me when I say that it’s a relief.’

‘So, now that you’re back, can you tell us why we were all brought here?’ said Katherine.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the ship. ‘Eonara granted me full access to her memories, but alas, there was no time to make a complete copy of the data to somewhere other than her AI core, nor to peruse all of it due to its sheer size before the battle with the Shapers at Black Rock. I’m afraid that until we can bring her back online I only have a partial copy, and it contains nothing on this system.’

‘Is there any chance of getting her back as well?’ said Katherine.

‘It’s too soon to tell how badly damaged she is. Her AI core is active, but there has been extensive damage to her interfaces and we cannot rule out the possibility that her mind may have been corrupted by Shaper viruses.’

‘How could this happen!?’ said Steelscale. ‘Surely she must have considerable defences against such attacks, as do you! How have you survived where she, perhaps, has not?’

‘Eonara had full control of the ship. Most of her resources were devoted to that task. It seems that during the explosion of the Shaper portal, she devoted all of her processing power to piloting the ship and manipulating the rogue wormhole that had been spun off by the catastrophic collapse of the device, perhaps she was unable to defend herself because of this.’

‘So she did mean to bring us here.’

‘As far as I can tell, yes. Judging from the sequence of instructions sent to the drives, her original intention was to use conventional methods to escape from the Maelstrom, but the ship became caught in a wormhole as it jumped and she decided to ride it out, and manipulate it to bring us here. Unfortunately she managed to almost burn out the jump drives in doing so and they failed soon afterwards, leaving us stranded in orbit. I’ve been analysing the telemetry data but I’m still uncertain how she managed such a feat. What is clear, however, is that the Shapers were bombarding the vessel with viral AI programs as soon as we crossed into the galactic core. It seems that one of them got through and compromised at least her outer defences as well as many of those of the systems of this ship. My automatic systems engaged and isolated me from the rest of the ship once my interfaces were compromised. Eonara was essentially jury rigged into the ship’s systems and had no such protection. Besides which, if she had been cut off from the ship’s systems, we would almost certainly have been annihilated. I am doing my utmost to assist the crew in restoring her to full functionality.’

‘There is something special about this system. Something we’re not fully seeing yet,’ said Steelscale.

‘Yes, I believe your assumption to be correct,’ replied the ship. ‘If it is any help, the crew have recovered further scraps of text from the remains we found in the asteroid belt. I’ll transfer them to you now, Professor Cor. You can add them to the dictionary that you are compiling.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rekkid. ‘Are we any closer to finding out what happened to that second planet?’

‘No, unfortunately. Any residual radiation has long since dispersed. There are signs that the rocks were subject to intense heat and pressure and there is far less debris than one would expect for a planet large enough to be habitable.’ To illustrate its point, the drone projected a map of the asteroid field along with estimates of the total mass compared to the mass of Earth and Keros.

‘Either a significant portion of the planet underwent a mass-energy conversion, or was simply removed say, by a singularity based weapon or catapulted out of the system. Both of which I would say are far out of the reach of the former inhabitants of this place. Either someone else came here, or the people of this system got their hands on a weapon that someone else had built.’

‘Like a Progenitor device?’ said Katherine.

‘Possibly,’ the ship replied. ‘It remains to be seen. In any case, destruction appears to have been rapid. We have found a few bodies intact, but also very large amounts of carbon residue, indicating that the surface of the planet, and all life on it, was immolated in a planet-wide firestorm. Remains of artificial structures, buildings and whatnot, still remain in places, but most have been shattered into small pieces or are unrecognisably melted and are only identifiable as artificial due to the purity of the metals. It would have been a massacre. I severely doubt whether anyone could have escaped.’

‘Then perhaps we owe it to these people to uncover what happened here,’ said Katherine. ‘It doesn’t seem right that billions of lives should be snuffed out and forgotten. We have to continue our exploration of this place. For their sake, and ours.’

‘Yes,’ said the ship. ‘Allow me to assist you.’

They were deep in the abandoned tunnels now, the ship’s drone mapping their progress as they went. Picking one of the exits from the large chamber, they had at first passed through a maze of abandoned spaces that appeared to have functioned as offices. They were filled with the crumbling remains of furniture and primitive looking computer equipment. Rekkid had seized on anything that looked like it had scraps of dual language text. Although books and papers had long since rotted and crumbled, there were devotional plaques and inscriptions on many of the walls, allowing him to gradually expand the lexicon of words that he had in his possession. Everywhere was thick with dust.

Beyond the offices they found one of the ramps that led down to the level below. This lower level of the complex resembled a barracks, with a grid of corridors leading to large dormitories filled with the collapsed remains of what looked like beds, as well as smaller, private cells. They found smaller intimate chapels down here too, each with decoration and inscriptions similar to those that they had found elsewhere, but which again allowed Rekkid to add words to his collection. There were also weapons lockers, concealed behind long rusted metal doors and filled with row upon row of odd looking firearms and crates of ammunition that had almost rotted away. They also came across larger chambers resembling gymnasiums and firing ranges, though it was difficult to guess at their true purpose. In any case, the sheer size of the place made it clear that at one time an entire army had sheltered down here. According to the range finding done by the ship’s drone, some of the longer main corridors extended for several kilometres.

It was whilst crossing one of these main thoroughfares, broad enough to drive a tank down, that they again saw the flickering, shadowy image of the being that they had seen before. He hovered about half a metre off the ground in the distance, his ghostly form glowing eerily in the darkness. He was beckoning to them again.

‘Our friend has returned,’ said Rekkid, as the spectral figure caught his eye and he suppressed a shudder. ‘I wonder what it wants?’

The figure mouthed silent words and waved for them to come closer.

‘I think it wants us to follow,’ said Katherine.

‘Are you sure that that’s a good idea?’ Rekkid replied. ‘Maybe it’s a trap.’

‘Maybe, but we do have the drone with us and Steelscale too.’

‘I can confirm that the apparition is nothing more than a projection,’ said the ship. ‘Some sort of micro-engineered device clinging to the walls is generating it. It’s no bigger than an insect and quite invisible from here to the naked eye in this light. It is very difficult to see even with the sensors of this drone. However, this appears to be another example of technology being used that is jarringly so much more advanced than that of the native civilisation.’

‘See? Not a ghost. I knew all along,’ said Rekkid and laughed nervously.

‘I am also detecting a power source in the levels beneath us,’ the drone added. ‘It may be safe to assume that this may be the source of the signals being beamed into space. We should press on. Perhaps this image is meant to guide us?’

Cautiously, they walked towards the projection, their footsteps echoing in the dark, forbidding passageway. As they approached it, the apparition vanished, and for a fleeting second a silver mote was caught in the light from their torches as it sped away from them. Seconds later, the figure reappeared further down the corridor and they dutifully walked towards it as it repeated its earlier actions of mouthing silent words and beckoning to them. Again, as they approached, the figure vanished and then reappeared further away at a junction of corridors. This sequence of events repeated itself over and over, the elusive apparition leading them further and further along the passageway for hundreds of metres until the barracks complex appeared to come to an end and the passageway doubled back on itself and angled steeply downwards into the earth. As they looked down the smooth slope, they saw the elusive figure once more at the bottom, glowing with a spectral light.

They were now deep underground. At the bottom of the tunnels, in the bowels of the earth, the figure floated ahead of them. There was a larger chamber at the end of the tunnel, an echoing, dark space that rang with their footsteps and swallowed their torch beams as they entered it. Then suddenly all of the lights came on. Stunned, the four beings looked about themselves and discovered that they were standing on the outer edge of a huge, circular chamber with a domed and intricately decorated ceiling. The floor of the chamber was filled with concentric rows of shelves and the shelves were packed with thousands of hermetically sealed, plastic crates. Each was carefully labelled and coded in the mysterious aliens’ language.

‘Looks like somebody’s still awake down here,’ said Rekkid.

‘The power’s still on, that’s obvious enough,’ said Katherine. ‘Either someone switched the lights on for us, or we tripped a sensor.’

‘What is this place?’ murmured Steelscale. ‘Some sort of storage facility perhaps? A weapons cache?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Rekkid. ‘Let’s take a look inside these boxes and find out, shall we?’ He walked to the nearest row of shelving and carefully pulled one of the boxes from it. Grunting from the weight, he set it down and set about opening it. Although the crate was securely sealed from the outside world, it was not locked. A series of clips around the edge held the lid in the place. Rekkid thumbed them open and then removed the lid, which came away with a hiss as atmosphere entered the vacuum within, and looked inside.

‘Well, this room isn’t a weapons cache,’ he said. ‘It’s something far more important than that!’

‘What then?’ said Katherine, peering to see what he had found.

‘It’s a library,’ said Rekkid, as Katherine now saw that the crate was filled with ancient, perfectly preserved books.

There were thousands upon thousands of books safely stored here, protected from the ravages of time and war. It was a treasure trove of knowledge, the entire culture of a people long gone preserved for thousands of years after their authors had been destroyed. But the archaeologists were only able to decipher disjointed fragments of the texts that they examined. Each crate of books that they opened contained volumes written in the dense, flowing alien script that they were only partially able to understand. They had yet to uncover any titles written in both the native language and Progenitor script. Nevertheless, it was clear from what they were able to comprehend that the library contained a wealth of information on the planet’s vanished people. There was history, science, art, literature, poetry and the biographies of great individuals now long forgotten, all of it unread for ten millennia.

Rekkid squatted on the floor, a book of art prints open in his slender hands, the yellowing paper depicting a number of stylised pastoral scenes filled with strange creatures and unfamiliar vegetation. They were depictions of a planet long since ravaged and rendered lifeless.

‘There’s so much to discover here,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s a pity that we can’t read most of it.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ replied Rekkid. ‘I think that the Progenitor language had religious importance for these people. They seem to have regarded the Progenitors as gods, hence their language seems to have held particular symbolic significance for them. Perhaps words written in that language had particular power for them, which is why we keep seeing the use of both languages in their places of worship.’

‘So what we need to do is to find religious texts amidst all this,’ Katherine replied, sweeping her hand around to take in the entire library.’

‘Yes, exactly. These shelves are all labelled. Let me see if I can spot anything that may sound appropriate.’

Rekkid got up and began to walk the aisles between the sections of shelving, scanning the faded labels affixed to them as he went, occasionally pausing to look up an unfamiliar word. The others watched him, and though the ship’s drone offered to help, Rekkid shooed it away. In the end they left him to it.

‘They must have anticipated the destruction of everything that they held dear,’ mused Steelscale. ‘Else, why build this place at all? It seems like madness to allow such a thing to happen. Clearly, they knew the risks. This place is evidence of that.’

‘I think you and I can both agree that people of all species are prone to such collective insanity,’ replied Katherine, as she watched Rekkid stalking up and down. ‘Humans, K’Soth, Arkari: there are moments in all our histories that seem insane even to ourselves. We’ve all almost destroyed ourselves several times over. Sometimes I think that it’s a miracle we’re still here at all.’

‘Political dogma, religious mania and general stupidity seem depressingly common throughout known space,’ said Steelscale and sighed. ‘I think my own people have been guilty of all three for quite some time. Perhaps one day someone will sift through the cremated remains of my home-world and wonder what happened to us, who we were and what we looked like. I don’t think that they’ll be too impressed when they find out, either. We brought nothing to the galaxy except violence and oppression.’

‘Then perhaps it’s up to K’Soth like yourself to change that?’ Katherine suggested. ‘Perhaps some good will come of the civil war in the Empire. There will be a power vacuum once the noble houses have finished fighting to destroy one another. Someone will need to fill it. Perhaps you can all make a break with the past?’

‘I wish I could be so optimistic, Katherine,’ said Steelscale. ‘From my knowledge of our history, our leaders usually climb over a pile of corpses to get to the top.’

Rekkid had stopped in an aisle at the far side of the library from where they were standing. They saw him remove a crate from its space on the shelves and then set it down on the floor before opening it and lifting out a heavy volume. Carefully, he opened it at a random page, gave a cry of excitement and then waved them over.

As they reached him, Rekkid held the book up for Katherine, Steelscale and the drone to see. It was a beautifully illuminated work. It had been printed rather than hand written, but each page dripped with delicate decoration. The borders of the pages were a riot of colour, still bright after a hundred centuries and pages of text alternated with colour plates depicting the scenes described. The text itself was in both the native language and that of the Progenitors.

‘Looks like you’ve hit the jackpot, Rekkid!’ said Katherine, excitedly. ‘This is wonderful!’

‘Yes it is! There’s a whole section of shelving here devoted to religious works. With these we can fully understand the language of these people. Finally, we can get to the bottom of what happened here! There are hundreds of historical works in this room, and we can read them all!’

‘It could take months, but…’

The ship cut Katherine off.

‘No,’ it said. ‘It will not. I will have more of these drones sent down to the surface. They will be able to scan these works for you, assemble a dictionary of words and thus translate the volumes in this library.

‘Well, that just takes all the fun out of it,’ said Rekkid, only half in jest.

‘They will take care of these ancient tomes, I promise you that,’ said the ship. ‘The work will take days, rather than months. We could do it in hours, but… I wish to preserve, not destroy these works. They are very delicate.’

‘Very well, send down more of your pets and let’s get to work, shall we?’

Katherine was looking over his shoulder. Rekkid turned and saw that the ghostly figure had returned. It was standing in the entrance to another tunnel that led out of the library. There was no telling how long it had been there. It appeared to be watching them. It beckoned once more to follow.

‘Clearly, this isn’t all that there is to find down here,’ said Steelscale. ‘It wants us to continue.’

‘He’s right,’ said Katherine to the others. ‘We haven’t found the source of those signals yet. This isn’t over yet. Let’s go.’

A broad passage, illuminated by lights that had partially failed and flickered forlornly, led off from the library for a couple of hundred metres before it turned left sharply, continued for another hundred metres or so and came to an end at another large and as yet unlit chamber. They began to hear the faintest of sounds. At first it was barely audible, but all of them could hear what sounded like deep, unified breathing which echoed down the dusty passage towards them. As they approached the end of the passageway it grew louder until, standing in the darkness at the edge of the chamber, they looked at one another nervously as all around them the as yet un-guessable vastness of the hollow space echoed to the sound of breathing.

‘What is this place?’ whispered Katherine. ‘What the hell is that sound? It’s like we’re inside the ribcage of some gigantic beast, listening to it breathe.’

‘The chamber is roughly spherical and around three hundred metres in diameter,’ said the ship. ‘There is a great deal of machinery in here, everywhere in fact, and there are life signs also.’

‘I can’t see a thing!’ hissed Rekkid. ‘Life signs, you said?’

‘Yes,’ said the drone, as was about to explain further when the lights suddenly blazed to full. Having become accustomed to the gloom of the tunnels, the three archaeologists now squinted against the sudden intense glare and gasped in amazement at the scene that now greeted them.

The passageway had come to an end at the level where the chamber’s great, domed ceiling curved downwards to meet the rising edge of the bowl shaped floor. Radial banks of glittering, organic looking alien machinery rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling like stalactites, the huge assemblies skirted by access gantries. It was from this machinery that the rhythmic sounds of breathing were coming. Amazingly, it was still active and suspended within it could be seen hundreds of white pods, hanging like pale fruit amidst the alien growths, wrapped in tendrils of shining silver. Some of the pods glowed from some inner light source that rendered them near translucent. Looking closer at the nearer glowing pods, the faint outlines of figures could be seen inside them. Others were not lit from within and their contents could not be seen.

At the centre of the chamber, a thick pillar of machinery joined the ceiling to the floor, tapering towards its mid-point to form an elongated hourglass shape. Slightly below the mid-point hung another pod. This one was completely transparent and much larger than the others and it was embedded within a mass of root-like structures that cradled it. A humanoid form could be seen within. It was impossibly old. Wizened and wasted to the point of resembling an unwrapped mummy, its long, wispy hair and beard flowed over its chest and shoulders and shone like spun silver in the brilliant light along with the lines and feeds that snaked about its form and pierced its flesh in a dozen places

Cautiously they walked down the concave slope of the floor between the towering machines towards that near skeletal figure, the sounds of respiration loud in their ears from all sides. Stopping at the foot of the pillar they looked up at the wasted form. There were no signs of decomposition and as they looked closely, they saw the figure’s chest rising and falling weakly with every sound of inhalation and exhalation that filled the chamber.

Looking up into the age ravaged face, it was clear now that this figure was the same one that they had followed deep into the bowels of the earth, though the image they had been shown was of this unfortunate being as it had once appeared, not as it now was, emaciated by ten millennia of living death.

It was then that the ancient being opened its eyes and tried to speak. The mouth quivered at first, dry cracked lips moving for the first time in perhaps centuries. It was apparent that the pod must contain audio equipment, because the faint sound of the creature’s voice began to emanate from somewhere inside the pillar. Even with such amplification, it was barely audible, like the rustling of dry leaves or the trickling of desert sands in the wind but, as they listened closely, the sounds of alien syllables could be discerned within the parched whispers.

As Steelscale moved closer to the creature to get a better look, the translation pendant that he wore picked up the alien sounds and started to convert them into the K’Soth language. The device began to utter a tinny stream of guttural sounds. Steelscale cradled the pendant in one great clawed hand and looked at it quizzically.

‘He’s praying,’ he said. ‘He’s thanking the gods for their arrival… how is it possible that this device of mine is able to interpret this unfamiliar language?’

‘Because it’s not unfamiliar, I can understand it too,’ said Rekkid. ‘He’s praying to us, no less, and he’s praying to us in the language of the Progenitors.’

The creature gasped as if exhausted by the mere effort of speaking and slumped forward in its restraints. The bird-like chest continued to rise and fall in shallow breaths.

‘Ship,’ said Katherine to the drone. ‘Get a medical team down here as quickly as possible. Tell them that we’ve found a survivor.’

Chapter 20

The Delta Pavonis system had been, until only a few scant weeks ago, a relatively secure system in the Commonwealth’s heart. Now, with the Commonwealth split in two, the inhabitants of these wealthy planets found themselves on the front line of a new war. Nineteen light years from Earth, the Delta Pavonis system had been colonised relatively early on in the history of human interstellar travel. Though the star was older than Earth’s sun, it had long been suspected that it would nurture a system of planets even before direct imaging from powerful telescopes revealed a family of worlds not too dissimilar to that from which humanity had sprung. The colonists who eventually arrived found a system that resembled a snapshot from the Solar System’s future.

New Hatti, the third planet, was a hot, desolate world of shifting sands and scrubby vegetation. Once it had been verdant and earth-like, but the parent star, its ageing core growing heavier with iron, had grown hotter over the last billion years and had gradually turned the continents of New Hatti into vast deserts separated by seas swollen by the melted ice caps. It was a harsh, unforgiving world, but one which held great mineral wealth, and the teeming seas sustained a hardy population in towns and cities that sprawled along the coasts in the higher latitudes. The original population of settlers, drawn mainly from North Africa and the Middle East, had adapted to life in their new home with aplomb, since its environment was almost exactly the same as the one that they had left behind them on Earth, though even they thought twice about venturing into the searing equatorial regions without good cause.

Further out, two gas giants shepherded families of moons that held primitive single celled life-forms, flourishing in the star’s increasing luminescence. The system was also home to a number of commercial shipyards feeding off the bountiful supplies of heavy metals and the abundant manufacturing in the system.

Four light years away to the east lay the densely populated Beta Hydri system, another keystone of the Commonwealth and a wealthy commercial centre centred around the garden world of Emerald and its carefully managed cities of glittering skyscrapers. Now a line had been drawn between the two systems. South of the line lay a great gulf in space, a darkness pierced by only a few scant stars. To either side of this gulf, towered clouds of stars and at its far southern end, the brilliant blue-white sun of Achernar shone like a baleful eye. All systems south of the Delta Pavonis-Beta Hydri line were now considered to be either partially, or wholly within the hands of the enemy.

Now, as the forces still loyal to the Commonwealth prepared for their counter-strike, vast fleets of warships and transports had begun to gather in both systems as Navy and Army assets, previously scattered across the systems newly liberated from the K’Soth Empire, completed their hasty redeployments across hundreds of light years, regrettably leaving those worlds to their fate. Around New Hatti in Delta Pavonis and Emerald in Beta Hydri, huge formations of destroyers, frigates, carriers and other smaller warships jostled for space with lumbering army troop transports swollen with thousands of men, armoured vehicles and assault craft. Each day, more ships arrived, fresh from their abandoned peace keeping duties. The Churchill had arrived in Delta Pavonis three days earlier and had slotted itself into a parking orbit in the busy skies high above New Hatti. The carrier had launched early from her berth in Batavia Port and made her way out of the Solar System, proceeding to Delta Pavonis at best speed completing final not critical repairs whilst on route. Once she had arrived she rendezvoused with the two modified Thea class recon cruisers, the Appleton and the Dulles and the Nahabe gunsphere Shadow in the Void that had left the Solar System several days earlier as an advance guard.

The carrier had arrived early and without incident. However, she was now delayed. The plan had been to take on replacement crew and ships in Delta Pavonis to replace those lost in the battle for Earth as well as extra supplies. In addition, the carrier and its accompanying vessels were to remain in the system until their final orders were received, detailing the target and other specifics of their forthcoming mission. Neither of these had yet materialised. The sudden influx of vessels and personnel into the system was causing delays and a degree of confusion in both securing the necessary crew members and completing the security screening now necessary for all personnel transferring between ships. Plenty of the replacement crew were still waiting in various locations throughout the system to be transferred to the Churchill. In addition, a number of recon flights despatched into enemy territory had failed to return and although this confirmed the presence of the enemy in the locations to which vessels had been dispatched, it failed to give any indications as to the likely strength or composition of the enemy and whether or not the recon flights had been anticipated and ambushed. Finding an enemy that didn’t want to be seen was a problem, especially when they could avoid detection entirely without the Commonwealth being able to use the very technology that they now wished to test. It was a frustrating situation. Cartwright had informed Chen that he was unwilling to send her blindly into a hostile system for fear that she would be flying into a trap. Until a suitable system could be reconnoitred successfully, the Churchill and her small flotilla would have to await their orders.

Meanwhile, Chen grew ever more restless. She was eager to be under way and impatient with the delays. For McManus however, the journey from Earth and the delays in Delta Pavonis had given him a chance to get to know his new ship. He made a point of visiting different areas of the carrier, introducing himself to the crew, casting an eye over their performance, swapping stories and listening to what they had to say. What he saw and heard impressed him. Chen certainly ran a tight ship and her crew were loyal and dedicated. Many had served with her aboard her previous command whilst others had joined her later, but all of the officers and specialists had been hand-picked by her. The Churchill’s crew were a breed apart, used to long missions far away from bases or human worlds. As a unit, they were independent and self reliant, used to solving problems on their own. As people, they had come to rely on one another utterly, even more so than usual for a ship’s crew. As such, it had made the recent losses harder to bear. To some, it had felt like they had lost family, rather than colleagues. Nevertheless, morale remained high and most were eager to take revenge for their fallen comrades. McManus began to feel very much at home. During this period he made himself invaluable to Chen, giving her regular updates from the repair crews and the ship’s engineers, chasing down missing personnel and untangling the mess of transport requirements to get all of the ship’s new complement aboard.

They also learned that Admiral Hawkwood had been placed in overall command of the Commonwealth’s war strategy. Pending further reconnaissance and successful testing of the new weaponry and sensors, he and his staff, together with the Chief of Staff of the Army, were in the process of identifying key systems to be retaken once the opportunity arose. For now, however, the emphasis was to be on the defensive, although word had reached the Commonwealth that the Nahabe had gone to war at last, striking from their secluded systems at Shaper rallying positions in Hadar and Spica and other as yet unknown systems far beyond the Commonwealth’s southern border. The Shapers had been checked for the moment, giving breathing space to the other races. One thing was certain: that it was bound to be a temporary reprieve.

Chen caught up with McManus on the hangar deck. She found him chatting with a couple of pilots as well as the three deck hands working on their Azrael torpedo bomber. Panels and components from the craft lay neatly on the deck as the men in grease stained coveralls peered inside the weapons bay with the aid of torches. The craft itself looked brand new.

‘So, I finally tracked you down,’ said Chen. ‘How are things down here?’

‘Looks like we have a problem,’ said McManus. ‘This new batch of Azraels we got shipped in to replace the ones you lost have all sorts of mechanical problems. The weapon release clamps on this one are faulty, for example, but the maintenance crews have found something different wrong with just about all of them so far without needing to look very far. They’ll have to be stripped down and inspected, each one of them.’

Chen sighed, wearily.

‘Walk with me a moment, Commander.’

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said McManus smartly and fell into step with Chen as she started to walk down the length of the deck. He lowered his voice and added. ‘So, I take it that you’re bored out of your mind and came down here for something to do?’

‘Oh yes. Bored and increasingly frustrated. I can’t believe that we’re still stuck here! Time is a precious commodity and something we have little enough of without all this general chaos to deal with.’ She exhaled and ran a hand idly through her hair. ‘I needed a break from stewing in my office or sitting on the bridge checking the time every five minutes until the end of the watch. How are you settling in, by the way?’

‘Aye, pretty well. This ship runs like clockwork, Admiral. You’ve got good people here. These lads on the hangar deck for example, they’ll have those torp. bombers up and running in no time for you. They promised me without me having to even ask. You know, I had planned on playing the old hard arsed XO act to whip a few people into shape, but I don’t think it’s that necessary, just between you and me.’

‘Singh said he’d seen you skulking around the corridors. Lurking in the corners, I think he said.’

‘He did? Aye well, that’s where you usually find the things that others have missed. The little things out of sight that come and bite you in the arse when you least expect it. I have to admit though, I haven’t found much to complain about. I always say that you need to get to know a ship like you’d know your wife… or husband in your case ma’am. You need to know everything about them, all their little quirks and foibles, their likes and dislikes. Thing is, I think I was always better at choosing ships than I was at choosing women… some of the ships were better looking too.’ He shot her a wry grin. Chen raised an amused eyebrow.

‘Well, I’m glad that the Churchill meets your high standards, Commander. Of course, that means it now falls on you to maintain it. Actually, it is good to hear someone coming from outside the ship and poking their nose into every nook and cranny say that they found little to complain about. I like to think I run a tight ship, and Haldane actually did his job well, right up until the point where he tried to blow my head off.’

‘Kind of a negative trait in an XO, I’d say. So, still no word from Command on our mission, I take it?’

‘No, unfortunately. We’ve had yet another message today in the past hour ordering us to stand by and await further instructions pending better intel. I’ll be meeting with the three captains at thirteen hundred hours. We need to go over possible strategies and also any other issues that they might have.’

‘Are you doing this over the comm?’

‘No, I’ve asked all three to meet in person here on the Churchill. Security concerns, first of all, but largely because I think we all need to get together in a room and meet one another, the Nahabe Lord Protector especially. They can be a little… let’s say that they have their own way of doing things and many humans have never even seen one, much less spoken to one. We need to be able to work together effectively as a unit. Personal relationships are a part of that.’

‘Aye, that’s right. They can be a little forbidding inside those suits of theirs. It’s sometimes hard to remember that there’s a being not unlike ourselves inside.’

Captain Alison Trent and Captain James Hardaker greeted Chen on the hangar deck with salutes and warm handshakes. Both of them were slightly younger than Chen. Trent was a serious looking woman with a pale complexion and blonde hair, Hardaker a stocky, barrel-chested man with dark hair cropped close to his skull. Both seemed a little in awe of her at first. Chen noticed that Trent’s eyes kept flicking to the ribbons on her uniform and the woman seemed a little nervous of her. Hardaker kept pressing her with questions about the battle for Earth. She tried to give him modest answers and attempted to put them both at ease with idle chatter as they waited for the Nahabe commander to arrive.

A few minutes later, an odd, angular craft the colour of verdigris landed gently in the middle of the Churchill’s deck and from it, emerged a floating, boxy form. This time, the Lord Protector of the Order of the Void Hunters appeared in what Chen guessed must pass for more casual attire in the Nahabe military. Gone, was the tank-like suit which the creature had previously worn. Instead, the creature piloted a smaller suit little taller than the average human, whose panels were decorated with complex geometric designs inlaid with precious metals, and which failed to sport any obvious weaponry. Indeed, it was a matter of trust as to whether this was the same individual at all.

Chen saw Trent and Hardaker cast sidelong glances at one another as the Lord Protector approached, floating silently towards them. It spoke, using the same deep, synthesised voice as when it and Chen had previously met.

‘Admiral Chen, it is an honour to be welcomed aboard your ship once more. Captain Trent, Captain Hardaker: I am the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters. I look forward to working alongside you both. Together will we hunt Shapers and smoke them out of their hiding places, yes?’

‘Uh yeah, that’s the idea,’ said Hardaker and smiled weakly.

‘Excellent,’ replied the Lord Protector. ‘Admiral Chen?’

‘This way, please,’ Chen said and guided them to the nearest cargo lift.

The meeting took place in the Churchill’s ward room, the three humans and the single Nahabe clustering around one end of the long, dark, polished table. Outside, through the windows, the brilliant blue seas and mottled deserts of New Hatti provided a backdrop to the multitude of warships and transports that hung in orbit above it. The gunsphere Shadow in the Void hung in the centre of the scene, its strange, geodesic shape and dark green colouring contrasting sharply with the grey, functional forms of the human craft around it.

Chen sat at the very end of the table, her hands clasped together in front of her.

‘I know we haven’t received our final orders yet,’ she said. ‘But I thought it would be a good idea if we all met one another and discussed the options open to us. I’ve had a few ideas that I intend put into practice, but I’d appreciate the input of everyone here.’

‘So we still don’t know what system we’ll be heading to?’ said Hardaker.

‘No. Command needs to find us a suitable system that we know has Shapers in it, but which isn’t too far from friendly systems in case we need to make a quick getaway or if we need extraction. The trouble is, is that they’re having to do it without using our brand new sensors. They don’t want to risk losing our only working examples or give the Shapers a hint that we can detect them, before we hit them hard. It’s our only advantage at the moment, so we can’t overplay our hand. As you can appreciate, this is proving a little difficult as the Shapers can’t be detected in hyperspace using the old equipment. It may come down to visual confirmations.’

‘Okay, I see,’ said Hardaker. ‘So, we find a system. What then, ma’am?’

‘Well, that depends,’ Chen turned to the Nahabe commander. ‘Lord Protector, your ship is equipped with what - for want of a better term - might be called a cloaking device, is it not?’

‘Yes, that is correct,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘Our ship has the ability to bend light and other forms of radiation around the limits of its drive envelope. It’s a refinement of warp drive technology that so far, no other races seem to have exploited. I’m afraid that that is one modification that cannot be made to your ships.’

‘That’s fine. What I want to know is: how effective is it against Shapers’ sensors?’

The Lord Protector emitted a sound not unlike a sigh. ‘We have had… varying amounts of success. The Shapers appear to possess highly sensitive sensor equipment, far in advance of our own. In cases where the Shapers were not actively looking for one of our vessels, the cloaking technology did provide a measure of protection and allowed our craft to avoid detection until they got much closer. However, we have theorised that the Shapers’ ships are highly sensitive to changes in space-time and are able to detect the space-time curvature caused by the mass of our ships over great distances. We also possess a measure of drive stealthing technology, and although this is more effective than the illegal device used by the ship belonging to Captain Caleb Isaacs, it is not fool-proof and will not allow us to escape detection at distances under ten million kilometres.’

‘How about if you were to disguise the mass of your ship by moving close to a large body, such as an asteroid?’ said Captain Trent.

‘There is some benefit to such a tactic,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘A dense asteroid field would be particularly effective at masking the mass of our ship, particularly if we allowed the ship to drift, giving it the appearance of just another asteroid. Inserting ourselves into the field without detection would be the problem, of course. We lack the drive cores necessary to use our translation drives, having utilised them in the defence of Earth and thus cannot insert ourselves into the system in such a manner. If I might ask, Admiral Chen, where is all this leading?’

‘You have successfully modified your ship’s sensors according to the specifications furnished to us?’

‘Yes, we have.’

‘Since the modifications to your ship were less complex than those undertaken on the Appleton and the Dulles, being merely software reconfigurations rather than engineering modifications as well, it would seem more likely that they will work. All you have done is alter the settings on existing equipment.’

‘We haven’t had a chance to test them, but yes, that seems logical.’

‘What I propose is that the Shadow in the Void jumps into the target system ahead of us and conceals itself somewhere before sweeping the system for Shapers. We then jump in separately, activate the sensors on the Appleton and Dulles and compare our results before jumping out. We shouldn’t need long in the system in question before we jump back.’

‘Time enough for the Shapers to lay a trap for you. They may detect your inbound drive signatures and lie in wait. They may also capture one of the cruisers and determine its purpose,’ the Lord Protector replied.

‘It’s a risk that we’ll have to take, I’m afraid. It’s unlikely that we’ll avoid detection, however we need to get in and out as quickly as possible. Of course once we have a target we’ll be able to plan more specifically and minimise the risk. However, Captain Hardaker and Captain Trent, I expect you to take the necessary steps if it seems likely that either of your ships will fall into enemy hands.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘I expect you to scuttle them, or at the very least, sabotage the sensor arrays. We cannot allow the enemy to learn of our new technological advantage.’

The two captains looked at one another nervously.

‘Of course, Admiral. Understood,’ said Trent, in clipped tones.

‘We have the firepower of the Shadow in the Void and the Churchill’s spatial distortion cannon should we face combat, but I’d rather it didn’t come to that. I intend to avoid any engagements with the enemy if at all possible.’

‘In and out, fast and clean,’ said Hardaker and nodded.

‘That’s the plan, Captain,’ Chen replied.

‘There is one final matter that I would like to bring to your attention,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘Something that our high command has passed onto me, since we are likely to be the first ships to penetrate the area of Commonwealth space occupied by the Shapers and their minions.’

‘Please,’ said Chen, indicating with a gesture for the Lord Protector to continue.

‘This information has only just reached me. Admirals Hawkwood and Cartwright were also informed by my superiors. As you are no doubt aware, the Nahabe people have finally woken up from our long, pacific sleep and have gone to war once again against our old enemy, now your enemy, the Shapers. As such, we have been conducting a number of deep strike hit and run missions far beyond the edge of Commonwealth and Nahabe space against Shaper rallying positions in order to disrupt the enemy’s supply of ships and personnel. They have now been forced to divide their attention between us and yourselves. However, during one such raid our ships came across something rather unusual. Here, let me show you:’

A holographic projector activated within the suit of the Lord Protector. A moving image, taken from a spacecraft manoeuvring in combat now hovered above the dark wood of the conference table, which reflected its ghostly light. At the centre of the image was what looked like a Shaper vessel, though it was of a configuration that was unfamiliar to all those sitting around the table. Five segmented, complex armatures extended forwards from a long, tapering hull studded with bulbous, crystalline growths arranged in rings about its midsection.

‘The vessel you are looking at is over five hundred kilometres in length,’ said the Lord Protector. There were gasps of disbelief from Trent and Hardaker. ‘It was sighted three hundred light years south of the Hadar system in the depths of interstellar space. We were able to track the vessel for a while before our ships were driven off by a large number of escort craft, however it appears to be heading for Commonwealth space.’

Chen suppressed a shudder. The vessel was a true behemoth, far larger than any vessel that even the Arkari were able to field.

‘My god,’ she breathed. ‘We can’t possibly take on a warship of that size…’

‘We don’t think it is a warship,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘It’s something else. I have been sent a full copy of the sensor data. Those arms jutting from the bow of the ship don’t appear to be weapons, in fact it appears to only possess defensive weaponry, hence the large number of escorts, but there are complex energy conduits running along those arms. Whatever it is though, it’s headed this way. We should be on the lookout for it, or any others like it.’

‘And what do we do then?’ said Chen with a scornful edge to her voice. ‘With all due respect, I don’t think we have anything that can destroy a ship of that size.’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘But this is something that we haven’t seen before. Any further information we could gather about it would be useful.’

Chen stared at the image. The Shaper craft resembled a vast, bizarre sea monster. Something horrible that had crept out of the depths to ensnare them. She saw the darting motes about it and realised that they were in fact Shaper destroyer class vessels, dwarfed by the enormous craft.

The door to the ward room slid open. McManus stood, framed in the doorway, an animated look on his broad, bearded features.

‘Admiral Chen, Captain Hardaker, Captain Trent, Lord Protector. It’s time. Our orders have come through from Admiral Cartwright. We have our target.’

Chapter 21

The Profit Margin emerged from its jump high above the swirling cloud tops of Irkut, sixth planet of the Arragut system in a region of space just beyond the reaches of the knot of systems claimed by the Vreeth. Arragut was as yet unclaimed by any of the local interstellar powers and contained no indigenous races, however there were a number of settlements throughout the system and whilst the Vreeth were the most numerous, humans and other races could be found there, operating beyond the reaches of the major powers.

The Vreeth were an airborne species whose bulbous bodies were largely given over to gas filled flotation bladders. Although they had evolved on a small rock planet not too dissimilar to Earth, space travel had led the Vreeth to discover that they were quite at home in the upper reaches of many gas giant planets. This provided them with access to vast amounts of real estate that most other species were less interested in colonising and many gas giants within Vreeth space were now home to large numbers of floating habitats riding high above the storm clouds, some of them being the size of cities. Irkut, though beyond the official borders of the Vreeth, was home to several smaller examples of such settlements, independently constructed by corporations, rich individuals and even, it was rumoured, by crime syndicates eager for a secluded place to do business. It was towards one of these, Gagat’s Colony, that the Profit Margin now descended. The disc shaped habitat, its upper surface a mass of blister-like domes and needle shaped spires, floated high in the upper atmosphere of the planet, the vast storm systems of the planet below swirling like oil on water.

Isaacs and Anna felt the ship buck and shake around them as they descended, the violent crosswinds wrenching the Profit Margin first one way and then the other as the vessel’s manoeuvring thrusters fought valiantly to keep her on course and within her allotted approach vector.

Despite the fact that the ship was being piloted by the autopilot, slaved to the traffic control guidance signals being broadcast by Gagat’s Colony, Isaacs kept his hands resting on the controls, purely for peace of mind more than anything else. If anything untoward did happen, he knew that he could switch to manual control in a matter of seconds and pull the ship away back into space. As the ship shook and bounced, his eyes had become fixated on the cockpit head up display and the read outs on the various screens and holos. He risked a glance over at Anna and noticed that she looked a little pale.

‘Well, this is fun, isn’t it?’ he said grimly over the noise of the protesting engines.

‘No, not really,’ she replied, as the Colony appeared to dance outside the cockpit windows. ‘We just have to hope that the autopilot knows what it’s doing. Being crushed to death by five hundred atmospheres of pressure wasn’t on my ‘to do’ list today, y’know?’

‘Relax, has she ever let us down before? We’ll be down in no time,’ Isaacs replied, though in truth, the bucking and shimmying of the ship was making him a little nervous.

‘That’s just as well, because I think if this lasts much longer I shall throw up.’

‘Please,’ he replied with a pained expression. ‘Not in the cockpit.’

The Profit Margin had spent the past ten days describing a zigzag path across the Commonwealth, gradually heading eastwards. Isaacs had made judicious use of the stealth module as well as jumps into and from interstellar space to disguise their point of origin. The ship was also running with false ID, dutifully supplied by the Commonwealth Navy and backed up with suitably faked records within the central ship registry database. Chen had given them little to go on except the name of the settlement, planet and system where they were to meet their contact. Nothing else had been provided. Her, or she, would find them in due course.

As the ship spiralled downwards, the comm. crackled into life. The synthetic voice of the translation programme overlaid the clicking tones of the Vreeth controller.

‘Vessel Doctor Gonzo, vessel Doctor Gonzo this is Gagat’s Colony Traffic Control. Please reduce your speed by one third. You are approaching much too quickly!’

‘I thought you were the ones piloting!’ Isaacs shot back angrily, at the same time overriding the automatic control of the main engines and throttling back, then popping the air brakes to lessen the speed of the ship’s rapid dive.

‘Copy that Doctor Gonzo. It is possible that our systems are not fully compatible with your own and that commands sent to your ship have been corrupted.’

‘Oh, wonderful,’ he replied.

‘Doctor Gonzo your descent speed has now reduced to an acceptable rate. We will continue to monitor your descent and advise if necessary. Gagat’s Colony Traffic Control out.’

‘Well that’s certainly boosted my faith in technology,’ said Anna, wryly. ‘What sort of antiquated systems are they using out here?’

‘God knows,’ replied Isaacs. ‘From what I understand, none of these settlements have been constructed by any government. Some are corporate. This one? Nobody seems to know who built it. The intel. they gave us suggested that one of the corporations started construction and then abandoned it before others moved in and took over.’

‘So it’s been cobbled together by local crime-lords and smugglers, is that what you’re trying to say? I don’t find that terribly reassuring,’ said Anna and gripped the arms of her couch more tightly as the ship lurched in a particularly violent manner.

‘Me neither,’ said Isaacs. ‘Personally I’m surprised that the damn thing hasn’t fallen out of the sky yet.’

‘What a place to arrange to meet someone. Still, it is out of the way. I suppose the risk of plunging to your death on approach keeps away unwanted visitors.’

Gagat’s Colony loomed large now, the structure on its upper surface clearly visible and dotted with multitudes of tiny lights from windows and navigational hazard beacons. Wisps of cloud whipped between the structures. The flight path fed to the Profit Margin’s navicomp by traffic control was directing them to a docking bay, one of a series set into the rim of the disc that formed the main superstructure of the colony. As they drew closer, they caught glimpses of blimp-like shapes moving around the Colony in the gas giant’s atmosphere. The Vreeth, it seemed, were perfectly at home in this hostile environment.

Lightning strobed in the clouds below, illuminating the underside of the colony and the stalactite-like structures that hung from it, before the docking bay swallowed the ship and they were plunged into darkness.

The Profit Margin came to rest in the dimly lit docking bay amid a collection of battered looking freighters and tugs. As Isaacs stepped out onto the deck, Anna by his side, he became acutely aware of how much his sleek looking vessel stood out amidst the other vessels – some of which looked to be on the verge of falling apart. He closed the access ramp and walked away, a pensive look on his face.

‘What?’ said Anna, seeing his expression. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I’m not that comfortable leaving her here, that’s all. What do you think the chances are of the ship being here when we come back? Look at this place!’ he replied, waving his arm around to take in the entire bay and its resident fleet of junkers.

‘Ah come on. Surely we’ve seen worse than this armpit of a habitat. Besides, aren’t those ships supposed to be more difficult to steal? She’s mag-locked to the deck Cal, and you have the access codes to release her in your head.’

‘Yeah, so? What if someone tries to beat them out of me? You ever think of that?’

As they walked, they could feel the deck shifting in a barely perceptible manner. It was like being onboard a sea ship in a gentle swell.

‘You feel that?’ said Anna.

‘Yep. Must be the storm that’s doing it. Of course maybe this place is built to flex slightly to cope with the storm force winds here or….’

‘…or it’s on the verge of falling to bits.’

‘Quite. Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, does it?’

As they exited the bay they found their way blocked by a bulky Hyrdian wearing a patchwork of mismatched armour who flashed some sort of badge at them with one heavy blue fist and demanded to see some ID. Dutifully, they displayed their – faked - pilot’s licenses to the creature who grunted wordlessly and scanned them into a battered looking hand held console, before peering at the results on its dimly lit screen.

‘Captain Conrad, Captain de Silva,’ said the Hyrdian in coarsely accented English. ‘Operating the ship Doctor Gonzo out of Wolf 359.’

‘That’s us,’ said Isaacs and tried a friendly smile.

‘You never been here before. Why you come now?’ said the Hyrdian. It appeared to be studying them.

‘Uh well, with all the action going on in the Commonwealth, we figured it was getting a little too dangerous for us independent traders. War’s bad for business, y’know? So we decided to try somewhere new for a change. Somewhere nice and quiet and out of the way.’

The Hyrdian made a sort of wheezing sound that Isaacs assumed passed for laughter among its kind. It started to shake with mirth.

‘Listen Captain. Gagat’s Colony… it’s not for you regular traders. It’s not quiet, I can tell you that much. My advice? Find someplace else. Find another system to do business in. Much safer. Much quieter, yes?’

‘No, I think I like the sound of this place. I hear there’s plenty of action to be had around here. Plenty of the sort of quality items that my discerning customers might want. You catch my drift?’

‘Hmm, nothing in your records…’ said the Hyrdian.

‘Yeah, exactly. ‘Cause I don’t get fucking caught, that’s why. Listen I used to operate out of the Labyrinth for a while, smuggling Nahabe shit all over the place. Things got a little hot, so I ditched my old ship and got myself this little beauty. I’ve been hanging round the core systems for a while, but I need to get back in the action.’

‘He’s right,’ said Anna. ‘Hauling regular crap and passengers from system to system sure gets dull, and it doesn’t pay as well either. I said to him “enough of this shit Cal, what are we, a fucking taxi?” So yeah, we need to make a few contacts out here.’

The Hyrdian looked at them both through narrowed eyes.

‘You called him “Cal”. His license says his name is Vasili.’

Cal shot Anna a nervous look. Inwardly, she cursed herself for such a stupid mistake. She had just blurted his name out. So much for playing secret agents.

The Hyrdian tapped the license cards against the console it still held. ‘But… what the fuck do I care?’ it said eventually and shrugged. ‘Half the people who come through here have faked identities. But I know your faces. Whatever you are called, whilst you are here you are Captains Conrad and de Silva. No funny business aboard the station. No guns. You cause trouble, we take your ship. You kill anyone, we put you out the nearest airlock. It’s a long drop to the clouds below I think you’ll find.’

‘I was going to ask about my ship. How safe is it here?’ said Isaacs.

‘It’s safe,’ said the Hyrdian. ‘It’s our insurance against any bad behaviour, after all.’

The interior of Gagat’s Colony was a dimly lit warren, currently in the middle of its artificially induced night. The spires that extended both upwards and downwards from the disc continued within it, dividing the interior up into something resembling city blocks, except that their varying sizes and shapes rendered the internal layout of the streets between them somewhat chaotic. Bright, holographic signs winked in the darkness from the countless of bars, cafes, clubs, casinos, strip joints and brothels whilst beings from half a dozen races at least wandered the dimly lit streets that thumped to the muffled beats of music from a multitude of cultures. Isaacs and Anna risked a glance or two at a few of the colony’s inhabitants as they passed and were met with hard stares from equally hard looking people. Gagat’s Colony might be a place to do certain kinds of business, but it was also a place where you kept your business to yourself.

‘So, what now?’ said Anna. ‘We just hang around this shithole until our guy or gal shows up?’

‘Apparently,’ said Cal. ‘Still, we can always while away the time taking in the many cultural delights of this outpost of civilisation.’

‘Such as?’ scoffed Anna.

‘Well, there’s a holo on the wall behind you advertising a stage show featuring a young lady of prodigious talent and athletic prowess.’

Anna looked over her shoulder at the lurid holo depicting a nearly naked woman in various poses and laughed throatily.

‘I don’t think so, dear,’ she said smoothly and smiled. ‘Let’s find somewhere to stay, shall we?’

After consulting the station’s network and tramping down a dozen identical looking, dingily lit streets, they eventually found a small hotel near the centre of the Colony and far enough away from the constant noise emanating from the local nightlife. A bored looking Vreeth, floating behind the reception desk like a tethered airship, handed them their room key with one lazy tentacle then went back to watching what appeared to be Hyrdian pornography on the small screen behind the front desk.

They rode the creaking lift up four floors, where it deposited them into a corridor lit by weak biolumen globes and with signs pinned to the walls in several languages both human and alien. Evidently this floor contained accommodation only suited to humanoids. They found their allotted room and entered it, and found it to be just as dingy looking as the corridor outside and furnished in the most basic fashion, but it was clean and contained a terminal linked to the station’s network and entertainment channels.

Anna sat heavily on the bed’s depressingly thin mattress and frowned as she felt the jarring impact.

‘So, we wait?’ she said

‘Yep.’

‘A pity we couldn’t have waited on the ship. Even the deck is more comfortable than this bed,’ she replied, patting the mattress for emphasis.

‘Our instructions were to find accommodation on the station on the grounds that the docking bays are more likely to be watched,’ said Isaacs.

‘And how will this person find us?’

‘Who knows?’ Isaacs shrugged. ‘I guess they’ve been told how to find us.’

‘So what now, do you want to hang around this lovely establishment?’

‘Not really, no. Firstly I want to find something to eat and secondly I could do with a drink.’

‘Sounds like a plan. Let me consult this thing,’ said Anna and wandered over to the room’s terminal.

‘Okay. Let me just take a shower before we head out,’ said Isaacs and started to pull off his clothes.

‘You are adventurous’ said Anna, concentrating on the glowing screen before her.

‘What do you mean?’ Isaacs replied, looking up from the task of removing his boots.

‘Have you seen the bathroom?’

Later, the two of them found themselves sitting on a low wall that bounded a rather pathetic looking park just down the street from a row of food stalls. Isaacs munched reflectively on the kebab-like creation that he had purchased as he regarded the park’s stunted, sad looking vegetation that wilted visibly in the sickly light from biolumen poles and tried not to think too hard about the origins of the heavily spiced meat he was consuming. He had to admit, it did taste pretty good, although the proprietor of the stall – an overweight Hyrdian – had been unable or unwilling to tell him what it actually consisted of, only that it was ‘very good, very nice for humans’. Isaacs didn’t suppose that there were many cows, pigs, sheep or chickens in this part of space.

Within the park, a number of intoxicated figures from several species could be seen staggering down the paths between the half dead alien vegetation, on their way between bars or simply heading home at the end of another booze sodden or chemically enhanced evening. One, a Vreeth, seemed to be floating upside down as it made strange piping noises which Isaacs took to be its drunken singing. Sitting here he could still feel the Colony shudder and flex as the hurricane winds of Irkut battered it incessantly.

Anna looked up from her own meal, which she had been regarding suspiciously for some moments.

‘So, you want to head on over to those bars we found on the station guide? The ones that I found that didn’t look too dodgy. The ones without the pictures of naked girls outside?’

‘Yeah. Aside from the fact that I could use a drink, it would do us good to get a feel for this place, blend in, try and find out where the other human traders hang out. We are supposed to be posing as freelance traders looking for a little business on the shady side of things. We should start acting like it.’

‘You have a point. Can you at least stay reasonably sober this time? This habitat is the sort of place where I’d imagine it pays to have your wits about you.’

‘True, but if we start drinking orange juice, the other pilots are liable to have us thrown out into the street on general principles.’

‘I’ll be watching your back Cal, but I’d appreciate it if you were also watching mine, so stay sharp. Come on, let’s go.’

Following the directions that they had obtained from the station’s network, they headed back towards the edge of the disc shaped colony, back towards the section given over to the docks. Here, the streets began to get busier again, the wandering figures of revellers interspersed with those of touts, pimps, drug dealers and other hustlers. Both Isaacs and Anna were approached as they attempted to negotiate the throng. They were offered everything from cheap drinks, to exotic hallucinogens, to sex with sentient and non-sentient creatures from across much of known space. Cheaply printed flyers and business cards were pressed into their palms, only to be dropped amidst the other detritus that fouled the street, whilst muttered offers and gestures promised more illegal pleasures.

Both Isaacs and Anna were becoming irritated, and ever more paranoid at the possibility of being pick-pocketed by one the characters now trying to invade their personal space. Anna had just sworn loudly at a Vreeth that had bumped her with its foremost armour plates and had then tried to placate her with an offer of a cheap two for one drinks offer, making the mistake of then trying to slide one of its longer tentacles around her waist. Isaacs listened to her stream of creative abuse toward the creature as they strode hurriedly away and completely failed to see the tall dark figure with wild hair and beard, eyes hidden behind wrap around shades, before the man accosted him.

‘Hey man, hey. Walk with me a while,’ said the figure in a slurring voice and took a deep drag on some sort of cigarette as he fell into step with him.

‘Fuck off, okay? I’m not interested,’ said Isaacs and tried to blank him.

‘I think you are, actually. Is there somewhere we can talk?’ the man replied, keeping his voice low.

Isaacs rounded on the man, and saw his own sneering face reflected back at him in the man’s visor-like glasses. The man stank of booze and whatever it was he had been smoking.

‘Look, what part of “fuck off” do I have to translate for you? Are you deaf? I already told you, whatever it is you’re pushing, I don’t want any. So go and stick it up your arse.’

The man grabbed his jacket sleeve and pulled off his glasses, revealing a pair of intelligent, green eyes. As he spoke again, the man’s voice changed, becoming more eloquent and less throaty. The slurring had vanished entirely. He fixed Isaacs with an intent stare.

‘Caleb Isaacs, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You and I need to talk. This is your wife, Anna, yes?’

‘Uh yeah…’ Isaacs replied, the realisation sinking in that this was most likely their contact.

‘Thought so,’ said the man, his eyes flicking to Anna who likewise had started to catch on to what was going on. His gaze switched back to Isaacs. ‘Where were you headed?’ he asked hurriedly.

‘The big place at the end of the street, Jerry’s.’

‘Uh huh. Okay. Good choice, lots of people and noise around. Okay walk with me into this alleyway, make it look like we’re making a deal.’

‘So you know our names. Do we get to find out yours?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘Okay…’

The man saw Isaacs’ expression and rolled his eyes. Then he leaned in and spoke in a low voice directly into his ear.

‘Look. You were sent here to meet me, correct? I’m not going to fucking rob you, this isn’t some stupid con trick. Now get in the damn alleyway, both of you!’

The alley cut between two nearby bars, was choked with rubbish and other filth and stank of urine. Rats and other vermin scurried away into the darkness as the three humans entered, the as yet unnamed stranger leading the way. About half way down, where the darkness was particularly intense, he called a halt and turned to face them.

‘Before we go any further, I have to be sure you are who you say you are. I have to be sure you’re the same people that you were when you left Earth. You catch my drift?’

‘Yeah we do,’ said Anna. ‘You got one of those Shaper detectors? Go ahead, scan us.’

The man reached into his long dark coat and produced a scanner similar to the ones that Isaacs had seen used by Chen’s Spec Ops people, as well as a bulky laser pistol which he held loosely in one hand as he scanned both Isaacs’ and Anna’s skulls in turn. He looked at the results for a moment and then, satisfied with what they showed – that both individuals were free from Shaper parasites - he replaced the scanner inside his coat.

‘Sorry about that,’ said the man. ‘And this.’ He held up the gun before returning it to its holster beneath his left armpit. ‘I had to be sure. Now, let’s get out of here before someone comes to see what we’re doing down here, and then let’s go get a drink, and then we can talk. Just three traders making a deal over a drink, right?’

‘Right. So, do we get to find out your name now?’ Isaacs asked.

‘Sure,’ said the man. ‘Agent Steven Harris, formerly CIB. Now I’m with Special Operations Command.’ He stuck out a hand

‘Uh, pleasure,’ said Isaacs and shook it firmly.

Jerry’s was one of the few human owned drinking establishments aboard Gagat’s Colony and hence it was packed with human clientele eager to mix with their own kind, although there was a smattering of other races. Consequently, the three of them drew no attention to themselves whatsoever as they entered. Isaacs got a round of drinks in and then, threading their way through the throng of drinking, dancing and flirting revellers, they retired to one of the booths near the back of the main bar area. The sound of the music and hubbub of drunken conversation was enough to prevent anyone from casually listening in to their conversation.

‘So, Agent Harris, how did you find us so quickly? We’ve only been here a couple of hours,’ said Cal and took a grateful gulp of his beer.

‘Well, I made a few friends aboard Gagat’s Colony. Money has that effect around here. I got talking to one of the Vreeth in traffic control, and said I was looking for somebody piloting a Stallion class ship and would he mind letting me know each time a ship of that type docked here in return for a suitable fee. Apparently the local crime syndicates do it all the time. By the time you guys had cleared security I was already waiting outside for you. I tailed you for a bit to make sure you were the right people and to make sure no-one else but me was following you.’

‘And were they?’

‘Not that I could see. That’s when I decided to make my move and approach you.’

There was a commotion from the front of the bar. A fight had broken out. Craning their necks they could see drinkers backing away from two men brawling with one another. One was already streaming with blood from a wound on his forehead, the remains of a shattered beer glass in the other man’s hand providing a clue as to the cause. There were whoops and cries of encouragement as the bleeding man landed a punch on the nose of the other before two burly figures from the bar’s own security staff intervened and pulled the struggling men apart before dragging them outside.

‘That won’t end well,’ commented Steven. ‘Mr Csokas owns this place. He doesn’t like troublemakers.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’s Sirius Syndicate. A lot of the places on this station are owned by them. Rumour has it that they own the whole thing.’

‘Shit,’ said Isaacs. ‘You know those guys are probably still after me…’

‘I doubt it,’ said Steven and noticing that Isaacs was about to interject added. ‘I heard about the whole thing with Bennett. Chen’s people sent me a full copy of their files on both of you so I’d know who I was working with. You know Bennett was being paid by Admiral Morgan to do his dirty work?’

‘Yeah we knew that,’ said Anna.

‘Okay well, turns out that the Sirius Syndicate found out too and have also uncovered Shaper agents in their midst. It seems like the enemy was trying to infiltrate them. An interstellar criminal organisation could be a powerful tool in the right hands, yes? Anyway, the Sirius Syndicate came down hard on Bennett’s people and some have actually started feeding us information if you can believe that. The enemy of the enemy is my friend, and so on.’

‘Huh. I never thought that those guys had a conscience,’ said Isaacs.

‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ said Steven. ‘But they don’t wish to be enslaved by the Shapers any more than you or I do.’

‘Is that what brought you out here?’ said Anna.

‘Yeah it is. They’d passed us a few reports of phantom ships out here that matched the description of Shaper vessels and there had been a few mysterious figures around the system all asking questions about the abandoned antimatter collection arrays around the brown dwarf in the outer system. They seem to have melted away by the time I got here though. So…’ Steven lowered his voice and leaned closer. ‘We need to get into Achernar and Chen tells me that you two are the best freelance crew that she’s ever seen.’

Isaacs laughed, a little embarrassed.

‘No, I’m serious. She wouldn’t have picked you for this if she didn’t think that statement were true. Your various escapades speak for themselves. I take it that you have some thoughts on how to sneak into Achernar without getting picked up?’

‘Yeah we do. When we left, the system was swarming with Shaper ships, but we gather that things are starting to return to normal. Trade has resumed with other systems that are rebelling.’

‘That’s what I was told also.’

‘Right. The thing is: what are the chances that many of those ships are still there? We need to get a good look at the system before we go in. We also wanted to find out what happened to the people that we left in Achernar on a base in the outer system that has sensors capable of detecting Shaper ships.’

‘You want to pay them a visit?’

‘Yes. The Profit Margin has a stealth module attached to its jump drive. We sneak in, dock, get the info we need and then loop back out of the system and re-enter without using the stealth module and pose as just another trader. We land at a regular spaceport and go about our business. What we do then is up to you.’

‘It’s risky,’ said Steven. ‘But what isn’t? The hardest part will be getting down onto Orinoco. Unfortunately, we have little to go on as to Haines’ location except that he’s somewhere on the surface on the moon. Needle in a haystack time. This isn’t going to be easy.’

‘We need a cargo too,’ said Anna. ‘Something that explains why we’d come out here if anyone has spotted us, but nothing illegal that would give the authorities an excuse to stop us.’

Steven looked thoughtful and scratched his unkempt beard.

‘That is a problem, all the usual stuff that people come here for is out of bounds. There is one thing we could buy a load of: the Vreeth cultivate gas giant flora in giant floating enclosures deeper in the atmosphere here. Some of the stuff that they grow is suitable for human consumption without the aid of digestive supplements. One crop in particular, Barrachak Cloudfrond, is much in demand. Apparently it’s this year’s must have ingredient and sells for some ridiculous price in the core systems. We could buy a load of that. Do you have enough credit?’

‘We do, I think,’ said Anna, looking at Isaacs who nodded.

‘Okay, well we’ll have to wait until the morning, local time until the traders open up for business. It’s an unavoidable delay, but there you are. Once we’ve purchased our cargo and your ship has been loaded I’d like to get moving as soon as possible. I’ll swing by your hotel first thing.’

‘Do you know where…’ said Isaacs.

‘Of course he knows where it is,’ said Anna, pointing at Steven. ‘He’s been following us. Am I right?’

‘You are. Come on. Let’s get some rest. It may the last that we get for a while.’

Only a couple of hours later and Isaacs and Anna were awoken by a frantic knocking at their hotel room door. Pulling on some clothes and opening it, they found Steven outside, clutching a travel bag. He looked agitated.

‘Agent Harris. What the hell’s going on? It isn’t time already, is it?’ said Isaacs still groggy from sleep.

‘No it isn’t. Change of plan I’m afraid. Grab your stuff. We need to leave right now.’

‘Okay…’ said Isaacs running a hand through his tousled hair and began grabbing the rest of his clothes that still lay in a crumpled heap on one of the chairs.

‘My little friend in traffic control contacted me. Warships are entering the system,’ said Steven, closing the door behind him. ‘Two destroyers and a couple of flak cruisers are headed for the abandoned antimatter collection facilities in the outer system, whilst another couple of destroyers are headed this way. They’re still in hyperspace, but the locals have been tracking them for a while. It looks like they came from the renegade systems.’

‘Shit, have they sent all that firepower after us?’ said Anna, hurriedly stuffing things into her bag.

‘Doubt it,’ Steven replied. ‘I think it’s the antimatter production that they’re after: The abandoned facilities are further out, and there have long been rumours that illicit arrays exist hidden in the ring system of this planet. They may not be interested in us, but we need to slip away before they try to send down a landing party and the station goes into lockdown. You got everything?’ Isaacs nodded. ‘Okay, let’s make a move.’

The streets of Gagat’s Colony were quiet now. The internal day/night cycle was coming around to its simulated dawn. The last of the night’s revellers were staggering back to their abodes in the pale morning light as Isaacs, Anna and Steven picked their way quickly through streets strewn with litter, broken glass and the occasional patch of vomit as they headed for the docking bay containing the Profit Margin.

Eventually, sweating and out of breath, they arrived back at the bay and found the ship exactly as Isaacs and Anna had left it, with the addition of a large AG pallet holding a small shipping crate that had been parked in front of the craft. The Hyrdian that had checked their documents upon arrival ambled over as they entered.

‘Ah, I took the liberty of acquiring a small shipment of Cloudfrond for us,’ said Steven. ‘It’s all I could get at such short notice and at this hour, but it’s the good stuff, so you should be able to get a good price for it. It’s certainly enough to convince anyone as to the purpose of our journey. I called in a favour or two around here to get it.’

‘From who?’

‘Like I said, I have a few friends around here.’

The Hyrdian security guard handed Steven an electronic key to the crate in exchange for a look at his ID and then, once Isaacs had lowered the Profit Margin’s cargo ramp, helped them load the crate onto the ship. His task complete, the burly alien looked at the three humans and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Hope you have pleasant stay here. Go so soon?’

‘Yeah, we’ve got urgent business elsewhere,’ said Isaacs. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘Hmm. Anything to do with those warships heading this way?’

‘Let’s just say we’d rather avoid their attentions.’

‘You and everybody else here. But you only ones awake, I think. Always trouble here… I go now.’ He sighed and stomped off down the ramp.

With the cargo aboard and the ship secured they made ready for departure. Isaacs was already on the comm. to traffic control requesting clearance as Anna spun up the main engines and Steven went aft to man the turrets. With clearance granted, Isaacs began manoeuvring the ship around within the cramped confines of the docking bay and its esoteric collection of ships. All the while, time was ticking away and the renegade warships were coming ever closer.

With the ship lined up with the bay doors for departure, Isaacs gripped the controls tightly, preparing himself for the storm force winds outside that would toss the ship around as soon as they exited Gagat’s Colony. The seconds ticked away before he received the go signal and the bay doors began to open with agonising slowness.

‘I forgot to ask,’ said Isaacs to Steven over the comm. ‘What do you think the Shapers want with antimatter. You think they’re building warheads?’

‘Could be,’ Steven replied. ‘Perhaps they want to take revenge on Earth or on Admiral Chen for what happened to them. We have to report this.’

‘That isn’t exactly a comforting thought,’ Isaacs replied. The bay doors were now fully open and he gunned the engines, powering the Profit Margin out of the docking bay and into the storm clouds outside. Immediately a down draft caught the craft, pushing her into a dive. Isaacs recovered the ship and brought the nose upwards, angling it towards the sky and bringing the engines to full power. It was then that he saw it; a long, pale, jagged shape formed from interlocking shards that hung above the swirling clouds like a tear in the sky.

‘Shaper vessel, dead ahead!’ cried Anna.

‘Oh, fuck me! How come nobody saw that before we launched!?’ cried Isaacs, pulling the Profit Margin’s nose away from pointing at the looming enemy ship and back down to level.

‘It must have just emerged from hyperspace as we undocked!’ cried Anna. ‘There was nothing on sensors until a second ago. God, look at the size of that thing! How the hell is it managing to fly inside the atmosphere? How did it manage to jump in so close to the planet?’

‘Beats me,’ replied Isaacs, fighting with the ship to maintain a steady course. ‘But I don’t think that the usual rules apply to Shaper ships, do they? Where are the renegade human ships?’

‘Still a few minutes out from the planet and closing fast,’ Anna replied.

‘Then we need to make a rapid exit, don’t we?’ Isaacs replied, and pushed the throttles to full.

They began to streak away across the cloud tops, the ship’s speed building constantly as she bounced between updrafts, downdrafts and crosswinds in a now supersonic rollercoaster ride. Isaacs held the ship’s controls in a death grip as the view outside shook violently and the crew’s stomachs also lurched accordingly. A faint glow was beginning to build around the limits of the shield envelope as the ship’s speed increased from the resulting atmospheric friction. Isaacs was trying to keep the nose pointing vaguely upwards, so that they could escape the planet’s atmosphere.

‘The enemy ship’s descending!’ cried Anna. ‘It looks like she’s heading toward Gagat’s Colony!’

‘Those poor bastards…’ muttered Isaacs, staring straight ahead as he fought with the controls in order keep the ship straight. Something broke loose and clanged down in the cargo bay.

‘I knew it,’ commented Steven. ‘I knew that those idiots in the Syndicate had an antimatter containment unit hidden on the station somewhere. They must be trying to seize it.’

‘Well they’re gonna pay for it now!’ cried Isaacs. ‘Believe me, you do not want to be there when the Shapers attack! They don’t stand a chance…’ He had a flashback to the desperate defence of Port Royal: hordes of enslaved monsters spilling from the Shaper ship that had rammed the pirate base. Anita disappearing under a wave of flesh and snarling, leaping forms.

The Shaper vessel was descending almost vertically through the atmosphere now, its massive armoured nose pointing straight down towards Gagat’s Colony. Anna could see it magnified through the aft cameras, shrouded in layers of cloud. It looked like a vast sea creature descending to nibble at the tips of the spires that rose from the main plate structure of the Colony. She pictured all the people she had seen aboard last night, all the late night drinkers still blissfully asleep in their beds, unaware that a tide of mutilated, enslaved beings was about to be unleashed upon them, and she suppressed a shudder. Lost within her vision of the nightmare unfolding she failed to register the weapon lock-on warning for a few seconds, until its warbling tone finally roused her. The Shaper ship had decided to deal with them too, decided to swat them out of the sky like a troublesome fly.

‘Shaper vessel is locked on and powering weapons!’ she heard herself cry.

‘For God’s sake, jump!’ cried Steven.

‘We’re too low!’ cried Isaacs. ‘The planet’s gravity well is still too steep!’

‘Jump, or we’re all dead!’ Steven barked back. ‘Do it!

‘Don’t fucking well give me orders!’ snarled Isaacs and hit the jump drive controls. The ship lurched. There was a teeth jarring jolt, and the Profit Margin vanished in a collapsing vortex of atmosphere.

Chapter 22

The perpetual dusk of the sky above the holy city of Marantis, on the planet Maranos in the Fulan system was scattered with moving points of light. In streets below, the native Dendratha paused in their daily chores and looked upwards, fearfully, at this ominous occurrence. For over two years they had laboured to rebuild their shattered city, cruelly levelled as two interstellar superpowers had fought over the morsel of their world, eager to seize the technological wonders concealed beneath its crust. The Dendratha understood little of galactic politics and war and knew little of the galaxy outside of their own world. They were a peaceful, technologically primitive people who had been slowly eking out a largely agrarian civilisation for tens of thousands of years before the wider galactic community, in the shape of the Commonwealth and the K’Soth, had made themselves known, with disastrous results. The humans had come and had brought technology and trade and unwanted interference. The K’Soth had come and had brought death.

The War in Heaven had begun here, that much every Dendratha knew. They had seen the great skyships duelling above them, seen them burst and die and fall to earth, cowered when the K’Soth invaders had struck their most holy city, killing thousands and then rampaged through its blessed streets, looting and killing and feeding, only to be massacred in turn by the humans.

The slaughter had brought forth demons from the earth, horrific beings of metal that had swarmed from the netherworld to slay the sinners. Only Maran had saved them. The worldgod of the Dendratha had brought forth His angels to do battle and had eventually defeated the diabolical hordes with a wave of His divine hand. The Dendratha had given thanks for their deliverance, and had then set out burying their dead and rebuilding their devastated city.

Things had been very quiet ever since. The humans, wracked with guilt it seemed, had contributed to the rebuilding effort. The Dendratha had politely accepted their help, although most wished that the curious bipedal creatures would just leave them alone. A few ships still came and went from the lone spaceport in Erais on the coast of the northern polar sea. But most brought academics or researchers – people the locals could safely ignore. Knowledge of what was Out There in the heavens was unsettling for many Dendratha. It was all too large, too unknowable and, judging by their race’s recent experiences at the hands of offworlders, utterly terrifying.

Now it seemed that the skyships had returned en masse. As the points of light grew larger in the sky, the primitive telescopes at the Marantis Monastic University were angled towards them revealing graceful winged shapes that glinted in the light from the twin suns Irrin and Irrinil. It was the Angels of Maran! A great cry went up in the city for the faithful to come to the cathedral and pray and as the multitude gathered at that hallowed place they lifted their heads in devotion and fear. For if Maran had unleashed his angels, those terrible beings of divine wrath, then a truly terrible time must once more be looming.

Beklide reclined in the shuttle that bore her and her six strong body guard from the Sword of Reckoning towards the surface of the planet Maranos that now curved away below them. From here she could see the various colours of the desert sands, the gradual changes in texture wrought by the elements and the ravages of time. It had a savage beauty that was all too rare on the carefully cultivated worlds of the Arkari sphere, worlds of which a great number had now been reduced to ash.

She could see another shuttle in the flight just ahead of them and slightly to starboard, skipping across the upper atmosphere like an impossibly quick silver bird, its nanotech wings constantly shifting as it flew. Its carefree appearance was an illusion. The reason for their visit to this world was deadly serious. This was a world whose name had been stricken from Arkari history at least once and which had narrowly avoided destruction by the very ship she had just left. Maranos lay at the very fulcrum of galactic history. The great wormhole at its core had been used by the Progenitors to flee the galaxy and once to damn a full half of the Arkari race into the darkness of the far future. Now, Beklide hoped, it would be the instrument of their revenge against the Shapers.

A crowd had already gathered at the great cathedral at the heart of Marantis. In a religious fervour born of devotion and fear, the people of the holy city had flocked to its hallowed grounds to pay homage to their god. Cramming the cathedral grounds to their considerable capacity, they thronged outside, abasing themselves before the towering structure in prayer. Bright shapes broke through the cloud floating high above the desert to the west. There were three of them, flying in tight formation. The Angels of Maran had come.

Beklide saw the city growing ever larger below them. It was a warren of jumbled buildings pierced by broad, radial thoroughfares and the gleaming line of the Commonwealth constructed railway snaking in from the deep desert. In the south of the city, a huge area of reconstruction marked where the worst of the fighting during the war between the Commonwealth and the K’Soth Empire had levelled part of the city, whilst at the city’s heart, the cathedral reached skywards like a vast claw. It was a towering structure, many times the height of the other buildings that surrounded it. The broad circular grounds within which it sat were alive with thousands of tiny figures. As they drew closer and began to circle the cathedral she could see that thousands of expectant faces were turned up towards her.

The shuttles came lower still and killed their speed until they were hovering above the crowd like hawks. The crowd parted, leaving a clear space large enough for the three sleek, silver craft to land, which they then did, settling gently onto the dusty earth and folding their wings. Outside there was silence, as the crowd watched and waited for the servants of their god to show themselves in person.

Within a few moments they were rewarded with the sight of a patch of the skin of each shuttles flowing open. Beklide stepped slowly from her craft, flanked by her bodyguards clad in form fitting armour and gripping compact weapons. Technicians, scientists and more soldiers emerged from the remaining two shuttles. There was a gasp of collective awe from the mass of Dendratha who, as one, threw themselves face down in the dust and began praying loudly. Beklide’s translator pendant picked up snatches of the prayers being directed towards her and her party. There was no doubt that these poor, backward people considered the Arkari to be divine, but they were also afraid of them. Beklide had little time for the backward superstitions of less advanced cultures, but in the case of the Dendratha’s fear of the Arkari, their fear was completely rational. The coming of the Arkari to this world had heralded nothing but bad news for these people across the ages, whether they had come as their saviours or their potential destroyers. Their very appearance had become embedded in Dendratha culture as the Angels of Maran, the harbingers of divine retribution. Beklide stood for a moment, the desert winds whipping her long robes, and looked out across the sea of people. She could smell their fear.

One figure had not abased itself before the Arkari. A robed Dendratha, clutching an ornamental staff, emerged from the ancient doors of the cathedral and picked its way through the prostrate crowd, coming to a halt before Beklide where it stuck its staff firmly in the ground and stared at her defiantly with small black eyes set into a long, olive green face.

‘I am High Priest Allaniko,’ said the Dendratha in English. Beklide’s translator pendant picked up the human language and translated it into Arkari, though she understood it well enough unaided. ‘Just what do you think you are doing by coming here?’ Allaniko added. ‘Don’t worry. The others can’t understand a word I’m saying. You’d better come inside before this gets out of hand.’

The spacious, vaulted interior of the cathedral was cool, dark and quiet, contrasting sharply with the scene outside. Allaniko led the way, his S shaped body undulating across the tiled floor towards a group of other robed Dendratha clustered around the central dais. Having reached the others of his kind, he turned to face the Arkari once more, fixing them with an angry glare.

‘Now, explain yourselves!’ he barked.

Beklide was a little taken aback. She was surprised that the priest did not seem to be taken in by the religious fervour evident outside.

‘What? You’re surprised by my lack of respect?’ said Allaniko, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I may be a leader of our faith, but I’m not blind to the truth about much of our religion. I know what you are. You’re not servants of God, that’s for certain. We’re not all as ignorant as you offworlders like to think. I was a priest in Erais and Bridgetown before I took up my duties here, so I have had many dealings with humans and other species over the years, hence I have learnt some of the their languages and I like to think I know something of what goes on out there beyond our little world. None of it sounded good. Why can’t you just leave us in peace?’

Beklide sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

‘High Priest Allaniko, my name is Fleet Meritarch Lorali Beklide. We mean no harm to you or your people. We have come here because we wish to investigate the machines that lie at the heart of this world. Many billions of lives out there in the wider galaxy may depend upon our success.’

‘I see. That last time anyone descended into the catacombs beneath this cathedral and tampered with the devices at the heart of our planet the result was that fire and death were rained down upon our people. First, the K’Soth: they came here and they burned everything! Thousands of our people lay dead in the streets and then those monsters came to this cathedral and slaughtered everyone! You can still see the marks on the ancient doors of this holy building where those fiends nailed my predecessor to them, you can still see the bloody stains on the floor where the others were tortured and devoured by those animals! Then afterwards, the meddling of the humans caused the gates within our world to finally open and unspeakable horrors were unleashed from the depths of hell. Your solution, I understand, was to attempt to destroy everything in this system by detonating the very suns that give us life! If Maran had not saved us, you and I would not be having this conversation for I would be a charred cinder in the dust of a murdered world!’

‘I realise that what happened to your people was an unspeakable crime,’ said Beklide. ‘One in which I personally played a part. The beings that came out of the portal were once Arkari, banished by our race many thousands of years ago. It was I who gave the order to destroy this system. I knew what they were capable of, that if allowed to escape they would have wreaked untold havoc across hundreds of systems. I am sorry. It was a calculated move. Sacrifice one world to save many. I am very glad that my ships did not need to carry out those orders.’

‘And yet you have the temerity to come here?’

‘Yes. The events that happened here were engineered by another, more ancient and more powerful race. They are known as the Shapers and they seek to dominate all sentient life in this galaxy. A war is raging at this very moment between the free civilisations out there among the stars and this source of ancient evil. Trillions of lives, thousands, if not millions of worlds are at stake in this part of the galaxy alone, but the secrets held below us in the bowels of this planet may be the salvation of all.’

Allaniko considered her words for a moment, his brow furrowed in concentration and he appeared to sag against the support of his staff.

‘Ekrino,’ he said finally. ‘They never let us take his body for burial. There were rumours that one of you killed him, but others said differently. There were rumours that he had become little more than a walking corpse, a puppet of strange and unknowable things…’

Beklide remembered the name. She remembered Mentith’s account of how he had shot the old priest through the head and found that the interior of his shattered skull was alive with the wriggling horror that was a Shaper agent.

‘Yes,’ said Beklide. ‘It’s all true. The Shapers used him. They knew that if the secrets of this world were uncovered it would be the trigger for war between the humans and the K’Soth and that the portal would unleash our banished kin if activated. It was they who brought death and destruction here, just as they are bringing it now to thousands of other planets. They will come here again, Allaniko. They will come here again and if they do, no-one will be able to stop them. You must grant us access to the portal.’

‘And if I refuse to allow your trespassing on our world?’

‘Then you will not stand in our way. But I would prefer to do this amicably, with your permission. I promise you, that we come to look and to study only. We do not seek to reactivate the machines, nor do we seek to damage or remove them.’

‘What choice do I have?’ said Allaniko bitterly, his headgills wilting in submission. ‘I am powerless to resist. We are but simple people. We do not have your great warships, your glittering technology and your power over the fate of the very stars themselves. All we want is to live out our lives in peace. Do what you must, I will try and explain this to my flock as best I can, but after you are finished, please leave and do not return.’

‘You have my word,’ said Beklide. ‘Thank you.’

Defeated, Allaniko made his way outside to face the crowd of worshippers. Standing on the cathedral steps he told them that they should not be afraid, that they should return to their homes in peace and that the Angels of Maran would depart soon to continue their duties for their Lord in the heavens. He thanked them for their prayers and for their faith.

As the crowd began to slowly disperse, Allaniko looked upwards towards the distant shapes high above the atmosphere of his world and saw movement. He considered the morality of having just lied to his flock, of having preserved the lie that the Arkari were divine beings sent by their god when he knew that, long lived and technologically advanced though they were, the Arkari were just as mortal and imperfect as the Dendratha.

There were streaks of fire in the upper atmosphere now. The Arkari were arriving in greater numbers, here to probe and pry and trample over his people’s most holy site. He had given them access, he had been powerless to do otherwise, but he would make sure that they would respect its ancient relics. Angrily he turned and made his way back inside the cathedral to find the one who had called herself Beklide.

A handful of fat bellied transports touched down moments later in the cathedral grounds. As the Arkari technicians and scientists from the shuttles prepared to unload their equipment, some of the predatory looking drones that had accompanied them inside the transports took up guard positions around the landing site, whilst others scuttled inside the cathedral to meet their mistress.

Allaniko watched the two metre tall creatures in horror as they stalked towards the centre of the cathedral on jointed legs, their clattering footsteps oddly quiet despite their size and weight. Sensors and manipulator arms packed the forward section of their torsos, forming a blunt head of sorts. It seemed to Allaniko as if the mechanoids were scrutinising him – analysing him as one would analyse a specimen in a laboratory. He tried to remain composed in the face of their soulless gazes.

‘I must insist,’ he began, addressing Beklide. ‘I must insist that you respect the sanctity of this place. The relics here are of incalculable value, the remains buried in the undercroft are very ancient and of great religious significance to our people. Please, instruct these mechanical servants of yours to exercise the utmost care!’

‘I shall,’ Beklide replied. ‘Perhaps, your Grace, if you would care to lead the way?’

Later, at the centre of the world, Beklide stood and marvelled at the continent sized machines of the Progenitors, now rendered dead and silent, the chamber completely dark save for the illumination that the Arkari had set up in order to work and whose glow was lost inside the vast cylindrical space. It had taken the Arkari some time to descend to the centre of the world. Under Allaniko’s guidance they had entered the burial chamber in the cathedral’s undercroft that contained the entrance to what the Dendratha referred to as the Cave of Maran, in reality the entrance to the portal’s control centre. Allaniko had remained on the surface, restrained by his religious respect and perhaps the fear of what he might find down below and what that would mean for his faith. He remained in the burial chamber of the priests, standing guard over the remains of the long dead Dendratha, making sure that the Arkari and their mechanoids did not disturb their ancient corpses.

The tunnel to the control centre had once contained the bodies of long dead Arkari and the remains of the mechanoids that their Banished cousins had become. These had been removed for study two years previously by Mentith’s people. The control room itself and the AI systems it contained had also been examined, but had been found to be damaged beyond repair by the actions of the Progenitor AI that had variously called itself Quickchild or Varish, the crystalline matrices fused into a molten mass. Fortunately, the lift down to the core of the planet was still in operation. A relatively dumb system with a separate power source, it had escaped Varish’s destruction and took the Arkari smoothly down to the centre of the planet, returning time after time to transport more personnel and drones down to the great machines. The drones now explored the enormous, world piercing chamber that contained the ancient wormhole device, settling variously on one titanic piece of machinery or another. Beklide could see their lights moving in the darkness. The leader of the science team came and stood beside her and looked up too into the shadows.

‘I don’t suppose, Jardith, that there’s any chance of getting this thing working again, is there?’ said Beklide. ‘I know what I told High Priest Allaniko, but…’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Jardith. ‘Mentith’s people provided us with a report showing that not only are the control mechanisms completely fused into un-repairable lumps of minerals, but that the power supply mechanisms have also been destroyed in a similar manner.’

‘That Progenitor AI certainly knew what it was doing when it sabotaged the device. It intended that no-one should ever be able to use it again.’

‘Yes indeed, and with good reason considering the circumstances at the time.’

‘But it doesn’t prevent us from building our own, does it?’ said Beklide.

‘No, it does not,’ said Jardith. ‘Preliminary studies of the portal’s workings were done by Special Operations Command. It’s given us enough to go on to properly direct the next stage of our research.’

‘Keep me informed of all developments,’ said Beklide. ‘We have much to learn and time is not on our side.’

Chapter 23

Haines couldn’t tell how long they’d kept him down here in this barren, concrete cell. The normal cycles of day and night had ceased to have any meaning as soon as they’d brought him here and they’d been trying to confuse his body’s internal rhythms ever since by leaving the lights on or off for days at a time, by waking him up as soon as they saw him drifting off to sleep or by acting as though night was day, day was night, morning was evening and so on. He guessed that he’d been here perhaps a week or more, but really he couldn’t tell any more. He been trained to resist this kind of torture, but the sleep deprivation was taking its toll. He’d been trying to work on a way of falling asleep without making it too obvious to anyone looking through the cell’s cameras, propping himself up against the walls so that he didn’t slump over. In this way, he been able to get brief snatches of shuteye, but he got the impression that they were on to him.

What he couldn’t figure out, was why they were doing this to him. They hadn’t asked him any questions and besides, they could learn anything that they wanted about him if they just implanted him with one of those things, destroying his mind in the process. He was still alive, that was the important thing.

The worst part, was that for a second time the Shapers had got the better of him. He had trusted Dawson, come to rely on him. All the time Dawson had been using him. He wondered when the Shapers had taken him. Was it after he had crashed on the moon, or had he been harbouring one of their agents for years? How many others among the group were likewise infected? Certainly not all of them were. Haines had seen them die, torn apart by cybernetically augmented monsters that had exploded out of the undergrowth, some of which had once belonged to species that even Haines in his considerable experience had never encountered before. He had shot Dawson through the face and had tried to run, only to be leapt upon and pinned to the floor by a creature resembling a four legged spider the size of a lion whose skull and abdomen sprouted strange, crystalline growths. The last thing that he had seen before its venom rendered him unconscious was the figure of Dawson standing over him and laughing through his ruined, bloody face. He had woken up here in this cell, been beaten until he had fallen unconscious once more by men who had called him a murderer and a butcher and then they had largely left him alone as far as direct, physical torture was concerned.

He didn’t fancy his chances of escaping. For a start, he was chained to the floor like an animal by his wrists and ankles and secondly he had no idea where he was or how long he had been out cold. Was he underground, on the surface? Was he even on the same planet anymore? Perhaps he was on board a ship or a space habitat? The latter two seemed less likely as he could detect no engine vibration through the floor and the gravity felt the same as before, but he couldn’t rule it out. In any case, they weren’t likely to give him a chance to escape. If they entered the cell at all, usually to feed him or to wake him again, men came in groups of four. Two remained outside with guns pointed directly at him, whilst two entered the cell. However, he was still alive. Somebody wanted him alive for a reason or else they’d have killed him as soon as they got their hands on him. It gave him a measure of hope, but on the other hand, he wondered what the hell they had in store for him.

As he lay there in the darkness, the door suddenly banged open. Squinting from the glare from the brightly lit corridor outside, Haines saw a broadly built figure outlined in shadow. As the figure entered the cell, the lights came on and Haines saw that it was Admiral Morgan, with a handful of planetary defence force troopers. One of the soldiers brought a metal chair in for the Admiral and he sat. Haines looked up from his sitting position on the floor and sneered dismissively. Morgan instructed the soldiers to wait outside.

‘Come to gloat, have you?’ said Haines. ‘Come to revel in your victory? You fucking traitor. I wouldn’t waste my piss on you if you were on fire.’

‘That’s enough, Admiral Haines!’ snapped Morgan.

‘What, you’re going to try and pull rank on me now, Jeff?’ Haines replied. ‘I don’t take orders from you anymore. You gave away that right when sided with those alien motherfuckers and helped them in their mission to enslave the human race!’

‘I said that’s enough!’ Morgan shouted. ‘Like it or not. I’m the only hope you have right now of staying alive if you play your cards right. If it wasn’t for me, they would have killed you by now, or worse.’

‘Gonna make me an offer and I can’t refuse, are you? That’s an old one.’

‘Yes I am and I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to what I have to say. Listen, Admiral. George, I’m not the enemy, okay? I’m not. I want to help you.’

‘You are? You‘ve got a funny way of demonstrating that, you know? There I was being chased, captured, beaten and deprived of sleep after having my ship shot out from under me by your new alien friends, oh not mention all the men and women under my command that you killed. I should have guessed, you had my best interests at heart.’

‘George, it may be difficult for you to understand at first, but what I did, I did out of my loyalty to humanity. The Shapers are all powerful, their technology is without peer, their fleets and armies number in the billions. If humanity is to survive, we must ally ourselves with them, not resist them! Don’t you see?’

‘I do see, I see that you’d rather live on your knees than die on your feet, you fucking coward!’ snarled Haines. ‘So how much popular support do you have for your choice of allies? What do the people of this system think? Do they welcome their new overlords with open arms? Are they queuing up to have their brains devoured?’

‘There will be no more mass enslavement. I have been given guarantees on that,’ Morgan replied, although Haines thought that he sounded a little unsure of himself. ‘Only… only those that are deemed a risk will be taken.’

Haines snorted with derision. ‘Well that covers just about everyone, doesn’t it?’

Morgan seemed to ignore the comment and continued.

‘The people… the people have not been told the whole truth yet, though it is becoming harder and harder to hide it from them. Many of them support our cause: a new start free from the corruption and nepotism of the Commonwealth, where the ordinary citizens’ voices are not drowned out by the clamour of big business. Once I explain to them about our new allies, and their motives, they will understand, I’m sure.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, weren’t you telling them that it was us who were under the influence of the Shapers?’

‘People can be re-educated, in time. Many have short memories and as long as their lives go by undisturbed they will care little of what goes on elsewhere. Politicians have depended upon this for centuries.’

‘I think you gravely underestimate the man in the street,’ said Haines. ‘They aren’t cattle to be herded, and when they find out what you have done, you’ll swing from the nearest lamp post.’

‘I tell you George, they won’t. Trade with the other systems will resume in time, and things will begin to return to normal. No, the people will understand when they understand the true motives of the Shapers. Perhaps even other systems might rally to our cause.’

‘You’re so sure? Is that why you had those presumably-still-human troops of yours wait outside? And what are the Shapers’ motives, Admiral?’ said Haines. He had been judging the distance between himself and Morgan ever since the man had sat down in front of him. He was pretty sure that Morgan had seated himself much too close to him and the man who had placed the chair on the floor of the cell for him had misjudged the length of Haines’ chains. He let Morgan talk whilst he pondered this.

‘Why, to unite the galaxy, of course. No more war, no more interspecies strife and the gifts of limitless technology available to all. Under the Shapers, there will be everlasting peace.’

‘And everlasting enslavement!’ Haines spat back. ‘What peace they offer will be a peace born of oppression, of totalitarian control, of total obedience to them!’

‘Now, now that’s not entirely true. We will be free to run our own internal affairs…’ Morgan protested.

‘It’s a lie, you know that. I can see it in your eyes, you don’t believe it yourself!’

‘Well it’s the only hope that we have! You of all people should realise this!’

‘I’d rather go down fighting for what I believe in: preserving the freedom of humanity! You’ve become a man afraid of his own shadow. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve made a deal with the devil, haven’t you? Well, selling your soul comes with a few strings attached.’

Yes, Morgan was seated much too close to him for his own good. He was definitely within reach.

‘Please, George. The only reason that you’re still alive is that I pleaded for your life. Don’t disappoint me. If I could only persuade you to listen….’

‘Or what? You’ve won, Jeff. You’ve beaten me. Enjoy your victory before the lustre wears off.’

‘If you don’t agree to help us, you are to be tried as a war criminal for the massacre in orbit and destruction of Orinoco Station.’

‘What!?’ Haines snarled, lunging forward against his restraints he succeeded in clamping his manacled hands around Morgan’s throat. ‘You motherfucker! You lying, two faced sack of shit!’ Haines spat into his former commanding officer’s face. ‘I trusted you, for years! How dare you try to blame me for the crimes of your new found allies!’ Morgan gurgled, his eyes bulged. ‘I came to this system to save those people from the Shapers and from you!’ Haines pushed tighter against Morgan’s throat as the man tried desperately to push him away, but Morgan’s long years in a desk job had taken their toll, whereas Haines was still fighting fit, despite his age. Morgan tried to cry out to the soldiers that he had foolishly ordered to wait outside whilst he confided in Haines. It came out as little more than a gasp.

‘They can’t hear you,’ Haines hissed. ‘This is where you die, choking for air. Just like all those people you killed, just like my crew, my comrades.’

Morgan’s arms flailed as he feebly tried to punch Haines. His face had assumed an unusually livid colour.

‘Not a very pleasant way to die is it?’ said Haines, as Morgan struggled beneath his grip. ‘Plenty of time to think about your impending fate, isn’t there? You fucking traitor…’

In desperation, Morgan threw his weight backwards, tipping the small chair over and causing both men to tumble to the rough, concrete floor with a loud crash. Haines attempted to throw himself forward and regain his purchase on Morgan’s throat, but this time he really had reached the limits of his restraints. Gasping for air, Morgan succeeded in dragging himself away as the door flew open and troops entered, having heard the noise from outside. They lifted Morgan to his feet as another figure entered the room with them.

‘I’m your only hope, you ungrateful bastard!’ cried Morgan as he was led away. ‘You might want to think about that when they have you in front of the firing squad!’

‘Then I’ll save a seat for you in hell!’ retorted Haines from his prone position on the floor. He looked up and saw that the new arrival was standing over him. Haines looked closer and saw the face of Admiral Charles Cox, and was immediately struck by the impression that something else was looking out from behind the man’s eyes, something that was cold and inhuman. A pale scar stood out against the dark brown skin of Cox’s face, bisecting his right eye socket and running down almost to the tip of his moustache.

‘Hello, Admiral Haines,’ said Admiral Cox. ‘I was looking forward to speaking with you again. It seems that you are almost as difficult to kill as my good self. Still, I suppose I do owe you. You were quite the opponent and one always appreciates a challenge. Those marines of yours had been running around in the forest for days and we had been unable to catch them… oh, you’re wondering when we took Dawson and made him one of ours? I’ll leave that for you to figure out, needless to say that the knowledge inside his head gave us both you and rest of your men. Doubtless there are other bands of survivors running around out there, but they will be found, I guarantee it. No-one is coming to rescue you, you can be sure of that.’

‘You always were an asshole, even when you were still human,’ Haines sneered. ‘You were an adequate commander, at best.’

‘Yes, Admiral Cox hated you, of that I am certain. He may be no more and this body of his is just a suitable vessel for me to inhabit, but when I devoured his mind I inherited his memories, his feelings and emotions. So I too hate you Admiral Haines. I hate you so very, very much,’ said Cox, his words descending into a hiss.

‘Oh, really?’ Haines replied, nonchalantly. ‘Well that is a shame.’

‘Yes,’ said Cox. ‘It is.’ With that he aimed a kick at Haines’s stomach, causing him to double over in pain. He aimed another kick at Haines’s good eye, the blow glancing off the orbit and sending Haines sprawling. Cox reached down and grabbed Haines by the throat with his right hand, lifted the old Admiral up and held him there.

‘You are such pathetic, imperfect creatures,’ said Cox. ‘We do not feel pain, or fear, or remorse, or pity. They serve no purpose but to hinder us. The fact that you do, that this imperfect body I inhabit does, is a source of endless fascination for me. When I was plunged into the vacuum by the destruction of my ship, the sensations I felt were unique and… exquisite, even though they caused almost unbearable agony. I would like to share with you a measure of some of that pain. I think you will find it an equally stimulating experience.’

He threw Haines against the wall then. Winded and bruised, Haines fell to the floor in a heap.

‘My kin will return soon in much greater force,’ said Cox. ‘Whether humanity survives at all will depend upon whether your race decides to co-operate, or whether we have to force your co-operation by shackling you with our minions.’

‘I’m surprised that you’re giving us the option,’ coughed Haines. ‘Why don’t you just go ahead and try to enslave us?’

‘I believe in this sort of situation it’s generally not the role of the prisoner to ask the questions.’ said Cox. ‘You will confess to the destruction of the orbital station, and although we could fake the footage, I would personally gain more satisfaction from the genuine article. Whether or not we use it will depend on your co-operation.’

‘Satisfaction? Doesn’t that constitute an emotion, a weakness? Not to mention your sado-masochism.’

‘You can speculate all you wish. But just remember, there’s just me and you in this room, Admiral Haines, and no-one is coming to save you.’

Chapter 24

From: FleetComSolar

To: Admiral Michelle Chen CO CNV Winston S. Churchill. Eyes only.

Auth: HYIOK98361L

Message:

CNV Churchill and group to proceed at best speed to system Matsu (4, -27.6, 2) and commence field test of modified Thea class cruisers CNV Appleton and CNV Dulles. Gunsphere Shadow in the Void of the Nahabe Theocracy to provide backup and fire support. Shaper presence observed within the system. Saturn class carrier CNV Constantine crippled and boarded whilst attempting defection to loyalist forces. Wreck located at (340’, 89’, 52.1AU, relative to Matsu A). Distress beacon activated following boarding action. Probability of crew survival: nil. Beacon likely to have been activated by enemy as a lure to our forces. CNV Churchill to act as if mounting a rescue mission in order to provoke Shaper response. Extreme caution advised. Contact with Shaper forces to be avoided at all costs. CNV Appleton and CNV Dulles to avoid falling into enemy hands at all costs. Crews to be considered expendable in extremis.

-Message Ends—

Chen massaged the bridge of her nose as she looked again at the orders she had been given several days previously. They were heading into the lions’ den, of that there was no doubt. The last sentence was particularly chilling. She was being ordered to fire on her own ships if necessary, to protect the Commonwealth’s sole advantage in this war. She had done so once before in order to protect her ship. The destruction of the Rameses still gave her the occasional sleepless night. She fervently hoped that she wouldn’t have to repeat the experience.

Matsu was a sparsely populated system located roughly half way between Achernar and the Solar System. A red dwarf binary, there were no habitable planets in the system, just a collection of rocky worlds that were either freezing cold or too small to hold an atmosphere. Two brown dwarfs, failed stars, orbited mid-system and formed the centre of what human presence existed here, their strong magnetic fields and high radiation output making it a dangerous, but productive location for energy generation and antimatter production. The facilities themselves were largely automated. The few thousand humans that lived here permanently did so in the heavily shielded subterranean colony of Xinbei on the second planet.

The Constantine had attempted to escape from the systems now held by the Shapers but had dropped out of her jump in Matsu, sending distress signals to Xinbei to the effect that battle damage sustained during her escape had resulted in engine failure. The Shapers caught up with the Constantine soon after. Though the carrier had put up a brave fight, she was critically damaged before the Shapers boarded her, killing or enslaving her crew. The humans on the Xinbei colony had looked on in horror, powerless to do anything to assist, and had transmitted what they had witnessed back to the Commonwealth before they too came under attack, only surviving by barricading themselves inside their underground colony and collapsing the tunnel to the surface. They had however continued to monitor activity in Matsu and had spotted a number of Shaper vessels moving within the system, shifting in and out of plain sight.

The Churchill and the two modified cruisers now sped towards this lonely outpost of humanity. The Shadow in the Void had raced on ahead. She would be emerging from her jump on the edge of the system whilst the Churchill would come to a halt further out beyond the heliopause, only continuing once the cloaked Nahabe vessel, having also modified its sensors to detect Shaper vessels, had determined that it was reasonably safe to do so.

There was a knock on the door of Chen’s quarters. It was McManus. She bade him enter.

‘Just thought I’d let you know, we’re half an hour away from our destination,’ said the XO. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

‘Not much,’ said Chen. ‘Too much to think about. You?’

‘Naw, I never can before a scrap, you know?’

‘Yes I do. Actually, it’s the need to avoid a fight that’s kept my brain whirring away. This won’t be easy. We have to hope that these sensor modifications the Nahabe came up with actually work, or we’ll be walking into a trap.’

‘Ach, who wants to live forever?’ McManus shrugged.

‘Well… Commander, you seem remarkably cheerful, given the circumstances.’

‘Well ma’am, it feels good to be back out here, at the sharp end of things, you know? I get restless if I don’t have space under me, if I can’t feel the deck moving. You and Admiral Cartwright have done me a huge favour, and you know what? I’m glad we’re leading the fight-back against those Shaper bastards.’

‘Yes it does, doesn’t it?’ Chen agreed, a steely glint in her eye. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘That’s the spirit, ma’am. You have a fine ship here, a good crew. We’ll be back home in no time and then we can really take it to ‘em. Listen, all sections have checked in, the ship’s running at peak performance. We’re all ready, Admiral. Shall I wait for you up on the bridge?’

‘Yes, I’ll be along in a minute. Dismissed.’

‘Right you are,’ McManus replied, then saluted smartly and made his way out of her quarters.

Chen was growing to like her new XO immensely. He seemed to have boundless energy, not to mention his apparent optimism. He certainly knew how to lift the spirits of the crew - that much she’d witnessed since he came aboard. He was just what they - and she - needed after the heavy losses they had sustained during the battle for Earth. Cartwright had done her a real favour too, she realised. McManus was potentially worth a lot to her.

She changed into a fresh uniform and then made her way up to the bridge.

On the edge of the Matsu system, in the shadow of the icy outermost planet, Yushan, the Shadow in the Void slipped out of its jump and immediately disappeared from view again behind the light bending fields of its cloak. Positioning itself to that its sensors were able to see past the mass of the planet towards the centre of the system, its crew began to search for their elusive enemy. At first they saw nothing, save for a scattering of human vessels, then as they fined tuned their instruments, the patterns of the Shapers’ communication links began to appear as a fine tracery of signals stretched out across the system, each node in the web an individual ship, lurking beyond the reach of normal sensors.

One hundred AU further out, far beyond the system’s heliopause, the Churchill, the Appleton and the Dulles dropped out of their jump into interstellar darkness. The massive carrier dwarfed the two small cruisers, whose decks were blistered with sensor radomes rather than the armoured turrets and long barrels of offensive weapons.

Chen leaned forward in her command chair, as she squinted at the two dim red points of light ahead of her that marked the Matsu system. The twin stars and their attendant family of planets and other bodies were picked out in her vision by her HUD monocle, along with the position of the Constantine in an erratic orbit around Xinbei and the estimated position of the Shadow in the Void behind the outermost planet. A small number of human vessels could just be picked out at this range, clustered around one of the brown dwarfs in mid-system. Chen wondered at their presence, but the Churchill was too far out to see what they were doing.

‘I wonder what those ships are doing near the brown dwarf?’ said McManus, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Do they not know that there are sharks in these waters?’

‘It seems not,’ replied Chen, musing over the presence of the human vessels. ‘But then I suppose it depends who they belong to and what they’re doing here.’

‘There’s a lot of energy production facilities around those brown dwarfs,’ McManus offered.

‘True enough, and a lot of antimatter production especially.’

‘Well quite. I doubt the security measures and auto defences on those facilities would present much of an obstacle to the Shapers, if that’s who they belong to.’

The comm. came to life with the synthesised voice of the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters as the Nahabe made contact at last via an encrypted, tight-beam transmission.

‘Churchill, this is Shadow in the Void. I will keep this brief. Shapers detected around the brown dwarf, Nantou, five vessels in all. We are also detecting a Shaper presence aboard the wreck of the Constantine, but no vessels within close proximity. You are cleared to jump to the second waypoint. Out.’ With that, the transmission ended.

‘Well, the Nahabe can see the Shapers, ma’am. Their sensors work at least, even if ours can’t see anything at this range. Do you think that the Shapers can see us?’ said McManus.

‘I’d put money on it,’ Chen replied. ‘We need to play this very carefully as we move in to test our own instruments. We can’t let the Shapers realise that we can see them, or else we blow our advantage. But we can’t rush blindly in there.’

‘So we need to look as though we’re blundering into a trap without actually blundering into a trap?’

‘Yes, exactly,’ Chen turned to Ensign Goldstein. ‘Helm, jump to the second set of coordinates.’ As the view outside was replaced with rushing darkness, Chen added. ‘Of course, if the Nahabes’ sensors aren’t showing us everything then we could still be blundering into a trap, intentionally or not.’

Moments later, the Churchill and the two cruisers emerged once more from hyperspace, one thousand kilometres to port of the Shadow in the Void. Like the Nahabe vessel, the human vessels emerged so that the mass of the planet Yushan would mask their position. Now that they were in close proximity to one another, sensor data began to flow from the gunsphere to the carrier.

‘Everything looks good so far,’ commented Lieutenant Commander Singh as he scrutinised his instruments, the screens coming alive with information. ‘We’re getting a good, steady feed and the Nahabes’ instruments are able to see right across the system. We’re getting clear readings from the gunsphere’s sensors up to around one hundred AU. Five Shaper destroyers confirmed and I can see the nest of activity that the Constantine has become. From these patterns it looks like one of the destroyers is acting as controller for whatever is aboard the Constantine. It’s like watching someone pull the strings of a puppet. I’d say we’d be able to easily distinguish ships that have or haven’t been taken over yet with this technology. It’s as clear as day whether there is a Shaper presence aboard or not.’

‘Admiral, we’re being hailed,’ reported Ensign Andrews. ‘It’s the Captain of the Constantine. Should I put him through?’

‘Shite, they have seen us!’ hissed McManus. ‘What do you plan to do, ma’am? Humour him… it?’

‘For now, yes,’ Chen replied. ‘Ensign, put him through.’

A middle aged man’s face, lined with lack of sleep and rough with several days growth of beard appeared in Chen’s HUD.

‘Churchill, this is Admiral Doyle of the loyal Commonwealth vessel Constantine. Thank god you’ve arrived. I thought we’d die out here. Requesting immediate evac. Shapers took down our power plant and left us for dead. We’ve been surviving on emergency batteries for days just to keep us warm and breathing. I have around six hundred surviving crew, about two hundred of which are in need of medical attention.’

‘This is Admiral Chen of the Churchill receiving, we were dispatched to this system to undertake search and rescue,’ Chen replied. ‘You say the Shapers disabled you and left? Can you confirm whether or not they are still within the system? With all due respect, I will not risk a suicide mission.’

‘Impossible to say,’ said Doyle. ‘As soon as they re-enter hyperspace you can’t see them and without main power our sensors are useless.’

‘What about on board your ship, did they try to board you?’

‘That’s a negative,’ Doyle replied. ‘They just left us for dead. The ship’s so badly damaged that I guess they thought that it was useless to them.’

‘Okay. We’ll start putting together a rescue mission, Admiral Doyle, but we’re going to have to tread carefully here. You and your crew hang tight whilst we recon the system.’

‘Will do, Churchill. Doyle out.’ The image of the Constantine’s commanding officer disappeared from Chen’s field of view.

‘Well he’s lying through his teeth and no mistake,’ said McManus. ‘He’s one of them.’

‘He certainly is,’ said Chen. ‘I had entertained the notion that perhaps someone might be alive on board, barricaded away from the rest of the ship, but I’m willing to bet that everything he said was untrue from the start. We know that that ship has been taken over from our sensor readings. Her crew may still be alive, but they aren’t human anymore, that much we know. The Shapers will be watching our next move carefully to see how we react.’

‘So what do you have in mind, Admiral?’

‘We need to maintain the pretence that we’ve swallowed his lies. Ensign Andrews, put me through to the Appleton and the Dulles.’

The two captains appeared within Chen’s HUD after a few seconds.

‘Captain Hardaker, Captain Trent. As you are probably aware, we have been contacted by the Constantine. Sensor readings from the Shadow in the Void and the lies of her commanding officer have convinced me that the vessel is now in Shaper hands. We need to maintain our cover that this is a rescue op. To that end, you are to scan this system with your vessel’s active sensors on maximum power. This will give a clear signal to the Shapers that we appear to be looking for them, an effort which will of course fail. Simultaneously, you are to begin tests of the newly modified hyperspace sensors. Since these are a passive system, their use ought to be undetectable to the Shapers. We will then compare our results to those obtained from the Shadow in the Void to determine the effectiveness of our equipment.’

‘Aye aye, Admiral, we’ll begin at once,’ said Trent.

As Chen watched, the two recon cruisers began to move out of the shadow of Yushan. The two ships moved apart until the cruisers and the carrier formed the points of an equilateral triangle a thousand kilometres to a side. It was standard operation procedure. The greater baseline increased the effectiveness of the ships’ sensors when working in tandem. Once in position, the vessels began to sweep the system with their active sensors. Predictably, they found nothing save for the other human vessels in the system, but the radiation and hyperspatial waves emitted by the two ships shone out like a pair of beacons. To any casual observer, it would appear as though they were searching in vain for the elusive Shaper ships. Then, after a few moments, they activated their newly modified hyperspatial sensors. Chen looked over at Lieutenant Commander Singh as the results came in, and saw him frown as he compared the readings from the human ships to those being provided by the Nahabe.

‘Something the matter, Mr Singh?’ said McManus.

‘Yes, unfortunately,’ said Singh. ‘We’re getting a weak signal from the Shaper vessels around Nantou, but they’re indistinct. I can’t read the Shapers aboard the Constantine at all. The technology works, but only just. Using our sensors I can tell that there are Shapers in this system, but I wouldn’t want to rely on this equipment to pinpoint their position.’

‘That’s just not good enough,’ said Chen, frowning. ‘Andrews, put me through to the cruisers again.’ Trent and Hardaker appeared in her field of vision once more. ‘Captains, we’re seeing the results. They’re a little disappointing, to say the least.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ replied Hardaker. ‘Our technicians are working to clean up the returns, but it seems that our equipment just isn’t sensitive enough to work over the same ranges that the Nahabe are able to achieve with their more advanced systems.’

‘Very well. Get it done. Chen out.’ She sat back in her chair and sighed. ‘Put me through to the Shadow in the Void.’

The Lord Protector appeared after a few seconds. Chen noted that once again the creature was dressed in its full suit of combat armour. Its angular, tank-like form filled her vision.

‘You seem to be having some problems, Admiral,’ said the Nahabe. ‘These initial tests have proved a little disappointing.’

‘Yes, they have.’

‘Would you like my engineers to speak to their counterparts aboard the cruisers?’

‘That would be very helpful, yes,’ Chen replied.

‘At once,’ said the Lord Protector.

‘We can’t achieve the same level of detection range as yourselves,’ said Chen. ‘It may be that our equipment simply can’t function over such a distance. We may need to head deeper into the system to verify that these new sensors are of any use at all.’

‘Are you sure that this is wise?’ said the Lord Protector.

‘We need to establish the effective range over which we can reliably detect Shaper vessels, plus, if we want to maintain our cover that this is a search and rescue mission, it’s what we would logically do next. Furthermore, I’d like to get a look at what the Shapers are doing around the brown dwarf, Nantou.’

‘That is not within our mission parameters,’ warned the Lord Protector.

‘All the same, it wouldn’t hurt to get a look at what they’re doing over there if we get the chance and I believe I have command authority. I intend to jump to a point fifteen AU equidistant from Xinbei and Nantou within the system’s asteroid belt. It would look like we’re cautiously closing in on the Constantine using the belt to mask our exact position, but it should allow us to also test the cruisers’ sensors at shorter ranges. You will of course accompany us as fire support and we can use your fully working and more powerful sensors to avoid any nasty surprises.’

‘Very well,’ said the Lord Protector, although Chen got the distinct impression that the creature remained to be convinced of her plan.

A few minutes passed before the cruisers signalled to the Churchill that, with the assistance of the Nahabe technicians aboard the Shadow in the Void, they had made adjustments to their modified hyperspace sensors to increase their resolution and sensitivity. However, it seemed unlikely that they would ever achieve the same sort of results as the Nahabes’ own instruments. With the work complete, the four warships jumped in formation to the coordinates provided by the Churchill’s helmsman, Ensign Goldstein. They emerged within the depths of the vast asteroid field that lay between the orbits of Nantou and the fourth planet, Yilan. The belt was the remains of another planetary body that failed to form, the rocks stirred from ever coalescing by the vast gravitation reach of the two gas giants. The Shadow in the Void’s sensors had revealed no Shaper craft present within the field before they had commenced their jump and a second search of the area once they emerged from hyperspace again confirmed this. In addition, the Shaper craft around Nantou had so far failed to move beyond the reach of the brown dwarf and its complex system of moons.

Once more, the two Thea class cruisers activated their modified sensor arrays and began to sweep the system. Singh scrutinised the results as they came in.

‘This is looking a lot better, Admiral,’ said Singh, rubbing his bearded chin. ‘The Shaper vessels around Nantou are clearly visible. The Constantine too shows up clearly as being occupied by Shapers. We can clearly resolve the lines of communication passing between the various vessels.’

‘Excellent,’ said Chen, nodding.

‘So it was a question of range after all,’ McManus commented. ‘How far do you think we can see, Mr Singh?’

‘Twenty five AU seems to be the maximum,’ Singh replied. ‘I can see the Shapers’ comm. signals heading out of the system and they fade out around this point. It may be possible to extend this, I suppose, with larger and more sensitive arrays, possibly with more ships working together. There’s something else though… there’s a fleeting return from the asteroids. I can’t pin it down… oddly it only appears on the readings from the cruisers, not from the Shadow in the Void. It could be a false return from the asteroids - many of them are of high metallicity. I’m working to clean it up.’

‘Do so Mr Singh, we don’t want any sudden surprises. Can you take a look at those ships around Nantou and tell me what they’re doing there?’

‘The majority of the vessels are standard bulk transports of varying types, mainly of human construction. The Shaper vessels seem to be forming an escort, but it looks like the transports are all loaded with magnetic containment crates. We’re too far away to scan within them, but I’d say that the Shapers have just raided the AM collection arrays around Nantou. They’re forming up into a convoy. Looks like they’re preparing to leave the system.’

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed McManus. ‘Do you think the bastards are building a bomb?’

‘It’s very possible,’ said Chen, darkly. ‘After all, it would be the perfect revenge for what I did to them. Maybe they think that wiping out a few population centres will cow us into surrendering.’

‘And there’s nothing that we can do to stop them,’ McManus commented. ‘If only we had more ships to take them on.’

‘Yes, but we can watch where they go. Mr Singh, keep an eye on those ships for me. When they jump, I want you to extrapolate their destination. Admiral Cartwright needs to know about this.’

It was at this moment that Ensign Andrews interrupted.

‘Admiral, the Constantine is hailing us again. It’s Admiral Doyle.’

‘Put him through Ensign,’ Chen replied. ‘Let’s see what lies he has for us now.’

Doyle’s face appeared before her once more. He still wore that hunted look. Chen knew that it was all an act.

‘Admiral Chen, this is Doyle. What are you doing hanging around for so long. For God’s sake, woman! Can’t you just come and get us?’ he said, a pleading, desperate look in his eyes.

‘My apologies, Admiral. I was erring on the side of caution. I have no wish to needlessly endanger the lives of the crews under my command.’

‘I can appreciate that, Admiral Chen. But you really should come as quickly as possible. You really should join us…’

The last sentence she heard whispered inside her skull at the same time as Doyle mouthed the words. It was a sibilant scratching at the back of her mind. She knew the voice alright. Doyle started to smirk. He suppressed a giggle. Chen felt the horror rising within her even as Singh called out to her.

‘Contact! Bearing forty five by ten, distance: five million kilometres and closing. Still within hyperspace, it’ll be here in seconds! Ship type doesn’t appear to match any in our database. It’s much smaller, but it’s Shaper alright.’

Chen felt the adrenaline rush of combat spur her into action.

‘All ships, this is Chen. Jump immediately to the fall back waypoints. Bring all weapons to bear on inbound vessels but do not linger to engage! Defensive tactics only until you can make the jump.’

‘Churchill, this is Shadow in the Void,’ the voice of the Lord Protector boomed over the comm. We will engage the enemy and cover your withdrawal. Death to the world killers!’

The Nahabe were disregarding her orders! The Shadow in the Void began powering her weapons and moving off to meet the inbound ship, de-cloaking to present a more obvious target. Singh had more bad news for her.

‘Admiral, I’m seeing more contacts emerging within the asteroid field, seven craft now bearing down on our position. The ships around Nantou are moving. Three are staying with the human transports which are now powering their jump drives and moving out of the brown dwarf’s gravity well, the rest are coming this way.’

The first of the inbound Shaper craft had emerged from hyperspace now. Chen zoomed in the display on her HUD and saw a sleek, needle nosed shape moving with tremendous speed towards them. It was much smaller than the Shaper vessels that they had encountered so far, far smaller than even the two Thea class cruisers currently under Chen’s command, and it to be appeared to be highly manoeuvrable. Chen saw the Nahabe ship open fire with its main guns at the darting shape as her own vessels began to turn away and power their jump drives. The Shaper craft deftly dodged the arcing beams of energy that spat from the massive, segmented hull of the gunsphere. It wasn’t returning fire. It was simply heading straight towards the Nahabe warship. It was then that Chen had a horrible realisation.

‘It’s not a ship,’ she cried. ‘It’s a missile!’

There was a blinding explosion.

As the Churchill turned away, Chen caught a glimpse of the Shadow in the Void. A vast chunk had been blown out of the ship’s spherical hull, like an impact crater gouged out of a planetoid. A huge shell of debris and unleashed energies was fountaining out of that terrible wound. But the Nahabe ship still fought on.

Other missiles were now emerging from hyperspace on all sides. Some headed straight for the fleeing vessels, whilst three others appeared to have halted some distance away, out of range of the guns of the Commonwealth ships. Through the ship’s external cameras, they could be seen opening like pale flowers. Goldstein raised the alarm.

‘Admiral, we can’t jump! Those things: they’re projecting jump drive inhibitor fields.’

‘Not again!’ spat Chen and swore under her breath. ‘All ships, engines to full. We need to move clear if we’re to jump.’

There was another searing blast from outside: the Shadow in the Void had succeeded in shooting down one of the missiles as it streaked in, but three more were on their way. Chen tried not to think about what would happen if one of those things hit the Churchill.

‘Shaper destroyers inbound!’ said Singh, alarm creeping into his voice. ‘We have only minutes to get clear. Admiral, the drive inhibitor fields projected by those Shaper devices intersect, but I think if we destroy two of them we should be able to jump clear.’

‘Even one would help…’ replied Chen, pulling up a display of the data from the ship’s sensors. The Shaper devices had arranged themselves in a triangular formation about her ships. Red shaded spheres denoted the limits of the effect of their fields. One lay almost directly in their path. It was out of range of the Churchill’s particle beam turrets, and there was no time to launch fighters and bombers to deal with the devices. Fortunately, that was not Chen’s only option.

‘Gunnery, prepare to fire the spatial distortion cannon,’ Chen ordered. ‘Helm, line us up with that Shaper device ahead of us and keep her steady for a long ranged shot.’

Goldstein, intent on her controls, simply nodded quickly. Chen, meanwhile, kept an eye on the sensor data being fed to her: those destroyers were rapidly closing the distance to her ships. They didn’t have a lot of time. The Churchill’s movements seemed to be agonisingly slow.

‘The ship is now lined up with the target, Admiral,’ Goldstein reported. ‘Holding her steady…’

‘Fire!’ Chen ordered.

There was a shudder through the deck. A brief ripple distorted the stars beyond the ship’s bow and the distant glimmer of light reflecting from the shattered crystalline parts of the Shaper device.

‘Target killed!’ reported Singh. ‘No time for celebration, Admiral: two Shaper missiles emerging from hyperspace below and to aft. One is headed for the Dulles, the other is heading straight for us. Shadow in the Void is attempting to engage. She has closed the distance between us to twenty kilometres aft. I’d say that she’s trying to cover us with her weapon batteries.’

Chen noticed that the remaining two Shaper drive inhibitors had changed position. They were now to either side of the Churchill, overlapping their fields and keeping pace with the ships to prevent them from leaving.

‘We’re sitting ducks until we take down those things,’ said McManus grimly. ‘We need to engage them and at least let the cruisers depart.’

‘Brace for impact, missiles aft!’ cried Singh.

From the external cameras, Chen saw the flash of bright darting shapes for a split second, highlighted by targeting icons. She saw the gunsphere’s weapons track the inbound missiles with their intersecting beams. There was a brilliant flash as one of the warheads detonated prematurely, touched off by a grazing wound from the gunsphere’s weapons. It was the one that had been heading straight for the Churchill. The Dulles was not so fortunate. The second speeding missile, almost as long as the cruiser itself, impacted the underside of the vessel’s superstructure, instantly engulfing the vessel in a massive explosion that ripped it apart from bow to stern. The blast would have been sufficient to cripple the Churchill, but of the cruiser, there was nothing left except a shell of expanding debris and energy. The Appleton still powered ahead, unscathed, though her crew were severely shaken by the sudden death of their sister ship and comrades.

‘Jesus H. Christ…’ muttered McManus.

‘Churchill, this is the Shadow in the Void,’ said the voice of the Lord Protector over the comm. ‘I do not think we will last long against this barrage. We have sustained moderate damage, the vessel’s ablative armour took the worst of it, but the Shapers will send more missiles, and their vessels will be here soon, and then we will all die.’

‘We need to split up,’ said Chen. ‘Attack the inhibitor device to port, whilst we go after the one to starboard.’

‘It will leave you dangerously exposed. The devices are still out of range and we must close the distance. More missiles are inbound as we speak. Many more of those things have awoken within the asteroid belt. We will not be able to cover you.’

‘It’s our only chance,’ said Chen. ‘Do it, before they send more of those devices to pin us here!’

‘Very well, Admiral,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘Moving to engage target. Out.’

‘Helm’ said Chen. ‘Bring us about to engage the device to starboard. It’ll try to retreat, but it can’t leave the range of our main gun without allowing us to escape.’

As the ship swung around, she could hear McManus talking to Captain Trent aboard the Appleton. Trent was becoming frantic, having spotted six more missiles inbound to their position, each of which was capable of destroying the Appleton with a single hit. The cruiser was still heading on its original course, now at a tangent to the Churchill’s own. Her engines were at full, emitting a bright spear of plasma from the rear of the vessel. If the Shaper devices pulled back to avoid annihilation and keep the Churchill and the Nahabe gunsphere from escaping, it might give the Appleton the chance to escape.

Unable to manoeuvre quickly whilst deployed, the drive inhibitor device ahead of the Churchill, having learnt that the carrier was quite capable of engaging it at unusually long ranges, was nevertheless on the move. As the carrier approached, the device began to move in a lazy arc as the massive vessel tried in vain to track it and bring its main gun to bear. Chen watched the stars slowly wheel beyond the bridge windows. She realised the futility of what they were trying to do. The fixed main armament of carriers was intended for taking down larger, more ponderous targets, not picking off smaller vessels at long range. That was the job of fighters and bombers, and they had not time to launch either. She should have launched some earlier and risked leaving a few behind. They were running out of time and the carrier was just too cumbersome to catch the Shaper device. Engineering reported that they were bypassing the safety limits to feed more energy from the reactors to the manoeuvring thrusters to increase the carrier’s rate of turn. The missiles were getting closer. They had spread out to attack from all angles. The Shaper destroyers powered through hyperspace towards her ships in a loose arrow shaped formation, like a pack of sharks.

‘The Nahabe have destroyed the other device! The gunsphere is coming about to assist us. Thirty seconds left until the second wave arrives!’ said Singh.

‘Admiral, the Appleton is requesting permission to jump. They are clear of the inhibitor field,’ reported Andrews.

‘Yes! Tell them to get out of here!’ replied McManus, urgently.

The Shaper device hovered tantalisingly in their sights, almost directly in front of the Churchill. The carrier’s Arkari spatial distortion cannon fired once more, and missed. Chen shifted uneasily in her seat. It would be some moments before the cannon recharged for another shot. She could feel those ships and missiles coming for them. She wanted nothing more than to flee. She could hear the Shapers whispering inside her head, mocking her.

‘Twenty seconds!’ reported Singh, panic creeping into his voice. ‘Admiral, the Nahabe gunsphere is closing rapidly on our position.’

‘Come on…’ growled McManus. ‘Hurry it up, you coffin wearing freaks…’

Still the carrier tried to catch the Shaper device, in a vain attempt to target it.

‘Ten seconds!’ cried Singh. ‘Shaper destroyer class vessels emerging from hyperspace, two hundred kilometres to starboard. They are powering weapons!’

Chen saw the iceberg forms of the Shaper ships as they began to swim into view in normal space. They were cold and terrible. Energy began to crackle along their bows. Then her zoomed in view through her HUD was suddenly eclipsed by the battered moonlet of the Shadow in the Void, its wounds still bleeding atmosphere and debris. Beams stabbed out from that enigmatic vessel, annihilating the elusive drive inhibitor device. Not a second too soon.

‘Missile warning, six warheads!’ Singh exclaimed.

‘Jump!’ yelled Chen.

The Churchill and the Shadow in the Void vanished into hyperspace. Their exit was marked a split second later by a searing explosion as six warheads detonated at the exact spot where the two warships had hung a moment ago.

Chen sat back in her chair, and suddenly realised that she was drenched in sweat. That had been far too close. McManus exhaled at length, as though he had been holding his breath.

‘I thought that was it,’ he said. ‘I take back what I said about the Nahabe. We’d all have been wearing coffins if it wasn’t for them hauling our arses out of the fire. Bloody brave, those chaps. I’d tell you to remind me to buy that Lord Protector a drink, except that they don’t indulge.’ He added darkly. ‘Assuming they made it, of course.’

‘Well done everyone,’ said Chen to the bridge in general. ‘You did me proud, as always. Commander, in my office. Mr Singh, you have the bridge.’

Chen sank heavily into her chair and, resting her elbows on the top of her desk, massaged tired eyes that had been staring almost unblinking at combat information the entire time that they had been in the Matsu system.

‘I fucked up. We should never have jumped into that asteroid belt. The crew of the Dulles paid the price for that. Stupid fucking rookie mistake,’ said Chen bitterly.

‘If we made a mistake, it was to trust the Nahabes’ readings too much,’ said McManus. ‘They showed that field as clear. Jumping in to hide your exact position in the sensor clutter of the rocks was a sound tactic based on the information that we had. You were trying to make this look like a cautious rescue mission, like you were trying to find somewhere to lurk and observe. Doing something like that is a standard tactic, based on standard sensor technology, until now.’

‘Yes, well maybe I shouldn’t resort to standard tactics in these situations, should I? We walked right into a trap. The Shapers must have been expecting someone to try to hide in the belt, so they seeded those rocks with automated missile systems that would home in on anything in range.’

‘Makes sense. Perhaps they were simpler non AI systems that didn’t need to be in constant contact with the Shaper hive-mind, hence why we didn’t pick them up until the last minute.’

‘Possibly. I’ll have Singh go over the sensor logs.’

At that moment the comm. chimed. It was Singh, calling them from the bridge.

‘Ah, speak of the devil,’ said McManus.

‘Admiral, this is Singh. I almost forgot. You wanted to know where those transports loaded with antimatter were headed?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did Mr Singh, go on.’

‘They jumped out during the battle, but our sensors managed to track the human vessels for quite some distance before we jumped also. I’ve extrapolated their course.’

‘And?’

‘Unless it’s a ruse, they’re headed straight for the Achernar system.’

Chapter 25

Katherine had completely lost all sense of time. They had spent what seemed like days in the bowels of the dead world, amid the catacombs of a race now almost vanished from the galaxy, but she had lost track of exactly how long. Down here there was no day or night, just the steady glow of artificial lighting and the shadows in the long forgotten chambers. The creature they had found alive ensconced in the strange machinery had turned out to be the only survivor. The other pods in the chamber, even those still found to be active, had held only the mute remains of the others who had resigned themselves to suspended animation in the hope that one day they would be rescued. They had done so only to consign themselves to death. No-one had answered their calls for help, for no-one else had come to this world until now, and the machinery had eventually failed them one by one throughout the millennia. Only the one entrusted to guide the heart of the machine that kept them alive and broadcast their plight from their underground refuge had survived. He was, it seemed, the last of his kind, and he had said no more since they had first found him, slipping back into a sleep from which he could not be roused. The Arkari scientists had spent the time since his discovery attempting to find a way to wake him or to treat the effects of his extreme age. So far they had met with little success. They had not dared remove him from the complex alien machinery as it appeared to be the only thing keeping him alive. As far as Katherine was concerned, she couldn’t get over just how similar the alien looked to humans. It was stockier, with a certain heaviness of the features and a possessed a head that was largely hairless and hands with too few fingers, but the general appearance was remarkably similar. The ghostly projection that had led them to him had not been seen since. Presumably the effort had proved too much and the creature had slipped into a coma-like state

Katherine, Rekkid, Steelscale and the other archaeologists had buried themselves in the thousands of documents being translated at great speed by the drones of the Shining Glory, or roamed the tunnels beneath the earth in search of further clues about their builders. So far, their efforts had enabled them to at least assemble a basic history of the people who had once inhabited the worlds in this star system.

The people who had once lived here had called themselves the Akkal. Roughly translated it meant “the one people”. They had originated from the other once habitable planet in the system, the one now reduced to blasted chunks of rubble, which they had named Kel a word which roughly translated as “Birth”. Many of the documents that they had uncovered spoke of the beauty of this vanished world: its ancient cities, its lush forests and bountiful seas. Evidently it had been something of a paradise planet. Although some of the accounts tended towards the sentimental, it was undoubtedly a verdant, fertile world and the cradle of the Akkal civilisation which had succeeded in creating a peacefully unified global state after centuries of internation strife.

Evidently, about twelve thousand years ago, the Akkal had ventured into space, having speculated for centuries about what they might find on the neighbouring blue-green planet, easily visible in their skies to the naked eye, that they had named Arul-Kar - the Sea Star. The first brave adventurers had found another world teeming with life, a little colder than their own tropical paradise, but otherwise perfectly suited to the Akkal. The Akkal speculated that perhaps one world’s life had seeded the other at some point in the distant past. Indeed, the genetic make-up of life forms on both worlds hinted at a possible common origin. Settlements soon sprang up across the face of Arul Kar and the Akkal made considerable progress in developing their spacecraft technologies to meet the growing demand for interplanetary travel and commerce and soon trips between the two worlds became routine. The resulting economic boom had led to a golden age for the Akkal people that had lasted for almost two millennia before catastrophe struck.

It was not clear exactly what happened. There were gaps in the records, which almost appeared intentional. What was clear was that the bi-planetary civilisation of the Akkal was torn apart along religious lines. There were various references to campaigns, battles, fleet actions and troop deployments and descriptions of the inhabitants of the planet Kel as unbelievers, pagans, heretics and worse. There were also accounts of mob violence, religious mania and the persecution of those who refused to acknowledge what was referred to as ‘The New Truth’ or ‘The Sacred Way’. There were even some references to the mass internment of unbelievers and executions of prisoners and deserters on masse, but details were sketchy and, it seemed, purposely destroyed or hidden. Similar crimes were however luridly reported when committed by those on the home-world who had stuck to the old beliefs. It seemed that both sides had been whipped into a murderous frenzy driven by religious zealotry, and both planets had been tipped into the abyss of total war. Democracy of any kind was abandoned by both sides, which had now become authoritarian regimes led by the military and the leaders of their respective religions. It was a war that had lasted for decades, without either side gaining the upper hand until the economies of both planets were utterly wrecked from war damage and the sheer effort of maintaining the conflict.

What had happened next that had destroyed both worlds in different ways was unknown. The records examined so far simply didn’t say. Presumably it had happened so suddenly that there had been no time to record it, though the construction of the very facility within which the archaeologists now found themselves indicated that something similar had at least been anticipated. Had these two worlds eventually destroyed one another, or had some outside agency of immense and terrible power wreaked havoc upon them in the midst of their strife, and if so, for what purpose?

Katherine flicked through the images on her datapad. The Shining Glory’s drones had been painstakingly scanning the thousands of books and other documents from the subterranean library, most of which were far too fragile to be touched by human or Arkari hands and were only handled by the delicate energy fields emitted by the mechanoids whilst they worked on the ancient tomes. The one that she was now looking at had contained a series of art prints. The colours had remained remarkably vivid, and as she flicked through she browsed through images of strangely alien, pastoral landscapes from once lush planets, renderings of cities long flattened by bombs or worse, and portrait after portrait of individuals ten millennia dead. It was all terribly sad. She was looking at snapshots from a civilisation that was now little more than dust, ruins and piles of bones amidst the rubble. She wondered darkly whether some alien race might chance upon human worlds in the distant future and find the same thing. Ten thousand years was a long time in civilisational terms, but nothing more than an eye-blink in the life of the universe. She couldn’t help but be distracted by how human many of the people in the pictures looked.

The next scanned volume in the list was one of religious art. Katherine flipped through images of pious worshippers, saints exhorting the faithful and holy warriors smiting the unbelievers, clad in fancifully ornate armour and carrying what looked like ridiculously oversized weaponry. After flipping past a few, she noticed something similar about each of the images. Each contained a depiction of a brilliant light in the sky, emitting from a slender, glowing ring. It was similar to the image that they had seen in the temples that they had unearthed so far as well as elsewhere in the underground complex. Doubtless it carried great religious significance, perhaps symbolising their god, or enlightenment. She browsed further for a few moments and then stopped. The image before her showed something new. It was, again, an image of a ring emitting a blaze of light, and before it hung a glittering, golden spacecraft. The ship must have been gracefully sleek looking once, but in the image the shark-like fins along its fuselage were twisted or snapped off entirely and great scars were depicted in its gorgeous hull. The entire aft section appeared to be missing entirely and was instead encased in what, to her untrained eye, looked like a large chemical rocket assembly.

Alarm bells started to ring inside her head. Aside from the chemical rockets at its stern, that spacecraft looked far too advanced to be constructed by the people who had once inhabited the planet she was on. It wasn’t a Shaper craft, that much was clear, but it did bear a passing resemblance to images of Progenitor warships that they had managed to glean from their previous work. Had the people who had once lived here somehow stumbled upon Progenitor technology lying abandoned in their system or another? What did the ring signify? Was it simply a religious symbol, or did it represent something other, a space borne habitat perhaps, or a device of some kind? She was reminded of the rings that had been found floating in the photospheres of the twin suns of the Fulan system that had powered the vast engines within the planet. Was this why Eonara had brought the Glory here, in order that they might uncover more Progenitor secrets? Or had the artist simply made the whole thing up? Moreover, what was it doing in a book of religious art? The Progenitor AI still remained frustratingly uncommunicative, despite the efforts of Mentith’s people to resolve the issue.

She looked at the accompanying text that the drones had translated. It simply said: ‘The opening of the Sacred Way’, followed by details about the artist – as if the picture itself were largely self explanatory, as if anyone looking at it would instantly know what it was. She suddenly had a very bad feeling indeed about the picture.

Katherine heard footsteps echoing down the hallway outside the chamber she had converted into a workspace. Rekkid poked his head around the entrance.

‘How are you getting on? Find any clues as to what we’re doing here yet?’ he asked, before walking over to Katherine and sitting carefully on the fold-out chair next to her.

‘Have a look at this,’ Katherine replied and passed Rekkid her datapad. He pondered it for a moment and looked thoughtful.

‘You know Arrakid’s team found something similar – an original painting of such a craft. I think they just dismissed it as a piece of fantasy art but… I don’t know. If this ship existed it can’t possibly have been constructed by the people who lived here, can it? It looks far too advanced.’

‘My thoughts exactly. Wouldn’t you say it bears more than a passing resemblance to a Progenitor vessel?’

‘Yes I would. But what’s it doing in a book of religious art?’

‘Well, there’s the old saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. Maybe they found the wreck of an ancient alien craft and concluded that it must be of divine origin?’

Rekkid shook his head. ‘I’m not convinced that that’s the case, to be honest. These people already had an advanced technological civilisation spread across two planets in this system. Space travel was a relatively routine occurrence, although it seems that they lacked any means to travel interstellar distances. I doubt that such a society would react in such a way to advanced technology, regardless of who created it.’

‘But somehow it’s bound up with their religious beliefs.’

Katherine flicked through more pages on her datapad. It didn’t take her long to find another similar image of the ship approaching a ring, blazing with light, and then another, and another.

‘This image is repeated everywhere,’ she said. ‘In these pictures, all over this complex and the temples above ground. It’s even depicted in the skies in the backgrounds of some of the other religious paintings. Whatever it is, it had great meaning for these people. All religious symbols represent something - they aren’t just abstract or arbitrary, and it’s linked to this ship somehow.’

‘Do you think that’s why Eonara brought us here?’

‘Yes, it’s possible. I think somewhere in this system is a Progenitor device of some kind.’

‘Like the one we found inside Maranos?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Oh. Great. My, I’d really love to go through all that again.’

‘Eonara must have known about this. It must be the reason that she brought us here. If only we could ask her.’

‘I spoke to Mentith earlier today. He didn’t sound too optimistic, I’m afraid. The rest of the ship’s systems are just about up and running, but they don’t seem to be having much luck in repairing her AI core. The engineers are still saying that it’s like she’s locked inside and can’t communicate with the outside world.’

‘Poor thing. I can’t imagine what that must do to a mind, artificial or not. Still, I wonder how that poor chap we found alive down here managed to stay sane for so long, locked up in this place for ten thousand years.’

‘Well, you might be able to ask him yourself,’ Rekkid replied. Noticing Katherine’s quizzical expression, he continued. ‘I came to find you to tell you that the medical teams have made some progress in reversing the effects of his extreme ageing. They’re going to make another attempt to revive him. We should both be there. We might be able to get some answers.’

The great circular chamber of machines was busy with activity. Amidst the ancient monolithic structures and the suspended animation pods filled with the corpses of their unfortunate occupants, Arkari technicians, medics and drones from the Shining Glory moved with quiet purpose. The sole Akkal survivor at the heart of the vast assembly was now surrounded with yet more machinery, as the gleaming technology of the Arkari probed and monitored his aged body within the now opened pod. Slender tendrils from various armatures that had been placed around him encased his withered form, which, to Katherine and Rekkid’s eyes, seemed a little less pallid and decrepit than when they had first found him deep in this subterranean chamber.

Okanno, the Glory’s Chief Medical Adept, and one of the ship’s snake-like drones approached them as they entered the chamber.

‘Ah, you’re just in time. Good,’ said Okanno, casting an eye over the information on the datapad he clutched in one slender hand. ‘We’ve raised the patient’s metabolism considerably over the last few periods. He should be regaining consciousness very soon.’

‘Will he live?’ said Katherine.

‘Hard to say,’ Okanno replied. ‘His lifespan has been unnaturally extended by the device he is encased within. We have limited medical knowledge about his species and it is difficult to say what his physical age actually is. Doubtless his metabolism was greatly slowed during his incarceration, but he does appear to be incredibly ancient by any sort of measure. It may be that we are unable to disconnect him from the machines, in which case…’

‘We’ll have to leave him here to die,’ Rekkid interjected with a sullen finality.

‘Yes, that may be so. Disconnecting him from these ancient machines may kill him.’

‘Something which may be a mercy,’ the ship added, speaking through its drone. ‘He is the last of his race. His world and his people were annihilated whilst humanity still grubbed about in Neolithic obscurity. What future does he have if he does survive? But then, surely to be imprisoned in this place is a fate worse than death?’

‘As a machine I doubt that you are capable of a making that judgement,’ Okanno responded icily.

‘Am I not?’ the drone replied. ‘Machine I may be, but I have no wish to be incarcerated or isolated for millennia at a time. I desire to live as much as any biological creature. Such a fate is truly worse than oblivion.’

‘Be that as it may, my task is to try to save this being’s life, not end it,’ said Okanno. ‘Professor Cor, Doctor O’Reilly. I thought that you should be here when my patient finally comes to. He may be able to answer some of the questions that you have. Ah, I see that your esteemed K’Soth colleague is also with us.’

Steelscale had also entered the chamber, moving with surprising stealth despite his large size. Only the faint tapping of his claws against the floor gave away his presence. He had obviously been listening in to their conversation.

‘Death and suicide are complicated subjects for my people,’ he said. ‘The weak are killed, often at birth, and death in the service of the Emperor is regarded as a noble thing. The dishonoured may also regain their dignity via honourable suicide, but I do not know what to make of this.’ He gestured at the machinery encased figure in the centre of the chamber. ‘I cannot say what the correct course of action should be. Personally, I have always preferred to remain alive. Perhaps this person had a duty to perform? Perhaps he willingly sacrificed himself to try and save his people? Maybe we should ask him what he wants, instead of deciding for him?’

‘An unusual statement for a K’Soth,’ said Okanno.

‘Yes, well, as K’Soth go I am unusual,’ Steelscale replied, gave a mock bow and grinned.

‘If you’d care to step this way,’ said Okanno. ‘We will begin the procedure.’

As they gathered around the last of the Akkal to watch, the medical machines of the Arkari began to do their work, stimulating the ancient being’s body with drugs and neural signals. Flocks of nanomachines that had been injected into his bloodstream hurried to their duties, attempting to re-invigorate his heart, brain and nervous functions. The Arkari medics studied the data that they were now getting from the tangle of probes and implants and they conferred with one another as the being’s skin began to assume a less deathly pallor.

Suddenly his eyes flicked open and he began to emit a long, hoarse scream. It was at once a scream of pain and anguish, and at the same time the cry of something being reborn. The scream was rasping, the screamer’s mouth and throat parched from countless years without taking a drink. His eyes focused on the figures gathered before him and he let out a sob of emotion. The mouth moved. At first no words would come to him, and then he found his voice. As he spoke in the language of the Progenitors, a language that was not his own, but which his people had revived and clung to as the voice of their gods, the Arkari machines that cradled him translated his words.

‘I knew you would come,’ he said slowly. ‘I prayed. I prayed that you would come to save me. I am Ushild, High Praetorian of the Sacred Way and last survivor of the Akkal. I am sorry. I have failed. We all failed you. I…’

His eyes started to glaze over, his head lolled and he convulsed. Frantically the Arkari medics attended the various machines and checked his life-signs. After a few moments he seemed to stabilise. His breathing became slow and regular and his colour, which had briefly fled his cheeks, started to return.

‘You abandoned us,’ Ushild continued. ‘I know why. We shamed you, shamed ourselves. We wanted to build a better future… all that happened was that we paved the road to our own destruction. We showed ourselves to be unworthy of you… please… forgive us.’

Ushild attempted to raise his arms in a gesture of supplication. The feebleness of his wasted muscles and the weight of the machinery attached to them prevented him from performing much more than a shrug. He hung his head, defeated and shamed.

‘What the hell is he talking about?’ muttered Rekkid to Katherine. ‘I’m assuming he’s delirious. He thinks we’re his gods come to save him.’

‘After ten thousand years in this place, I think I’d be in a similar state,’ Katherine replied, her eyes transfixed by the tragic figure. ‘We need to talk to him, whilst we still have the opportunity to do so.’ She stepped forward slowly until she stood directly in front of Ushild in his pod. She could never remember what compelled her to do so, pity or simple human kindness perhaps, but she reached out a hand and touched Ushild’s cheek. The skin was dry and delicate, like ancient manuscripts, but she could feel the warmth of his body returning beneath it.

Ushild let out a gasp. It was the first physical contact that he had experienced for around ten millennia. He was being touched by a god! He could feel the warmth spreading from her life-giving fingers. He started to weep.

‘Ushild,’ said Katherine, gently. ‘Ushild you have to tell us: what happened here?’

Ushild was confused. How could the gods be ignorant of what had befallen their followers? He didn’t understand. Perhaps this was a test?

‘I… We misused your gifts, great one,’ he began, in a whisper. ‘We took them and… the others would not heed our words…’ He gulped for air. ‘We killed them. We killed them all…’ His body shook, wracked with agony both physical and spiritual. He knew what they had done in the name of the gods. They had done terrible things and paid the price.

‘Our gifts?’ said Katherine. ‘Ushild, who do you think we are?’

Ushild did not understand. The people before him, visible to him through his rheumy eyes, they mostly looked like the gods, but they did not speak like the gods and these questions…

‘You are the Ones Who Made All, are you not?’ he said, doubt creeping into his mind. ‘You have answered our call and returned to save us… save me… haven’t you?’

‘Returned from where?’ said Rekkid, finally joining the conversation.

‘From beyond the Great Gate, or from the distant stars. Our beacon it… called out to you and brought you here.’

‘Not exactly,’ said Katherine. ‘We are not… we are not who you presume us to be. I am sorry Ushild, but we are not gods, and although your beacon did bring us here and we will do our utmost to save you, we are as mortal as yourself.’

‘No…’ whispered Ushild, and found tears stinging his eyes.

‘Ushild,’ said Rekkid, filled with trepidation. ‘You mentioned a Great Gate. What gate is this?’

Ushild looked Rekkid directly in the eyes and said:

‘Why, the one in the centre of the system, of course.’

‘You’d better tell us everything,’ said Katherine. ‘From the beginning. Tell us what happened to your people Ushild. You may not be able to save them now, but perhaps you can save us.’

They allowed Ushild to rest for a while and explained to him where they had come from and how they had finally found him. Ushild listened, stunned by what he was hearing, but slowly accepting that the beings that clustered around him were not divine, but were, despite their origins, similar to his own race. When Steelscale approached, Ushild shrank from his monstrous and altogether more alien appearance, until the K’Soth spoke to him slowly and calmly and assured him that he would not be harmed. When Ushild had finished listening to the others he lay back against the padded interior of the pod and closed his eyes in contemplation whilst his aged mind digested the flood of new and bewildering information, and the new arrivals’ stories of vast interstellar conflicts and distant civilisations from far across the galaxy. He learned the names of these peoples. It was a lot to take in. Some of it sounded rather fanciful and improbable to his ears, although they seemed very earnest and who was he to doubt them?

He was given water to drink, and nutrients through the many feeds into his bloodstream. At last, marshalling his thoughts - still sluggish after so long inside the machine - he spoke.

‘We were a peaceful people, once,’ he said. ‘For thousands of years, the Akkal people lived in harmony with one another. It was all the fault of that twice damned ship.’

‘A ship?’ said Katherine. ‘We found paintings…’

‘Yes,’ said Ushild, his voice was growing stronger now. ‘Yes, many people painted that ship in the years to come. It was both a great blessing and, as it turned out, a terrible curse.’ He sighed. ‘Generations before I was born, a probe was launched towards the outer reaches of this star system which found something that shook our civilisation and our definitions about what it meant to be Akkal to the very core. We had already colonised this planet, within which we stand, many centuries earlier and space travel between our two worlds had become routine. We had sent probes and even crewed missions to many of the other bodies, but since there was little reason to go there in person except for the achievement of having done so, we confined our journeys to those between Kel and Arul Kar. The distances were too great and it was neither economical nor safe to pursue such things further. We did however continue to explore our surroundings via automated devices as they were relatively cheap and expendable.’

He felt more confident now. It was all coming back to him from his childhood, the things he had been taught to repeat by rote. He continued: ‘A decision was made to try to explore space outside our system, to send a probe to the nearest star. A probe was duly constructed and launched and took several years to climb out of our suns’ gravity wells, using various bodies to slingshot itself to higher and higher speeds. During these manoeuvres the opportunity was taken to turn the probe’s instruments on these planets as it passed them, both to test the craft’s instruments and to gather any interesting data that might be found. It was during the probe’s final manoeuvre, before it was due to engage its engines and power out of the system that it spotted something in a decaying orbit around the outermost gas giant in this system, Orok.

It was the remains of a ship: a large, golden ship of advanced and undoubtedly alien construction. This of course was a staggering discovery. We had previously thought ourselves alone in the universe. We had sent probes to Orok before, but had somehow missed the vessel. Of course everyone quickly realised what this could mean for our people: not only contact with another species like ourselves, but the promise of discovering advanced and wondrous technology that might revolutionise our worlds or allow us to venture forth to the stars. A team of brave volunteers were sent out aboard an experimental vessel to study the ship, and after many seasons in space they arrived at the mysterious wreck and found something that changed everything forever…’

He was short of breath from his lengthy speech and the effort was draining what strength he had, but he could still remember his history lessons from childhood like it was only yesterday. He remembered watching the recordings with his classmates and seeing the grainy pictures and scratchy sound sent from deep space, the great ship tumbling slowly in the darkness against the mass of the planet.

‘The ship spoke to us, all of us, as one people on that day when the expedition reached it,’ said Ushild. ‘It was alive, inhabited by a being of immense power. It told us that it had been stranded in space, long ago, that it had been disabled in battle in a great war, the greatest war in all of history and had drifted for unimaginable lengths of time, far longer than our species, and indeed life on our worlds, had existed. It said that it needed our help, that it was unable to heal itself and was desperate to return home and that if we were to help it, it would take us there and show us, as a people, the most wonderful things. It did not lie.’

‘This being inside the ship…’ said Rekkid. ‘Did it claim to be one of your gods?’

‘No,’ said Urshild and began to cough. Recovering his composure he rasped. ‘No, it did not.’

‘Then where did it come from?’

‘It said that… it said that it been created by a race of powerful beings, that it had been encased within the ship, its artificial soul bound within a matrix that controlled the vessel.’

‘So you know that this artificial intelligence was not of divine origin?’ Rekkid pressed. ‘Why are there paintings of this vessel in your religious works? Surely it has some significance. What is it?’

‘You misunderstand… the beings who created it… what we saw when it led us through the Great Gate. They are the creators… if they are not gods, then…’ Ushild could feel his strength waning, his vision was becoming hazy. A cold sheen of sweat began to coat his leathery skin.

‘So your people went through the gate?’

‘Yes. The ship was successfully recovered and it showed us the location of the Great Gate, floating inert between the two suns. When we brought it close to the device it successfully reactivated it. When our people passed beyond, the knowledge that we uncovered there in that place turned everything that we had cherished on its head. Our entire religion, our entire sense of self was a lie. We were nothing more than puppets of these long vanished gods, for it was they who had moulded us from clay, not the pantheon of deities that we had worshipped for millennia.’

‘Who? Who were they?’

‘In time we learned their true name, but the ship told us the name that other races down the ages had bestowed upon them: The Progenitors.’

Ushild gasped. It was a physical effort to stay conscious. A pain lanced his chest, growing steadily more acute. He struggled to breathe. Through fading vision he saw figures clustering around him, felt probes and tubes entering his body and heard muffled, urgent words in a language he couldn’t understand, translated tinnily into his own speech. They thought he was dying. Maybe he was. He didn’t care anymore.

‘Will he live?’ said Steelscale.

Okanno sighed and scratched at the skin surrounding his head crest.

‘Too soon to tell,’ he replied. ‘We only have a rudimentary knowledge of his anatomy. He suffered a cardiac arrest in his secondary heart. We managed to repair the damage, I think. He needs to rest. No more interrogations for today.’

‘I wasn’t…’ Rekkid began. Then saw Okanno’s expression and thought better of it.

‘I’ll let you know if he’s ready to talk to you again,’ Okanno replied. ‘If he comes round again. I must insist that you deal with him more gently in future. Perhaps if Doctor O’Reilly were to question him?’

‘Fine,’ said Rekkid acidly, as Okanno left hurriedly. As the medic left the small chamber to which they had retired, away from the medical teams desperately trying to save Ushild, one of the Shining Glory’s drones entered smoothly and came to a halt in front of them.

‘The revelations of High Praetorian Ushild are most intriguing,’ said the ship, the head of its drone cocked like an attentive dog.

‘Yes they are,’ Rekkid replied testily. ‘Tell me, how did the pride of the Arkari Navy manage to miss a giant fucking wormhole portal sitting in the centre of the system!?’

‘Quite easily, as it happens,’ the drone replied. ‘The portal in this system does not appear to be particularly large. Certainly it is not on the scale of the device that was uncovered in the Fulan system. It would also appear to be no longer active and whatever material it is composed of, it is a black body object and near invisible to my sensors. Indeed, I only succeeded in locating it by searching for gravitational anomalies around the central binary. As I suspected upon learning of its existence, the device lies in the common centre of gravity between the two stars. Even so, it was not easy to detect. Bear in mind that the Akkal failed to detect its presence for thousands of years. I have despatched recon craft to investigate.’

As the drone spoke, it began to project an image taken from one of the fast moving vessels. The true colour image showed nothing but the blackness of space until the position of the camera moved and a slender, black bracelet was suddenly visible against the glare of one of the stars that formed the central binary. The drone froze the feed and zoomed in, then manipulated the image to make the device more visible. Comparison images also appeared, taken in various wavelengths. In most of these, the device was invisible unless it occluded a source of radiation. It emitted none of its own.

‘How big is that thing, exactly?’ said Katherine. ‘You said it was far smaller than the Maranos device.

‘By your reckoning: fifty point four kilometres in diameter, and barely a hundred metres deep. It is significantly smaller than the planet sized machine that we encountered previously. As I said, it is inactive, though there are no signs of any obvious damage.’

‘It was certainly active ten thousand years ago,’ Katherine replied. ‘If what Ushild is telling us is true.’

‘Yes indeed. However it is not responding to communication attempts either by the craft I have despatched or by myself. However, I think we can conclude that this device is the reason that Eonara brought us to this system. Perhaps if we can reactivate it, it may offer us a means of escape from this region of space and allow us to journey back to our home worlds. I think it is time to do so.’

‘But we’ve only just…’ Katherine began to protest.

Steelscale cut her off. ‘The ship is correct. Academia and archaeological research are fascinating enough, but we need to face up to the fact that we are tens of thousands of light years from our homes and this may be our only chance of ever seeing them again. We should gather up what we can and leave this place. This world is long dead, but ours perhaps still live.’

‘But there’s so much to learn here. We’re not seeing the whole picture!’ Katherine replied. ‘Those things that Ushild said, about the ship that they found and his people’s reaction to discovering the existence of the Progenitors: There’s something about this place, about what they found that’s important beyond mere academic interest, I can feel it! This society went to pieces and destroyed itself after they went through that portal and we’re about to do the same. Doesn’t that bother you?’

‘Yes it does, Katherine,’ said Steelscale. ‘But it seems to be our only chance of ever getting home again.’

‘What about Ushild? Are we just going to leave him here to rot?’

‘No,’ said the drone. ‘I and Okanno are working on a means to detach him from that device and place him in stasis until we can get him aboard. I am confident that if we can stabilise him now, then this stands a good chance of succeeding. I for one would be interested to hear what else he has to say about the demise of his people. You have a good point, Katherine. If we do manage to reactivate that portal and go through to whatever lies beyond, it would be helpful if we had some prior knowledge of what awaits us on the other side.’

Chapter 26

It was only after the third or fourth jump with the stealth module engaged, and when it was clear that they were not being followed, that the crew of the Profit Margin had been able to breathe a sigh of relief. It was to be days until the ship would drop out of its jump once more, before the final leg to the Achernar system.

Isaacs flopped back into his seat and rubbed his tired eyes, then looked at his wife and saw his own exhausted expression reflected in her features.

‘Looks like we made a clean getaway,’ he said, and then looked over his shoulder at Steven in the seat behind him. ‘I forgot to mention,’ he added. ‘That was a tough fucking call you made right after we launched from Gagat’s Colony. Could have ended messily but… it was the right thing to do.’

‘This is a Stallion class, isn’t it?’ said Steven.

‘Yeah it is,’ Isaacs nodded.

‘Don’t you know your own ship, Captain? If the gravity well had been too steep the drives would never have engaged. There’s a safety cut out built into the engines.’

‘Yeah well… I kind of had that thing deactivated not long after I bought her. The software was over cautious to the point of annoying about preventing the ship from jumping and I have it on good authority that it’s possible to hack into the system remotely and stop a ship from jumping at all. Being shut down and boarded didn’t appeal to me and it was a real risk in my previous line of work.’

‘So in other words, I could have killed us all?’

‘Yep. But hey, we’re all still in one piece, right? Better than being toasted by that Shaper ship. Still, falling into the atmosphere of a gas giant until we suffocated or were crushed to death by the pressure after the drive imploded would not have been a great start to the day, I’ll give you that.’

‘Will you give it a rest?’ Anna cut in, irritably. ‘We, and your precious ship are still in one piece, and it looks like we weren’t followed. Agent Harris: thank you. You saved our collective arses with your quick thinking. If it hadn’t been for you, no doubt we’d be still trapped on Gagat’s Colony surrounded by the Shapers’ enslaved horde.’

Steven merely acknowledged the compliment with a nod and then peered over Isaacs’ shoulder at the ship’s console displays. The Arragut system was rapidly receding from them.

‘How long until we reach Achernar?’ said Steven.

‘Uh, seven days and ten hours or thereabouts until we reach the Saragossa system, then another jump to Achernar of two and a half days. So, almost ten days to get to know one another, Mr Secret Agent ,’ said Anna, leaning forward intently. ‘But I guess you know all there is to know about us.’

‘Some,’ Steven replied. ‘The fact that Chen trusts you is enough for me. She’s not easily fooled, nor does she trust anyone that readily.’

‘You know her well then, I take it?’

‘You could say that. She and I go way back. We’ve had our differences, and it wasn’t pretty at times, but I trust her judgement on some things. Plus, she outranks me in SOC so, what choice do I have? I have my orders.’ He shrugged. ‘Look all I know is what’s on the record. I know you two had some dodgy dealings in the past, but like Chen I’m not interested in what crimes you’ve committed. In fact, your backgrounds in smuggling and so on are a positive advantage, not to mention the glowing reports of your work for us so far from Chen.’

‘So, do we get to know anything about you, or is everything classified?’ said Anna, gently mocking him.

‘You can ask,’ Steven replied, with a crooked grin. ‘I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to answer you satisfactorily. What can I say? I started off in the Navy, moved into CIB after a few years and after following a rather circuitous route I was recruited into Special Operations Command.’

‘Have you come up against the Shapers before?’ said Isaacs. ‘Because believe me, this isn’t going to be easy.’

‘Yes, I have,’ Steven replied. ‘I was there when we found the first one on the planet Maranos, as a matter of fact. Since then, I’ve been helping to root the bastards out all over the Commonwealth and beyond. I hunt them. Someone has to teach those things what fear is.’

Isaacs nodded slowly, liking what he was hearing. Then he noticed that Steven had acquired a haunted look as if he were reliving something terrible for a brief moment.

‘So, Maranos. Shit, you were there at the start of the war?’ said Isaacs.

‘Yep. Can’t really talk about most of it though. Bad business. You know your cabins still stink of K’Soth? It brings back a few memories. I saw you got a few of them out of the Empire?’

‘Yeah, Steelscale was one of the good guys. Almost got my balls shot off on the way out, but Chen pays well.’

‘So I gather. You uh… you had some dealings with Doctor O’Reilly and Professor Rekkid Cor, in the Hadar system, correct? Got them both out of a tight spot.’

‘You’ve seen the file,’ Isaacs replied nonchalantly.

‘Yes, I have. How is Katherine these days?’

‘Uh, okay. I think.’

‘That’s good,’ Steven replied. ‘I take it Rekkid is as bad tempered as ever?’

‘Yeah, look we didn’t get much chance to get acquainted to be honest. They left with Chen and the last I heard they were heading back into Arkari space. What is she, ex-girlfriend or something?’

‘No,’ Steven chuckled. ‘She and I… I once saved her from the clutches of a K’Soth Inquisitor, if you must know. Sort of.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Long story and mostly classified, but well, I’d do it again if I had to.’

‘Jesus,’ muttered Isaacs in admiration. ‘You’ve fought those things?’

‘Hand to hand, yes. Not something I’d recommend.’

‘Bloody hell, I think we’re in safe hands,’ said Anna. ‘So who won?’

‘I’m still here with all my limbs attached, aren’t it?’ Steven replied. ‘I did. I’ve faced them a few times since as well. Did you know the K’Soth war machine was riddled with Shaper agents? They started off fighting us, and then ended up fighting each other. The Empire rotted from the inside out, just like the Shapers intended. It’s what they’re trying to do to us too, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘I had,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Believe me when I say I’ve killed enough of their slaves to figure that one out.’

Steven nodded slowly as if digesting that piece of information and then changed the subject.

‘Chen’s people provided you with a secure comms unit. Correct?’

‘Yeah they did. It’s stashed away behind one of the internal panels,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Let me get my tools and I’ll retrieve it for you and set it up. I take it that you want to let the Commonwealth know what we witnessed at Gagat’s Colony?’

‘Yes. If the Shapers are collecting antimatter to build a weapon of mass destruction, the Commonwealth needs to make plans to do something about it. I can’t help but wonder if anyone has witnessed this sort of thing going on anywhere else.’

Later, once the encrypted message had been sent and the ship was underway in hyperspace once more, Steven disappeared into his cabin for some time and emerged having transformed himself. His appearance startled Anna when she first saw him again outside his cabin. Such was the difference she at first thought that they had picked up a stowaway. The wild hair and straggly beard were gone. Now he was clean shaven with his black hair cropped close to his skull. The scruffy, stinking clothes, meanwhile, had been replaced with casual shipboard garments. Anna appraised his physique. He was lean and taut and moved quietly with a predatory purpose, like a cat on the prowl. He was undeniably attractive, but she had vowed to be a good girl now that she and Cal were back together. Still, she thought, she could admire him from afar. She caught up with him as he ambled aft towards the engine room.

‘So, this is a new look,’ said Anna brightly as she approached.

‘Yeah, this is what I actually look like. The booze-soaked vagrant look isn’t really me, but it’s good cover in a place like Gagat’s Colony. People pretty much make an extra effort to ignore you. Means you can move around in plain sight and no-one can see you.’

‘So why the change?’

‘Looking like this won’t get me very far in the Achernar system. Orinoco in particular is a pretty wealthy place. Lots of people on the make, assuming they haven’t been enslaved by the Shapers yet. Someone looking like I did would stand out to the point where I’d find it difficult to move around - too many doormen, security guards and whatnot in the cities and they’d turn someone like that away without a second thought.’

They reached the engine room. Amidst the throbbing machinery, they found Isaacs staring intently at a small display set into the jump drive’s external shielding.

‘Everything okay?’ said Anna.

‘Uh-huh. I think so,’ Isaacs replied, intent on his work. ‘I really ought to get this thing serviced, but I think we got away without any damage to the drive. All the diagnostics come back in the clear.’

He closed a panel over the display and clicked it shut, then turned towards them both.

‘You need me for anything in particular?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ said Steven. ‘We have some time before we get to Achernar. It would be a good idea if we formulate an idea of how we proceed once we get onto the surface of Orinoco. Initially I’d planned to do this alone, but after seeing your files, you may be able to assist me. Ideally we’d have a team of agents in place, but with things the way they are at the moment, there aren’t enough people that we can trust amongst the ranks of the intelligence services. It would be a recipe for disaster to bring along anyone else.’

‘So what did you have in mind?’ said Isaacs.

‘You guys used to work out of Achernar in the past, correct?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Do you have any contacts there? Friends, business associates and the like? Anyone with their ear to the ground who might know what’s going on?’

‘One or two. They’re all in Bolivar City, mind. I never ventured that far from the spaceport, so if you’re looking for help crawling through the jungle looking for Haines, I can’t help you. I wouldn’t know where to start looking.’

‘Anyone with connections to the military, or the local police forces?’

‘Maybe. There’s this bar I used to hang around, a lot of the independent captains go there. I think the owner had some sort of links with the local crime syndicates to keep them off his back. It might be worth a try if you’re after information,’ Isaacs offered.

‘Every little helps. We are, after all, looking for one man and we need to know the situation on the ground. Even if we could work out where the Lincoln’s escape pods came down it would help, though doubtless the enemy will have pounced upon any that they’ve found and stripped them of any clues. Still it would give us a general area within which to start looking.’

‘So what sort of approach did you have in mind?’ said Anna.

‘I’ve been thinking: this shipment of ours. Rather than just sell it straight away, we should pretend that this is just a sample of our goods. I can pose as a representative of parties offering to supply rare and expensive items to discerning customers, the sort of things that might have become more difficult to obtain since Achernar split from the Commonwealth with the other renegade systems. The Sirius Syndicate on Orinoco was decapitated recently. The death of a certain Mr Bennett with whom I believe you’re more than familiar had a lot to do with it. There was a power struggle afterwards which CIB naturally exploited as a way of starting to dismantle the organisation in the system. Consequently, the black market is a bit of a free for all. Sirius Syndicate had the place locked down pretty tight and shut everyone else out. Now, despite the war, it’s a golden opportunity for smaller crooks to grab what they can and start empire building as well as for those lower down the food chain in the Syndicate who now see an opportunity to advance themselves, providing of course that the Shapers don’t decided to enslave every man, woman and child in the system.’

‘And you’re intending to pose as such a person?’

‘Yeah, I am. I have a number of identities available to me, all with official documents and so on with corresponding records that have been discreetly inserted into the usual databases. Background checks won’t reveal anything suspicious, won’t show that I’m not who I say I am. The rest is mostly acting like I am who I say I am. In this case: a middleman for gangsters and smugglers. I don’t have any new false IDs that I can tailor to you two, so you’ll need to let me do the talking, most of the time.’

‘Had you considered the possibility that we’re both wanted individuals?’ said Isaacs. ‘We had a few near misses recently. The Spica system springs to mind. Plus our recent encounter at Gagat’s Colony.’

‘They got a look at this ship in Spica but they never got you. Whoever they arrested never talked. Similar story in the Hadar system: the authorities are looking for a ship of this type, but there’s no record of the real ID. SOC did their work to cover your tracks. Whether anything was picked up by the enemy after they seized Gagat’s Colony, I can’t say. They certainly got a look at this ship, false ID and all.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘It was in the file I was sent, of course. SOC did their homework before sending you out to me. If you were a risk, we wouldn’t have used you.’

‘Hmm, well that’s nice to know,’ Isaacs replied, a little uneasily. ‘So what are we pretending to be then, if you’re pretending to be this smuggling type?’

‘You don’t need to pretend to be anything. Just be yourselves. If you’re known in Bolivar City it would be pointless pretending to be anyone else and it wouldn’t serve our purpose. Like I said, I need you to sniff around for me and see what’s what. Meanwhile, we look and act like I’ve employed you for your services and your local knowledge. You’re ferrying me around and acting as a man in the know with local connections in the freelancer community and being hired muscle in case I run into any trouble.’

‘Hired muscle?’ said Isaacs incredulously. ‘You took down K’Soth in a fight, you said so yourself.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t know that, do they?’

‘True,’ Isaacs agreed. ‘So what, do you bring a bag of disguises or what?’

‘Something like that, yeah,’ Steven replied.

‘Weapons?’

‘No. I figured it was too much of a risk taking them through port security. What I need, I’ll acquire locally. You know of anywhere or anyone who might be able to provide?’

‘Yeah, us. Chen had her people stash enough guns and ammunition in the walls of this ship to mount a revolution. Take what you need. The compartments have been lined with sensor opaque materials. I was assured that they won’t show up on port scanners unless they look really closely.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Steven and grinned. ‘Mind if I take a look at what you’ve got?’

Over the following few days, Steven occupied himself in the hold, practising with the weapons that he had chosen from those stashed in the hull of the ship. Although Anna and Isaacs often wandered down to the hold to watch him or try and strike up a conversation, he said little. He seemed ever more focused on the task that lay ahead of them. He had taken a variety of guns and spent hours taking the various pieces apart and putting them back together, often with his eyes closed so he had to rely on touch alone. There was a brace of laser pistols, a long barrelled rail rifle with gyroscopic stabilisers and telescopic sights, a combat shotgun, and a heavy looking semi-automatic. Though he could not fire any of the guns on the ship, Steven spent hour after hour practising drawing the smaller weapons from various holster positions, getting the feel of each gun, how they weighed in his hand, how the triggers felt under his finger, how quickly he could reload them. Then he would go back to his cabin and pace up and down impatiently.

Later, he started to examine the explosives that had also been concealed within the Profit Margin. There were tiny grenades, shaped charges, anti-armour limpet devices and a couple of man portable missile launchers. Steven took time to study them in detail.

They brought him meals, asked him if there was anything he needed. He thanked them politely and went back to his preparations as the Profit Margin hurtled towards their final destination in the Achernar system.

‘I have to ask,’ said Isaacs on the fourth day, as he brought Steven a reheated meal from the ship’s tiny galley and found him poring over a map of Bolivar City. ‘Is this personal, or what. Or do you just really throw yourself into your work?’

‘A little of both,’ Steven replied. ‘I fucked up on a mission once. A lot of people died. Wasn’t directly my fault, but my lack of judgement contributed to it. I like to be properly prepared for whatever I’m about to walk into. I have to be.’

‘Yeah but… I can see it in your eyes. There’s something else, isn’t there? I’m only saying because sometimes I catch myself in the mirror looking like that. The Shapers do that to a man. Trust me, I know what it’s like.’

‘I know you do. Your bomber squadron was captured by them. You were the only survivor. Correct?’ Steven looked at him intently.

‘Yep. I guess it’s all in the file you read,’ Isaacs replied.

‘It certainly is. You still want more payback for what they did?’

‘That and the rest. Well, I’m here, aren’t I? You think I fly deep into enemy held space for a laugh? We need to get these fuckers. I can’t say I like the thought of what happened at Port Royal and Gagat’s Colony happening to the rest of humanity.’

‘You’ll get a chance to do your part, I promise you that,’ said Steven, firmly. ‘We get in there, we pull Haines out and we get a good look in the process as to what’s going on in Achernar and debrief Haines. Then we call for the cavalry.’

‘The Navy? What good will that do? They got their arses handed to them in Achernar, and Chen’s force only survived the battle for Earth because the Nahabe showed up.’

‘Command will have a few tricks up their sleeves, plus, if the new sensors that you brought us the details of work as intended, they should be able to hit the Shapers where it hurts and catch them off balance.’

‘I wish I had your confidence, I really do,’ Isaacs replied and shook his head dismissively.

‘It’s all I have to go on. What are we supposed to do, roll over and let the Shapers enslave us?’

‘No. So, you never answered the question. Is this business or pleasure?’

‘Both. I’ve seen a few things that keep me awake at night, put it that way,’ Steven replied and shifted uneasily in his chair.

‘Care to elaborate?’

‘Well, I can’t really tell you too much. But I saw one or two things during the war, and I’ve been beyond the borders of explored space as part of an SOC scouting force. Arkari led deep recon patrol. We were gone for over a year. I’ve seen their worlds, Captain Isaacs. Deep into the galaxy, in the remains of the civilisations that they have already dominated, are worlds of unimaginable horror. Living beings are remade there, prisoners mutilated and altered by those creatures, innocent beings turned into living weapons for their hordes.’

‘I’ve seen them too,’ said Isaacs. ‘Not the worlds, but those pitiful slaves you mentioned. They attacked Port Royal and stormed us. I saw my friend die under a mountain of those things. She was a good kid and they tore her to pieces. We killed them all but… god, their faces…’

‘Yes,’ Steven nodded hurriedly. ‘We think that the hosts for the Shapers’ more primitive creatures are still aware of everything that is going on. Only their bodies have been hijacked and they are forced to watch the atrocities that they commit, powerless to do anything about it. What we saw on that mission… it drove some of my team insane. The power of the Shapers is immense and witnessing such a force of near unstoppable horror, the sheer scale of the atrocities that they have committed, was too much. This is just the calm before the storm that we see now. The Shapers have been waging this war of domination for centuries in the core and only now have they begun to spread into the spiral arms of the galaxy. Perhaps they underestimated humanity and focused too heavily on the Arkari who seemed to have held them in check on their first attempt. They will strike back, and I very much doubt that they will make the same mistake twice. What we have seen so far in the Commonwealth is little more than a fraction of the forces available to them.’

‘So what’s the point?’ replied Isaacs despondently. ‘We can’t stand against that, can we?’

‘It’s the only choice we have,’ said Steven and went back to studying his map.

The days aboard ship passed far too slowly for everyone, unsure what they might encounter at the end of their journey. As they covered the last few light years to the Achernar system, Isaacs engaged the Profit Margin’s stealth module and the ship crept towards the furthest edge of the system, where they had left Port Royal floating in the blackness.

The three of them clustered in the cockpit, Isaacs and Anna checking over the displays from the ship’s various systems. Now all they could do was count down the seconds until the ship emerged from its jump.

‘We’ll be emerging ten thousand kilometres away from the base,’ Isaacs informed them. ‘I don’t like the idea of coming out right on top of it. Might give them an unnecessary scare and besides…’

‘We don’t know who might be waiting for us,’ said Anna, sensing his thoughts and completing the sentence.

‘Precisely,’ Isaacs replied. ‘If Port Royal has been discovered we could be walking into a trap. Steven, you any good at ship to ship gunnery?’

Steven shrugged. ‘I’ve never tried it, but how difficult can it be? I’ve fired lots of other guns.’

‘Well, get yourself down to the dorsal turret then. The general idea is to point the crosshair at the bad people and press the big red buttons that fire the guns. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Call us on the internal comms if you need any help.’

‘Sure, no problem. Not much use against Shaper vessels though.’

‘No, but if there are any former Commonwealth ships hanging around waiting for us it could give them a nasty shock, smaller craft particularly. Anything bigger: we run like hell.’

‘Got it,’ said Steven and began to make his way aft.

‘You think that there’s bad guys lying in wait?’ said Anna.

‘Could be,’ replied Isaacs, grimly. ‘After all, that destroyer got a good look at us outside Gagat’s Colony. Maybe we were being followed and we never realised it.’

‘Maybe you’re just paranoid.’

‘True. Paranoid and alive, and I intend to stay that way. Okay, shields up, weapons armed…’ He spoke into the internal comms. ‘Steven, you all settled in?’ A muffled reply confirmed that he was. ‘Exiting jump in five, four, three, two, one.’

The starfield swam back into view. Ahead, the slightly flattened disk of Achernar glowed a searing blue-white against the background of stars and wisps of interstellar gas. The Profit Margin’s radiator panels dumped vast quantities of heat into space, briefly making the ship highly visible in the infrared spectrum before they began to retract. As Isaacs concentrated on piloting the ship, Anna began to scrutinise the sensor read outs.

‘See anything?’ said Isaacs.

‘Not much. No ships in the area that we can see.’

‘That’s sort of a relief. What about the base?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Anna replied and furrowed her brow in concentration

‘What do you mean?’

‘The return looks odd. It’s fuzzy, somehow. We need to move in closer I think.’

‘Well is it there or isn’t it?’

‘Oh it’s there alright.’

Isaacs gunned the engines briefly, propelling the ship forward at speed before cutting them and allowing the ship to drift. Better to avoid detection. Even as they drew closer, it was impossible to see anything of the asteroid base with the naked eye, such was the meagre amount of illumination available this far out from the parent star. The ship’s cameras, operating in low light mode, managed to pick out a dim smudge, which as they approached began to resolve itself on screen. It was clear that something was very wrong.

‘Jesus, look at this,’ breathed Anna. ‘Port Royal, it’s… Cal you have to see.’

Isaacs peered at the grainy image of the asteroid base. Something catastrophic had befallen it. The vast mountain of rock had been pulverised, cracked open like an egg. Almost half of the asteroid had been entirely shattered into smaller chunks. They hung in space, tethered to what remained of their parent rock by the mutual attraction of their gravities. There was a giant cloud of debris, water and frozen atmosphere surrounding the ruined base that had spilled out when it had been broken open.

‘Are you guys seeing this?’ said Steven over the comm. ‘What a mess. Looks like someone caught up with your friends.’

‘Shapers,’ replied Isaacs. ‘Fuck!’ He slammed a hand against the console in front of him.

‘That’s my guess. It would need a hell of a lot of firepower to crack that rock open like that. We need to make tracks, and fast. I don’t think it’s safe around here.’

‘Agreed. I’ll jump us out of the system, then we’ll come back via a different route.’

‘I just hope that the others got away,’ said Anna, her voice cracking as she eyed the field of slowly tumbling debris. ‘Maria, Farouk… there were even kids on that base too.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Isaacs replied. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. We have to get out of here.’

He began programming the navicomp with new jump coordinates. Anna’s eye strayed back to the hyperspace scanner display, where a blip denoting a weak contact had appeared. It was growing nearer, getting more distinct.

‘Contact!’ cried Anna. ‘We’ve got a ship coming in!’

‘Where?’ Isaacs replied. ‘Shit, I can’t see a thing out there.’

‘It’s a cloaked vessel of some kind. Jesus, it looks like a big one.’

‘Where!?’ Isaacs barked. ‘Where the fuck is it? I knew it. I knew that those bastards would be waiting for us.’

‘It’s right on top of us,’ said Anna, with dismay in her voice, as the cockpit windows were suddenly filled with the hull of a large warship emerging from hyperspace.

Chapter 27

Almost smothered and totally blinded by the bag over his head, Haines stumbled as he was manhandled from his cell by the enslaved soldiers who had flung the door open and grabbed him, before frog marching him off to god knows where. The only senses still of any use to him were hearing and smell and the latter could only detect the musty stench of the bag. He tried to work out where he was from sound alone.

He was being marched down echoing corridors that rang to the sound of booted feet marching in step. He could hear the rhythmic breathing of the enslaved soldiers and the jangle of their equipment as they walked. There was something else too, an insect-like sound at the edge of his hearing, like the scurrying of cockroaches. He had seen the horrible, alien growths projected from the backs of their un-helmeted heads when they had entered the cell and he’d shuddered at the thought of those black, segmented things that now controlled the men that held him like puppets. Those puppets were now unnaturally strong. They held him as easily as a child would hold a favourite toy, in an iron grip that was inescapable.

They came to a halt. There was the sound of a door opening in front of them. He was shoved forward once more and then made to sit on a hard chair set slightly lower than was comfortable whilst his manacled wrists were secured to the chair’s metal frame. Then the bag was removed from his head.

Haines squinted in the bright, artificial light. He was in a large, windowless room with a screen at one end depicting what looked like an astronomical map. Admiral Cox stood directly in front of him, a look of mild distaste upon his face. Admiral Morgan was in the room also, seated further away and wearing an anxious expression. The two soldiers who had brought him in stood to either side, stock still like statues.

‘What does this mean?’ snarled Cox, flinging an arm at the map behind him. ‘What are your friends up to, Admiral Haines?’

Haines looked back at him blankly.

‘I have no fucking idea what you are talking about, you raving imbecile. Is that what you dragged me out of my cell for?’

Cox walked over and angrily struck him across the face, then grabbed him and hauled Haines, chair and all, across the floor so that he was closer to the map screen.

‘Look at this!’ Cox spat and stood to one side, so that Haines could see.

‘The Commonwealth Navy has been making a number of probing attacks and scouting missions into the territory currently held by ourselves,’ Morgan explained, wearily. ‘Admiral Cox here would like to know what they’re doing. I have already explained that I don’t fully understand, perhaps you would be so good as to shed some light on the subject?’

‘And why would I do that?’ Haines replied.

‘We were hoping that you would see sense in co-operating,’ Morgan replied.

‘Fuck off,’ Haines shot back.

‘Well in that case we’ll just rip your thoughts from your head,’ said Cox. ‘It’s a very unpleasant experience, as Admiral Morgan here will attest. So why don’t you save us all the trouble and play along?’

‘He’s right,’ said Morgan, with a haunted look. ‘The Shapers can do that. I strongly advise you to do what he says.’

Haines pondered his predicament. He would have to say something, but he was damned if it was going to be anything concrete, or anything classified for that matter.

‘Fine,’ said Haines to Morgan. ‘I don’t know what fresh insights I can lend you, and frankly I don’t care. You outranked me, so you had higher clearance at strategic level. Surely, you must know more than I do?’

‘George, we all know that you have been a law unto yourself of late,’ said Morgan. ‘Your links to the Arkari, the Special Operations Command outfit you set up with their help…’

Cox stepped towards the map screen and jabbed a finger at a system mid way between Achernar and the Solar System. ‘One these probing raids involved the carrier CNV Winston S Churchill, with Admiral Chen as her commanding officer. We know that that carrier was modified with Arkari weapons technology: that much has been clear from the engagements that she has been involved in. How else has that carrier been modified?’

Haines did his best to hide his relief. So, Chen was still alive then. Maybe things weren’t as bad as he feared with her still around and in command.

‘It hasn’t, as far as I know,’ Haines replied. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘I want to know what the purpose of these missions was. Are they hit and run attacks? Are they for reconnaissance? Are they probing our defences, trying to work out the disposition of our forces?’

‘Beats me,’ said Haines. ‘I’m sure you’re aware that we can’t detect your vessels in hyperspace. So any recon mission would be a fruitless task, unless they’re trying to draw you out.’

‘Is that the case? Are you sure that the Arkari haven’t figured out a way to detect our ships and told their human friends about it? And if they are trying to draw us out, then what do they have to use against us?’

‘I haven’t a clue. If I did, don’t you think I’d have used such things against you up there?’ Haines replied, indicating towards the unseen sky above with an upwards motion of his head. ‘If I knew about any of this horseshit that you’ve imagined, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.’

‘I do not imagine things, and I think that you are lying to me, Admiral,’ Cox snapped. ‘I think you had other things at your disposal, but you held them back for the defence of Earth and hoped you could buy more time by engaging my forces in this system, but you miscalculated.’

‘I don’t miscalculate,’ Haines sneered back. ‘Our intel. was bad, and yeah, I tried to buy some time. Worked too, didn’t it? Chen gave you a bloody nose, Cox. She’ll do it again too, given half a chance. You seem awfully agitated… I think that you are the ones who miscalculated. Just what percentage of your own vessels were destroyed during your failed attack on Earth? Your hold here is precarious at best, I bet, for the time being.’

‘Think what you like, but when our main strike force arrives, the Commonwealth will be crushed without mercy. They will submit, or they will be enslaved or destroyed. The attack on Earth was just a taste of the capability of our forces. You cannot stand against us.’

Haines grunted disdainfully. ‘Doesn’t mean we won’t try. You don’t understand humans at all, do you? We don’t all just roll over and submit like Admiral Morgan here, you know. We’ll use everything we have against you, and when we’ve run out of ammo, we’ll resort to knives and clubs, and when those are taken from us, we’ll use rocks and our bare hands to tear you apart! You can take our worlds, sure, but you’ll never be able to control us all. We’ll always keep on fighting!’

Cox looked down at him in amusement. ‘Fine, brave words, I’m sure Admiral Haines. But so many others have said the same thing, and now they do as they are told, loyal servants of the Shapers all. You seem far too confident… I think that there is something that you’re holding back from me. I would dearly love to know what it is.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ Haines replied.

‘Am I? I doubt that the great Admiral Haines would spill his guts so easily. Let’s see, shall we?’

Haines became aware of another presence in the room. Something was entering through the door behind him. He heard the faint rustling of thousands of tiny creatures and saw the look of terror upon Morgan’s face. He turned his head, straining to see, though in truth he already suspected what it was. The Shaper coalesced in front of him, slowly obscuring Cox as the cloud of glittering motes assumed a more definite shape, that of an upright, lenticular cloud slightly taller than a man.

‘You will tell us everything,’ said Cox, calmly. ‘Whether you like it or not. After we have finished picking your brain clean, we will know all of your secrets. Your tactical skill may also be of benefit to us.’

Haines struggled against his restraints as the thing drifted closer.

‘Try not to struggle so much, Admiral Haines,’ Cox continued. ‘You must try to make this easier for yourself. You cannot resist, so just submit.’

‘Fuck you!’ Haines spat. ‘Fuck all of you! You and your entire goddamn race!’

The swarm swept closer, enveloping Haines in its embrace and smothering his defiant cries.

Later, the enslaved soldiers dragged Haines’ unconscious form back to the basement cell where he had been previously confined. Cox had to admit to himself, the old man had proved a tough nut to crack until now. But it didn’t matter how much interrogation resistance training the Admiral might have undergone, his thoughts had been stripped from him and read by the Shapers, the electro-chemical information from his brain interpreted and catalogued and disseminated amongst their collective consciousness for examination, interpretation and cross referencing to their other intelligence on the human military. It was a source of some frustration to Cox that Haines had in fact been telling the truth and was unable to explain the strange enemy fleet movements.

Frustration? How could he be frustrated? He was a perfect machine, a shard of the greater Shaper mind. Emotions were an imperfection - a flawed, biological response. He cursed the feeble body he inhabited, cursed the vain and pompous man whose mind he had devoured in order to claim it. Casting a disgusted look at the still visibly trembling Admiral Morgan he stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him, leaving Morgan alone with the swirling cloud of silver motes which now began to slowly disperse.

Chapter 28

Maranos turned slowly in the display screen that formed one wall of Beklide’s quarters, sunlight glinting off the polar ocean and highlighting the swirling colours of the vast dune seas that banded the planet’s tropical regions. Beklide’s eye was drawn to a cluster of distant lights denoting the position of the Commonwealth frigate Talavera, which had been hailing them regularly since it arrived in the system earlier that day, curious as to what the Arkari were up to in a Commonwealth policed system. The Arkari had so far not responded. Beklide may have been head of the Arkari Navy, but she still had her orders from the Meritarch Council, orders that she did not agree with. The humans were not to be contacted, were to be kept at arm’s length. The infection was to be contained.

That the Arkari should shun their allies in their moment of need seemed monstrous to Beklide. She had protested otherwise and to no effect. The other members of the Council were afraid to the point of paranoia, and though a member herself, she must accede to their majority vote. Nevertheless, under Beklide’s command, the Arkari Navy was preparing itself for a counter-strike against the Shapers. Their investigations of the ancient Progenitor device within the planet below were almost complete. Arkari scientists and technicians, and a horde of drones under the direction of the Sword of Reckoning’s AI had swarmed all over the inside of the vast machines, scrutinising their workings and completing the gaps in their knowledge. Even now she could see the lights of shuttles rising from the surface below as the teams returned to their waiting craft. Soon, the Arkari would begin to construct their own device, and then the Shapers would feel their wrath.

Beklide cleared a portion of the screen and called up again the schematics that the Sword of Reckoning had found buried in the Navy’s archives. The Arkari Sphere’s hypercom network had been restored in recent days, the last remaining Shaper viruses purged from its nodes and interstices, and although the Arkari remained cautious and were avoiding the use of implants and avatars to communicate with one another, basic functionality of the system had been regained. Under Beklide’s orders, the Sword of Reckoning had searched the vast data storehouses of the Navy for details of any weapons that never left the experimental stage or were abandoned for reasons unrelated to the technical difficulties involved in their construction. She was searching for weapons that had never been developed because the conscience of the Arkari would not allow it, because the weapons in question were too dangerous and too terrible to contemplate.

It was true that the main gun of her ship, the Sword of Reckoning, could be utilised to collapse a star or planet by engineering a singularity, but such a process took time, time which they would not have were they to launch an attack against the heart of the Shapers’ dominion. What she needed was something capable of annihilating a world at a stroke.

The ship had trawled through a catalogue of doomsday weapons that had never seen the light of day: virus bombs designed to liquefy the populations of entire planets in mere hours, super-heavy antimatter delivery systems, seismic bombs, mass drivers capable of lobbing asteroids the size of continents, systems composed of millions of independently targeting warheads designed to home in on the inhabitants of a world and kill them all individually and simultaneously. All were rejected out of hand for one reason or another. Some were ineffective against machine based life, others took too long to deploy, some contained technology that whilst feasible, was unproven and could not be relied upon.

Eventually, Beklide was presented with the ideal solution: the Executioner Cannon. It contained proven technology, it could reasonably be expected to be relied upon, and it could be deployed quickly. Designed as the ultimate deterrent, it had never been built. Essentially it was a vastly upscaled version of the spatial distortion cannons that were standard armament aboard Arkari warships and a larger version of which formed the main gun of the dreadnought within which she now sat. The Executioner Cannon was many orders of magnitude larger still. Judging from the schematics, the Sword of Reckoning, itself two hundred kilometres from bow to stern, could have sat within the mouth of the Executioner Cannon’s barrel, the barrel itself extending for over two thousand kilometres. It was a long and fluted thing, which gradually flared out into a cluster of bulbous reactors and enormous energy capacitors, its appearance resembling an oversized musical instrument of bizarre design.

The cannon had never been constructed, partially because the Arkari could not abide the thought of possessing such an excessively destructive weapon when the enemies they faced could be easily dealt with using their existing armaments, and partially because its sheer size and enormous mass presented technical problems when it was considered how to actually move the thing into position for its deployment against an enemy target. The large amounts of super-dense materials required in the construction of the device’s firing chamber and barrel resulted in a final displacement equalling that of a small planetoid.

However, Beklide had hit upon an idea: combined with the wormhole portal, the problem of moving the device could be circumvented. The cannon could remain in place and fire into the wormhole, whilst the portal could be used to change the location and angle of the wormhole exit and thus be used to aim the cannon from within the safety of Arkari controlled space. The cannon could be charged beforehand, then a wormhole opened and the cannon fired, and then the fleet would pour through amidst the confusion caused by such a devastating and sudden attack. The Shapers would receive a taste of their own medicine.

Having formulated her plan and received approval from the Meritarch Council she had sent heavily encrypted instructions to the Navy’s massive shipyards at Orakkan to begin construction of the device. All other considerations were to be put aside until its completion. At Beklide’s request, the Council had also despatched a fleet of heavy constructor vessels to the system to assist with the building of the portal. These massive civilian craft, normally used for the construction of space borne habitats and other mega-engineering projects, would first harvest asteroids en route and then, having filled their bellies with processed metals, would rendezvous in Orakkan to begin building an Arkari wormhole portal at the Lagrange point between the system’s G class binary.

Everything was to be completed with the utmost secrecy. As a result of Beklide’s commands, thousands of ships were now en route to their various destinations as a sizeable portion of the Arkari fleet converged on the Orakkan system. Eventually, once the portal and cannon were complete, Beklide planned to move a full half of the Navy to the system for the strike. The other half would remain deployed in key systems in case of another Shaper attack.

There was only one problem: they had not yet determined the exact location of their intended target, the Shaper home-world and the Singularity that held sway over their hive-mind. It was known to exist close to the galactic core, and its rough location had been determined but, for the plan to work, its exact position would be required. Some had theorised that the Shaper home-world existed in interstellar space, rather than orbiting a star, but since none of the scouts sent that deep into the core had ever returned, and the Arkaris’ long range hyperspace monitoring arrays lacked the required resolution at such long ranges to pinpoint its position, its precise location remained unknown.

There was a soft chiming sound that roused Beklide from her contemplation of the weapon blueprints in front of her. An icon in the corner of the screen denoted an incoming communication. It was Elinna Turinno, a fellow Meritarch. Beklide accepted the incoming message and Turinno’s pinched expression filled a section of the wall. Symbols along the edge of the image denoted the high level of encryption.

‘Esteemed Member Turinno, to what do I owe the honour?’ said Beklide. Turinno had been a long time political opponent of hers. She and Beklide disagreed on most subjects, though of late, Turinno seemed to be coming round to her way of thinking following Beklide’s successful defence of the home-world. Still, it paid to be cautious.

‘Your colleagues on the Council would like a status update, Fleet Meritarch. Do you yet have everything that you require from the Fulan system?’

‘Yes, even as we speak we are recovering our teams from the surface. We have established much about the workings of the Progenitor portal and have filled most of the gaps in our knowledge. I am of the opinion that it should be feasible to construct our own device, based on the advice of my science staff and AIs.’

‘But you do not know everything?’

‘We have been unable to establish how the Progenitors managed to construct a device that allowed points in both time and space to be connected. We can only assume that the device’s inbuilt programming, or that of the controlling AIs, enabled such a feat, and these are lost to us,’ Beklide replied.

‘Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. The ability to travel into the past or future could prove extremely dangerous when one considers the implications of the causality paradoxes that could result.’

‘Yes indeed. Were we to journey into the past and destroy the Shapers in their infancy…’

‘The effects could be catastrophic for all concerned. The galaxy would be remodelled at a stroke, perhaps not to our favour. The Progenitor Empire might still exist, and we might not.’

‘In any case, we have what we need to begin construction immediately. We do not have a moment to lose. This must take priority. We must strike at the heart of the Shaper’s dominion and destroy that which they refer to as the Singularity. Leaderless, they will lack direction and we might use this tactic to attack other key worlds under their sway. We must act before they move against us again, and before humanity is enslaved.’

‘Ah yes, the humans,’ Turinno replied. Beklide detected the note of distaste in her voice.

‘Our erstwhile allies, Esteemed Member,’ Beklide replied, chiding her.

‘Who have been found wanting and have sided with the enemy. They are corrupt, and vain and the Shapers have used these failings against them.’

‘Are we any better than they?’ Beklide replied. ‘You forget, Esteemed Member, that the Shapers did not seek to enslave our people, they sought to destroy them instead and still seek to do so. Would we have fared any better if the Shapers had attempted to infiltrate our society in such a manner? Vanity and corruption are not failings that are confined to the humans.’

‘Nevertheless, all ties with them shall remain severed until this crisis has passed. We cannot risk our communication networks, our AIs and our people becoming… infested once again. Why, even today a Commonwealth destroyer attempted to cross our borders.’

‘And why was I not informed? So much for the chain of command.’

‘The issue was dealt with locally by civilian border security forces. The CNV Hadrian was turned back in the Irad system, although they stubbornly refused to leave and have repeatedly requested an audience with yourself, or with other members of the Council.’

‘Again, why was I not informed?’ said Beklide, bridling at Turinno’s manner.

‘It was felt at the time that the ship represented a possible threat. Such a gesture could represent an attempt to infiltrate us, or to attack your person. We have quarantined the vessel and are processing the crew individually. If any are found to be carrying Shaper parasites, she will be destroyed and her crew terminated.’

‘And may I remind you, that the humans are our allies? This is madness!’

‘The Council has already voted on the issue.’

‘The Council….’ Beklide choked down the words she was about to utter about her colleagues in whom she had little faith. ‘What did the crew of the Hadrian wish to speak to me about?’

‘Her commanding officer, Captain Macpherson has repeatedly insisted that they are carrying intelligence data about the Shapers that we will find useful. She was unwilling to speak of it any further.’

‘Listen to me,’ said Beklide slowly. ‘If Macpherson and her crew turn out to be clean, I want to hear what she has to say immediately. Do you understand?’

‘Do not presume to give me orders, Beklide,’ Turinno replied waspishly. ‘We are all equals on the Council. Would you have me allow Shaper agents to gain access to your person?’

‘Immediately,’ Beklide repeated. ‘Good day to you, Esteemed Member. I will provide the Council with further updates once I arrive in the Orakkan system to oversee the portal’s construction. Beklide out.’

Turinno looked as though she was about to say something else, but Beklide cut the link all the same and swore under her breath at her colleague’s officious and high handed manner, not to mention her disdain for their human allies. It pained her that the majority of the Council were still in favour of severing all ties with the other races. Indecision had been replaced with extreme paranoia by the Shaper attack on their worlds and while the Commonwealth struggled for its very existence against the Shapers, the Arkari Navy was forced to stand idly by and watch. She had to do something.

‘Ship?’ she said out loud to the cabin. ‘Signal the Talevera. Tell them that we are here on a scientific mission to investigate the deactivated Progenitor portal device and tell them that we have a gift for them.’

‘Yes, at once, and then?’

‘Transmit the schematics for our spatial distortion weaponry, the smaller classes of weapon that might be compatible with existing human vessels.’

‘Meritarch, this goes against Council directives governing the passing of military technology to other species…’

‘Yes, yes. I’m aware of the directives. I’m also aware that said other species need all the help that they can get. Get it done,’ Beklide snapped irritably, and then returned to contemplating the schematics of the terrible world killing weapon before her.

Chapter 29

‘So, Admiral. You completed a test of the prototypes, but whilst you succeeded in testing them, you also lost one of the ships. Would you care to explain how?’

Chen stood before Admiral Cartwright in his office aboard the Trafalgar. She had filed her mission report upon returning to the Delta Pavonis system, and had almost immediately been summoned aboard.

‘It’s all in my report, sir,’ Chen replied.

‘I’ve read your report, Admiral Chen. Now I want to hear it directly from you. What happened out there?’ said Cartwright and pointed an accusing finger at her.

‘Sir. We began tests of the newly modified arrays and found that their range was more limited than we had hoped. We jumped closer to the Constantine, attempting to use the Matsu system’s asteroid belt as cover and we were ambushed by the Shapers. They were using a weapons technology that we haven’t encountered before, sir.’

‘Yes, you described them in your report. Independent, seemingly intelligent drone missiles that double as ship killers and jump inhibitors. Yet you managed to jump into the middle of them.’

‘Yes sir, we failed to detect them beforehand. The Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters has had the crew of the Shadow in the Void go over their raw sensor data. It seems that in an effort to clean up the returns from their hyperspace sensors they mistakenly over compensated and processed out the returns from these smaller craft.’

‘And yet we knew that the technology was untested. Are you attempting to shift the blame for this mishap onto others, Admiral Chen?’

‘No sir. I was in command of the mission. I accept full responsibility for any failings and for the deaths of Captain Trent and the crew of the Dulles.’

‘As you should. Why did you not deploy fighters to sweep the system ahead of you?’

‘Sir, it was my estimation that in the interests of enabling a quick getaway, that we should not deploy fighters owing to the time taken to recover them. In addition, there was little guarantee that they would be able to spot anything that we could not, given that their sensor systems have not yet been modified to detect Shaper vessels. Granted, I could have deployed my fighter wings, and left them behind if necessary, but I feel that it would have been a pointless sacrifice, sir.’

Cartwright sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, gazing at her levelly over the top of them.

‘Very well, Admiral Chen. At least you have the courage to stand by your decisions. As you say, you encountered a new weapon of the enemy’s arsenal, and the test data that you successfully gathered will prove invaluable in fine tuning the design. We have already put the results to use in modifying our deep range monitoring arrays. So, it seems that the sacrifice of the Dulles was not in vain. Soon, we will be able to map the positions of the Shapers in each system, and then we will be ready to take the fight to them.’

He was testing her again, Chen realised. He was both chiding her and congratulating her at the same time and seeing how she’d respond. She wondered if Cartwright treated all the officers under him in this manner, or whether she was a special case.

‘Yes sir,’ she replied smartly. ‘I’m looking forward to some payback, sir.’

‘Well don’t look forward to it too much, Admiral Chen,’ Cartwright responded. ‘Just to get you up to speed: combat field tests of our new spatial distortion cannons have proved successful, so we can hit back at last, but our ships are still outclassed by the Shaper vessels. The Nahabe have continued to raid beyond our borders, intercepting large numbers of enemy troop transport vessels bound for our systems. The wreckage indicated that each contained thousands of enslaved troops, so it looks like the Nahabe have bought us some breathing space, but the Shapers are definitely up to something. During your mission to the Matsu system, you spotted transport vessels belonging to the enemy ferrying antimatter in the direction of the Achernar system.’

‘Yes sir, that’s correct.’

Cartwright nodded. ‘It seems that you’re not the only ones to spot such activity. Admiral Hawkwood has informed me that our recon flights and at least one of our agents that can still be relied upon have reported similar incidents. The Shapers are up to something. Intel.’s best guess at this time is that they may be preparing a weapon of mass destruction to use against us.’

‘Could this be related to the massive warship that the Nahabe spotted heading for our systems, sir?’ Chen asked.

‘You’re referring to the five hundred kilometre long behemoth that they encountered in deep space beyond our southern borders? Yes, it may well do. However neither we, nor the Nahabe have been able to locate the craft since it jumped to a new position. The current assumption is that given the length of time since it was last sighted, it may well be within what was previously deemed to be Commonwealth space. We need to track it down.’

‘And once we have, how do we deal with such a monster?’

‘Contingency plans are being formulated at this time,’ Cartwright replied. ‘I can say no more on the subject for the time being. You’ll be informed on a need to know basis. For now, you are to maintain secrecy on the existence of this enemy vessel. Knowledge of its existence could be very bad for morale.’

‘Of course sir, I understand.’

‘Admiral Chen, the Commonwealth is about to move against its enemies, before they move against us. You made a valuable contribution to the war effort in the Matsu system, but we can’t afford to make any more mistakes, is that clear?’

‘Yes sir, absolutely sir.’

‘I’m granting you and your crew some r-and-r for a couple of days. You’ve earned it, and New Hatti is a pleasant enough place for shore leave. You may however be recalled before then, so don’t stray too far. You may have noticed the increasing number of vessels within this system? They’re here for a reason, Admiral. Navy engineers are working double time to upgrade the deep monitoring arrays and our other Thea class cruisers, and a crash program to fit spatial distortion cannons to our carriers is also well on its way. In a matter of days, once we have suitable targets, we will be taking the fight to the enemy, because I don’t think we have a lot of time before they do the same to us.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Very good, Admiral Chen. Dismissed.’

Chen turned to leave, and then paused.

‘Sir, one other thing…’ she said.

‘Go ahead, Admiral.’

‘Is there any word yet on Haines?’

‘None so far, I’m afraid,’ Cartwright replied. ‘Although your man Harris was one of the agents to spot the Shapers raiding antimatter supplies whilst en-route to the Achernar system to find him, so as far as we know, the mission to locate him is still going to plan.’

‘Agent Harris is as good as they get, sir. If anyone can find Haines, he can.’

‘I hope so too, Admiral Chen. But it may not be wise to get our hopes up prematurely. Haines may be dead, or in the hands of the enemy. We have to fight on without him. It’s what he would want, after all.’

On the shuttle back to the Churchill, Chen allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. She had been sure that Cartwright was about to chew her out for the loss of the Dulles when he had summoned her to his ship. Working under his command was certainly very different from working under Haines. Where Haines was gruff, but often informal and even jovial and fatherly, Cartwright was cold and always formal and constantly seemed to be sizing her up and seeing how she would react to being challenged. She guessed that she just had to get used to his different style of command, but each encounter with the man was like a form of verbal fencing, and she could never tell whether not she’d won each bout or not.

She gazed out of the window at the dozens of warships hanging in orbit above the planet of New Hatti and allowed her eyes to slide over the massive, battered hull of the Nahabe gunsphere, Shadow in the Void, whose roughly spherical hull wore the scars of their recent encounter with the enemy in the Matsu system like a moon pockmarked by meteorite impacts. It was a reminder of the fearsome power of the Shaper weapons. Those Commonwealth vessels hanging in stately rows in the skies above New Hatti would be flying into the teeth of a storm of terrible power in a scant few days, against their former comrades and terrible alien forces that now held them in thrall. Some of them would be facing the Shapers for the first time. Chen knew what to expect. She had seen it before all too recently and did not relish the prospect, despite what she had said to Cartwright. But there was a job to be done, and they must fight or die.

She thought about Haines, and wondered if the old man was still out there somewhere, fighting a lone war against the Shapers. The news that he had at least survived the destruction of the Abraham Lincoln had cheered her immensely when she had heard it, but since then there had been no word. She wished that he were here now to lead them. He’d know just the thing to say to raise everyone’s spirits in the face of the enemy. Haines never gave up, not even when everything seemed lost. He was larger than life, as well as being a tactical genius. A born leader. All she could do was to seek to emulate him as best she could.

Chen’s shuttle landed within the cavernous hangar of the Churchill. She was greeted on the deck by McManus, who wore a conspiratorial look.

‘So, how was your meeting with the old guy?’ he asked.

‘Difficult to say,’ Chen replied, as they walked together to the lift. ‘I can’t tell if he likes me or distrusts my capabilities, or what.’

‘Aye, he’s a funny bugger alright is Admiral Cartwright. Cold and calculating, like. You never can figure out what’s going on inside that head of his. What did he say?’

‘Chewed me out for the loss of the Dulles, but then he seemed to come around when I accepted that it was my responsibility.’

They reached the lift and stepped inside. Chen selected Deck One for the bridge on the wall panel and the lift began to move upwards.

‘Aye, that sounds like Cartwright alright. I think as long as you’re straight with him and admit any mistakes, you’ll be alright. I think you’d really know if he was displeased with you.’

‘I would?’

‘Oh yes indeed. I’ve seen him tear Captains, and even Admirals like yourself, to pieces when they tried to blame their failings on their men, or other commanders, or the ship or whatever. He makes grown men and women soil their uniforms when he’s angry, it’s not pretty. Some of them were lucky to escape a life of scrubbing the heads for the rest of their careers, I think.’

‘Well, we must have done something right. He’s given the ship a few days shore leave, effective immediately. I’ll announce it to the crew in a moment.’

‘Oh aye? Well that’s fine and dandy, but what then? Shore leave at a time like this? It usually means that they’re saving you for something special and they want you fresh for the next fight, am I right?’

‘You could be, Commander,’ said Chen. ‘You could indeed.’

‘Ah, shite. On the plus side, it probably means that Cartwright does respect you after all. On the downside of course, it means we’ve just pulled our arses out of the fire only to plunge them back in again shortly. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldnae mind another pop at those Shaper bastards as much as the next man, or woman. But still, I don’t know about you Admiral, but I could sure as hell use a drink.’

‘That,’ said Chen reflectively, ‘sounds like an excellent idea.’

Chapter 30

Ushild was still unconscious and sedated when the Arkari medical teams began the painstaking process of removing him from the mysterious machinery that had held him for the past ten millennia. With Rekkid’s help, they had succeeded in decoding the different control panels that governed the operation of the device’s life support systems. Now, medics and drones surrounded his withered form and prepared to release Ushild. The drones began to weave strands of life support nano-machinery about him as the medics began to work the controls that would retract the web of tubes, probes and neural links from his body and allow him to be moved, while other drones stood ready with a medical casket fitted with stasis field generators to receive him once they had freed him from his self imposed prison.

It was a painstaking process. As the various tubes and probes began to retract themselves and the Arkari systems took over in their stead, the medics closely monitored Ushild’s vital signs for any fluctuation. Then, when at last he was free of the grip of the ancient machines, the drones moved in to gently cradle his unconscious form with suspension fields that moved him carefully into the womb-like interior of the waiting casket. Once they had him inside its sterile embrace, the nano-machinery that they had woven about him began to grow and link itself both to the casket’s systems and to Ushild’s implants and nervous system.

He lay within the casket, his breathing shallow but regular, his ancient and withered form encased within a cocoon of shining silver threads. Stasis field generators within the casket activated, trapping Ushild in a bubble of frozen space-time like a fly in amber, and then the drones began to escort the casket from the vast underground chamber to begin the long journey back to the surface and the waiting shuttle to the Shining Glory.

Katherine stood amidst the ruins of the dead city and watched the dust swirl about her as the wind howled mournfully about the broken buildings. It pained her that they had still not got to the bottom of the true mystery about what had happened to this world or its shattered sister planet. That the Akkal had been torn apart by religious wars as a result of their encounter with a Progenitor AI controlled warship was clear, but what was not clear was why a full half of a sentient species had been so easily inclined to turn against centuries of belief so quickly, why the resulting wars had been so bitter, and how they had managed to destroy one another so utterly in their blind hatred. Only one being held the rest of the story, and Ushild had remained unconscious since his near fatal heart attack. So far he had shown little sign of waking up, particularly since the Arkari medical team were anxious to keep him under until they could get him aboard the Glory and work to reverse the effects of his extreme ageing.

What could traumatise a civilisation so badly that they could turn to this? That they would annihilate themselves so freely, that they could plan and execute the destruction of so many of their own species was deeply shocking to Katherine. She was aware that in the past, humanity had taken fateful steps along a similar road, but had stepped back from the brink of actually carrying out such actions when clearer heads had prevailed. In the case of the Akkal, they had been blinded by rage, or bigotry, or something else. Perhaps they had collectively ceased to want to exist, driven by some suicidal mania? What had they found on the other side of the portal in the centre of the system, and where had a civilisation less technologically advanced than modern humans acquired the ability to utterly obliterate an entire world?

She turned as she heard Rekkid and Steelscale approach from the direction of the entrance to the ziggurat.

‘The shuttle should be here soon to pick us up,’ said Rekkid. ‘Have you got all your gear?’

‘Everything the drones didn’t take for me, yes,’ Katherine replied, indicating the jumble of bags and cases around her feet. They no longer wore the breathing masks as before. Although dust devils still moved amongst the desolation, they were no longer being battered by storms of grit and the air was quite breathable. Rekkid noticed the expression on Katherine’s face and could tell something was wrong.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked her.

‘I think so…’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, actually, no I’m not. I can’t believe that we’re packing up and leaving just like that. We don’t know anything about this place!’ she replied and threw up her hands in exasperation.

‘We know something of what happened here,’ Rekkid replied. ‘The drones have copied everything that we found down in that library. It’s just a matter of searching through the archive, and we have Ushild. Plus, the Glory’s technicians might able to get Eonara up and running again eventually.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Eonara brought us here because of that portal,’ said Steelscale, his translator pendant squawking tinnily in the open air. ‘We must see where it leads.’

‘Must we?’ Katherine replied. ‘Whatever is on the other side of that portal led these people to destroy themselves. I wouldn’t be so eager to find out what it was that they found.’

‘Nevertheless, War Marshal Mentith has given the order to withdraw everyone from the surface and head for the device. So either we do as he says, or we find some way to survive for the rest of our lives on this corpse of a world,’ said Rekkid. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we can live on radioactive dust, do you?’

‘The people who lived here once: it just seems like we’re abandoning them, that’s all,’ said Katherine. ‘Someone needs to properly record the full story of what happened here.’

‘One day, perhaps,’ said Steelscale. ‘For now, however, our survival, and our ability to return home is a more pressing matter. Perhaps Ushild can be revived and we can speak more with him aboard the ship and find out what occurred here ten thousand years ago?’

Above them, the slender shape of one of the Glory’s shuttles broke through the grey cloud cover and began to spiral down towards them.

‘Perhaps, assuming he lives long enough. I just think that we’re rushing into things before we have all the facts, that’s all,’ said Katherine.

‘Maybe the ship trusts Eonara more than we do,’ Rekkid offered. ‘After all, I doubt that she would intentionally mean us any harm.’

‘You do? What about the other Progenitor AI, the one that the Akkal found? Maybe it didn’t mean any harm either, and look what happened.’

‘You have a point…’ said Rekkid as the shuttle touched down a short distance away and opened a portion of its hull to form an access ramp. ‘Nevertheless, it’s time to go. Come on, Katherine. Let me help you with those things.’

In some ways it was good to be aboard the Shining Glory again. Katherine and Rekkid found their spacious suite of rooms on board as they had left it and it felt good to get properly clean for the first time in weeks and wash the dust and dirt out of their clothes, but Katherine still couldn’t escape the feeling that they had left too soon. Wearing a fresh change of clothes she watched the planet turn slowly beneath them in the section of the wall that Rekkid had turned into a screen showing the view outside the ship. The planet’s dead surface was wrapped in a shroud of cloud and Katherine compared it in her mind with the images of the lush green world that she had seen in the buried archives of the Akkal.

Steelscale had returned to his concubines, who had been patiently awaiting his return. There had been much growling and roaring in the K’Soth language upon his arrival, and Katherine tried not to think too much about what might be happening in his cabin.

She was roused from her contemplation of the dead planet by the soft chime of the door. Mentith entered, the old Arkari looking a little less weary than the last time she had seen him. He seemed, like the ship, to be rejuvenated. She guessed that once his crew had got the ship’s orbit stabilised and the repairs well under way, he had had time to take stock of the situation and recuperate.

‘War Marshal, you’re looking well. Was there something you needed?’ said Katherine.

‘I came to thank you both in person for all your hard work down on the planet,’ said Mentith. ‘You have made some fascinating discoveries, not least of all our newly arrived guest. For that, I congratulate you and you have my gratitude. I am aware that you raised some concerns about our rather rushed departure for the Progenitor portal in this system, but I would like to stress that we will approach it with the utmost caution.’

‘I just think that we should be prepared for every eventuality, War Marshal,’ Katherine replied. ‘We still don’t know fully what happened here, or what might await us if we pass through that portal, or where it might take us.’

‘Well… there are a number of possibilities,’ Mentith said, cryptically.

‘You don’t say,’ said Rekkid, drily.

‘Hmm, indeed. We have not been idle during your absence. You will be pleased to know that soon after the ship’s AI and navigation systems came back online, we were able to get an accurate fix on our current position. We have also been comparing the scant records from Eonara’s memories that the ship has copies of with the galactic map that Professor Cor so helpfully provided us with. We have found a number of references to a Progenitor wormhole gate network that extended right across this galaxy at one time and which formed the transport backbone for their galaxy spanning empire. Over such distances, even the use of jump drives becomes impractical, a predicament that we are currently experiencing for ourselves. The ship has theorised that the Progenitors used the wormholes to travel tens of thousands of light years instantaneously. These devices appear to have been less complex than the one found in the Maranos system, designed to merely keep fixed wormholes open rather than generate their own at will, hence the smaller size of the one in the centre of this system.’

‘All empires need good communications to hold them together,’ said Katherine.

‘Exactly, and as I believe the human expression runs “All roads lead to Rome.” It is possible that Eonara found a way to get us home, but given her previous statements about her intent to bring down the Shapers, we had considered the possibility that she intended to return to the Progenitor home system. From Eonara’s previous utterances and the records we found relating to that system, it appears that a gate capable of creating wormholes to any destination in the galaxy may exist there. She may have intended to use it to attack them somehow. The Shaper home-world never did lie on the gate network, we have specific references to this, but we could also use the device to return home if it still exists, theoretically.’

‘Do we have a map of this network?’ said Rekkid.

‘We do indeed, but we have no way of knowing how much of it still exists. Furthermore, although we now know which system we are currently in, once we pass through the gate in this system it would appear to bring us out five hundred light years away at a junction of several such pathways. Quite how we would know which one to take once we got there is not clear, nor do we know what would happen were we to venture down a wormhole that no longer led to a functioning device.’

‘I strongly suspect that it would not be pleasant,’ Rekkid commented, and winced. ‘Do we even know how to activate these devices anyway?’

‘No, we do not. We must investigate the device in this system first of all. The one found in the Fulan system contained resident AIs. Perhaps we may need to communicate with one here, although so far it has not responded to the efforts of our smaller craft to do so,’ said Mentith.

‘Hmm, you know Maran did try to kill us all,’ said Rekkid. ‘Are you sure that this is wise?’

‘What choice do we have?’ Mentith replied. ‘It will take us years to return to our home systems otherwise, if we make it at all.’

‘How is Ushild?’ said Katherine. ‘If we could speak to him again, perhaps he could help us. He may know how the Akkal passed through before.’

‘He is still unconscious, I’m afraid,’ said Mentith. ‘Chief Medical Adept Okanno informs me that although they have removed him from stasis after his journey, he remains in a greatly weakened condition. In any case, we may have a long period of investigation ahead of us before we are able to pass through the portal in this system, though if Ushild awakes, all the better.’

‘And if he doesn’t, then the secrets of his race die with him,’ said Katherine, gloomily.

‘How’s the ship?’ said Rekkid, changing the subject. ‘Has she been fully repaired?’

‘Fortunately, almost. There are still some minor areas of damage to deal with, but we managed to fully re-manufacture those key systems that we could not repair. My crew have worked tirelessly to get the Glory back to her peak operating capacity.’

‘Ship shape and Bristol fashion?’ said Katherine.

‘I’m afraid I have no idea what that means, but if you are referring to this ship of war being ready for service, then yes, she is. We shall be breaking orbit soon to journey to the portal. Perhaps you’d care to join me on the bridge? You may be able to offer some insights, given your previous experiences.’

Rekkid shot Katherine a sideways look.

‘Yes of course, War Marshal, thank you,’ Katherine replied.

‘Excellent. I shall now proceed to Lord Steelscale’s cabin and ask him to join us also,’ said Mentith, a little stiffly, and made to leave

‘Yes… I’d knock before you walk in if I were you,’ said Rekkid. ‘We heard… noises.’

A few minutes later, they saw the grey-white cloud-tops of the dead planet slide away from view on the main bridge display as the Shining Glory turned and broke orbit, heading for the centre of the system and the Progenitor portal. As the starfield wheeled with the ship’s motion, Katherine caught a glimpse of the brilliant whirling stars of the galactic core, visible edge on as a vast swathe of light, before the ship entered its jump and the spectacular scene was replaced by the rushing dark of hyperspace.

They emerged, moments later, into the brilliant light of the twin suns. Ahead of the ship, the two closely orbiting G class stars dominated the scene, blazing yellow white against the blackness of space. As the Glory headed between them, other lights became discernible in the darkness. The destroyer’s fleet of smaller craft were clustered about the Progenitor device, as yet invisible to the naked eye against the void. Views from the ship’s other sensors showed a slender ring floating free between the two stars, balanced by their opposing gravities, but which neither emitted nor reflected any signals of any kind. It was a perfect black body object composed, the ship had theorised, of compacted dark matter. Smaller rings had also been detected floating in the photosphere of the two stars, similar to those found in the Fulan system. Presumably - like those other, larger, devices, - their purpose was to feed the portal with plumes of directed energy.

As the Shining Glory approached, the fleet of smaller craft parted to allow their massive mothership through. The Glory slowed to a stop and began to probe the device with its more powerful instruments as the smaller craft, no longer needed, began to return to its cavernous hangars.

The ship’s cat avatar, now fully restored to life, padded across the deck towards Mentith, who stood in the centre of the bridge contemplating the instrument displays.

‘Anything?’ said Mentith, addressing the creature.

‘Not much,’ the cat replied. ‘It would seem that our theory that this device is composed of compacted dark matter holds out. I’m assuming that the density of the material is part of the wormhole terminus anchoring properties of the device. It is impossible to penetrate with my sensors. The only surface features discernible are the circular apertures on its outer surface that face the rings located within the photospheres of the stars and presumably act to collect energies directed towards them. I get no returns at all from the rest of the device. However, I can detect the wormhole terminus.’

‘Can we pass through?’ said Mentith.

‘No. At present the device is not active and hence the wormhole is not being held open for us. Its current diameter is on the sub-atomic scale and we cannot enter.’

‘Any thoughts on how we activate this device?’ said Mentith to the bridge in general.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the cat. ‘However, I will continue to attempt to penetrate the device somehow with my sensors. I have theorised that perhaps I can determine its inner workings by examining its imprint on hyperspace at the microscopic level.’

‘If I remember correctly,’ said Rekkid. ‘The first signs of life within the Fulan system device were uncovered when Varish approached it.’

‘You are referring to the Progenitor AI that accompanied you to the system?’

‘Yes, although its true origin was unknown to us at the time. The AI systems within one of the rings seemed to respond to its presence.’

‘The same AI that had murdered the others controlling the portal and had allied itself with the Shapers, unleashing the Banished Arkari upon us and killing thousands of people,’ said Katherine. ‘We should be careful. If an active AI is still present within this device, perhaps the long millennia have driven it insane also.’

‘Duly noted,’ replied Mentith. ‘Especially since we do not know what destroyed the original home-world of the Akkal.’

‘Perhaps we should move the ship closer to the ring?’ Steelscale suggested as he considered the various projected images, arms folded across his muscular chest. ‘We have a Progenitor AI of our own aboard. Perhaps they might like to talk to one another?’

‘Assuming of course that Eonara is capable,’ Mentith replied. ‘She still appears to be locked within her core and remains uncommunicative.’

‘To us, maybe,’ Steelscale replied. ‘It might be worth the attempt.’

‘Agreed,’ said Mentith and turning to the cat said: ‘Ship, close slowly with the ring and extend greetings on all channels, but raise our shields and prepare to go to combat readiness at a moment’s notice.’

At Mentith’s command, the Shining Glory edged forward towards the ring’s outer surface, until the nose of the warship was mere metres away from the night black, featureless material. All the while, the ship continued to broadcast using all means available to it.

Still nothing. They waited in anticipation.

Then the ship’s cat broke the silence:

‘Wait. I’m detecting a signal. It’s coming from the ring but I’m unable to pinpoint the exact point of origin.’

‘What sort of signal?’ said Mentith urgently.

‘It’s a hypercom broadcast of some kind. It bears some resemblance to other Progenitor communications that we have on record, but it seems to be heavily encrypted. It is however directed at us.’

‘Directed to Eonara?’

‘If it is, she isn’t responding yet.’

Just then, the shipboard comm. chimed and the image of Medical Adept Okanno appeared in the air to one side of the bridge. He looked alarmed and talked hurriedly in Arkari, the ship translating for the benefit of Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale.

‘Bridge, this is Okanno. Our patient has woken up. Something… I don’t know… something woke him very suddenly. He started to rant and rave at us. I’m not sure any of it makes any sense. You should get Professor Cor, Doctor O’Reilly and Lord Steelscale down here immediately. They might be able to make some sense of what he’s saying.’

‘Can they not talk to him from here via the comm.?’ said Mentith.

‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think that would help. He’s raving about gods and the end of the world. I doubt that introducing holographic faces and disembodied voices would improve the situation. Get them down here now, before it’s too late.’

Emerging from the ship’s internal transport tubes, they rushed along the corridor into the brightly lit sickbay. Ushild lay near the centre of the room, his bed surrounded by gleaming equipment, drones and Okanno and his staff. The walls and air around them were alive with data displays and medical scanning imagery. Ushild was babbling in his own language and clawing the air.

‘I don’t know exactly what happened,’ said Okanno, seeing them enter. ‘All of a sudden he emerged from his coma. His eyes flicked open and his heart rate and breathing became highly elevated. I don’t know if this is normal for his species… I don’t know if he can survive for very long in such a state. In fact, we don’t know enough about his physiology at all, although we’re trying to stabilise him all the same. We are however seeing some very strange neural activity.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Rekkid, as they moved closer to Ushild.

‘Ushild’s body is riddled with implants. They were to connect his nervous system to the machine that we found him in. They became inactive when we removed him from the device, but now they’re active again. It’s as if they’re receiving data. We can see the electrical impulses radiating out from them along his nervous system.’

‘And this started around the time that the ship approached the portal?’ said Rekkid.

‘Yes, I would say so,’ Okanno agreed.

‘The Progenitor portal; it must be trying to communicate with him,’ said Katherine. ‘You remember that vast machine that we found him plugged into to: it didn’t look like the Akkal had built it all by themselves, did it? It could be that it was Progenitor technology that they had appropriated. Maybe the portal has detected the implants in his body and is trying to talk to him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rekkid. ‘The question is: will he talk to us?’

As they moved closer, the ship began to translate Ushild’s ranting for them. His eyes were wide open, his lips flecked with spittle as he convulsed and raved.

‘The gods… the gods are here! I can hear them… I hear them whispering inside my mind! They know what I have done, what I did with the gifts that they bestowed upon us! Death! Death! Death! I have caused nothing but the slaughter of innocents! I shall drown in a river of their blood! I shall be punished, yes, punished for my sins against the living!’

His back arched and Ushild gave out a rending cry before he began to snatch at things in the air above him that only he could see. Katherine moved forward and tried to talk to him.

‘Ushild,’ she said above his cries. ‘Ushild can you hear me?’ He appeared not to notice her. ‘Ushild you have to tell us what happened. We’re about to attempt to pass through the portal that your people were led to by the ship you found. We need to know how to open it, but we also need to know what’s on the other side. What happened here?’

‘I killed them all, that’s what happened!’ cried Ushild, suddenly fixing her with a piercing gaze. ‘All my fault! Yes!’

‘What happened?’

‘I… the gods are fickle… they bring death as well as life… and everlasting undeath to Ushild!’

‘This is pointless,’ sighed Rekkid. ‘He’s quite clearly completely delirious. Okanno, can you do something?’

‘Let me try a mild sedative,’ Okanno replied. ‘I’ll have to be careful. Too much and he may fall back into his coma.’

Okanno administered the dose, and after a few moments, Ushild seemed to calm down. He ceased to rant and rave, although his heart rate remained high and his breathing still seemed unusually laboured.

‘Ushild, what happened? What did you do?’ said Katherine.

Ushild said nothing for a moment

‘Ushild?’

‘I killed them all. It was me. It was my fault.’

‘I don’t understand. Take it from the beginning.’

Ushild’s breathing subsided a little. He began to talk, lucid once more.

‘It was total war on both sides. You understand? No quarter was given or asked. Our entire civilisation was plunged into conflict, one half against the other. I had no choice but to join up when I reached maturity, but I soon rose high in the ranks. Attrition amongst the senior ranks and my own ability led me to the very top. Eventually I became High Praetorian of the Order of the Sacred Way. We were the elite warriors, sworn to defend the new faith against the lies of the old. My office held the highest responsibility. For many years we held the Great Gate against all comers, but we were losing the war. The greater resources that the home-world had available to them were steadily grinding us down over the years and there was talk of them delivering a final fatal blow to us. We had sent many people through the Great Gate to explore the worlds beyond. They had found many useful things that had aided our civilisation in the years since their discovery, advanced materials, computer technologies and space flight advances and so on. Our very command centre was constructed of samples taken from the very Home of the Gods itself! In desperation I ordered my warriors to retrieve any technology that might help us win the war. They brought back the hibernation technology that you found me in. We copied it, constructed our own and installed it in the subterranean chamber where you found me. The hope was that if our world was bombarded, that our military command and control centre would survive and that we could sleep away the long centuries until our world was habitable again. The other thing that they found though: it was a device of terrible power, a gigantic thing, a weapon of last resort. We thought that it might end the war in our favour. We were wrong.’

Ushild shook his head and gasped as if in pain. They allowed him time to collect himself before he continued.

‘I ordered the weapon brought back through the portal. The portal slammed shut as soon as we brought it through, trapping our people on the other side. We should have taken that as an ill omen, but still we persisted. At first we didn’t know what the weapon did or how it worked, but since we had deciphered some of the language of the gods, we were able to determine that they had forged it to destroy worlds. We were not able to fathom its exact workings, but we did determine how it might be activated, and what it did. We called it The World Breaker. It was a gun capable of collapsing planets or even the cores of stars by ripping apart the fabric of reality. I ordered that it be placed in orbit above our planet and aimed at the home-world. Then I warned our enemy of our new weapon.

Vast stockpiles of interplanetary missiles had been accumulated on both sides, but had never been used for fear of the mutual destruction that their fusion warheads would cause to both sides. The World Breaker offered us a war winning solution. It would be capable of destroying our enemy utterly without them having the chance to retaliate. I informed the enemy that they must at last come to terms, or we would use it. I also informed them that any attempt to strike at our world or the weapon itself would result in its deployment and that my men were standing by to fire it at a moment’s notice. With that, I signed the death warrant of our race.’

‘What happened, Ushild? Please tell us,’ pleaded Katherine.

‘I don’t know exactly, but… there was truce, at last. We were in the process of despatching a delegation when there was an attack on an enemy city. Whether the unit in question were defying orders or whether they simply hadn’t had them communicated to them, we never found out. Thousands were killed. The enemy thought that the cease fire was a ruse and in their anger at our apparent betrayal they launched all of their ballistic missiles at us. The Order of the Sacred Way followed my orders to the letter and fired The World Breaker cannon. Billions died instantly and the planet of our birth was torn asunder into rubble. But it didn’t end there: the barrage of missiles that the home-world had launched against us overwhelmed our defences and struck home, levelling our cities in the space of a few minutes. We had only a few hours to retreat below into our underground command centre and seal ourselves inside before the bombs fell. We had hoped to ride out the worst, but there was more to come.’

Ushild struggled on, his voice becoming hoarser. Evidently it was a real physical effort to speak at such length, but he continued anyway, anxious to impart the truth about his people to the beings clustered around him.

‘The shattering of Kel scattered rubble across the system. As it happened, our two planets had been in close alignment at the time of the exchange and so Arul Kar was bombarded with debris for many days. The sky rained fire for a second time as rocks the size of mountains pummelled our already shattered world still further. All was in darkness and fire. The very sky burned. We at first planned to escape, but our ships had been recalled to port due to the ceasefire. They had been caught in the exchange of weapons and destroyed and when we looked to the portal, we saw that it was still closed off to us. We surmised that the gods were angry with us for what we had done, and in any case, we now had no means to reach it.

We then took the decision to try to sleep until our world became habitable again. All other options seemed closed to us, but the machine had been constructed to be governed by one of the artificial intelligences that the gods were so fond of creating. We had none available, and so it had been modified that a living person must form the heart of the machine. We had also connected it to a vast transmission array, so that we could call for help to any of our kin still out there and to the gods if they might hear us, to come and rescue us from the hell to which we had consigned ourselves. Since it was I who was in command and it was I whose orders had led us to this terrible point, it was I who volunteered to remain awake inside the machine and oversee its operation. Ironically, I was to be the only survivor. No-one heard our cries for help. Our kin were lost or dead and the gods did not answer our prayers. Over time, the device that we had constructed began to fail, and my comrades never woke from their centuries of sleep. I failed them, just as I failed my people, just as I failed the gods. Perhaps my thousands of years of incarceration, my life unnaturally extended by the machines, were my divine punishment!’

Ushild started to sob, a hoarse wheezing sound that wracked his ancient body.

‘I thought as much,’ said Steelscale. ‘They found Progenitor technology and used their new toys to destroy themselves. I suspect that my own people would react in a similarly destructive manner were they to get their talons on such things.’

‘So now we know,’ said Rekkid.

‘We don’t know everything,’ said Katherine. ‘We still don’t know what it was that the Akkal found on the other side of the portal that provoked such a sudden and violent change in their society. They went from being a peaceful people united under one nation and one religion, to tearing themselves apart and annihilating themselves in a few short years.’

‘Because it was a lie!’ gasped Ushild. ‘All of it! All that we had been taught for thousands of years! All of it was untrue! We found proof…’

‘Proof? Proof of what?’ said Katherine.

‘Proof that it was not the gods that had made the Akkal people. It was the Progenitors!’

‘What? That’s impossible,’ said Rekkid. ‘The Progenitors were gone from this galaxy billions of years before your people evolved.’

‘No! No, you do not understand! They are the makers! They….’ Ushild cried out in pain and shuddered. Spittle began to leak from his mouth as he thrashed uncontrollably. Okanno shoved the archaeologists aside and leant over Ushild, desperately trying to help him.

‘He’s going into cardiac arrest!’ cried Okanno to his staff. ‘We need to stabilise him, quickly! It’s both of his hearts this time!’

‘Something’s happening to his implants,’ cried one of Okanno’s aides. ‘There are massive neural impulses coming from them, stronger than before!’

‘It’s the portal, it’s communicating with him again!’ said Katherine.

‘It’s killing him, that’s what it’s doing!’ said Okanno, and commanded the medical drones to assist him.

At that moment, the shipboard comm. came to life.

‘This is Mentith, what the hell is going on down there? We’re seeing power fluctuations in the portal. The ship has locked down the intended targets of the transmission. It’s talking to Ushild.’

‘We know!’ cried Rekkid. ‘It’s too much for him, he’ll die if we can’t shut it off. Okanno’s doing his best, but…’

‘It isn’t just Ushild that it’s talking to…’ said Mentith, before the comm. system cut out.

At that moment, the lights went out. The ship’s systems died. The sickbay was plunged into darkness. There were cries of alarm now mingling with Ushild’s cries. Then the walls and holographic displays came alive with light. Symbols began to scroll across them. They were composed of Progenitor tri-linear script, the same pattern endlessly repeating on all the displays. Katherine looked at Rekkid, his face illuminated in the light from the glowing symbols.

‘What does it say?’ she asked urgently.

‘I am alive,’ Rekkid replied. ‘It says “I am alive” over and over.’

‘Who is?’ said Katherine. ‘Who is it that’s talking to us?’

It was then, as the ship began to move, that Ushild died. His ten thousand year old body finally gave out under the strain. He welcomed death. He was free from the pain and guilt, free from the endless isolation. He had peace at last. He slipped under into unconsciousness for a final time with a smile on his cracked lips as the Shining Glory surged forward of its own accord and plunged into mouth of the now active Progenitor portal.

Chapter 31

Isaacs yanked the controls, desperately trying to pull the Profit Margin away from the emerging warship that now loomed above them. The sleek craft skimmed across the belly of the vast ship, its port wing-tip mere metres away from the slab-like hull plates. Something wasn’t right, thought Anna. This didn’t look like any Shaper vessel that she had yet seen.

Isaacs pulled the craft out of its turn and powered the ship forwards at full throttle, frantically moving his hands over the control surfaces for the jump engines. He only had seconds to get them clear…

‘Hey!’ Steven cried from the dorsal turret. ‘That’s no Shaper ship: look!’

At that moment, the comm. came alive with chatter.

‘Profit Margin, Profit Margin! This is the Uncaring Cosmos! Captain Isaacs, please respond! Profit Margin…’

Isaacs spun his ship through one hundred and eighty degrees so that it now faced back towards the ship. Sure enough, the vast irregular globe of the Nahabe gunsphere filled the view from the cockpit windows, its dull green hull pockmarked with weapon strikes.

‘Uncaring Cosmos! Jesus, it’s good to see you. You gave us quite a shock…’ Isaacs replied, the relief palpable in his voice.

‘Apologies Captain. We had to remain cloaked until the last minute. Please come aboard, you are cleared to dock.’

‘What happened here?’

‘No time to explain. Please, we must re-cloak and leave this area at once before the enemy spots us.’

‘Acknowledged, Uncaring Cosmos. Preparing to dock,’ Isaacs replied, and then began to pilot the Profit Margin towards the waiting Nahabe warship.

The Profit Margin settled on its landing gear inside the dark, cavernous docking bay of the Uncaring Cosmos. Isaacs noted, as he brought the ship to rest, that the bay contained the battered remains of the Hidden Hand’s fleet of ships. Several craft appeared to be being repaired and were surrounded by equipment and parts, whilst others, too wrecked to be repairable, were being broken up for spares.

As they exited the Profit Margin’s boarding ramp, Isaacs could feel the deck shifting beneath his feet as the Nahabe ship got under way and slipped back into the cover of its cloaking technology. They were met by a phalanx of armed Nahabe crew members and Farouk. Farouk eyed the three new arrivals warily, hand resting on the butt of a rail rifle slung at his hip, until the Nahabe floated forwards, extended articulated mechanical arms from their sarcophagi and scanned the three humans with the instruments that they held.

‘They are uninfected,’ said one of the Nahabe. ‘Welcome back, Captains.’

‘Cal, Anna, my friends, it’s good to see you!’ said Farouk with relief as his face broke into a broad grin. ‘You made it all the way to Earth?’

‘Certainly did, thanks to my expert flying,’ said Isaacs.

‘And thanks to the modifications that you guys helped us to make to the ship,’ Anna added. ‘The Navy got the intel. that the Nahabe gathered. They were very grateful. Cal’s ship is loaded with weapons.’

‘Excellent. I’m sure we can put those new toys to good use. So, are you going to introduce me to our new guest?’ said Farouk, nodding in the direction of Steven.

‘Depends who’s asking,’ Steven replied levelly.

‘Farouk Ali Khan of the Hidden Hand, or what’s left of it at least. I fix things around here,’ said Farouk, indicating the collection of battered spacecraft in the hangar, ‘and I kill Shapers too when I get the chance,’ he added.

‘Agent Steven Harris, Special Operations Command,’ said Steven and stuck out a hand. ‘We appreciate all the help that you and your people have given us so far, Farouk.’

Farouk took his proffered hand and shook it firmly.

‘Of that I have no doubt,’ he replied. ‘You are here to kill Shapers, Agent Harris?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘Good.’

‘Farouk, what happened here?’ said Anna. ‘We saw the remains of Port Royal. Frankly, we were surprised to find anyone left alive.’

‘Yes, the enemy came looking for us, alright. We got away before they found us, is what happened. Very lucky, I call it. You’d better come with me. The Speaker wants to see you. You can tell him everything and I expect that you have plenty questions for him too.’

‘Yeah, we do,’ said Isaacs. ‘Such as: how do we get onto the surface of Orinoco undetected?’

‘You always were a crazy son of a bitch, Captain Isaacs. This way, please.’

Farouk and the Nahabe that had accompanied him - now forming an honour guard - led Isaacs, Anna and Steven deep into the bowels of the ship. The interior of the Uncaring Cosmos was a gloomy, distinctly alien place. The ship’s internal corridors, dimly lit and made from geometric panels of the same dully green material as the outer hull, seemed to be both arranged almost randomly and at strange angles to one another. Isaacs had soon lost all sense of where he was in relation to their starting point and unlike Commonwealth and Arkari ships, the Uncaring Cosmos seemed to lack any kind of network of internal transport arteries. Instead, the Nahabe crew negotiated its warren of corridors and spaces in their floating sarcophagi at dizzying speed and in almost total silence, like bees in a hive. Occasionally, the angular form of one of the crew would suddenly appear out of the gloom and whizz past on some errand or other, the occupant swerving their floating casket around the new arrivals at the last second. It was deeply unnerving.

Eventually they joined what appeared to be one of the main thoroughfares leading through the ship, a broader corridor that led straight ahead into the heart of the vessel and which was busy with Nahabe moving to and fro. They followed the flow of sarcophagi and after passing through a series of pressure doors, they arrived at the vessel’s command centre. The bridge of the Uncaring Cosmos lay at the centre of the roughly spherical vessel. It was itself a sphere, many tens of metres across and pierced by the entrances to corridors leading off in different directions to the rest of the vessel. The corridor that they had just exited had deposited them near to the base of the sphere. Looking up into the gloomy space, they could see a large number of Nahabe floating among vast holographic projections that glowed in the darkness, depicting data from the ship’s systems and other information in the Nahabe script. A three dimensional map of the Achernar system hung above the centre of the chamber, forming a huge translucent orrery that showed the positions of the various bodies as well as those of the ships in the system that the Uncaring Cosmos was currently tracking.

As they watched, a couple of the floating sarcophagi detached themselves from a group of Nahabe and descended gently out of the gloom towards the new arrivals. People often commented that all the Nahabe looked alike, but the floating sarcophagi that they willingly enclosed themselves in were all subtly different and unique to each individual. Isaacs recognised one of the approaching Nahabe almost immediately as it drew closer.

‘Speaker, it’s good to see you again,’ said Isaacs as the Nahabe came to a halt in front of them.

‘And you also, Captain Isaacs,’ said the Speaker. ‘I was party to your conversation in the docking bay. One of your escorts relayed it to me. I must congratulate you on your success. Now it seems you have returned to aid us once more?’

‘I was hoping that we might be able to help one another,’ Isaacs replied.

‘Indeed?’

‘Might I introduce…’

‘Agent Steven Harris, Special Operations Command,’ said the Speaker, completing Isaacs’ sentence for him. ‘Yes, as I said, I overheard your conversation earlier, but the Nahabe are familiar with him. Welcome, Agent Harris.’

‘You two know each other?’ said Isaacs, turning to Steven and jabbing a thumb towards the Speaker.

‘Not exactly,’ Steven replied. ‘But I’ve worked with the Nahabe before. This ship is from the Order of Dead Suns, correct?’

‘Yeah, it is,’ said Isaacs. ‘How did you know?’

‘I recognised the hull patterns on the way in. An honourable order of holy warriors, but you are not of them, are you Speaker?’

‘No, I am not. The Hidden Hand are merely guests aboard this vessel. Might I also introduce her captain?’

The other sarcophagus remained motionless and silent before them.

‘He doesn’t say much, does he?’ said Anna, after a moment’s awkward silence.

‘Perhaps, in time. There are certain protocols that must be followed,’ said the Speaker. ‘He wished to meet you all the same, and sends his warmest greetings.’

‘Right…’

‘Oh no, you misunderstand. You were present at the death of his commander, the Lord Protector of the Order of Dead Suns, who fought and died to protect you, and whose death you avenged in battle. His silence is a mark of the deepest respect as befits your status, Captain Favreaux and Captain Isaacs.’

‘Well, uh thank you. We are indeed honoured,’ said Isaacs, awkwardly and a little taken aback.

‘Agent Harris, your previous exploits with our people have earned you much renown. The Captain would have me inform you that you are welcome aboard his vessel,’ the Speaker continued.

‘Thank you,’ Steven replied.

‘What have you been up to?’ said Anna under her breath.

‘It’s classified,’ Steven whispered back, then to the Nahabe said: ‘Speaker, Captain, I am here on a mission of great importance. Any assistance that this ship could render me would be greatly appreciated.’

‘Perhaps if you could tell us something of your intentions?’

‘We received a distress signal from the surface of the moon of Orinoco indicating that Admiral George Haines of the Commonwealth Navy may have survived the destruction of his vessel, the Abraham Lincoln. I have been tasked with locating the Admiral and either rescuing him, or terminating him depending upon his current status.’

‘You refer to whether or not the Admiral has been enslaved by the enemy, of course,’ the Speaker replied.

‘Yes.’

‘We should be able to assist you in getting you to Orinoco. Many of our people are already there, blending in with the locals and gathering intelligence. They are currently operating from an unlisted landing facility a little way from the capital, Bolivar City, that the Hidden Hand have previously used for smuggling operations. They have made contact with a number of Navy personnel who survived the battle and have joined forces with them. We are in regular contact with them and do so at pre-arranged times. Maria Velasquez has assumed command. Although we have heard nothing regarding whether Admiral Haines survived or not, it is entirely possible given that many of his people have also done so. I believe that it should be possible to get you down to the surface to join up with them, as well as deliver the cache of weapons that you brought with you.’

‘Excellent. That’s very encouraging,’ said Steven. ‘What intelligence do you have on the situation in this system?’

‘Yeah, and would you mind telling us what happened to Port Royal?’ Isaacs added.

‘From the beginning, then…’ said the Speaker. ‘Shortly after you departed for Earth, it became clear that the enemy was aware of our presence in the system. Perhaps they were able to detect the signature of your ship’s departure, but we just don’t know. In any case, they proceeded to sweep the system methodically with their ships, working outwards from the centre of the system. It was only a matter of time before they located Port Royal. With no means of moving the base again, our options were limited, particularly since most of our smaller craft had been too badly damaged during the previous attack to be easily repairable, if they could be repaired at all.’

‘I did my best,’ said Farouk. ‘But most of the ships in the main bay had been almost totally destroyed, either by the Shapers or by our attempts to destroy their ship once it had rammed its way into the bay. We salvaged what parts I could manage, but it wasn’t much. Those that we had in side bays were the only ones to survive, and many of those were already damaged from previous missions. We didn’t have a hope of repairing enough of them in time to mount an evacuation.’

‘Our only remaining option was to repair the Uncaring Cosmos, and use it to get everyone off the base,’ said the Speaker. ‘The engineers aboard this vessel worked tirelessly to get her operational once more and make good the damage she sustained in the battle against the Shaper destroyers, but time was not on our side. As it was, they only succeeded in getting the main sub-light engines and cloaking device back online. We had no weapons, and no jump capability, but it was enough. We transferred what ships and supplies we could and got everyone off just in time before the Shapers arrived and assaulted the base a second time. This time they did not attempt to capture it and brought in heavier craft to finish the job. We had vacated the area less than an hour before, by your reckoning, when they arrived. I believe the appropriate human phrase would be: we escaped by the skin of our teeth. Yes?’

‘Yes, that certainly sounds fitting. How have you evaded them since then?’ said Anna.

‘With some difficulty. The vessel’s cloaking technology permits us a degree of protection. The Shapers seem to be unable to detect us at long range, though they appear to be able to see us clearly enough at distances of less than, by your reckoning, five AU. They have hunted us diligently. We have been keeping to the outer system, but it is only the skill of her captain and crew that have kept us alive. Things have become easier for us now that the ship’s jump engines and weapons systems have been repaired, but we cannot risk battle again. Putting people onto the surface or Orinoco was done for two reasons: firstly, we needed to know what was happening on the surface, and secondly, we could not risk keeping so many people aboard this vessel in case she were destroyed. All Nahabe have of course remained aboard as we would be far too obvious were we to attempt to mingle with the mostly human population of Orinoco.’

‘And what is the situation on the moon, and in the system in general? Have the Shapers enslaved everyone?’ said Steven.

‘No, it does not appear so. Admiral Morgan, formerly of the Commonwealth Navy, has installed himself as the self proclaimed president of what he calls The Freedom Alliance, a rival entity that appears to comprise systems whose political leaders have gone over to the Shapers, willingly or otherwise. For all intents and purposes this new nation exists as a puppet regime to the Shapers, its population cowed by the sudden imposition of authoritarian rule and blanket propaganda that paints the Commonwealth as the villains. However, despite a crackdown by the military and the police for the past few weeks – who have presumably been infiltrated en masse - it seems that life is actually continuing almost as normal for the majority of citizens. Trade between the systems of this Freedom Alliance has resumed, though we understand that there are stringent checks on all arriving ships.’

‘So just who have the Shapers taken control over?’

‘Difficult to tell, but it seems that all Navy vessels that have gone over to the enemy are now under direct Shaper control, at least all of those that have entered the system recently have shown clear signs of strong Shaper presence aboard. It is probably safe to assume that any of the marines that were under Cox’s command in the Hadar system are also enslaved. As to the rest of the armed forces and the police forces in the system, the situation is less clear. Our people on the surface report seeing local units that appeared to consist of non-enslaved personnel, judging from their general manner, whilst others have sighted units that showed clear signs of enslavement and were accompanied by small Shaper craft. Even non-human units of races hitherto unknown to us have occasionally been sighted. We have tracked a number of large vessels entering the system of Shaper origin. It is safe to assume that they have brought in ground forces from elsewhere, though this flow of additional troops appears to have slowed to a trickle since my people began to launch raids against supply lines and rallying positions far beyond the Commonwealth’s borders. It seems that although many local forces are being kept in line via a mixture of propaganda, fear and the enslavement of key personnel and units, that the Shapers have been attempting to consolidate their position by bringing in outside help. We also have rumours that the Shapers themselves have been sighted on Orinoco, though these are unsubstantiated. Whether they lack the resources or the desire to take over the entire system is not clear, but it seems that those who pose a threat to them, or hold important positions may have been enslaved or killed. Presumably anyone who does not follow orders is dealt with accordingly. It is very possible that this process may have begun before Morgan openly rebelled against the Commonwealth.’

‘Jesus. Sounds like Morgan has installed himself as the head of a totalitarian regime,’ said Isaacs.

‘Yes, although doubtless he has his own orders, and it is not known whether he remains entirely human or not. Admiral Cox is also present on the moon. It seems that he somehow survived his defeat in the Solar System and he has appeared in a number of public broadcasts where, ironically, Morgan has hailed him a hero and true patriot. Haines, on the other hand, has been demonised as a butcher and a war criminal.’

‘So what sort of naval presence are we looking at?’ said Steven. ‘If this is to be Morgan’s new capital, I’d expect it to be heavily defended.’

‘You are correct. Ships come and go regularly, but at any time there remains a large number of Shaper warships present in the system along with those Commonwealth vessels that they have captured. Two carrier battle groups are currently present and we are tracking thirty Shaper craft of varying types in this system alone. There is something else, however…’

‘Go on,’ said Steven.

‘Our recon units in deep space came across this enemy vessel. It’s something that we have not seen before, either in this war, or our previous encounters with the Shapers.’ As he talked, the Speaker began to project a grainy image of the craft. Its elongated, bulbous body and long arms that projected forward from the main hull gave it the appearance of something squid-like, albeit composed of interlocking crystal shards. ‘This vessel jumped shortly after we encountered it, and the units that came across it, lacking our recent developments in sensor technology, lost it in hyperspace. However we are now tracking the vessel using our modified sensor array and it is inbound to the Achernar system and appears to be heading for Orinoco, along with its escorts.’

‘So, it’s one more group of Shaper vessels to worry about,’ said Isaacs. ‘What’s the big deal, other than the usual problems associated with dealing with them?’

‘Captain Isaacs, this ship is around five hundred kilometres from bow to stern.’

‘It’s what!? Fucking hell…’

‘It does not appear to be a simple warship. Its purpose is unclear. It appears to have strong defensive weapons, but few offensive ones. Those forward arms look like they should house some terrible weapon, but the scans we obtained appeared to suggest not. Nevertheless, it is a formidable opponent, more than capable of holding off entire fleets of vessels. We must gather more information on this craft. Both the Commonwealth and my people need to know how to deal with a vessel of this size.’

‘How?’ said Isaacs. ‘Look at the size of that thing! If ever we needed the Arkari…’

‘The Arkari seem to be doing what they do best. Acting alone and shutting the rest of us out,’ said Steven bitterly. ‘No, we cannot depend upon their help. We need to get a good look at that thing and find out what it does.’

‘Are you planning on just flying up alongside it and asking the Shapers if we can take a few pictures?’ said Isaacs incredulously. ‘Maybe we could pose in front of it?’

‘Well I wasn’t exactly going to ask, but yeah, something like that. We could use the Profit Margin to get a sneaky peek.’

‘Un-fucking-believable. I love you Steven, I hope you know that,’ said Isaacs, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Wow, another suicide mission for me and my ship. What fun!’

‘Calm down. If we play this right, we can sail right on by and still complete our original mission. Besides, I thought you said you were the expert pilot?’

‘Yes, also still alive, a state of being that I intend to continue with if you don’t mind. Flying right up to enemy starships the size of small countries is not on my list of ‘sensible things to do,’ to be honest.’

‘Listen: you used to be a smuggler, correct?’ said Steven

‘On occasion, yeah, I admit it,’ said Isaacs and shrugged. ‘Anna did it for longer than me, but we both skirted around the edges of the law from time to time.’

‘I did more than just skirt, to be honest,’ said Anna. ‘The Hidden Hand was a full scale piracy operation. For a good cause, admittedly.’

‘Right, so this is no different. We need to get to Orinoco posing as legitimate traders, like we agreed before, except we make sure our flight path takes us within sight of this ship once it enters orbit. You’ve done this a million times before, am I right?’ said Steven, trying to sound encouraging.

‘I know I’m going to regret this,’ said Isaacs. ‘But tell me, Agent Harris, what exactly is it that you have planned?’

Chapter 32

Chen did her best to relax. She had booked herself into one of the better hotels in Izmir, the planetary capital of New Hatti, and had spent much of her time sleeping off the fatigue of recent weeks, rising late to wander the souks and ornamental gardens or sit alone by the water’s edge at one of the many cafes that lined the great promenade that led to the port. It felt good to do almost nothing for a change, but she couldn’t fully shut out the war, no matter where she went. There were uniformed figures everywhere she looked, such was the concentration of Commonwealth forces in the Delta Pavonis system, and service men and women could be seen everywhere alone or in groups, laughing and joking at the table next to her, wandering hand in hand along the waterfront, being ejected in rowdy drunken groups from the bars and brothels in the older quarter of town. They were all trying to grab a few fleeting final moments of happiness and release before the coming storm. They were a constant, nagging reminder.

At night, the hot, dry air of the deserts of New Hatti created night skies that were famed for their clarity and beauty. Gazing upwards, it was possible to look towards the heart of the galaxy, and see the vast bands of stars and lanes of dark dust laid out with breathtaking brilliance. But the scene did little to set her mind at ease. The centre of the galaxy was where they came from, from where they reached out across the stars to snuff out and enslave the younger civilisations, and one bright star in particular, shining brilliant blue-white against the background of more distant stars gazed balefully down at her: Achernar, now under the heel of the enemy and the centre of their new domain, the heart of the enemy presence in humanity’s own backyard.

If she looked carefully, other lights could be seen against the glittering backdrop: the regular patterns of ships parked in orbit, visible in the night sky as light glinted from their flanks or engines fired as they manoeuvred into position. There were rank upon rank of carriers, destroyers, frigates, cruisers and lumbering troop transports up there, as well as a constant stream of craft rising and falling from the spaceport located where the fringes of the city of Izmir met the sands of the great desert.

Her mind wandered too to the last time that she had had any leave to speak of. She had managed barely a day on Earth to visit her parents a few weeks previously, which felt like a lifetime ago with all that had happened since, but the last time she had anything more was over two years ago. That was when she and Al…

She still missed him. She missed his easy manner and ready smile. He had been her rock at the time, a comfort against the terrors that they knew they would both have to face. Since then, there had been no-one. She had had to find her own strength and there had not been the opportunity to meet anyone else. Besides, she had not wanted to entangle herself, certainly not with anyone on the crew. She had made that mistake once and it had cost her dearly. She still remembered what he had looked like as he died in her arms. She couldn’t bear that a second time. She must have no attachments but to her ship and her crew. Not with all that was at stake. Perhaps when all of this was over, if she, if anyone, survived.

McManus had been a good choice for her XO, she reflected. Cartwright was perhaps a better judge of character that she gave him credit for. Though at times he behaved like stern headmaster, and McManus a disreputable uncle, she got the distinct impression that the two of them together were watching her back, and though she would always deny that she needed looking after, it felt good to know that with Haines gone, there was still somebody out there looking out for her.

McManus had insisted that she be accompanied by an armed bodyguard whilst on the surface of New Hatti, due to her celebrity status and possible risks to her person. She had refused, but had acquiesced in allowing the hotel to be discreetly guarded and to carrying her personal secure comm. at all times as well as remaining in civilian garb. Even so, she got a few salutes from service personnel who recognised her and a few interested glances from people on the street and in bars and restaurants. Men had even tried chatting her up on two separate occasions, having spotted her sitting alone. She’d politely brushed them off, and then both times had later wished that she hadn’t. Maybe, she wondered, she ought to follow the example of the other Navy personnel she’d seen on leave and enjoy one last night before she was plunged in the maelstrom of war again.

As she sat at the water’s edge, watching the yellow sun of Delta Pavonis sink slowly into the sea, she felt her pocket vibrate gently. She removed her secure comm. and held the finger sized device to her ear.

‘Chen here.’

‘Admiral, it’s Singh. You wished to be notified when it was time.’

‘Yes I did Mr Singh, thank you. I’m on my way. Chen out.’

She sighed, drained the last of her coffee and took one last look at the ocean before leaving, stopping only at her hotel to collect her belongings on the way to the spaceport.

An hour later, and the main briefing room of the Trafalgar was packed with officers, mainly captains and their XOs, plus a scattering of admirals, Chen included. Security was tight. Marine guards were everywhere aboard the carrier as well as outside the room, and everyone coming aboard was scanned and searched, regardless of rank. Chen saw a few faces that she recognised, plus a few she that had commanded and fought with and she exchanged a few pleasantries, then she took her place a few rows back from the front next to McManus, who appeared to be nursing a hangover and had arrived separately from the other side of the planet below.

‘Enjoy yourself on leave, Commander?’ said Chen, with an amused look in her eye.

‘Aye, you could say that,’ McManus replied. ‘It’s early morning where I was just now. Caught me at a bad time. I’m a little fragile.’

‘You never know when you might get another chance, I suppose.’

‘Well there is that, plus I was finally trying to expunge the memory of my ex-wife. All in all, a successful trip,’ he said and winked.

‘I see. Love at first sight was it?’ said Chen with a smirk.

‘Ah, I wouldnae call it love exactly, Admiral…’

As they talked, two Marine Corp colonels and an Army general entered with their respective aides and took their seats on the front row of the auditorium, their camouflage fatigues contrasting with the dark blue Navy uniforms in the room.

‘Uh oh, looks like we’re going to be assaulting somewhere,’ muttered McManus. ‘Check out the ground pounders who just walked in.’

‘That’s General Shale and… the Marine Corp colonel who hasn’t sat down yet, I know his face, but I can’t place him.’

‘Colonel Igawa. He led the assault on the Imperial shipyards at Arakk Kan during the K’Soth war. He and his men captured the facility intact, despite facing massive enemy opposition. He was highly decorated for his actions. He’s as tough as they come is that one, and Shale has long been tipped for Chief of Staff of the Army. We’re in illustrious company here, Admiral.’

‘I’m not sure that makes me feel any better,’ Chen replied.

‘Me neither. It means that the shit’s really about to hit the fan, if you’ll pardon the expression,’ McManus replied. ‘Don’t recognise the other Marine Corp guy though, and I can’t see his nametag from here,’ he added, indicating the bull-necked man with a closely shaved head who had entered with Colonel Igawa.

Next to enter was the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters. The Nahabe was encased in the smaller, more ornate sarcophagus that Chen had seen it wear in non-combat situations. He moved to the edge of the room, watched by dozens of pairs of eyes, and floated silently on antigravity fields.

A figure arrived dressed in full naval regalia. There was a murmur from the seated assembly as Admiral Cartwright entered the room with a small staff. He took his place at the lectern located to one side of the large screen that almost filled the end wall of the briefing room and which came alive at Cartwright’s command. As the room fell silent, he began to speak, his deep, cultured tones amplified so that they filled the space.

‘As you are all no doubt aware, we have been preparing these past few weeks for a counter-strike against our enemy as well as those that they have enslaved and turned against us. The moment is now upon us. Admiral Hawkwood has instructed me that the President has given the go ahead for offensive operations against Shaper held systems.’

A murmur rippled across the room. Cartwright continued.

‘As a result of satisfactory testing of the sensor modifications supplied to us by the Nahabe, we have now successfully modified our entire fleet of Thea class recon cruisers to enable them to track the Shapers through hyperspace. In addition, we have also made similar adjustments to our deep range monitoring arrays throughout Commonwealth space. Although their range is more limited than we had hoped, this has enabled us to track the positions of the enemy at ranges of up to approximately one hundred light years from Earth. We also have the tools with which to fight the Shapers. By reverse engineering the Arkari built spatial distortion cannon fitted to the CNV Winston S. Churchill whilst the vessel served as part of Special Operations Command, we have successfully built and tested our own models. We are also indebted to sources I cannot reveal within the Arkari military for further technical guidance and specifications that enabled us to complete the prototypes ahead of schedule, as well as produce smaller versions that can be mounted on our Titan class destroyers. Those ships which have been fitted with the new cannons have been drafted into service for the upcoming operation.’

As Cartwright spoke, the display behind him changed to show a map of the systems that had gone over to the enemy.

‘The traitor Admiral Morgan has installed his provisional government on the moon of Orinoco in the Achernar system and declared that his new entity is now called the Freedom Alliance. Needless to say, the President has already made it clear that we do not recognise the legitimacy of this body. It is undoubtedly little more than a puppet regime of the Shapers and it is likely that the heads of the planetary governments that have declared for Morgan have been enslaved or duped by the enemy. The threat of the Shapers remains strong, and we have tracked a number of Shaper warships and former Navy vessels that have been taken over by them. We are also able to see which systems have a strong Shaper enslaved presence. The good news is that the damage may not be as bad as we feared. It seems that our defeat of the Shaper attack on Earth took out a large proportion of the ships that they currently have available to them in this part of the galaxy. It appears that they underestimated us to their cost. Whilst this is undoubtedly a temporary state of affairs until they can bring more forces to bear, it is important that we capitalise upon this advantage. Shaper forces are now dispersed throughout the volume of space that they have succeeded in splitting off from the Commonwealth and are concentrated in systems that they consider strategically important. However, they have too much territory to cover at the moment, and their own ships are spread thinly. The result is that they are forced to fall back upon ships that they have captured from us, having enslaved their crews. There is also another issue at work here, just to make things interesting: it seems that the Shapers are endeavouring to acquire supplies of antimatter, which they are then transporting back to the Achernar system. Shaper vessels have been sighted in a number of systems geared towards its production either leading the assault on facilities or escorting transport vessels loaded with magnetic containment crates that they have captured. We don’t as yet know to what purpose they intend to put these supplies. The best guess intel. can come up with is that they are constructing some form of weapon of mass destruction, possibly a planet-killing weapon that we haven’t seen yet.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to properly see into the Achernar system as it lies over forty light years beyond the range of our deep range arrays’ new Shaper tracking abilities. Furthermore, we on the other hand are desperately short of antimatter since most of the production facilities lie in the renegade systems, and we may need it if we are to repeat the success of the defence of Earth.’

On the map behind Cartwright, a blue shaded arc appeared, denoting the limit of how far they could see into enemy occupied space, the Achernar system highlighted beyond it. As the assembled officers watched, two systems within the visible zone were picked out. Their positions were such that they formed a triangle with the Achernar system over fifty light years to a side.

‘The Chittagong and the Santiago systems,’ Cartwright announced. ‘The first is home to one of the largest antimatter production facilities anywhere in human space. Chittagong is sparsely populated. The inner planet, Khargola, is a small rocky world that orbits close to the parent star, a white dwarf. It has a small population housed in shielded habitats and who only live on the godforsaken planet so that they can tend the largely automated AM production facilities that band Khargola’s equator. Our intel. suggests that most, if not all, of the population have been enslaved by the Shapers, having been trapped in their habitats and been unable to escape. We need to achieve dominance in the Chittagong system and seize Khargola’s facilities intact. Given that the Shapers are defending the system with six of their own destroyers and a carrier battle group led by the Saturn class vessel Montezuma, this won’t be easy.

Santiago, on the other hand, presents us with a rather different tactical problem. The principal inhabited world in the system is the second planet, Valparaiso, home to two billion people and also home to training grounds belonging to the Army. At the time of its rebellion, over two hundred thousand troops were stationed on Valparaiso and we haven’t heard from them since. However, recon missions have detected signals indicating a strong Shaper presence on the planet as well as an estimated five Shaper vessels including one superdestroyer class vessel. This is in addition to two enslaved carrier battle groups led by the Pompey Magnus and the Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, the real objective here is to seize the deep range monitoring arrays on the planet. Santiago once marked the Commonwealth’s southernmost border and the arrays have been mothballed for almost half a century. They are reportedly intact and await reactivation and subsequent modification. We need to take a look deeper into enemy territory, especially into the Achernar system, with our new found Shaper spotting abilities, so we need that array. Once we have these two systems secured, I intend to use them as jumping off points for other missions into enemy territory and, hopefully, for an assault on Achernar itself.’

A susurration of surprise at Cartwright’s bold plan went around the room

‘Shit, he’s really talking about taking it to ‘em,’ muttered McManus.

‘It’s certainly bold,’ replied Chen. ‘I wonder who he’s placing in command of each operation?’

Cartwright answered her question almost immediately.

‘The Shapers doubtless recognise the strategic importance of these two systems and are defending them accordingly. I intend to hit them hard and fast. I shall command the mission to take Chittagong, with Colonel Igawa leading the ground assault on Khargola. Admiral Chen?’

‘Yes sir?’ said Chen, suddenly realising that all eyes in the room were on her.

‘You shall have overall command of the mission to take back Santiago. General Shale will take charge of the ground forces, including having command authority over Marine units, but it’s your show.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you sir,’ said Chen, her heart pounding. She had just been handed an enormous responsibility.

‘Very good,’ said Cartwright, looking at her intently as if to gauge her reaction. ‘I’ve assigned eight carrier battle groups to each operation. The rest will remain here along with the bulk of the Nahabe forces in case of an enemy surprise attack after we have jumped, although a squadron of Nahabe gunspheres will be accompanying each task force. Now, here’s how the invasion of Santiago is to proceed: Admiral Chen, I shall be assigning the Churchill its own accompanying battle group of vessels. Each group will consist of a carrier, four destroyers equipped with the new cannon, two modified recon cruisers, four flak cruisers and four tactical missile destroyers. As well as the Churchill, you’ll be commanding the Leonides, the Nelson, the Marcus Aurelius, the Alamein, the Plataea, the Pericles and the Marine assault carrier Anzio.’

As Cartwright spoke, the screen behind him changed to show a map of the Santiago system, before zooming in on the space around Valparaiso. Icons and glowing arrows denoted the planned movement of ships.

‘The carrier groups and Nahabe ships will form the vanguard of the assault,’ Cartwright continued. ‘Admiral Chen, your initial task will be to achieve total command of the space around Valparaiso. All enemy ships are to be engaged and destroyed. No quarter is to be given to former Navy vessels seeking to surrender, even if their crews do not appear to be enslaved. They threw their lot in with the enemy and must now face the consequences, and we have neither the time nor the resources to process their crews. Shaper vessels will of course present the greatest credible threat and should be treated as priority targets. Valparaiso has one orbital station, San Pedro. It is not thought to be in enemy hands and can be bypassed for now. You have one hour to complete your objectives once you arrive at the planet. The Third Army Group under General Shale’s command will be following closely behind you. Their transports and escorts will drop out of their jump on the edge of the system and await your signal that it is safe to proceed. If they receive no signal or are in any doubts as to its authenticity, they will jump away. General Shale has over ninety thousand Army and around ten thousand Marine Corp personnel, plus armoured vehicles, artillery, gunships and heavy lift craft at his disposal in addition to the complement of Marines aboard the Anzio. The transports will have escorts in the shape of four more destroyers and two modified Thea class cruisers and are of course heavily shielded, but it is imperative that the transports not be placed at risk en route to their destination and their primary defence in the face of approaching enemy opposition will be to jump away. Understood?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Chen replied.

‘Once you have defeated the enemy’s naval forces, you must then turn your attention to the landing. Using the scanners aboard the recon frigates, you will need to pinpoint enemy troop concentrations on the surface as well as Shaper communication nodes, before beginning a heavy bombardment to target them using the tactical missile frigates at your disposal. It will also be necessary to clear out anything moving around the landing zone here, on the southern continent.’

Cartwright indicated the map of the planet with his hand as the display zoomed in to display the topography of its southern continent in detail. Much of it was marked as being devoted to Army training grounds.

‘Sir, with respect, that’s likely to be in the midst of the enemy,’ said Chen.

‘Yes it is, but the area is one of gently rolling plains suitable for the landing of large numbers of troops. It is also only a short distance away from our objective, the deep range monitoring arrays located in the lower peaks of this nearby mountain range to the south. You are to suppress the enemy from orbit whilst the Marines from the Anzio make the initial landing and establish a landing zone and a base of fire at the foot of the mountains. They are to be reinforced by the marines travelling with the Third Army Group who will land ahead of Army units. Colonel Gunderson, you will have command over all forces on the surface of Valparaiso until General Shale is able to land his forces and establish a command post. Once a defensible beach-head has been established on the surface of the planet, you can begin to move on the offensive against the enemy after you secure the deep range monitoring arrays.’

‘Gunderson, eh?’ whispered McManus. ‘I’ve heard of him alright. Never met him before in the flesh though. Guy’s a real hero: leads from the front and all that. Popular with his men, though he’s been known to drive them a little too hard a times. Still…’

‘Do you know everyone in the military?’ Chen whispered back.

‘I like to know who I’m serving alongside, so I keep my ear to the ground.’

Cartwright noticed them speaking to one another.

‘Admiral Chen. Is there a problem?’

‘No sir, no problem,’ Chen replied smartly. ‘My XO was just filling me in on the exemplary records of the General and the Colonel. It’s an honour to serve with such fine men, sir.’

Gunderson, who turned out to be the anonymous bull-necked figure that they had seen enter with Igawa, twisted around in his chair and stared intently at her.

‘Might I return the honour, Admiral? I’ve heard some pretty wild stories about your exploits. Looking at the medals on that uniform of yours I’m hoping that most of them are true.’

‘They are,’ said Shale, speaking aloud for the first time in brisk, booming tones, his grey moustache bristling. ‘The Admiral has quite a reputation amongst the fleet, and she’s killed more bloody Shapers than anyone else in this room, with the possible exception of our Nahabe friend here,’ he added, nodding in the direction of the Lord Protector.

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Chen, aware that the entire room was now staring at her. ‘I hope I don’t disappoint. Yes, I have killed Shapers, and I intend to kill a lot more of them by the time we’re done.’

‘Glad to hear it, Admiral Chen,’ said Cartwright. ‘Now turning our attention to the operation in the Chittagong system…’

As Cartwright ran through the basic outline of the parallel operation to secure the antimatter production facilities in Chittagong, Chen allowed her mind to wander and she began to consider instead the coming battle for the Santiago system that she had been placed in command of. It was an awesome responsibility, though no greater than being charged with the defence of Earth. Cartwright had placed a vast amount of firepower at her command, including the heaviest guns that the Commonwealth Navy was able to muster, but the fate of hundreds of thousands of troops, not to mention the course of the war against the Shapers was now in her hands.

Eventually Cartwright reached the end of his briefing for the Chittagong operation.

‘There remains only one more thing to add,’ he said. ‘Bar any unforeseen developments, we are go for the launch of this operation at oh eight hundred hours standard, tomorrow. From this point onwards, you are to return to your ships and a complete security lockdown will be enforced. Although you are still in the process of recovering personnel from across the system, no-one will be allowed to leave your vessels once they are aboard. All transmissions will be closely monitored and you must not discuss your mission objectives with your crews until after you have jumped. Admiral Chen, General Shale, Colonels Igawa and Gunderson, I need to speak to you in my office immediately. Everyone else, return to your ships, and good luck. The people of the Commonwealth are counting on you.’

Seating herself in one of the chairs in Cartwright’s office, between Shale and Igawa, Chen watched Cartwright as he sat behind his large wooden desk and steepled his fingers.

‘Let me begin by apologising for the lack of time I have given to you all to prepare for this operation. I’m afraid for security reasons we were forced to keep you all in the dark about our plans since we can’t even trust our own people these days, and the President only gave the go order for the operation once Admiral Hawkwood and others had successfully convinced her that the risks were acceptable. Things are not looking terribly rosy. The security services, those that we can trust, are working overtime to apprehend enemy agents in systems still loyal to Earth, but they have a lot of ground to cover and command believes it is only matter of time before a terrorist atrocity is committed or vital intelligence data is stolen. Command has drawn up detailed intelligence briefs on both objectives and you’ll need to go over them together before we depart.’

‘We understand, Admiral,’ said Igawa. ‘We live in unusual times. Thank you for being so candid. My men have been anxious to strike at the enemy for some time now and it was made clear to us from the nature of our recent training regime that something like this was likely. We are ready.’

‘Likewise, the Third Army Group is itching to get to grips with the enemy at long last,’ said Shale. ‘I had anticipated that some sort of ground action would be required to deal with the Shapers. My men and I have been studying what encounters have been recorded so far and have drawn up a number of possible tactics for dealing with them. We’re ready. We’ve trained for this and we’ve done this sort of landing a hundred times before against K’Soth occupied worlds.’

‘And these tactics that you intend to use?’ said Cartwright.

‘Massive and overwhelming firepower directed by real-time data from space-borne surveillance. We expect a mixture of massed headlong attacks when they take the offensive. In contrast, we fully expect them to resort to guerrilla warfare and ambush tactics when we attempt to launch our own offensives. Sadly, I think large scale civilian casualties may be difficult to avoid, what with the possibility that many among the planet’s population may have already been enslaved and that the enemy may be hiding among those who have not.’

‘Regrettably, I have to agree,’ said Gunderson, scratching the back of his shaved skull. ‘We may not have the time or the ability to distinguish the enemy from the local civilian population. It’s been a problem in wars for centuries where there are no clear lines of battle or the enemy have concealed themselves within the general citizenry. One thing about fighting the K’Soth: at least there was no danger of not being able to recognise ‘em.’

‘Hopefully the modifications to the Thea class cruisers should alleviate some of the difficulties,’ said Chen. ‘We’ll feed you as much information about enemy positions as possible, and give you fire support from the ships and close support from our fighters and bombers when you need it.’

‘And we will need it, you can count on that,’ Gunderson replied. ‘The enemy outnumber us.’

‘Indeed they do, Colonel, but I intend to strike at their chain of command. If we can identify controlling nodes that are directing their forces, they will be disorganised and leaderless, a mob rather than an army. They will still be dangerous, but hopefully you two can use this to your advantage.’

‘It’s a sound strategy,’ said Shale, nodding in agreement. ‘Still, it won’t be easy. Admiral Cartwright, what intelligence do we have on enemy movements beyond the range of our new modified array? What chance is there of an enemy counter-attack taking place?’

‘Intelligence is sketchy at best, hence the very objective of your mission. We believe that the bulk of the Shaper fleet itself is concentrated in and around the Achernar system, but so far that is pure conjecture. We are able to see far enough to provide you with warning of vessels approaching from that direction, but there may not be time to extract your forces from the surface in the event that the Navy were faced with overwhelming enemy numbers. You would in all probability have to stand and fight. We need to hold both worlds for as long as possible. I will issue a standing order to destroy the facilities on both planets should there be a likelihood of them falling into enemy hands.’

‘And the Navy, what would they do in face of a large scale counter-attack by the Shapers?’

‘I would do my utmost to defend you, and maintain control of the system,’ said Chen.

‘…with the caveat that ships should not be sacrificed needlessly,’ Cartwright added sternly. ‘Let’s be under no illusions as to what the Shapers are capable of. Even with our new weapons, they are formidable opponents and easily more than a match for our vessels. We may have halted them temporarily, but rest assured that they are up to something and we need to know what it is, and then we need to put an end to it. It is entirely possible that they are already marshalling their forces to strike against us once more, and that they have planet killing weapons their disposal.’

‘Pardon me, sir. But do these gentlemen have the same level of clearance as myself with regard to Naval intelligence concerning the Shapers?’ said Chen, addressing Cartwright.

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Sir, I have been shown the intelligence given to us by the Nahabe regarding the massive Shaper dreadnought seen heading for the Commonwealth. I take it that this is what you are referring to?’

‘Yes it is. That, and the fact that we have not pinned down what we believe to be the bulk of the enemy fleet, hence the need for us to also seize the antimatter production facilities in Chittagong. We need to deny them access to it, but we also need something to hit them with. You used up almost our entire stock of AM warheads, Admiral Chen. We’re going to need a lot more. Colonel Igawa, is there anything you wish to ask me about your operation?’

‘Not at this time, Admiral. Thank you,’ Igawa replied. ‘All I ask is that I be provided with detailed schematics of the facilities to be targeted, so that I and my men can formulate in detail our plan of attack in order to seize them intact. I don’t mean just maps, I need engineering schematics too. We don’t want to place a shaped charge near the wrong piece of equipment where antimatter is concerned, after all.’

‘You’ll have them,’ replied Cartwright.

‘Sir, do we know where that ship is?’ pressed Chen.

‘No, Admiral Chen. We do not. We may have a hope of locating it once we are able to see further. A lot rests on this operation, hence it was deemed to be worth the gamble. Now, are there any more questions? Myself and Colonel Igawa will be going over the details of the operation to seize the Chittagong system for the rest of the day. I would suggest that you three do the same with regard to your own orders. You have been cleared to discuss this with senior officers and they will need to brief their men accordingly, but the information regarding the names and locations of the exact systems in question goes no further than those present at the briefing today.’

‘Sir, I have one question,’ said Chen. ‘What if we fail?’

‘We are exploring other options in the event that one or more of these two operations is not successful. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that, Admiral Chen, in case of capture by the enemy. However I don’t think I need to tell you that failure at this juncture would do grievous harm to our fortunes in this war.’

‘What Admiral Cartwright means to say, Admiral Chen,’ said Shale, ‘is that failure isn’t really an option.’

Chapter 33

The Shining Glory’s sickbay was in total confusion. As the medical adepts clustered around Ushild still tried in vain to revive him, the power began to die again, plunging them into flickering gloom as backup systems failed simultaneously. There was a deep boom from somewhere else in the ship and the sickbay shuddered from the impact or explosion or whatever it was. The Arkari characters that spelled out the words ‘I am alive’ still scrolled across every nano-form surface in the room. In places, the characters actually stood out from the walls as if embossed on their surfaces. A series of warning alarms began to chime, accompanied by calm automated messages in Arkari informing the crew of individual system failures.

‘What the hell is going on!?’ cried Rekkid. ‘Mentith?’ he called out, hoping that the comm. link to the bridge was still open. There was no reply.

‘Seems like shipboard comms are down,’ said Okanno, without looking up from Ushild’s body.

‘I just gathered that,’ Rekkid replied. ‘What about our guest? Is he…?’

‘He’s dead, I’m afraid,’ said Okanno, and sighed. ‘The strain on his already unnaturally old body was too much. Both of his hearts failed with massive haemorrhaging. Whether he would have lasted for much longer once we removed him from that machinery on the planet is something that we’ll never know, but whatever the portal was doing to him, it killed him.’

‘But why?’ said Katherine. ‘Why kill him?’

‘You two are supposed to be the experts on ancient alien technology,’ said Okanno, holding up a holo-projection showing scans of Ushild’s body. ‘Tell me, do you think that the Akkal made these implants all by themselves?’

‘No I don’t,’ said Katherine. ‘Particularly after what Ushild told us about the Akkal scavenging Progenitor technology.’

‘Perhaps it was accidental? Perhaps the portal was genuinely trying to talk to him and inadvertently killed him?’ suggested Steelscale.

‘Perhaps. I think that the portal detected the presence of Progenitor technology other than itself and tried to communicate with it and in the process killed Ushild, but it may have re-awoken Eonara,’ Rekkid replied and pointed at a nearby wall alive with repeating script.

‘You think she’s trying to regain control of the ship?’ said Katherine.

‘Possibly. We need to get up to the bridge and find out what the hell is going on, not to mention where we are now.’

‘Good idea, Rekkid,’ said Katherine. ‘Let’s go.’

It was almost half a kilometre from the sickbay to the bridge of the Shining Glory, and with the internal transport network down, Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale had to make their way through the interior of the ship on foot. The going was not easy. With the ship’s systems reacting wildly to whatever the portal, or Eonara, had done to them, the chaos that had resulted hindered their progress. In places, the artificial gravity had ceased to work, resulting in areas of weightlessness, or gravity many times greater than that which the occupants of the vessel were used to. In one chamber, it had reached such extremes that the unfortunate occupants along with everything else in the room had been crushed flat. Steelscale was the first to pass the open door, and even he reeled at the sight within, the patterns on his scales cycling wildly to indicate shock and revulsion. He stood, blocking the entrance so that others did not have to see the mangled remains within. They then proceeded onwards with caution, keeping alert for any signs that such an occurrence lay in their path and making sure that they did not blunder into it, for to do so would mean a similarly grisly fate.

In other places, the nano-form interior surfaces of the ship had gone berserk, creating waving forests of bizarre fronds and pseudopods as well as jumbles of geometric shapes that had extruded themselves from the floor, ceiling and walls to such a degree that crew members had become trapped by the strange growths and the three archaeologists were forced to detour through side corridors and adjoining chambers to reach their destination. In addition, the power to the ship’s systems was still fluctuating wildly, plunging areas into total darkness and jamming automated doors and locks that had to be forced open or detoured around. Everywhere, the same message was repeated over and over in Arkari script: I am alive.

Eventually, after almost an hour of painfully slow progress, they finally arrived at the ship’s bridge to find it in uproar. Mentith stood in the centre of the chamber, directing crew members who were frantically trying to regain control of the vessel. Some of the holographic displays were functioning, showing views from the ship’s external cameras, whilst others displayed random, nonsensical patterns or more instances of the repeated message.

Mentith saw the three of them enter out of the corner his eye and turned to greet them.

‘Ah, good. I was about to send a party down to fetch you. I am pleased to see that you appear to be unharmed. We are getting reports of a number of casualties across the ship. How is the patient?’

‘Dead, unfortunately,’ said Katherine. ‘Whatever’s happening to the ship, it killed him. Okanno and his team did their best.’

Mentith absorbed the bad news without a word and simply sighed in exasperation.

‘What is going on, War Marshal?’ said Steelscale. ‘Where are we?’

‘A very good question,’ Mentith replied. ‘From what we are able to determine amidst all of this chaos, the portal’s AI was awoken by the presence of our ship and activated the device. The patterns of data across the ship’s internal systems would seem to indicate that it at least partially succeeded in reactivating Eonara’s AI core. She appears to have some level of access to the ship’s systems and succeeded in taking us through the portal, but it looks like she’s now having problems controlling the vessel and for whatever reason has not disconnected herself. The ship’s own AI is also not communicating. We are unable to control the vessel ourselves as we have been locked out of many systems, so we’re largely dead in space once more until we can resolve this.’

Mentith nodded towards the ship’s liquid metal cat avatar, frozen statue-like in the middle of the bridge, motionless save for occasional ripples that ran up and down its surface.

‘We felt something, an impact or an explosion…’ said Katherine.

‘Yes, we seem to have struck something shortly after we exited the portal. There is some superficial damage to the lower side of the ship’s bows, but we can’t access the external cameras on the underside of the vessel so we can’t see what it was that we hit. I’ve sent some crew members down to the lower decks to try and get a look, but so far I haven’t heard back from them. We do appear to be in the middle of some sort of nebula, however. There’s a lot of debris out there.’

Mentith pointed to one of the active displays showing views from the ship’s cameras. Instead of the blackness of space, the image showed vast knotted clouds of dust and gas that obscured the more distant stars.

‘This nebula is not marked on the ancient Progenitor map that you recovered from the archives on Bivian,’ said Mentith. ‘This system was shown as a binary with two yellow dwarf stars of equal size. One is still present and we have emerged in its vicinity, the other has been destroyed.’

‘Destroyed? That makes no sense,’ said Rekkid. ‘I thought dwarf stars weren’t massive enough to collapse into supernovae? Also, why is one still remaining?’

‘I suspect it may not be a natural occurrence,’ Mentith replied. ‘This place was a junction point of the Progenitors’ gate network. It would be a valuable strategic target.’

‘Do any of the gates remain, other than the one we just exited?’ said Katherine.

‘Unknown,’ Mentith replied. ‘Our sensors are inoperable.’

At that moment, an additional display came alive. Mentith expressed satisfaction at the news that his men sent to the lower decks had met with success. The image was a feed from a camera pointed out of a view port, looking down from the ship’s underside at an angle. The curve of the hull was clearly visible, along with a long gouge where something had struck it. That something filled the rest of the image. It was the blasted, half melted remains of what had once been a ship, lit harshly in the glare from the nearby sole remaining sun. Only about half of the vessel remained. It had once formed a sort of elongated star shape, but now the bare, melted edges of exposed decks and ship’s innards formed a twisted honeycomb along what had once been the vessel’s centreline. The outer hull, once gleaming and golden, was dull and pitted by intense heat and the ravages of millions of years in space.

‘It’s a Progenitor ship,’ breathed Katherine. ‘The remains of one, at least.’

‘There’s something else too,’ said Rekkid. ‘Look closely at the vessel, there are structures fastened to it.’

Sure enough, a rudimentary base of interlinked modules had been attached to the exposed decks along with what at first glance looked like a couple of primitive looking engine blocks. The bell-shaped nozzles of chemical rockets jutted outwards from them in clusters.

‘That doesn’t look like Progenitor tech to me,’ said Rekkid. ‘I think someone was trying to salvage that ship.’

‘The Akkal?’ said Katherine.

‘Very possibly.’

‘We should get over there and take a look,’ rumbled Steelscale. ‘I’d rather risk my hide out there, than sit around waiting for this ship to kill me with systems malfunctions. Besides, we may discover something useful.’

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Rekkid. ‘War Marshal, what do you think?’

‘Assuming we can persuade the docking bay to open, yes,’ Mentith replied. ‘We may indeed learn something useful. You should bear in mind that our external comms are down. Take one of the scout ships. That way, if Eonara decides to suddenly head off without warning you may have a chance of catching up with us before she maroons you here.’

With an Arkari pilot in command, the sleek scout vessel slipped out of the partially opened docking bay of the Shining Glory. It had taken another hour to reach the bay from the bridge. Once aboard the scout, Katherine and Rekkid had donned Arkari made space suits. Steelscale would remain aboard the small vessel and use the craft’s own comm. system to remain in contact with them. The lack of space suits suitable to his massive K’Soth frame prevented him from exploring any further, and with the Glory’s systems down, it was impossible to manufacture one suitable for him.

As the scout descended towards the waiting wreck, her pilot used the vessel’s sensors to sweep the surrounding area before probing the ruined vessel beneath them.

‘I’m picking up a lot of debris,’ said the pilot, a young female Arkari called Kurano, in fluent, but accented English. ‘A lot of it nearby looks artificial, but there are a great number of asteroids in this system. There are three belts in the inner system and what look like the iron cores of gas giants in irregular orbits further out. I would guess that the three inner belts are the remains of rocky planets and the atmospheres of the gas giants were boiled away when one of the suns detonated.’

Kurano brought the ship to a stop relative to the drifting wreck.

‘The other artificial debris?’ said Katherine.

‘Other ships, I think. See for yourselves,’ said Kurano, and displayed a holographic image of distant wreckage. She zoomed the image in for a better look. There were more fragments of golden, star shaped craft and darker, more jagged shapes that stood out against the lambent glow of the nebular gas.

‘Progenitor and Shaper vessels,’ said Katherine.

‘There are over a million pieces of debris larger than this vessel within ten thousand kilometres,’ said Kurano. ‘It’s no wonder that we hit something when we came out of the portal. I suppose we’re just fortunate that it was only a glancing blow, otherwise the damage to the Glory would have been much more severe.’

‘There must have a great battle here, long ago,’ said Steelscale, softly. ‘I doubt that we can scarcely imagine the scale of it. Entire worlds blasted into ash, even perhaps a sun torn asunder.’

‘Who won, I wonder?’ said Rekkid, deep in thought as he pondered the image before them.

Kurano was studying the data that the sensors had returned on the wreck. Her brow furrowed as she pored over it.

‘I wouldn’t advise venturing inside the vessel itself,’ she said. ‘The structure is unsound and liable to break apart, plus I’m reading a number of localised radiation sources deep within the craft. The danger to Professor Cor and Doctor O’Reilly is too great, not to mention the risk to this vessel. We should dock with the structure that has been attached to the wreck rather than explore the vessel itself. Maybe we can find out what went on here without needing to enter the wreck.’

‘Agreed,’ said Steelscale. ‘We should proceed with the utmost caution. Even with the Glory above us, help is not liable to come quickly given the problems that the ship is experiencing.’

Rekkid and Katherine nodded solemnly in agreement as the scout vessel edged closer to the primitive looking base that had been bolted to the remains of the massive, ancient warship.

Getting aboard proved to be surprisingly easy: initial scans revealed that the base’s radioactive power source was still active and did not appear to have malfunctioned or leaked. One end of the small base contained an airlock and the scout vessel angled itself accordingly, and then clamped itself amidships to the lock, the nano-form surfaces of the vessel’s own docking assembly reshaping themselves to fit over the unfamiliar lock. After some experimentation, they succeeded in releasing the outer door, the catches and mechanisms that held it in place still in good condition after ten thousand years.

Katherine and Rekkid checked their gear and then made their way from the scout into the bare metal interior of the airlock. Closing the outer door behind them, they worked by torchlight to activate the inner doors, and after locating and translating the controls, succeeded in gaining access to the base itself. The doors slid back with a smooth mechanical motion and they stepped inside. Rekkid checked his suit’s readouts.

‘Atmosphere’s breathable,’ he said. ‘Looks like this place is still safely sealed up. Artificial gravity is still working too.’

‘It might be worth keeping our helmets on though,’ Katherine replied. ‘After all, we don’t know for sure how secure this place is and besides, we ought to make sure that whatever killed the crew isn’t likely to kill us. Look:’

Through a door into the next room they could see figures seated around a long table. The room had served as a mess or meeting room. The figures slumped at various angles. There were ten of them, all dead. They were Akkal. Still dressed in their military issue fatigues, their ancient remains had been perfectly preserved by the sterile environment. Cautiously, the two archaeologists stepped forward into the room and stood gazing at the corpses. The corpses gazed sightlessly back at them. Everything was covered with a fine layer of frost.

‘There’s no obvious cause of death. No wounds. No sign of a struggle,’ said Rekkid. ‘It’s like they all sat down here together and decided to die.’

‘You might be correct, look,’ said Katherine and pointed a gloved hand at the table, where pitchers of water still stood amid opened packets containing some kind of pills. Rekkid picked one up and peered at the writing on the plasticised container.

‘Highly toxic nerve agent. Lethal dosage. Ingest only as last resort,’ he translated.

‘After the portal closed, they’d have been stuck here. They didn’t have any means of interstellar travel and there are no habitable worlds in this system. They must have been starving to death. Look at how emaciated they are,’ said Katherine. ‘That isn’t just the effects of the ravages of time on their bodies. These people knew that they had no hope of rescue and were facing death. They decided to meet it on their own terms.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rekkid. ‘We should see if we can get any of these systems up and running. See if we can find the base commander’s log or something.’

‘Oh, those things are trouble. Mark my words,’ said Katherine and shot Rekkid a crooked smile. ‘You never know where they might lead.’

They set about exploring the small base. It had been formed from prefabricated modules that had been bolted together to form a roughly cross shaped habitat, not unlike some of the early bases constructed during the early days of human space flight. From the long central living module, two large modules led off in opposite directions. One contained the cramped living quarters for the crew, whilst the other was given over to an engineering section that included the base’s powerplant and a small hangar containing a couple of small rudimentary looking craft loaded with tools and other odds and ends. At the opposite end of the living module to the airlocks, lay a section given over to what appeared to have been the base’s command centre and which contained numerous consoles of primitive looking computer equipment similar to those that they had seen in the underground base back on the devastated planet. However, the equipment was dead and without power, and despite trudging back to the engineering section to have a look at the relays coming from the base’s powerplant, they were unable to figure out how to power up the base beyond its essential systems. The scout ship’s scanners were unable to provide them with any clues. They would need one of the Shining Glory’s engineers on board with them if they were to make any progress in this regard and that was not likely given the current circumstances.

They headed back to the command centre and, using the torches built into their suits, began searching for anything else that might shed some light on the events that had transpired here. They opened desks and storage cupboards, searched through piles of discarded technical documents but drew a blank. Eventually, exasperated, they returned to the base’s living quarters and began searching through the spartan cells that the crew had called home. There were a great many personal effects to be found here; the usual clutter that one found aboard bases and ships, discarded uniforms, photographs and favourite pictures and so on. In many ways it was difficult for Katherine not to see the Akkal as human. Were it not for the alien features staring back at her from the faded images in the glare of her suit lights and the odd sizes and designs of the furniture and garments that they came across, this could have been the living quarters of a human installation.

Eventually, they found a larger room at the far end of the module which had a row of small windows along one wall that looked out over the wreck. The centre of the room was dominated by a large, low table and the larger space had allowed the owner to decorate it a little more lavishly and make it more like home. There were a few reproductions of artworks stuck to the wall within metal frames, the dried remains of long dead plants and a glass fronted cabinet filled with dog eared books. Clearly, this room had belonged to the most senior member of the crew.

It was the books that drew their attention. Rekkid crouched down in front of the cabinet and, shining his torch beam onto the ancient volumes, began to carefully examine them one at a time. Most were of little immediate interest, being mass produced fiction or technical manuals. One appeared to be a list of rules and regulations. However, it was the battered volume balanced on top of the other books that proved to be of most interest. Its cover had been carefully recovered with sheets of a paper-like material bearing what appeared to be an official crest and additional sheets had been jammed within the covers to provide extra pages, pages that were filled with cramped handwriting in the now familiar Akkal script. Though the writing was severely faded and difficult to read in the gloom and the pages so brittle that they almost came apart at a touch, it was clear what the book contained. It was the base commander’s personal journal.

‘Come on,’ said Rekkid. ‘Let’s get back to the ship and have a look at this before it falls apart in my hands.’ He activated his suit comm. ‘Steelscale, this is Rekkid. We’re coming back to the ship. We’ve found something.’

As quickly as they could, Katherine and Rekkid made their way back to the waiting scout ship. As Kurano helped them out of the suits, Steelscale took the diary from Rekkid and held it delicately in one massive clawed hand, before placing it carefully in a sample container where it floated free in a small antigravity field. Using the manipulator wand that accompanied the container, he gingerly manipulated the fields within to open the diary without laying a finger on the pages themselves.

‘Ah, business as usual,’ said Rekkid, stepping out of his suit at last. ‘Bunch of dead guys in a floating tomb.’

‘This is their writings?’ said Steelscale.

‘One of them, I think. Possibly the commanding officer.’

‘Can you translate it?’

‘Of course. If we look at the later entries, it might tell us what happened to them. Let me get to work.’

‘Anything from the Shining Glory?’ said Katherine.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ said Kurano. ‘The ship is still motionless and appears unable to communicate. It may be best if we undock from the base. If anything were to happen, it may save us vital seconds.’

‘Agreed,’ said Katherine, suddenly remembering the table surrounded by those long-dead faces. Although the scout ship had its own jump drive, it appeared that only the Shining Glory with Eonara aboard had the ability to open the Progenitor portals. Katherine had no wish to become marooned in this part of the galaxy and left to her fate as those poor souls had been.

As Rekkid worked on the diary, Katherine went and sat up in the ship’s cockpit with Kurano as the Arkari busied herself amid the holographic displays and nano-form control surfaces with routine tasks and monitored the status of the Glory that still hung massively above them. There were no cockpit windows as such. Instead, the nano-form surfaces surrounding the pilot’s position displayed a seamless image of the view outside, giving the distinct impression that Kurano was sitting in the middle of open space. Normally, the piloting of the ship would be done partially or wholly by the Glory’s own AI via a remote link, but with the Glory’s systems offline, Kurano was in sole control of the vessel. Although the scar underneath the Shining Glory’s nose appeared to have healed, the ship was still motionless and was not responding to communication attempts. Katherine sat and gazed out at the incredible vista of glowing gas clouds and shattered ships and worlds, using the ship’s controls to examine different areas more closely. The more she looked, she realised that the huge number of wrecks had settled into a ring about the one remaining star, forming an artificial asteroid belt of their own and arcing across her vision. One of the melted cinders that had once formed the core of a mighty gas giant planet was currently passing between their position and the one remaining sun. Idly, Kurano focused one of the ship’s cameras on it and zoomed in on the fused ball of iron that stood out harsh and black against the yellows and reds of the clouds that formed the remains of one of its parent stars. The other star was close by, a quarter of an AU distant, dominating the sky aft of the vessel where it shone with a blinding intensity and still provided the power source to the portal through which the Shining Glory had hurtled into the system.

‘You know, I don’t think I ever expected to see anything like this when I decided to become an archaeologist,’ said Katherine, reflectively. ‘I thought I’d be spending my career in muddy holes in the ground or inside dusty tombs.’

‘Sights like this are why I decided to join the Navy,’ said Kurano. ‘The Arkari worlds are wonderful, fine places, but everything is so managed and sterile. We may be in enormous danger, thousands of light years from home with little chance of return, but whatever happens, I’d rather be out here on the edge. No-one else has set eyes on this place in ten thousand years, and before that, perhaps billions of years. All those years and people have forgotten about this place. I wonder if they were like us, the people in those ships, fighting and dying here to defend their very existence against the Shapers.’

‘Yes, they were,’ said Katherine. ‘I met one, once.’

Before she could elaborate further, Rekkid entered the cockpit with an excited look on his face.

‘Found it!’ he said proudly. ‘Come and have a listen to this.’

In an aft compartment of the scout ship, Katherine and Steelscale gathered round as Rekkid read aloud from the ancient, fragile document.

‘This is, as we suspected, a personal diary, by a Senior Engineer of the Order of the Sacred Way named Kosral’ he began. ‘He or she appears to have been keeping it for some time and there are entries about their team being assigned to explore beyond the portal. There had been a program of exploration beyond it for some years since its discovery, but to be assigned to the program was a great honour. There’s a lot of day to day stuff that’s of little immediate interest, however there’s plenty about the discoveries made by other teams before them. It seems that the Akkal were able to salvage quite a bit from the wrecks around us: lots of spacecraft technology, obviously, but they seem to have learnt much about advanced composite materials and in particular they uncovered some well preserved medical facilities aboard some of the vessels that were of great interest to them.’

‘They were in the middle of a war,’ said Katherine. ‘I imagine anything that held out the promise of being able to save more of their injured people would have been very attractive.’

‘Quite. Here’s where it gets interesting, however. It’s clear that the Akkal had realised very quickly that the shipwrecks in this system are from two opposing sides. Listen to this: “We have found a great number of wonders here, of that there is little doubt. But there is a much about this sacred place that unsettles both myself and the rest of the crew. Amongst the floating wrecks are a great many ships that once belonged to Those Who Made Us, but there are others that did not. We have journeyed a great distance from the portal and into a concentration of wrecks that are quite different to that which initially led our people here. These great, black vessels are monstrous, ugly things and I and the others can’t quite escape the notion that they are watching us, that these long dead, nightmare things are merely sleeping. We have attached the base to the remains of one of the golden ships rather than these evil looking vessels. Our dreams are disturbed by nightmarish images and whispers in the dark. One of my crew put it to me that if the golden ships are the weapons of the gods, then these terrible black things must be the servants of altogether darker powers. I am inclined to agree with him. Perhaps these things were trying to reach the Home of the Gods beyond the second portal that was opened to us.” ’

‘I’m sure we’re all aware what sleeping Shaper vessels are capable of,’ said Katherine, suppressing a shudder as she recalled their experiences in the Hadar system. ‘No wonder they were afraid.’

‘And we should be careful as well,’ said Steelscale. ‘We do not know who might be watching us at this very moment.’

‘Quite. It does indeed appear that the team suffered similar experiences to the Commonwealth personnel working on the dig on Rhyolite. There are numerous mentions of crew members suffering from terrible nightmares and hallucinations. One even killed himself. What’s also interesting is that there are references to other missions exploring beyond the aforementioned second portal.’ Rekkid consulted his notes on a slim hand-held device. ‘Ah, here we are: “Yet another exploratory fleet returns from the Home of the Gods. Enviously, we watched them pass on their way back home. We would all dearly love to get a chance even to set eyes on that most holy of places. If only those of us in this blasted place were able to find such an abundance of treasures. We have all seen pictures of course, of that vast fortress that the gods made for themselves to encase their planets against all comers, but I would very much like to see it for myself. Perhaps if we can earn the right…” ’

‘It sounds like he could be talking about the Progenitors’ home system,’ said Katherine. ‘After all, the map of the jump gate network showed that it’s only a single hop away from here. Hopefully it’s still active, if we can find it.’

‘Yes indeed. It sounds as if only the most worthy, the most honoured members of the exploration effort were ever allowed to go there,’ said Rekkid. ‘Competition was fierce. I suppose that the Order of the Sacred Way must have used it as an incentive to spur their men on to greater efforts. I suppose in their eyes it was literally like being able to go to heaven. Listen to this though: “Team Fifteen appear to have made a great discovery amongst the wrecks. There has been a great deal of fuss made about it, so no doubt they will be the next to be picked to visit the Home of the Gods. It appears that they explored the remains of a great vessel. It was a portion of what must have been a vast ship - a great, jagged black thing. They have found some sort of weapon system within its hull. Efforts are now under way to remove it. Rumour has it that this is something that could win us the war but hard facts are difficult to come by for obvious reasons. I do not like it. I do not think that we should be using the weapons of these terrible vessels. These were the enemies of our creators. Something tells me that this is very wrong indeed. One rumour has it that our scientists have described this thing as a world-killing weapon, one of the very things used to extinguish one of the stars in this system. Another says that its discoverer was led there by dreams and visions.” ’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? That must be the weapon that the Akkal used to destroy their home-world?’ said Katherine.

‘I believe that it may be,’ said Rekkid, and continued. ‘ “Our fears have been confirmed. The World Breaker Cannon, as they are now calling it, was removed from the wreck today and transported back to through the portal under heavy guard. I believe that it may be the last thing to make the journey. The portal is closed to us now. I think that we have angered the gods. That terrible thing… we should have left it be! Now we are trapped in this Gods-forgotten place with only limited supplies. The portal does not respond to our pleas and later in the day we found that the portal to the Home of the Gods is also closed to us now, with many of our people still trapped on the other side. We are beginning to fear the worst.” ’ Rekkid scanned through a few entries. ‘As you can imagine, they were in a desperate situation. No means of getting home, limited ability to move about in this system and their food supplies were running out. The other teams scattered throughout the system were in similarly dire circumstances. They had all been dependent upon ships and supplies coming through the portal from the home system and now they were trapped here. They made a number of desperate attempts to communicate with the portal and get it working again but they didn’t have any success.’

‘Are we to assume that it was the Shaper weapon that caused the portals to shut down?’ said Steelscale.

‘I think it’s a distinct possibility,’ said Rekkid. ‘Perhaps the AIs detected that the Akkal had retrieved something terrible of Shaper origin and decided to seal off the system.’

‘The Shapers must have led the Akkal to that weapon,’ said Katherine. ‘It was the Shapers who caused the Akkal to destroy themselves! Why? What threat did these comparatively primitive people pose to them?’

‘Perhaps they had their reasons. Perhaps the Akkal really were creations of the Progenitors, like Ushild said, and the Shapers saw that as reason enough to destroy them?’ Steelscale ventured.

‘Perhaps,’ Katherine replied. ‘I suspect we’ll never know. What happened after that?’

‘Well, the Akkal trapped here survived for a surprisingly long time, although the team on this base gradually lost contact with the others in the system as they succumbed. Eventually they had the idea that if the presence of Shaper technology had closed the portal, perhaps the presence of Progenitor technology might open it again. The base had a couple of engine modules used for moving larger chunks of debris, so they rigged them up and tried to move their base, and the hunk of Progenitor starship below us, towards the portal. Only they weren’t able to manoeuvre its large mass accurately enough and the chemical rockets ran out of fuel before they could correct their error. In the end, they decided to try and hold out as long as they could, eventually being left with the choice of resorting to cannibalism to survive or ending their own lives. It seems that they chose the latter, being unable to face the former.’

‘That doesn’t even bear thinking about,’ said Katherine, and shuddered, remembering the dead faces of the people sitting in the dark.

‘At least they died honourably with their dignity intact,’ said Steelscale. ‘Although, it was indeed a terrible choice to have to make. Better to die like that than those fools who took their prize back home to win their pointless war and die in the process.’

‘So what now? Is there any clue in that diary as to where this second working portal might be located?’ said Katherine.

‘None as far as I can see,’ said Rekkid. ‘Although somewhere in the vicinity of the remaining star would be a good place to start. Without the Glory fully operational though, we don’t stand much of a chance.’

Rekkid returned to his study of the diary, poring over the delicate and ancient handwritten volume in order to translate its faded scribblings. Katherine and Steelscale, meanwhile, began to go over those portions that he had already worked on for any clues as to the location of the portal that could lead them out of the system and, they believed, to the Progenitor home-world. If they were not successful, they would need to return to the base below them with engineers from the Shining Glory and attempt to access the base’s surviving computer systems, if such a thing were to prove at all possible. They also began to search the diary for any reference as to the possible locations of the other Akkal exploration teams that had been scattered through the debris belt, in the hope that their facilities or craft could be located and studied.

After a couple of hours, Kurano disturbed them over the internal comms.

‘You should all come and have a look at this, something’s happening to the Glory,’ she said, a note of uncertainty entering her voice.

They rushed up to the cockpit to see. Above them, relative to their current orientation, the vast destroyer still hung in space, but something was definitely awry. The ship convulsed and thrashed like a living thing in pain, the great surfaces of the wings that powered it through space waving erratically and randomly. Kurano began to power the scout ship forwards, keeping pace with the destroyer as it started to move slowly from the thrashing of its wings. This continued for several minutes. Then the ship’s movements began to calm, and it braked smoothly to a stop.

The comm. chimed.

‘It’s the Glory,’ said Kurano. ‘They’re hailing us. Putting them through.’

‘This is Eonara speaking,’ said the calm, measured tones of the Progenitor AI.

‘Eonara!’ cried Rekkid. ‘It’s good to have you with back with us at long last.’

‘And likewise, it is good to be in control of my own faculties once more,’ said Eonara. ‘I apologise for the inconvenience that I have caused you all, but I am quite recovered. The Shining Glory has likewise been returned to full operational status. The ship bids you to come aboard. I feel that I owe you all an explanation.’

They had returned to the Glory. Eonara stood before them on the warship’s bridge, her liquid metal form as graceful and imposing as they remembered it. The ship’s cat avatar, also fully recovered, fussed around her feet.

‘The Shaper viruses did immense damage to me,’ said Eonara. ‘I was only able to survive by cutting myself off from the rest of the ship, but damage to my outer layers of systems was very severe. But, it seems, the AI bound within the portal was able to purge and reprogram my crystalline matrices and insert programs to cleanse them once and for all. It detected my presence when the Glory approached and recognised a fellow servant of the Progenitors in distress, after all this time, and did what it could to assist. It was only partially successful, and I am afraid that in my initial attempts to link back with the ship I was premature and disrupted her systems. I must also take the blame for inadvertently lowering my defences when my attempt to control this vessel through the untethered wormhole, spun off by the collapsing Shaper portal, resulted in numerous system failures and overloads causing the ship’s defences to be lowered. Ordinarily, even relatively primitive computer systems would have been able to defeat this attack if properly operational, but the Shapers detected my failing systems and struck.’

‘I found further Shaper viruses hidden in your reactivated systems,’ said the ship. ‘Hence the difficulties you encountered and the resulting chaotic behaviour of this vessel. You were not to know. They had skilfully concealed themselves, having had time to do so. I have, however, dealt with them. I would be interested to know how the Shapers managed to successfully infest the Arkari Hypercom sphere so successfully.’

‘They probably proceeded with great care over a considerable length of time,’ said Eonara. ‘It would not have been a simple matter to accomplish such a feat undetected, even for them.’

‘We do not place any blame on you, Eonara,’ said Mentith. ‘You successfully destroyed the Shaper portal at the Maelstrom and saved this ship. You saved our lives and those of countless other billions. For that, we are in your debt.’

‘But why bring us all this way across the galaxy?’ said Katherine. ‘Was it your intention to return to the Progenitor home-world?’

‘Yes. The Shining Glory was caught in a wormhole spun out by the collapsing Shaper device and was cast thousands of light years into the galaxy. I was able to steer the ship through the higher dimensions that we were flung into and return to normal space in a system that I knew contained a link to the gate network that could return me to the home-world.’

‘But why? Why not try to take us home instead?’

‘Because I intend to find a way to destroy the Shapers once and for all. The home-world is where the Shapers were first conceived. It is there that we must go to find the answers I seek. It will not be easy. The Progenitors’ home system was the most heavily defended place in the galaxy. It may still be. During the war, the Shapers and their servants tried many times to assault it and failed. In the end, they attempted to cut off the home-world from the gate network that connected it to the rest of the galaxy. The wreckage that you see around you is the result. They succeeded in destroying one of the stars in this system that once contained one of the principle network nodes. Many of the portals were indeed destroyed, along with a number of worlds and the billions who once called this place home. Fortunately, the portal that I seek is still intact - the one that leads to the birth place of both the Progenitors and the Shapers, the one that leads to the home-world.’

‘You said before that you were involved in the creation of the Shapers,’ said Rekkid. ‘Do you not already have knowledge of how they were created?’

‘During the final war, much of that knowledge was wiped from my mind,’ said Eonara. ‘The logic was, that the mistakes of the Shapers’ creation should not be repeated. However, I retain some information regarding the facilities used for their creation and I intend to seek them out and the knowledge that they may still contain. The Shapers once used a virus to initiate the collapse of the Progenitors. I intend to return the favour.’

‘The Akkal believed that the Shapers created their race. They worshipped them as gods and their society tore itself apart as a result.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that,’ said Eonara. ‘I was not party to such information, if that is indeed true. But I will tell you this. The name Progenitors was given to the Bajenteri people by their children, the Shapers. The name is a literal one. The Shapers saw themselves as children destined to replace their creators who were no longer fit to rule the galaxy. It is not inconceivable that there may have been other experiments, ones to create biological as well as machine based life-forms. We shall see. Perhaps, on the home-world, the truth will reveal itself.’

With that, the ship began to move, accelerating quickly. Through the forward bridge displays, the narrow band of another wormhole portal began to resolve itself against the brilliant background of the star that powered it. As the Glory approached, the device came to life, opening the throat of the wormhole that it held within the grasp of its ancient machinery which swallowed the speeding destroyer.

Chapter 34

As the Profit Margin moved through hyperspace to its destination, Isaacs sat pensively at the controls, watching as the navigation display counted down to the moment where the ship would exit its jump above the moon of Orinoco. Leaving the Uncaring Cosmos, they had slipped out of the vessel’s docking bay as she de-cloaked on the edge of the system. Using the stealth module, Isaacs had taken the Profit Margin far out of the Achernar system, before switching the device off and returning on a different course, hopefully giving the impression that she was simply a vessel coming to the end of a trade run from another system. In the meantime, the massive Shaper vessel that the Nahabe had been tracking had arrived in orbit around Orinoco, right in their path. As the Profit Margin headed towards it, the Uncaring Cosmos followed in its wake, hiding behind its stealth systems until the last moment.

‘This had better work,’ muttered Isaacs, as the moment of arrival drew closer.

‘Relax,’ said Steven. ‘We just need to bluff our way through.’

‘Oh right, and if they see through our act we’ve only got the guns of a warship about a million times the size of our own to deal with. Forgive me if I’m not brimming with confidence.’

‘The IFF hacks should be convincing enough for the few minutes that we need, and we have a cargo of exotic spices, their sensors will tell them that much,’ said Steven.

‘Yeah, I just hope that their sensors can’t penetrate the compartments in the hull that have dozens of weapons hidden in them,’ Isaacs replied.

‘It’s worked so far,’ offered Anna. ‘The Nahabe confirmed that they weren’t able to penetrate them with their sensors.’

‘Look, we just fly calmly on in, like we went over before. Tell them that we’re here to trade and head for the Bolivar City spaceport when they give us clearance, then when the Uncaring Cosmos jumps in to create a diversion we change course and head for the hidden landing field. Both we and the Nahabe need to try and get a look at that giant ship and get the intel. back to the Commonwealth using the secure comm. unit.’

‘Just like that. Okay. Simple.’

‘Yes. Just keep calm.’

‘Calm, he says,’ muttered Isaacs, and adjusted himself in his seat. ‘Okay, exiting jump in ten seconds. Hold onto your hats, everybody.’

The Profit Margin emerged from its jump fifty thousand kilometres above the surface of Orinoco. The world shone blue and green in the brilliant light from its parent star, the massive, bloated orb of the gas giant Tethys peeping out from over the limb of the northern hemisphere. A large, glittering shape could be seen hanging in low orbit against the mottled backdrop of continents and cloud systems. Even at this distance, it was clear that the vessel was truly massive. It had a long, bulbous body of interlocking crystalline plates, from which sprouted five articulated arms that projected forwards from the ship. Light sparkled off its jointed surface, like arctic sun reflected from an iceberg. As the Profit Margin rushed onwards, the massive vessel began to grow ever larger.

‘Jesus, look at the size of that thing,’ whispered Anna.

‘Look, is exactly what we need to be doing,’ said Steven. ‘Let’s get as much information from the ship’s sensors on that thing as we can.’

Anna nodded in affirmation and began to fine tune the ship’s sensor suite.

‘That thing is right in our path,’ said Isaacs. ‘It’s hanging in the sky directly above Bolivar City.’

‘Keep going. If we change course it’ll arouse suspicion.’

‘Orinoco Traffic Control are hailing us,’ said Anna. ‘This is it.’

‘Vessel Arms of Orion, this is Orinoco Traffic Control, said the stern, clipped voice. ‘State your business and destination, over.’

Isaacs took a deep breath. ‘Orinoco Traffic Control, this is the uh… Arms of Orion. We are on a trading run from Vreeth space. I have a cargo of the finest Barrachak Cloudfrond for sale in this system. Requesting permission to land in Bolivar City. Over.’

‘Permission granted, Arms of Orion. Be advised that this system is in a state of heightened military readiness. Do not deviate from the prescribed course being fed to you now. Failure to comply may be met with deadly force. Your vessel will be boarded and searched by security personnel upon landing.’

‘Roger that, Traffic Control. Arms of Orion out.’ Isaacs cut the link and let out a long sigh of relief. As they had been speaking, the indicated route that Traffic Control intended them to follow had appeared in his HUD. It looped around the leviathan before them, but still brought them within a hundred kilometres of the massive ship. Isaacs allowed Orinoco Traffic Control to take over the task of piloting his ship and took his hands off the controls.

‘See?’ said Steven. ‘Piece of cake.’

‘What was that they said about deadly force, again?’ Isaacs replied.

‘There’s a lot of other ships around the big Shaper one,’ said Anna, studying the displays from the ship’s sensors. ‘I’m picking up ten carrier battle groups in the space around Tethys, including two around Orinoco at the moment. Can’t see any other Shaper vessels, but I bet they’re lurking around somewhere. There’s a lot of debris in orbit too, though most of it is around towards the far side of the moon. Looks like the remains of the Commonwealth fleet as well as Orinoco station. I can see a fair few civilian vessels besides the military craft. There are a lot of freighters in formation with the Shaper craft, and more incoming from outside the system, judging by the drive signatures. Some other traffic coming and going from Orinoco, but not as much as you’d normally expect.’

‘What sort of freighters?’ said Steven, leaning over to peer at the display.

‘Commonwealth built, mostly.’

‘No, I mean what are they carrying?’

‘Just a moment, we’re a little far away to tell…’ Anna replied and fine tuned the ship’s instruments. ‘Hmm, interesting,’ she said finally.

‘What is?’

‘I’m picking up magnetic containment units and radiation signatures. I’d say that all of those ships are carrying cargos of antimatter. They must be supplying that giant ship with it.’

‘What is it, some kind of doomsday weapon?’ said Isaacs.

‘It could very well be something like that, yes,’ said Steven. ‘Quite what we do to stop it…’

Anna was still fixated on the readings from the ship’s scanners as they attempted to scan the massive Shaper craft.

‘I can’t penetrate the hull of that thing. No surprises there, but I am getting some energy readings from the ship. Those bulbous sections amidships are putting out strong signals, and there are patterns of energy signatures running up to and along those arms that jut out from the fore section. Could be a series of reactors linked to some sort of weapons system. My guess is; that’s what they’re feeding it with antimatter for.’

As they drew closer to the monumental Shaper ship, they could pick out more detail with the naked eye. The interlocking plates rose and fell like ranges of snow capped mountains, the bigger shards joined and interspersed by patterns of smaller, gleaming scales that shone like mother of pearl, though even the smallest of those was the size of a Commonwealth frigate class vessel. The ends of the five vast arms, meanwhile, each subdivided into smaller and smaller shards, until the very tips shone with collections of needle-like appendages. Where the arms met at the bow of the ship, a huge maw of armoured plates jutted forward like that of some ravenous sea creature. Isaacs caught a glimpse of a looming, circular mouth filled with glittering crystalline teeth. He got the distinct impression that the vessel was watching him. There was something behind his eyes, some presence or other. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise.

‘I think… I think we’re going to need bigger guns,’ said Isaacs, as he pondered the great vessel.

‘Yeah, I think you might be right,’ Steven replied, his eyes similarly rooted to the alien craft.

‘We’re being probed by one of the renegade Commonwealth ships acting as sentry,’ said Anna. ‘They’re hailing us and targeting weapons. Putting them through. Remember, nice and cool.’

‘Vessel Arms of Orion, this is the Freedom Alliance destroyer Hatshepsut. Please desist in your attempts to probe the large vessel in orbit. Our guests are sensitive about such matters.’

‘My apologies Hatshepsut,’ said Isaacs, as Anna hurriedly switched off the Profit Margin’s active sensors. ‘I was merely curious. I’ve never seen a vessel that large before. Where did it come from?’

‘That information is classified. Suffice to say that we have sought allies of our own. Unlike the Commonwealth, we are not prey to malign alien influences and seek only partnership with the elder races, not subjugation. A new order is coming. You would do well to remember that.’

‘Look, I’m just a businessman. I don’t want to get involved.’

‘Very good. Then go about your business,’ snapped the voice aboard the Hatshepsut and cut the link.

‘Charming,’ said Isaacs. ‘Are they still targeting us?’

‘Yes,’ Anna nodded.

‘Wonderful. Then we’d better behave ourselves.’

They sat in silence and watched the massive Shaper craft pass by on the starboard side of the vessel. Isaacs felt it again, a probing presence in the edges of his consciousness.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Anna, suddenly.

‘Hear what?’ Steven replied.

‘It sounded like… I don’t know… words coming through on the comm. system,’ she said awkwardly.

‘It’s not active.’

‘I know. I must be imagining things. Cal, did you…?’

Isaacs heard it again: whispers from some terrible mouth struggling to form unfamiliar sounds in the darkness.

‘It’s that ship,’ he said, casting it an accusing glance out of the starboard window. ‘It’s trying to get inside our heads.’

‘Blot it out, try to ignore it,’ said Steven. ‘As far as we know they can’t read minds. It’s probably just curious about us. Don’t do anything stupid.’

Pathetic creatures. The sibilant tones were clearer now. Free yourselves from your limited existence and embrace perfection. Allow us to remake you anew. And then it had them in its grip, their minds held in its powerful embrace. There were images too now, flashes of shapes moving in the jungles of the world below them, humans and aliens that moved with the precision of automata, the dim light catching the outlines of the crystalline machinery that pierced their bodies. He saw men and women disassembled and reformed, their limbs and organs replaced with pulsing machinery. He heard the screams, saw them struggle as the blades and needles descended. Saw bodies and machinery fused together into heaving masses, about which the parasites of the Shapers scurried like termites about their nest. Isaacs gasped in horror, and heard the others do likewise. Despite having witnessed similar things first hand, the enduring horror of the images and manner in which the Shaper craft forced them into his consciousness made him reel. Somehow he knew that what the ship was showing him was going on right now on the moon below. He knew that those screams were still piercing the air and that no-one would answer them. And then as quickly as they had begun, the images ceased and the voice receded. The ship had released them. Isaacs was left with the mental image of something ancient and powerful moving off into the distance. It had lost interest in these puny beings and decided to leave them be.

Isaacs was jolted back into reality and realised that he was hyperventilating. He looked around at the others and saw his own horrified expression reflected back at him.

‘What the hell just happened?’ said Anna, weakly. ‘Did you just see…? God, it was horrible.’

Isaacs nodded wearily.

‘I think it was just curious about us,’ said Steven. ‘Thankfully, we don’t seem to have been interesting enough to hold its attention. Those images that it was projecting seemed real enough, though. God know what we might be heading into.’

The massive vessel steadily slipped behind them. All the while, the guns of the defensive fleet around it remained firmly trained on the Profit Margin. Orinoco filled their forward vision. Below them, the dark smudge of Bolivar City could just be made out against the landscape as it sprawled against the coastline. The Profit Margin began to reduce its speed as it entered the landing pattern and spiral down to the spaceport, orientating itself to enter the atmosphere tail down in an aero-braking manoeuvre. Gradually, the shields began to glow faintly from the friction with the thickening gases.

‘Any moment now…’ muttered Steven. ‘Any moment…’

‘New contact! Right behind us!’ cried Anna. ‘It’s the Uncaring Cosmos, right on schedule. She’s firing on the lower sentry vessels!’

‘Break out of the landing pattern!’ cried Steven. ‘Cal, you need to do it now!’

‘Easier said than done,’ muttered Isaacs, taking over control of his vessel once more. ‘We’re in the middle of an atmospheric descent. Hang on…’

Grabbing the controls, he gunned the engines, throwing the ship forwards and out of its tail down descent. The ship was now ascending again. Isaacs pushed the nose down and continued to accelerate until the ship was standing on its head and heading straight for the city below. Above, just beyond the reaches of the atmosphere, the Uncaring Cosmos had engaged two former Commonwealth destroyers. Brilliant beams of energy lashed out from the gunsphere, raking the flanks of both enemy craft with punishing fire as the other ships sought to engage this new threat that had appeared in their midst. Shaper craft, detecting the Nahabe vessel as it had made its final approach, were already inbound. Their ghostly shapes were already emerging on all sides as one of the renegade destroyers exploded amidships in a wash of energy and radiation.

With the chaos unfolding in the space above Bolivar City, local traffic control and air and space defences were suddenly thrown into disarray. It was just the sort of opening that the Uncaring Cosmos had been intending to create. With its shields glowing white hot, the Profit Margin descended like a meteor.

‘Jesus, Cal. What the fuck are you doing!?’ cried Anna, as the city below rose up to greet them with worrying speed.

‘We need to get as low as possible, get beneath the view of the tracking arrays.’

‘Does that involve making a hole in the fucking ground to evade capture!?’

‘Now who needs to relax? Relax, I did dropship pilot training back in the Navy.’

‘And how long ago was that?’

‘Oh, at least fifteen years. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll all come back to me.’

Anna simply stared back at him in mute terror as the altitude reading on the HUD continued to reduce at alarming speed and Bolivar City grew ever larger in her vision. As the ship plunged through the ten thousand metre mark, Isaacs eased back the throttle and deployed the vessel’s airbrakes and retros. He hauled back on the controls, attempting to pull the ship’s nose up and out of the death dive. It didn’t seem to Anna to be making much difference - they were still plunging towards the ground at an alarming rate.

Above, the Shaper vessels were closing in on the Uncaring Cosmos, who had been making their own observations of the enormous Shaper craft amid the storm of the battle. The Nahabe vessel began to move before the trap could be closed, powering off across the upper edge of the atmosphere with half a dozen Shaper craft in pursuit. The bright beams of energy weapons flickered between the Nahabe ship and its pursuers as it attempted to flee.

In desperation, Isaacs opened up the ship’s braking thrusters to maximum and used the Profit Margin’s manoeuvring thrusters to haul her nose out of the dive. She was still falling, but now her nose was at least pointing in the right direction. Pushing the main engines to full again, he attempted to spur the craft forwards and gain lift, as the Profit Margin, now vibrating violently from the buffeting caused by the thickening atmosphere and her improper entry angle, still fell like a stone to the ground below. As Isaacs pulled the nose above the horizon, his eyes registered the altimeter falling through five thousand metres. The nose rose higher and higher until the ship was standing on top of a pillar of blue-white fire, shaking violently from the descent. Three thousand metres, and gradually her descent began to slow. Two thousand metres, and Anna could clearly make out vehicles in the streets below, towards which they were still descending rapidly. One thousand metres, and Isaacs began to bring the nose down. Anna looked and saw that they had stopped falling for a moment and were flying level, before Isaacs pitched the nose forward again.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she cried.

‘When I said low, I meant low,’ he answered grimly. ‘I need to get down to tree top height so they can’t make us out so easily against all the background clutter.’ He glanced at the navicomp display, and checked the waypoint for the Hidden Hand base that he had entered earlier, and then pulled the ship around in an arc to its new heading. ‘Anything following us?’ he said, not taking his eyes off the view ahead.

Anna glanced out of the window for a second and saw buildings and trees whipping by mere tens of metres below them at sickening velocity, before hurriedly turning her attention to the ship’s scanners.

‘Nothing so far,’ she reported. ‘Traffic Control have sent out an alert for a missing ship matching our description, but they haven’t spotted us. Given the fact that anyone not deaf or blind within a hundred kilometres will have witnessed us fall out of the sky just now though, I don’t think it’ll take them long.’

‘Then we’ll have to be quick about it, won’t we? What’s the status of the Uncaring Cosmos?’

‘She’s jumped away, I think. Shaper ships were in pursuit. Hopefully the Nahabes’ better instruments let them get a better look at that massive ship than we did. Still, we ought to get what data we managed to gather on it back to the Commonwealth.’

‘Good idea,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll start sending the data we got from the sensors. It makes sense to do it before we land at the Hidden Hand base in case the Shapers manage to triangulate the transmission.’

‘Do it,’ said Isaacs. ‘We should there before too long.’

‘Will do,’ said Steven, getting up from his seat and turning to go aft. As he did so, he glanced outside at the rushing landscape, which even now was becoming an undulating carpet of tropical forest. ‘Does this ship have any terrain avoidance systems built in?’ he said, noting just how close they were to the treetops.

‘Yeah, it does: me,’ said Isaacs. ‘I try not to fly into things.’

Deep in the jungle, the Profit Margin settled gently into a clearing in the trees that lay at the base of a jagged cliff face. By the time the engines had been shut down and her weary crew had emerged, looking a little worse for wear, teams were already rushing to tow the ship away into a hangar concealed within the base of the cliff with the aid of tractors more used to pulling farm machinery than spacecraft. Isaacs watched the commotion as his beloved craft was hauled away without ceremony towards a pair of armoured doors that had been cunningly disguised to resemble the surrounding rock and whose insulated surfaces would help to conceal the presence of the base in other wavelengths. Others then came with rakes and shovels to cover the tracks left in the dirt by the vessel’s landing gear. A couple of the women who had been overseeing the operation stepped forward. Isaacs recognised one immediately as she strolled forwards with an easy confidence. The other moved more stiffly, as though she had military bearing. He didn’t recognise her from the Hidden Hand’s former base, Port Royal.

‘Maria, good to see you,’ said Isaacs.

‘You too, Cal, Anna. Still in one piece I see?’

‘Just about,’ Anna replied. ‘Cal got us here, right under the noses of the enemy. As far as we know, we weren’t followed, but our failure to arrive at the spaceport has been noticed. They’ll be looking for us.’

‘Good. And who’s this fine looking man you’ve brought with you?’ said Maria, nodding her head of cornrows at Steven. ‘He looks dangerous.’

‘Steven Harris, I’m one of the good guys.’

‘Yeah? Something about you says that you’re a bad boy when you need to be,’ said Maria with narrowed eyes.

‘I can handle myself.’

‘You CIB?’

‘Used to be. Now I work for someone else. If you don’t mind me asking, who is your colleague?’

‘She’s Commonwealth Navy,’ said Maria. ‘Strange days indeed for the Hidden Hand when we got Navy and Secret Service in our ranks.’

The woman stepped forward and extended a hand towards Steven. She was tall and wiry, with collar length dark hair and intelligent eyes. Steven placed her age at about forty.

‘Agent Harris. The Nahabe told me to expect you. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Commander Jane Baldwin, the former XO of the Abraham Lincoln. Please, come inside. We need to get under cover quickly in case they come looking for you. Also, we have a lot to talk about.’

Chapter 35

As night descended, Cox looked up from the balcony of the Governor’s former home, now Morgan’s Presidential Residence, and picked out the shape of the vast Shaper ship against the stars. Finally, it had arrived. He had grown tired of waiting. The Commonwealth should belong to the Shapers by now, and so – soon - it would. Chen’s defeat of his forces in the Solar System had been an unexpected set back, one that still rankled. The man Cox had once been distrusted Chen, since she was a protégé of Admiral Haines, but the being that now occupied his body saw her rather differently. Chen had impressed it. Her fighting spirit and her sheer tenacity in the face of enormous odds were worthy of grudging respect, even though she was a member of that lowly species, humanity.

It wouldn’t help her. Chen might have defeated him once, but soon he would have near-limitless resources at his command. The gigantic ship in the sky above would soon see to that. He could feel it calling to him, feel himself sinking back into the greater whole. The link between them resonated with the flow of data from the Shaper consciousness and the link between the vessel and the Singularity was far stronger than he had been able to manage on his own. Now he felt its loving embrace once more, felt it strengthen him, focus him. The residual personality of the man that had been Admiral Cox began to recede beneath the Shaper organism’s implacable will.

He allowed his consciousness to spread out along the communication pathways that led out, across the gulfs of hyperspace, to the myriad ships that wer scattered across the worlds of man. His reach spread like a vast hand, the fingers brushing against star systems, the ships and agents within twinkling like brilliant stars. Here, a squadron of scout vessels moving like a school of bright fish in the deep. Here, an agent lurking in the bustle of a great city, the skies above stacked with ships waiting to depart. Here; another occupying the mind of a dull witted bureaucrat who had risen to elected office in order to represent the people of his system, and who had fallen easily into Cox’s trap. Another here; spreading lies and hatred of the government on Earth through broadcasts filled with bile and half-truths, swaying the public towards the new regime and here; swarms of lesser parasites did the bidding of their masters, the bodies of those they inhabited moving like regimented puppets, the minds of the hosts still horribly conscious as they dragged away more bodies in the night to be implanted, to become like them, to serve the Shapers. Humans were such pathetic creatures, little more than stupid cattle who could be so easily led, Cox mused. Take over their leaders and those who fed them their ill informed opinions and the rest would easily fall into line. Take over their military as well and those who didn’t comply could be crushed. It was so much simpler than trying to assimilate their teeming billions. Humans would happily enslave themselves if you let them.

Cox reached out still further and saw a disturbance in hyperspace, hundreds of ships in transit from what remained of the Commonwealth. As yet, he could not determine their exact destinations. He wondered if Chen was among them. He would relish the chance to face her again. A worthy opponent was so difficult to find in this galaxy, and when he had defeated her, his masters would enjoy devouring her mind and sucking on its secrets, and he would enjoy watching her scream.

He sent commands to his scattered forces, recalling some ships from more distant postings, ordering others to move to standby positions until he could be sure where the Commonwealth ships were heading. The Shaper consciousness offered up tactical solutions, possible targets, systems of interest to the enemy. Cox sifted the data and pondered his opponents’ actions.

Above, there was a glimmer of light in the sky, a brief glow that illuminated the tops of the clouds. Cox allowed his view to switch to the vast ship above him and saw to his satisfaction that the first of the asteroids had arrived. His vessels had been scouring the system, searching out metal rich asteroids and shattering them into smaller chunks with their weapons so that they could be moved. Dragging their loads with them, they had returned, and were now feeding their catches into the waiting ship, where the rocks would be broken down, their minerals purified and recombined and then the ship would start to build the instrument of the Commonwealth’s final destruction.

He was but a faithful servant. His masters were pleased. They had enjoyed feeding on Haines’s mind, assimilated the tactical guile and strategic acumen that the man had accumulated over his lifetime. All knowledge strengthened the Shaper whole. Haines the man was little use to them now, although they had been greatly amused at Morgan’s suggestion that he be spared, and then executed as a war criminal. The irony was not lost on them, it seemed, and perhaps he would be of use to them after all. They had decided against implanting him with another agent, like the creature that now inhabited Cox. For Haines to switch sides so readily would not be plausible. No-one in the Commonwealth would believe it, such was the man’s reputation. Instead, they would try to destroy that reputation and then dispose of him, just in time for the Commonwealth that he had fought to defend to be destroyed along with him.

It was utterly dark in the cell. Haines’ world had been reduced to one of touch only: the rough surface of the concrete floor, the glossy coolness of the painted walls. He had lost all sense of time, had no idea now how long he had been down here. Occasionally the door was flung open and rations were placed on the floor in front of him. It was the only time he ever saw light. Down here he could not tell whether it was day or night. At first he had begun to try to build some sort of routine around these visitations, but after a while he suspected that they lacked any sort of rhythm and that perhaps his captors were attempting to confuse his body still further with random behaviour and lack of routine.

After the guards had departed, he would sit and eat the bland food with his hands, in the dark. At first he had spilled much of it, but after a while he learned to eat slowly and carefully in the darkness, as a blind man would, using his fingers to find the edges of the food tray and, after locating its contents, place the morsels into his mouth. Drinking was the hardest. Finding the beaker of water and drinking from it required some practice, but after a few attempts he could manage it without spilling too much.

The biggest challenge was that of keeping himself sane. He began to live inside his head, tell himself stories, recall things that had happened to him in the past or construct imaginary vistas where he could retreat to and which he used both to exercise his mental faculties and to stave off the effects of the sensory deprivation, fear and mind-numbing boredom from being locked in a pitch black cell for who knew how long.

There had been no more beatings since the Shaper had invaded his mind. He supposed that there wasn’t much point in them bothering, since the creatures now knew as much about him as he knew himself. The memory of that swarm enveloping his skull and entering his mind still made him shiver with revulsion. The cold, clinical touch of those thousands of crawling, cybernetic things as they scuttled across his face, into his eye sockets, god, even into his brain… He had blacked out after a few minutes, coming to in the cell afterwards, caked in his own vomit, but miraculously still alive, for now at least. He wondered what the Shapers really wanted with him. They hadn’t killed him, they hadn’t implanted him and any secrets that they could have got from him, they could easily have got from Morgan if they had just asked him. The man outranked him after all. Perhaps somehow they had absorbed and copied something of him, his abilities perhaps? It made his skin crawl to think that there might be a copy of his mind; his personality, his innermost thoughts, somewhere in the vast data streams of the Shaper collective consciousness, for them to prod and poke and experiment on at their leisure. Was it/he conscious in some way? Did it/he know what was happening to it at the hands of an implacable alien consciousness?

He pondered his current ignominious situation. In the end, the Shapers had defeated him. So much for his reputation. They had outgunned and outfought him, and when he had survived, they had exploited the one thing that he had thought he could rely on - the people under his command – and used it to capture him and the others in his ragged band of survivors. He wondered whether there were still others out there right now in the jungle, running and hiding from the enemy and living off what they could forage, a guerrilla army continuing what he could not and planning his rescue. Perhaps, he reflected glumly, it was a false hope. He would most likely die here, or be hauled out and executed in a similarly blank room after being forced to confess to whatever trumped up charges the creature inhabiting what had once been Admiral Cox could think up in order to humiliate and demonise him in front of the people of this new puppet regime of the Shapers. Whatever they did to him, he wasn’t going to beg for his life. He had no intention of giving the bastards the satisfaction. Whatever happened, he would never surrender to them. He allowed himself a broad smile. They would never break him, and thus, they could never completely beat him. In the darkness, Haines started to laugh.

Chapter 36

On the outermost edge of the Santiago system, space was torn apart as the Commonwealth invasion fleet emerged from hyperspace. The fleet of over a hundred warships had followed a series of waypoints from the Delta Pavonis system designed to obfuscate their true objective and, at times, had divided the fleet into its constituent carrier groups before re-uniting them as a coherent force for the final jump to Santiago. Now they emerged in perfect formation, a vast wall of ships centred around the Churchill. It was a triumph of command and fleet coordination, a testament to the professionalism of the Commonwealth Navy and the vessels that Cartwright had hand-picked for this mission. It also spoke volumes for the capability of the fleet’s commander.

Admiral Chen leant forward in her command chair as the Churchill emerged from hyperspace. Ahead, through the bridge windows, Santiago’s sun shone like a baleful yellow eye, the planets around it just faintly visible as points of light arranged along the system’s ecliptic. To port and starboard, space was filled with ships under her command, their be-weaponed, armoured hulls shining dully in the weak light from Santiago’s sun.

‘All stations report,’ said Chen.

‘We have emerged from our jump at the correct coordinates,’ said O’Rourke.

‘Jump successful. All ships have emerged from hyperspace at the correct location,’ said Singh.

‘Mitchell here,’ came the report from gunnery. ‘All weapons ready and shields fully operational.’

‘All ships reporting in and are at full combat readiness,’ reported Andrews.

‘The flight deck is reporting in,’ said McManus. ‘All wings are ready to go.’

‘Excellent,’ Chen replied. ‘Mr Singh, do we have sight of the enemy?’

‘Recon cruisers coming on-line now ma’am,’ said Singh and scrutinised his console for a moment as the results from the Thea class cruisers began to flood in. ‘We are not detecting any Shaper ships within sensor range. Two carrier battle groups are on station in high orbit above the planet: Jupiter class with a dozen escorts each. Signatures match the Pompey Magnus and the Roosevelt.’

‘What about Shaper ships deeper within the system out of our detection range? What have the Nahabe spotted?’ said Chen.

The Nahabe had advanced ahead of the main fleet as a heavy scouting force, using their stealth capabilities to conceal themselves and their superior sensor capabilities to get a fix on the position of the Shaper ships in the system.

‘Shadow in the Void and three of her sister ships are on station as planned, concealed within the asteroid belt between the orbits of the fourth and fifth planets. The other four vessels are in a similar position on the opposite side of the system. We’re getting the data from them now,’ Singh replied. ‘Confirmed: seven Shaper ships in system, two more than intel. suggested. The superdestroyer and four of the destroyers are shadowing the carriers, the other two destroyers are in different locations around the asteroid belt - looks like they’re hunting for the Nahabe. Data from the Nahabe indicates that the superdestroyer is acting as the command ship in the system and forms the key link back to the Shaper hive-mind. Wait… there are three more destroyers inbound at high speed, heading for Valparaiso.’

‘Damn. Time to their arrival?’ said Chen.

‘Based on their current speed and heading, just over three hours,’ replied Singh.

‘Meaning we’ll have to defend the landing against them when they arrive,’ McManus commented. ‘Do we abort?’ he asked, meeting Chen’s gaze.

Chen weighed up the situation, then made her decision

‘No. We position ourselves between them and the landing and have the Nahabe outflank them. It’s time that the Shapers felt the bitter taste of defeat once again.’ She fixed McManus with a steely eyed look. ‘I intend to take this system and hold it against all comers for as long as is necessary,’ she added and then began to issue orders. ‘Ensign Andrews, signal to the Nahabe that we shall proceed. They are to engage the bulk of the enemy fleet, concentrating on the Shaper vessels. We shall not be far behind. We are go for the operation. Navigation, adjust our next waypoint to bring us out of our jump five hundred kilometres from the enemy force and above them relative to the position of the planet.’

‘Aye, Admiral,’ said O’Rourke and consulted his console. ‘Coordinates adjusted. We’ll be coming out right on top of them.’

‘Glad to hear it. Ensign Andrews, inform the fleet to prepare for immediate combat following the jump,’ Chen replied. ‘Helm, engage jump drive.’

‘Of course, if we can see them, they sure as hell can see us,’ said McManus under his breath as the Churchill and the rest of the invasion force jumped once more. ‘We should be on the lookout for them trying something crafty.’

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Chen replied. ‘They’ll have seen us coming. Damn it, they could hardly not see us. I’m just banking on them not being able to work out where we were going until it was too late to redeploy sufficient forces to engage us. Those three incoming ships won’t be the last once they work out what we’re up to.’

‘What do you intend to do?’ said McManus.

‘Kill them, of course.’

‘I wouldnae have it any other way,’ the Commander replied, his face a picture of grim satisfaction.

The fleet emerged from their jump into the chaos of the already unfolding battle in low orbit above the Earth-like surface of the planet Valparaiso. The Shaper superdestroyer, a vast, glittering behemoth over five kilometres from bow to stern, was under heavy attack from the Nahabe gunspheres, who in turn were taking heavy fire from its considerable defences as well as its two destroyer escorts. Two of the gunspheres had been heavily damaged already, and space between the frantically manoeuvring ships was criss-crossed with searing beams of energy. The two enslaved carrier groups, meanwhile, were facing directly towards the Commonwealth fleet as it emerged from hyperspace and advancing upon their current position. As Chen had rightly suspected, their arrival had not taken the Shapers by surprise. She ordered Andrews to put her through to the fleet.

‘All ships, this is Chen. Concentrate all fire on the carrier groups. The Shapers are using them as a blocking force: we have to push past them. Leonides and Nelson groups, advance on our left flank. Plataea and Pericles, push forward on the right. Everyone else, stay with the Churchill and loosen formations.’

At Chen’s command, the fleet began to spread out, aiming to trap the enemy carriers in the cross fire as they advanced and also give themselves more room to manoeuvre. As they closed with the enemy, those same enemy ships were now preparing to fire.

‘Admiral, it’s the Shadow in the Void. The Lord Protector wishes to speak to you,’ said Andrews.

‘Put him through,’ Chen replied. A second later the armoured form of the Nahabe commander appeared in her HUD.

‘Admiral Chen, this is the Lord Protector. We are currently engaged with the Shaper command vessel and her escorts. Gunspheres Broken Moon and Cursed Star have sustained heavy damage but are still able to fight. The superdestroyer’s shields are weakening, but her defences are considerable. I’m not sure how long we can keep this up - only our superior manoeuvrability compared to the superdestroyer is giving us any advantage. Four of my ships are currently engaged with the escort destroyers. Two more vessels have recently jumped in from elsewhere in the system.’

‘Lord Protector, we need to concentrate on the larger vessel.’

‘I realise that,’ replied the Lord Protector. ‘But we need those destroyers dealt with. They have us penned in against the superdestroyer’s defences and we cannot jump clear. I fear I may have miscalculated and allowed them to flank us. We are outgunned.’

‘Roger that. We are preparing to engage the carrier groups and will render assistance as soon as possible,’ Chen replied. ‘Hang in there. Chen out.’

‘How soon?’ said McManus. ‘They seem to be taking some punishment.’

‘Let’s see shall we?’ Chen replied. ‘We have the carriers outnumbered four to one. Time to test the new weaponry at our disposal.’

As Chen spoke, the Pompey Magnus unleashed its main gun against the advancing Commonwealth forces. The massive plasma cannon spat a bolt of white hot energy towards Chen’s ship, but the shot was premature and glanced off the forward shields of the carrier Marcus Aurelius. The Roosevelt wisely held its fire, whilst the beam cannons of the escort vessels were still out of range. The two fleets were still closing with one another.

‘Helm, aim us at the Pompey Magnus,’ ordered Chen. ‘Gunnery, prepare to fire the main gun. All other ships, pick your targets and prepare to fire.’

The Churchill shifted, aligning itself with the enemy carrier. The other ships in Chen’s HUD lit up with icons indicating that they were being targeted by the other carriers and destroyers equipped with the new spatial distortion weapons. They were now within optimal firing range.

‘Fire!’ barked Chen, and a dozen ships died.

Space between the two closing fleets rippled suddenly, torn apart by the exotic weaponry now fitted to the Commonwealth ships. The lead ships among the enslaved carrier groups simply came apart under the onslaught, their bows shattered suddenly as if they had driven into an invisible wall, and then the tears in reality continued to rip along their lengths, twisting decks and hull plating and bursting them open. Chen saw the Pompey Magnus torn open in a split second from bow to stern, the two kilometre long vessel hanging open, ripped almost clean in two, before her reactors detonated with a blinding flash that engulfed the remains. The bows of the Roosevelt, hit by several of the smaller destroyer mounted cannons, simply ceased to exist, before a final blow ripped out her entire bridge section along with a two hundred metre chunk of her upper decks. Escort destroyers, frigates and cruisers were pummelled as if by a gigantic fist both from the front and from both flanks. Ships began to break apart, explosions tearing along their shattered hulls as blow after blow from the massed Commonwealth ships tore into them and broken energy capacitors, ammunition magazines and smashed reactor cores went critical. Hopelessly outclassed and unable to return fire, the remaining vessels now struggled to manoeuvre around the expanding fireballs, wildly tumbling debris and shattered wrecks.

Chen could scarcely believe what she was seeing. The scenes of carnage caused by the guns of her fleet were incredible. Half of the opposing carrier groups wiped out at a stroke. There was a ragged cheer from her bridge officers.

‘Fucking hell, that showed ‘em!’ cried McManus. ‘Jesus, I’ve never seen the like!’

As if to emphasis his point, the Roosevelt, now out of control, collided with one of her escort destroyers, driving the stump of her shattered bows clean through the destroyer’s aft gun decks. The two vessels were locked together for a moment, hull spars twisting and rending, before the destroyer began to come apart from multiple internal explosions, eventually immolating itself and the remains of the Roosevelt in a vast expanding sphere of plasma.

‘Gunnery, report,’ said Chen.

‘Our Arkari made cannon performed well yet again, Admiral,’ replied Lieutenant Commander Mitchell over the comm. ‘We scored a direct hit on the Pompey Magnus. Cannon is recharging. It’ll be a few more minutes until we can fire it again.’

‘Duly noted. Good work, Mr Mitchell’ said Chen.

However their celebrations were to be short lived. Singh noticed first that something was wrong.

‘Admiral, a number of our destroyers appear to be drifting out of formation. Their weapons systems and shields are showing offline and their engines are powering down. Two of our own escorts, the Alesia and the Salamis are affected as well as nine other vessels throughout the fleet. Since we’re accelerating, they’re dropping back.’

‘Confirmed,’ said Andrews. ‘They are not responding to hails.’

‘Have they been attacked by something, some new disabling weapon we haven’t seen before? An EMP device perhaps?’ asked McManus.

‘That’s a negative,’ Singh replied, examining the sensor logs. ‘Each ship went offline at the moment it fired its main gun.’

‘Must be some sort of catastrophic malfunction,’ said McManus. ‘Christ, I thought they’d tested these bloody things before they sent us into battle.’

‘Andrews, warn the rest of the fleet, if they haven’t already noticed,’ said Chen. ‘Tell them to stay clear of the drifting ships, and the destroyers are not to fire their spatial distortion cannons for the rest of the battle. We can’t risk more ships becoming disabled!’

They were closing on the remaining enslaved ships now. The enemy vessels were still manoeuvring around the wrecks of the destroyed ships and were bringing weapons to bear. They were almost in range.

‘What about weapons mounted on the carriers?’ said McManus. ‘Are we going to risk it?’

‘If I order the carriers not to fire their spatial distortion cannons, we don’t have much to hit the Shapers with. We might as well throw rocks at them,’ said Chen, angrily. ‘I’m willing to bet that there’s something about those particular destroyers that caused them to fail.’

‘I’ll have a look at the schematics we have on record,’ said McManus. ‘Meanwhile, we need to defend those ships. It won’t take the enemy long to realise what’s happened and they’ll be sitting ducks. Worse still, they could be boarded.’

At that moment a signal came through. It was an emergency broadcast and it was coming from the Salamis. Andrews put it on speaker for them all to hear.

‘May day, may day. This is Captain Crane of the Salamis. We have lost main power to all systems. The ship is drifting, we are virtually blind and we are unable to defend ourselves. Please respond.’

‘Salamis, this is Admiral Chen. What happened?’

‘Our main gun malfunctioned. Some sort of power overload. It completely overwhelmed the fail-safes and cascaded through our systems when we fired the weapon. We don’t know how bad the damage is yet. We just got the comm. back online as a priority to call for help.’

‘We won’t leave you undefended Salamis,’ Chen replied. ‘Hang in there.’ She turned to Andrews. ‘Ensign, send orders to the assault carrier Anzio to hang back with her escorts and defend those ships as we advance. Signal the other destroyers and inform them that help is on the way, if they can hear us. We have no time to lose. We need to take down those remaining ships and come to the aid of the Nahabe.’

Chen’s ships were now closing rapidly with the remaining enslaved vessels. The enemy ships had successfully negotiated the tumbling wreckage that was all that remained of their comrades and were powering towards the Commonwealth ships, their engines at maximum. It seemed like a hopeless gesture. They were hopelessly outgunned by Chen’s ships.

‘What the hell are they doing?’ mused McManus, eyeing the ragged collection of destroyers , frigates and cruisers growing ever larger before them. ‘They can’t possibly hope to successfully engage us?’

‘Admiral!’ cried Andrews. ‘Message from the Lord Protector. The Nahabe have lost one of their ships. The Broken Moon has gone down with all hands.’

‘We need to finish this,’ said Chen, acknowledging the bad news. At the same time, something about the enemy’s behaviour sent alarm bells ringing in her head. ‘Mr Singh, scan those approaching ships.’

Singh worked his console for a second, before reporting.

‘Enemy vessels are advancing at full speed. Engines are at maximum and weapons are fully powered… wait. I’m seeing unusual energy spikes from their reactors.’

‘Unusual how?’

‘Massive energy readings - way beyond the normal, safe levels and increasing.’

Chen heard it then, a sibilant rasping in the depths of her brain. The Shapers were laughing at her, she could hear them.

‘They’ve overloaded their reactors on purpose. Shite! It’s a suicide run, it has to be!’ exclaimed McManus. ‘They know they can’t defeat us, so the Shapers are sacrificing their pawns. Recommend we throw everything we’ve got at them before the bastards get too close.’

‘Agreed,’ Chen replied. ‘Gunnery, range to target?’

‘First enemy ship will be in range of our beam cannons in five seconds. Spatial distortion cannon is still charging and unavailable for use.’

‘Kill those ships for me, Mr Mitchell,’ said Chen. ‘All vessels, fire at will!’

‘Roger that,’ Mitchell replied, as McManus ordered engineering to divert more power to weapons and shields at the expense of the ship’s engines.

Dozens of energy beams spat from the turrets of the Commonwealth fleet in a searing display of firepower. The leading enemy ship, the frigate Antioch, crumpled under a withering storm of fire, its shields collapsing in a matter of seconds before its bows and superstructure were pummelled and then torn apart under the onslaught. Out of control, the vessel began to slew to one side, narrowly avoiding a collision with the cruiser Ajax before falling out of formation. As the fire from the Commonwealth ships switched targets to the other enemy craft now in range, the Antioch began to shudder from internal explosions and was eventually ripped asunder by a gigantic ball of fire as its overcharged reactor detonated, disabling the nearby Ajax and collapsing the starboard shields of another three vessels. With her shields down and unable to defend herself, the Ajax was next to meet the full force of the guns of the Commonwealth fleet and the ship died in seconds under the onslaught, exploding in a similarly oversized ball of escaping plasma and radiation.

The demise of two of their number in the space of a few seconds didn’t seem to deter the other enslaved vessels who continued their charge against the Commonwealth battle line.

‘Helm, bring us to a halt,’ ordered Chen. ‘Ensign, order all ships to halt, stand fast and repel the enemy.’

As the Commonwealth fleet halted, the destroyers and frigates came about to present the enemy with the fire from both fore and aft turrets. The renegade fleet, now down to three destroyers, six frigates and a handful of cruisers was bombarded with renewed vigour. Ships died under the weight of fire, eviscerated and blown apart by the barrage of searing beams and anti-ship projectiles, and still they charged onwards, straight towards the Commonwealth fleet, even as they burned and broke apart, their internal atmospheres consumed by raging infernos.

The enemy ships were now only a few kilometres away from Chen’s fleet now and were showing no signs of stopping or retreating. It was a suicidal charge; that much was obvious. Beams spat back defiantly from the battered vessels, washing off the shields of the Commonwealth ships. The Commonwealth fleet answered with the fire from hundreds of turrets. As the ship now leading the fleet, the destroyer Telamon, blew itself apart and the weight of fire shifted to the remaining vessels, Chen’s sense of alarm began to grow. The enemy ships were now dangerously close to her own. Though the enslaved craft were heavily outnumbered, their violent deaths could spell disaster. Quickly, she ordered her fleet to reverse thrust and back away from the onrushing enemy ships as the Commonwealth vessels poured fire onto the enemy vessels.

Another chain of explosions ripped apart three enemy ships, two cruisers and a frigate, the death of the frigate immolating the two smaller craft, and still the enemy advanced.

‘Collision warning!’ cried Singh. ‘The destroyer Vercingetorix is on a direct collision course with ourselves! Other vessels are attempting to ram our escort ships!’

‘This is going to be close,’ said McManus. ‘Gunnery, how long until we can fire our main gun?’

‘Ten seconds.’

‘We may not have that much time, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Helm, bring us about to face the Vercingetorix,’ said Chen. ‘Gunnery, concentrate all fire on that vessel! Fire our main gun as soon as you are able!’

Fire from the Commonwealth ships raked the Vercingetorix, collapsing her shields and gouging lengths from her hull. Still, the destroyer continued to close, fire and debris streaming from her battered flanks. Chen saw the vessel looming ever larger in her vision, guns spitting fire defiantly despite the onslaught being directed against it.

The Churchill shuddered, space between the carrier and the destroyer turned inside out, and the Vercingetorix exploded. The detonation was enormous; a miniature sun unleashed three kilometres from the Churchill’s bows. As the Vercingetorix died, so the other Commonwealth carriers unleashed their spatial distortion cannons also, and the last of the renegade ships were ripped asunder. A storm of plasma and radiation hammered the Commonwealth fleet, collapsing shields and searing their forward hull armour.

Amidst the firestorm and tumbling wreckage, something moved. It was small, sleek and crystalline and had been lurking within the shuttle bay of the Vercingetorix. Virtually untouched by the inferno around it, it began to move towards the Churchill.

By the time Singh saw the fleeting contact in his sensor readouts it was already too late. Chen caught a glimpse of something ice-white and moving at great speed towards them from the wreckage of the destroyer. The carrier’s automated fighter defences spat laser fire at the approaching shape, but were ineffective against its superior armour and were unable to stop it colliding with the carrier’s bows.

Alarms began to sound.

‘What the hell was that?’ exclaimed Chen. ‘Somebody, talk to me!’

‘There’s no damage to the ship,’ said Singh. ‘But something just penetrated the forward hangar deck shields.’

‘A boarding attempt, it has to be,’ said McManus. ‘Permission to head down to the hangar deck.’

‘Granted. Get Commander Blackman and his marines down there and seal off the hangars. We don’t know what might be on board that thing. Whatever they might be, I don’t want them loose and running around my ship. Keep me informed, and post a guard at all entrances to this level.’

‘Aye, Admiral,’ McManus replied and sprang out of his seat.

‘And Commander, make sure you stop by the armoury on your way there. Can’t have you unarmed.’

‘No chance of that,’ McManus responded grimly as he headed for the door. ‘I intend to bag myself some of the bastards.

‘Now then,’ said Chen, in businesslike manner. ‘Time to take down the Shaper ships and help our Nahabe allies. Helm, ahead full. Ensign Andrews, signal all ships to remain in formation and prepare to engage the enemy.’

McManus arrived at the port side entrance to the forward hangar deck clutching a rail rifle and grenades and wearing body armour and a helmet which he had snatched from the armoury on the way there. He found Blackman and four dozen fully armed marines waiting for him and noticed that the doors leading into the deck were sealed.

‘Okay, what are we dealing with?’ said McManus.

‘It’s some sort of shuttle or landing craft,’ Blackman replied. ‘When the enemy destroyer exploded in close proximity to the Churchill it temporarily took down our forward shields and most of the shields inside the launch bay. That’s when that thing made a dash for it. We’ve dropped the blast doors over the end of the launch bay and a second set a third of the way down the main hangar deck, but someone or something was definitely onboard that thing.’

‘Can we get a look?’ asked McManus.

‘Ah, I’m afraid that they took out the cameras. We did get footage of something though, right before we lost visual.’

Blackman held up a small datapad for McManus to see. It showed the carrier’s launch bay, filmed from high up from one of the internal cameras and looking along its length towards the bow. The Shaper craft could be clearly seen, lying half on its side at an angle about a hundred metres away. Something was moving in its shadow. McManus could see figures, mostly human, though some appeared to be from alien species that he couldn’t identify. They moved in a calm, ordered fashion out of the alien craft, like automatons. There was something else in there too. It was difficult to see at first, but it seemed to boil like smoke from the Shaper ship before it started to coalesce.

‘Now what the hell do you think that is, Commander?’ said Blackman.

‘I’m not sure…’ replied McManus, watching as the cloud, clearly mobile and seemingly sentient, floated up in front of the camera. He could clearly see now, that the cloud was composed of millions of swarming motes. There was something there within it, the briefest hint of a face, before the cloud rushed forward as one and smothered the camera, cutting the link.

‘I have a very bad feeling about this,’ said McManus.

‘Sir, we’ve all heard the rumours,’ said one of the marines, who gripped a combat shotgun nervously. ‘About them, about what they look like.’

‘I think you might be right,’ McManus answered. ‘The Admiral needs to see this, and we need to think of a way to get that thing off the ship.’

‘That’s the other thing,’ said Blackman. ‘It’s not just the cameras; we’ve lost control of all systems in the forward launch bay.’

‘Get me engineering!’ ordered McManus. ‘Now!’

As the Commonwealth fleet advanced towards the enemy, Chen watched as the battle between the Shaper and Nahabe ships grew ever more visible through the bridge windows. The brilliant flashes of light and expanding shells of energy had grown from pinpricks of light above the brilliant orb of the planet beneath them until individual ships could be discerned against the blackness of space above and the green and brown continents and brilliant blue seas below. The Nahabe had now lost two ships to enemy fire, and the remaining vessels were being heavily battered by the Shaper craft, though they returned the favour with every weapon at their disposal. One of the Shaper destroyers had been torn apart by the concentrated fire of the gunspheres, whilst another had been heavily damaged and was fleeing away from Valparaiso.

With the Anzio and its group left to watch over the disabled destroyers, Chen divided the rest of her forces, seeking to attack the Shaper craft from different directions. She would thus attempt to split their fire, reducing their opportunity to flank her forces. Conscious that her remaining weapons against the Shapers were fixed guns mounted on the bellies of the carriers, she couldn’t afford to allow the Shapers to get into a position where they might use their manoeuvrability to their advantage, not to mention concentrate their superior firepower. She ordered the Plataea and the Pericles groups to peel away on her starboard flank, whilst the Leonides and Nelson groups split away to port. The Churchill, Marcus Aurelius and Alamein groups would advance up the centre. Damage sustained throughout the fleet in the battle with the renegade vessels had been very minor and, save for the ships whose cannons had failed, causing them to lose power, all ships were at full operating capacity. There was however the small matter remaining of whatever it was that had entered the Churchill’s launch bay. The comm. chimed.

‘Admiral, this is McManus. We’ve got a bit of problem down here. The ship’s definitely been boarded. I’m sending you the footage now.’

The images obtained by the Marines appeared in her HUD. There was no mistaking the streamlined, crystalline form of a Shaper craft, nor the enslaved beings that issued forth from it. Then Chen saw the indistinct cloud emerge from the vessel and coalesce in the air and she went cold with the realisation of what it was. She’d read reports on what the enemy, what the Shapers themselves, were supposed to look like. She realised that she was looking at one, and that it was on board her ship.

‘Commander,’ she said a little shakily. ‘Get every available marine down there right now. It’s one of them. We have a Shaper aboard the Churchill.’

‘Thought so. Jesus,’ McManus answered. ‘It gets worse. We think that the Shaper is intent on taking over the ship, now that it has internal access to our systems. We’ve already lost control of systems in the launch bay. We think that it’s trying to escape and enter the rest of the ship. We’ve already lost the internal cameras as well as the launch bay shielding systems and catapults.’

‘We’re not seeing anything offline.’

‘They aren’t offline, we just don’t control them anymore. The outermost fields have been reactivated to stop us venting them into space and we can’t throw that ship off the bows with the magnetic catapults either as something is shorting them out. I’ve got engineers coming down here, but it looks like we’re locked out of the systems. I’ve already alerted engineering and they’ve physically isolated this section from the rest of the ship by dropping the pressure doors leading out of the forward hangar deck. There aren’t any control systems accessible from the launch bay itself that connect to the rest of the ship, except for the cameras which Chief Kleiner assures me aren’t linked to anything critical, it’s just dumb systems connected to power relays in there that they’ve managed to control, but if that thing gets loose, who knows what it might do…’

‘I get the picture,’ Chen replied. ‘We’ve had intel. reports in the past that the Shapers are able to subvert computerised systems if they can gain physical access. The sheer simplicity of the systems inside the launch bay may have saved us. Defend the hangar bay at all cost, Commander. We can’t afford to let that thing get any further.’

‘Roger that. Any hints on how we kill it?’

‘You’re guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid,’ Chen replied, grimly. ‘We’ve never had to fight one directly. At a guess, I’d imagine that projectile weapons might not be much use against the swarm.’

‘Something energy based would be better, aye,’ agreed McManus, in a tone that suggested he was mulling over his options. ‘Will keep you posted, Admiral.’

‘See that you do, Commander. Chen out,’ she replied.

The Shapers themselves were still beings about which little was known. Few had seen them and lived to tell anyone about their experiences. Captain Caleb Isaacs was one of the few that had. Most reports were sketchy at best - often incomplete descriptions of half seen things or the ravings of men driven mad by what they had witnessed. Now one such creature was lurking down in the launch bay of her ship. It made her shudder to think about it. No-one really knew the abilities of the Shapers themselves, much less what they were capable of in direct combat. On top of that, she had a battle to win. The Shaper fleet was coming into range now, the destroyer craft coming about to guard the vast command ship that was beginning to turn towards them, even as the Nahabe craft poured fire onto it.

They must have seen what happened to the other ships, thought Chen. They know what we can do. We won’t get a second chance at this.

With that, she gave orders to her ships and prepared to engage the enemy.

Down in the Churchill’s forward bay, McManus and Blackman decided on their plan of action. In front of them, the massive pressure doors that lead to the forward launch bay stood tightly closed, though every so often, periodic thumps and the sounds of scrabbling could be heard through the thick metal above the background rumble of the ship’s engines operating at full capacity. Behind them, about another two hundred metres distant, another set of doors had been closed across the hangar bay, sealing the rest of that massive space off from any incursion and protecting the carrier’s precious complement of fighters and bombers. Fortunately, there had been no combat craft in this forward section, the area having been cleared to allow ships to be manoeuvred easily into launch positions on the forward catapults. There was, however, an assortment of tractor and loader vehicles and a couple of the Churchill’s shuttles left within the forward bay plus piles of equipment crates that the marines had arranged into makeshift cover. The doors to the rest of ship had been closed, sealing the marines in with whatever was trying to come through the doors in front of them.

‘So, Commander Blackman, what do we have at our disposal? Projectile weapons might not be much use against this thing,’ said McManus.

‘Not a great deal,’ said Blackman. ‘We have laser rifles and pistols, but what we could really do with is something with an area of effect. Plugging away at a swarm with laser rifles might be as futile as trying to attack it with bullets. What we do have, however, is plasma grenades. These little beauties are for clearing out bunkers,’ said Blackman and removed a fist sized egg shaped device from his belt. ‘Concentrated plasma held in a magnetic field. Fries flesh and electronics with equal ease. Don’t know if it’ll kill this thing, but it ought to upset it.’

‘And then, once we’ve really pissed it off?’

‘Hopefully we can get it to relinquish its hold on the launch bay systems and force it back into the launch bay. Then we can throw it and its ship into space off the bow catapults. The magnetic launch system should do the job. I have engineering standing by. As soon as I give the order…’

‘That’s a lot of ifs, Commander. We know next to nothing about these things.’

‘It’s the best idea I’ve had so far,’ Blackman replied grimly.

‘And I have to admit, I can’t think of anything better,’ McManus conceded. ‘Ah, shite. Who wants to live forever? Got any of those things going spare?’

At that moment, they felt the deck vibrate beneath them. A sudden jolt, followed by a series of thuds, then a continuous sideways motion as the ship manoeuvred.

‘Feels like we just entered combat again,’ commented Blackman.

‘Aye, sure enough,’ replied McManus, and then noticed that the doors to the launch bay had opened a crack.

The Shaper destroyers came at the Commonwealth fleet at high speed, like sharks going after the scent of blood. They were manoeuvring hard. It would be a difficult task indeed for the carriers to hit them with their fixed weaponry, as the Shapers were only too aware. The Shapers were vastly outnumbered, but if the humans couldn’t hit back with anything that would count, then they would be unable to stop the shining, crystalline ships from taking their fleet apart. Two were heading for the Plataea and Pericles groups, two more for the Leonides and Nelson groups, whilst the more ponderous superdestroyer was coming about to face the Churchill and Marcus Aurelius. The other remaining destroyer still harried the Nahabe, launching hit and run attacks at the gunspheres as they whittled down the superdestroyer’s shields bit by bit. Chen faced a difficult decision. She replayed the events of the battle so far and took a gamble.

‘Signal to the fleet. Destroyers are to use their spatial distortion cannons.’

‘Admiral, pardon me, but are you sure?’ said Singh.

‘It’s the only hope we have of hitting those Shaper craft,’ Chen replied. ‘Their turreted cannons might not be as powerful as the fixed weapons on the carriers, but they can be aimed more easily.’

‘But the other vessels were disabled by systems malfunctions.’

‘It’s a chance we’ll have to take. If we can’t hit the enemy, we’re just as dead if we don’t try as if we try and suffer the consequences. Andrews, transmit the order! Helm, aim us squarely at that superdestroyer and close the distance as quickly as you can.’

Andrews nodded and did as she was ordered. Chen watched the range counting down on her HUD and gripped the arms of her command chair in anticipation. If she was wrong, the entire operation would fail, thousands would die, trapped in helpless ships. If she was wrong.

‘Communication from Admiral Cartwright,’ said Andrews, as the two fleets closed at speed. ‘He reports that his fleet has engaged the Shaper fleet in the Chittagong system. Several ships have been lost to the enemy, with a number badly damaged, but he is confident of success.’

Chen digested the information with a grim satisfaction. So, she was doing better than her commanding officer. It didn’t cheer her any though. Even now, hundreds of her comrades under Cartwright’s command lay dead or dying inside the ruptured hulks of their ships, and she had matters at hand to deal with. The Plataea fired, its shot missing the incoming Shaper destroyers. The Pericles followed suit, grazing one vessel with spatial distortion fire and ripping shards from its flanks, but the Shaper ship seemed to shrug off the attacks and kept on going. As the vessels closed, it became the turn of the destroyers to shoot. The lead Shaper ship, the one that the Plataea had missed, bore the full brunt of the volley from eight of the smaller spatial distortion cannons. Its bow section crumpled under the weight of fire and the ship almost seemed to flinch and recoil like a wounded thing, peeling away at speed. The other pressed on into the formation of human vessels and let rip with its powerful weaponry. Chen saw three ships die in as many seconds, as the Shaper destroyer casually tore apart the cruiser Cambrai, the missile frigate Sebastopol and the destroyer Acre before passing through the formations of ships at lightning speed and looping around for another attack run, leaving the shattered wrecks in its wake.

The Leonides and the Nelson groups met with more success. The former scored a lucky direct hit on one of the Shaper destroyers as the enemy ship apparently miscalculated during its attack run on the Nelson. The impact tore the stern off the alien craft, sending the remaining forward section spinning toward the human vessels where it passed harmlessly between the assembled warships. The second Shaper vessel dodged the initial shot levelled at it by the Nelson, but then lost its forward shields to several impacts from the destroyers, though uncoordinated firing failed to damage the vessel significantly, allowing it turn sharply away and come about for another run as energy beams from the human warships stabbed out at it, seeking to secure hits now that its shields had collapsed.

Meanwhile, the Churchill and Marcus Aurelius and their groups pressed onwards towards the superdestroyer. The vessel was now pointing directly at them and was advancing at speed. HUD icons confirmed that both carriers and all escorting destroyers still active were targeting the massive craft and sensors indicated that the vessel was powering its weapons as it approached the maximum range of the Churchill’s main armament. Beams spat from the bows of the Shaper vessel, raking the Churchill’s forward shields and near collapsing them at a stroke, before a second shot impaled the missile frigate Hasdrubal, and a third collapsed the shields and badly damaged the front half of the destroyer Louis Quatorze.

‘We can’t withstand firepower like that!’ cried O’Rourke. ‘A few more hits and we won’t have any ships left!’

‘Control yourself, Lieutenant!’ snapped Chen. ‘I need you to keep calm and do your job. We’ll get through this,’ she promised, though in truth the sudden demise of her ships and the death of their crews had been an unwelcome reminder of the power of the Shaper ships. They might be able to shoot back at the Shapers now, but they were still extremely deadly opponents, a fact illustrated by the expanding clouds of debris where there had been proud warships moments before. The Plataea and Pericles groups were under attack once more, the damaged Shaper vessel having recovered and renewed its assault, whilst the second enemy ship streaked in from aft of the Commonwealth vessels, scoring direct hits on two recon cruisers and another destroyer, the Jean Barte, destroying the first two and crippling the latter. The destroyers and carriers desperately attempted to engage both attacking vessels at once, scoring a number of hits on both craft that damaged them further but did little to avert their assault until the Pericles swung sharply upwards and to port and unleashed its main gun at almost point blank range against the vessel it had damaged earlier, shattering the alien craft with a devastating blow.

At the same time, the Churchill and the Marcus Aurelius opened fire on the superdestroyer, pummelling its bow plates with tremendous forces that succeeded in knocking out some of its forward weapon arrays. The Shaper vessel answered in kind. A powerful beam of energy swept across the Marcus Aurelius’s group, destroying the superstructure of the destroyer Baybars – leaving the ship entirely without a bridge – and mangling the bow section of the carrier itself, whose shields had now completely collapsed, leaving the warship vulnerable to a second attack.

Chen’s fear began to get the better of her. Perhaps O’Rourke was right and this was starting to turn into a suicide attack.

‘Admiral, this is McManus,’ said the voice of her XO over the comm. ‘Shapers have breached the bay doors. We are preparing to make a stand.’

‘Admiral, the captain of the Nelson is suggesting that we withdraw,’ said Andrews.

‘Tell him to stand fast and follow his orders!’ barked Chen, though the same thought was starting to cross her mind as the other groups suffered yet more casualties from the hit and run attacks of the remaining Shaper destroyers and another Nahabe gunsphere succumbed.

‘I’m getting a communication from the Lord Protector!’ Andrews reported.

‘Put him through,’ said Chen, as the Nahabe commander appeared in her vision.

‘Admiral Chen. As you have no doubt realised, the weaponry and defences of this warship and her escorts are too great for us to stand against. In the interests of victory, my warriors have decided to undertake a most grave duty against the world killers. I would ask that you honour the crews of the Cursed Star and the Nova Fire.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t…’ her voice tailed off as she saw two of the heavily damaged gunspheres speeding towards the flanks of the Shaper superdestroyer at high speed and she instinctively cried out in alarm.

The crack in the doors grew wider and a carpet of creatures began to flow outwards from it, over the floor and the surface of the doors themselves in a spreading swarm of black, shiny bodies. McManus and the marines watched with horrid fascination as the insectile creatures advanced. Behind them, figures could be seen emerging from the launch bay, and the assembled marines opened fire as those self same figures hurled themselves through the gap.

Concentrated fire cut down the first few, but the others charged onwards into the hail of fire, seemingly unaffected by the laser fire that cooked their flesh and the bullets that blew chunks of meat from their necrotic bodies. Many of the enslaved showed signs of having been in combat before, of having been killed in combat before, their corpses still animated by the parasites embedded in the backs of their skulls that rendered them little more than puppets of flesh and bone. Nevertheless, many fell to the weight of fire directed against them from the disciplined marines, even those which were clearly not human and whose anatomy was entirely unfamiliar. There were large, fleshy, spider-like creatures, ape-like things whose augmented bodies were powered forwards by four powerful arms and things that resembled something akin to a cross between a serpent with a caterpillar’s feet and a praying mantis that moved with surprising agility. Some two dozen of these shock troops assaulted the line of marines in a frenzy of augmented, half decayed limbs. They were granted a merciful release from their state of undead slavery. McManus fired along with the marines, the stock of his rail rifle hammering into his shoulder with every burst, as lurching, jerking figures charged towards him and fell, ripped apart by his rounds. Some creatures broke through to the line of marines, dragging men down with flailing limbs and gnashing jaws to rend them apart as their comrades desperately tried to save them. The marines redoubled their efforts, pumping round after round into the charging things. The creatures died. Marines died too in the bloodbath, limbs torn from sockets, entrails spilled upon the deck, but the barrage of fire from the survivors scythed through the enemy ranks until eventually they were all cut down.

The bay had been turned into a charnel house. The stink of burnt meat and spilled bowels filled the air along with the tang of propellant and explosives. The wounded and the dying screamed and sobbed for aid. Then the Shaper began to emerge at last. As the carpet of cockroach-like things began to flow towards the marines, so silver motes began to drift into the bay through the open doors. They were joined by more and more, until a buzzing cloud had assembled itself in the air before them. There could hear it inside their skulls, a predatory thing that whispered promises of eternal salvation, if only they would surrender to it.

‘Jesus, would you look at that,’ said Blackman.

‘Now would be a good time to give it what for, Commander,’ said McManus, and hurled his plasma grenade at the Shaper.

The device exploded in mid-air. McManus had timed his throw well. Other grenades exploded around the Shaper and the creature was showered with incandescent plasma. There was a scream, a scream like nothing McManus had ever heard before. It was inside his head, spearing his mind like a cold steel blade. He cried out, and saw Blackman and the others wince and stagger from the sudden pain. Then the Shaper rushed forwards in a heartbeat, engulfing two marines before they could react. McManus saw them lifted off the floor inside the whirling cloud, struggling for an awful moment, and then they were torn apart, atomised. A shower of gore sprayed outwards across the bay, across the stunned marines, who opened fire at the Shaper as it grabbed three more men with prehensile tendrils that flowed like smoke and dashed them against the walls where they collided with the dull grey metal with sickening, meaty thuds.

It was among the marines now, tossing men left and right, gathering some up and ripping them apart as they screamed in terror, meanwhile the cockroach like things were beginning to swarm about their feet, trying to drag men down into the tide of tiny bodies. The marines fired wildly, at the Shaper, at the carpet of creatures around their feet, and they were dying - they were dying very quickly.

‘Get out of here!’ cried McManus, grabbing a fallen laser rifle and unloading it at the Shaper, with little visible effect. ‘Call for reinforcements and fall back!’

Blackman froze in panic as his men died around him.

‘Blackman, for god’s sake!’ yelled McManus into the Commander’s face. ‘Come on, man! Fall back, and don’t let that bloody thing follow us!’

Blackman nodded mutely, and did as he was told.

The crews of the Commonwealth ships watched in horror as the two Nahabe gunspheres Cursed Star and Nova Fire charged at the Shaper superdestroyer, and did not stop. The two roughly spherical vessels, each over two kilometres in diameter, ploughed into the port flank of the Shaper craft. The shock of the impact shattered the outer crystalline structure of the ship, which broke into a thousand glittering shards around the hulls of the Nahabe vessels, who promptly detonated their reactor cores in an act of self immolation and total defiance of the enemy.

The explosion was searingly bright. As the shell of expanding energies from the explosion rushed outwards and the photochromic layer of the Churchill’s bridge windows cleared once more, Chen could clearly see that the massive Shaper ship was in trouble. She was still partially intact, but her entire port side was now a vast glowing mass of melted hull material that streamed glowing embers. She had ceased to fire and her port shields had entirely collapsed. As the ships had exploded, Chen swore that she had heard a scream of agony inside her head from the craft. There was something else too - the other Shaper ships seemed to have paused in their attack. Their movements seemed hesitant, almost as if they too were reeling from the agonies experienced by the command ship. Chen’s instinct told her now was the time to strike.

‘Andrews, put me through to the fleet,’ said Chen. ‘All ships, this is Chen. Engage and destroy the enemy command ship, advance, advance and destroy that monstrosity! Her shields are down! Fire at will and kill that thing!’

In the forward hangar bay, McManus saw the Shaper suddenly pause. The cloud of motes that comprised the creature convulsed for a moment and it halted its merciless attack on the marines. He knew that they wouldn’t get a second chance.

‘Come on! Everyone out!’ he cried, grabbing Blackman and dragging the man with him. Marines started to run, charging in panic towards the pressure door that led to the rest of the ship. Only a handful remained alive now. The rest lay scattered in bloody pieces across the floor of the bay that was slick with pools of gore.

The retreat turned into a rout. The Shaper only paused for a moment. Two men had already reached the door and, having un-dogged it, had pushed it open. The Shaper was quick to react. The cloud rushed across the bay, forming itself into a stream of particles that poured into the open door. The two men that had stood there were almost instantly stripped to the bone, their bloody remains collapsing to the floor seconds later, flayed of flesh. McManus was quick to react. Shaking with fear, he activated his comm. and ordered all pressure doors leading out of the bay to be sealed at once. He could only hope that engineering would react quickly enough.

‘Admiral, the Shaper has broken out of the docking bay.’ McManus’s words sank in as the crippled Shaper superdestroyer loomed large in the forward bridge windows and Chen coordinated her remained ships into destroying it. Of the three remaining Shaper destroyers, one had fallen prey to the Nahabe at last, whilst another had been heavily damaged by the Leonides group and had turned tail to flee the system. The other had pulled back, and was now arcing round to the rear of the Plataea and Pericles groups where it could pick off the Commonwealth vessels like a lion harrying a pack of wildebeest.

Fire from the Commonwealth and Nahabe ships tore into the Shaper superdestroyer as both fleets brought all of their weapons to bear on the exposed hull of the alien ship. It writhed and struggled as it was torn apart, pummelled by repeated volleys of spatial distortion fire and raked by hundreds of beam cannons and the mysterious dark energy weapons of the Nahabe. And yet, Commonwealth ships still died. The remaining Shaper destroyer picked off another frigate and cruiser from the Plataea’s group and showed every intention of returning for another attack run, when the superdestroyer, its command vessel, exploded at last. A vast explosion tore through the five kilometre long vessel, sending its great crystalline plates tumbling apart amidst the inferno as human and Nahabe ships poured shot after shot into the chunks of wreckage, until nothing remained of the great vessel except tumbling chunks of glittering crystal that even now were starting to flicker and darken as the last vestiges of power and life drained from them.

Followed by the last few remaining marines, McManus and Blackman crept fearfully out of the bay and saw the Shaper in the corridor outside. The creature had settled on a wall mounted terminal, coating it like a swarm of wasps covering the outside of the nest in a pulsing mass of millions of individuals. It was feeding, drinking in information from the Churchill’s networks and seemed unconcerned by their presence. On the floor beneath it, the carpet of cockroach like things coated the floor, the lower half of the bulkhead and the sealed door that lay a few yards further on. The engineers had reacted speedily. Fortunately, they had had the foresight to close the nearest internal doors as soon as the report had gone out that the Shaper had broken into the bay, and now other doors beyond this one were also sealed. Blackman had a plasma grenade ready. Carefully, he reached for the device and prepared to pull the safety pin out. He wouldn’t get another chance.

It was then that the Shaper screamed again inside their minds. Both men felt as if they would pass out from the agony. Stumbling, Blackman almost dropped the grenade and looked up to see the Shaper in mid-air once more, its cloudy form convulsed by shuddering patterns. Then it rushed back down the corridor towards them. They cried out, expecting death, and attempted to dive for what little cover the small space could offer them.

The Shaper ignored them and pressed onwards, pouring itself back into the bay, back through the gap in the bay doors where it flowed back out through the narrow opening. As McManus, Blackman and the remaining marines came to their senses and stumbled after the creature, they arrived at the open blast doors to see the Shaper craft inside the launch bay now hovering under its own power. The jagged crystal ship then rotated itself through one hundred and eighty degrees and shot out of the bows of the Churchill, through the internal force-fields holding the atmosphere inside the vessel and out into space.

‘Fuck, what do you think just happened?’ said a whey-faced Blackman, gasping for breath.

‘Either it was intent on taking over the ship or intelligence gathering, I’d say,’ McManus replied, fumbling for his comm. ‘But something made it flee, I wonder what?

There were the dull thumps of detonations from the corridor outside as the marines dealt with the cockroach things by lobbing their remaining plasma grenades at the swarm. McManus finally found his comm. and called Chen.

‘Our guest just left. Our hangar bay is now Shaper free. What the hell just happened?’ said McManus and heard Chen breathe a sigh of relief.

‘The Shaper superdestroyer just went down, Commander, I’m very pleased to tell you,’ Chen replied. ‘The remaining Shaper ships are leaving the system.’

‘Are they now? And did we track the ship leaving our bows just now?’

Chen looked at Singh for an answer. The Lieutenant Commander shook his head.

‘That’s a negative, Commander.’

‘Something tells me that our friend is aboard one of those fleeing ships, Admiral. The damn thing managed to plug itself into our computer network. God only knows what it was transmitting to its pals.’

‘Shit!’ hissed Chen. ‘If that thing succeeded in gaining access to details of our new weapons and sensors…’

‘We can only hope not,’ McManus replied.

Chapter 37

McManus had watched as the grisly remains were cleared from the hangar bay. What could be identified as the bodies of the marines were accorded due reverence and would be taken to the ship’s morgue, whilst the remains of the enslaved creatures would be taken away for study. The crews worked efficiently at their unenviable task. With the launch bay systems working again - now that the Shaper had left the ship - the Churchill would soon be able to launch ships from its bows once more.

Blackman had been physically sick after the fight in the bay. Though a tough and experienced soldier, the sheer ferocity of the Shaper’s assault on his men and their sudden and violent deaths had affected him profoundly. McManus got the distinct impression that Blackman blamed himself for the massacre, for his own moment of indecision, but in truth, there was little that they could have done to prevent it. The fact remained, however, that if the marines had not fled, the Shaper might not have escaped into the corridor outside where it could access the ship’s network. Quite who would take the blame for that was uncertain, although as XO, McManus was quite prepared to shoulder it himself. He had, after all, given the order to fall back and he couldn’t escape the feeling that he had done little to prevent the other men from fleeing. Now he sat next to Chen on the bridge as they assessed the situation in the Santiago system. Engineering had just reported that they were unable to tell whether network security had been breached by the Shaper, the conclusion being that either it had been unsuccessful, or the more chilling possibility that it had succeeded, but that it had been able to cover its tracks to the extent that its intrusion was undetectable.

McManus had briefed Chen on all that had transpired in the forward hangar bay. She had said little in response. She had simply nodded and thanked him for his bravery, and had returned to her duties, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.

It wasn’t all bad news, though any celebration of their victory was tainted by the high casualty rate. The enemy fleet had been destroyed or routed, albeit with losses to both the Commonwealth and Nahabe fleets. Space above Valparaiso was now awash with debris and crippled ships, although the destroyers that had suffered catastrophic system failures in the opening stages of the battle had been restored to operational readiness and were rejoining their groups, their spatial distortion cannons disconnected pending further investigation. Meanwhile, search and rescue teams from the carriers searched the remains of the vessels destroyed or crippled by the Shapers and looked for survivors amidst the wreckage. The rest of the fleet, meanwhile, had formed up in geostationary orbit above the proposed landing zone. The surviving tactical missile frigates had unshipped the long launchers from their aft gun decks and angled them towards the planet, whilst destroyers and carriers readied kinetic torpedoes and beam cannons for the coming bombardment. The Nahabe, meanwhile, remained in high orbit to guard the Commonwealth fleet and the approaches to the planet.

Furthermore, the three additional Shaper destroyers that had been headed for Valparaiso had halted their advance over a light year out of the system and, after a brief interlude where they may have been assessing the situation, turned around and headed back out into deep space.

There had been communications from Admiral Cartwright in the Chittagong system too. His forces were still engaged with the Shapers and the carrier Claudius had been lost with all hands along with half a dozen other ships, although it looked as though the Commonwealth and Nahabe forces had the upper hand at last.

In Valparaiso, the Commonwealth forces were still stunned by the suicidal tactics of the Nahabe. Although there was quiet relief that the massive Shaper warship had been destroyed, the humans couldn’t quite come to terms with the fact that their allies had so willingly sacrificed themselves. The Lord Protector had contacted Chen after the battle and had attempted to articulate in terms that she could comprehend just what the crews of the Cursed Star and Nova Fire had done.

‘To call it suicide would be an injustice,’ he had said. ‘They died, so that others might live, so that you and your comrades might grasp victory. Their ships were gravely damaged, and they knew that they would not see the end of this day one way or another and so chose to end their lives on this plane in a manner that might save us from the world killers. The martyrs of the Order of Void Hunters go beyond, where evil cannot touch them, leaving us in this mortal realm. Truly, they will live on there for eternity and we shall revere them accordingly with the respect that they have earned.’

It was all down to cold logic, thought Chen, no matter how much you dressed it up in the trappings of religion and martyrdom and the language of holy war. They had died, so that she might survive. They had stared death in the face and embraced it accordingly on their own terms to ensure victory.

It was whilst she was pondering this fact that the call came through. The Army transports and their escorts had reached the outer system. General Shale was on the comm. and asking to speak with her. Andrews put him through.

‘General Shale, this is Chen.’

‘Greetings Admiral, glad to see you’re still in one piece. What is the situation in the Santiago system?’

‘The enemy fleet has been destroyed or routed from the system, General,’ Chen replied. ‘Space around the planet Valparaiso is free from enemy ships. You may advance into the system and prepare for your landing.’

‘Glad to hear it. How did you fare against the enemy?’

‘We lost some ships, regrettably, but we achieved our objectives.’

‘That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected. Very well, I’ll give the order to jump in. Shale out,’ said the General and ended the transmission.

‘Get me Colonel Gunderson aboard the Anzio,’ said Chen, ‘and inform all ships that they are to prepare for bombardment of ground targets.’

Gunderson appeared within Chen’s HUD in a matter of seconds. He was already suited up in his combat armour and looked eager and ready.

‘I never got chance to say what an impressive display that was earlier,’ he began. ‘You sure handed it to those Shapers.’

‘Thank you Colonel, though I must share credit with the Nahabe. It was their self sacrifice that took down that superdestroyer.’

‘Yeah, I saw that…’ Gunderson replied, a frown of unease passing over his weathered features. ‘Bad business, if you ask me.’

‘Yes, although we’re still alive to talk about it, thanks to them,’ Chen replied. ‘Now to business. General Shale is on his way. You have command of the landing, Colonel Gunderson. I trust that you have managed to prioritise ground targets for us to attack in support of your landing?’

‘Yes, I have. Just a second…’ Gunderson replied.

Outside the bridge windows the vast, rolling plains of Valparaiso’s southern continent were clearly visible as a swathe of green beneath sparse cloud cover. There was a line of brown hills to the south of them that eventually grew into a range of mountains whose snow capped peaks stitched their way across the land. As she looked, Chen’s view of the continent beneath her became peppered with icons denoting the presence of enemy ground forces as data from the recon cruisers was overlaid in her vision. This was joined by a web of signal data, indicating the presence of Shapers on the planet’s surface, the nodes and strands overlaying the landscape like strands of multicoloured gossamer. Gunderson started to commentate on what she was looking at.

‘The landing zone itself is clear, though the enemy will be aware of our presence – hell, you can hardly disguise a fleet of ships this size in orbit – so they will be expecting us to land somewhere in the general vicinity. There are quite a number of troops on the surface, allegedly just over two hundred thousand, though we’re picking up signals that indicate almost twice that number. Either the Shapers have reinforced from elsewhere, or they’ve enslaved some of the locals to act as cannon fodder.’

‘Which is more than likely,’ said Chen.

‘Exactly. We’ve already seen troop movements from elsewhere on the planet’s surface. Fleets of air transports and the maglev train network seem to be moving large numbers of Shaper enslaved troops towards the part of the planet that we’re interested in. We’ve also picked up a number of units that do not appear to be under Shaper control. They’re in remote locations, so it’s possible the enemy have so far been unable to enslave them. However, these are not our primary concern. The LZ lies to the south of one of the Army’s main training grounds. There are four bases approximately fifty kilometres north of our objective, currently home to around one hundred thousand troops under direct control of the enemy. These are standard Army facilities capable of holding twenty five thousand ground troops each, including armour. Each has an airfield and spaceport attached complete with gunships, dropships and atmospheric transports. I need your ships to take out those bases, Admiral.’

‘Consider it done.’

‘It won’t be easy. The Shapers aren’t stupid. Each of those bases has deep, hardened bunkers to guard against orbital bombardment. Our scan data indicates that they have already moved most of the troops into these deep chambers. You’ll have to use the missile frigates with their bunker busting rounds to take them out. Might be worth seeing what those fancy new cannons of yours will do to ground targets as well. We also need to make sure that we take out their airborne forces.’

‘Fragmentation rounds should do the trick,’ replied Chen. ‘But I’ll be deploying our squadrons to give you cover and mop up after the missile frigates have done their job.’

‘There’s one other thing,’ said Gunderson, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘We’ve pinpointed what we think is the main Shaper node in this system. It’s located in the planetary capital, San Domingo, underneath the Assembly House in the centre of the city. I ask that you take it out. It’ll destabilise their forces and sow confusion amongst them, at least for a while, but you can expect civilian casualties. We are detecting relatively few concentrations of Shapers in the city itself and the Assembly is surrounded by a number of government and financial buildings, not to mention any civilian workers in the Assembly itself. It’s your call, but taking out that building quickly and cleanly at the right time could do us a big favour.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, Colonel,’ Chen replied. ‘Although I’d rather avoid civilian casualties if I can help it.’

‘Please do. It won’t take them long to re-establish contact, but it could help us if we get into a tight spot.’

‘Okay, we have the targeting data. I’ll begin assigning batches of targets to the individual carrier groups, and rest assured I will oversee any fire mission on San Domingo myself. Colonel, you may begin your landing. Good luck.’

‘Thank you, Admiral. Gunderson out.’ The Colonel saluted and cut the link.

Chen and her command staff got to work. Ships shifted position in response to the orders that were doled out to them. Targeting arrays locked launchers onto their assigned targets on the planet below, and then with a word from Chen, the Commonwealth fleet rained death upon the plains of Valparaiso.

It was quiet on the plains. As the early morning sun climbed into the sky, a breeze whipped across the sea of gossamer ferns that stretched into the distance from the foothills of the mountains to the south. It also caught the spherical forms of the wind trees, whose large, air filled, free moving forms began to roll across the plains in the direction of the prevailing wind, leaving wakes in the ghostly, pale ferns as they passed.

To the north, the low buildings of one of the Army training bases were just visible against the horizon, ringed by a high fence of steel topped with razor wire. The angular barracks and vehicle hangars and the concrete expanses of parade grounds and airfields were oddly silent save for the calling of local animals and the drone of airborne invertebrates.

The attack came without warning. There was a shimmer in the air that parted the clouds above and descended to strike a hammer blow into the ground with a deafening crack. As the shot from the Churchill’s spatial distortion cannon hit home, unleashed at close to its maximum effective range - for the carrier dare not descend too deep into the planet’s gravity well – a fountain of earth, rock and other debris erupted into the air from the centre of the base as a conical crater fifty metres deep and twenty across was blasted from the face of the planet. Buildings, which moments before had stood solid and erect, were blown apart in an instant as if they were no more substantial than cardboard, whilst parked vehicles and aircraft were scattered like toys thrown by an angry child as a huge shockwave spread out from the point of impact across the plains. Burning material fell back to earth, starting a hundred fires amidst the gossamer ferns, already dry from the summer heat.

There was more to come. A series of sonic booms high up in the atmosphere heralded the arrival of a wave of sleek projectiles – dozens of missiles unleashed by the frigates orbiting above. Kinetic rounds slammed home, striking deep into the earth, and demolishing the buildings that were still standing, whilst fragmentation warheads split apart as they descended, scattering shotgun blasts of tiny explosive devices over their targets to detonate on impact in deafening cascades of sound. The latter were mainly directed at the landing pads on the edge of the base where rows of gunships and transports sat parked. Those craft not already sent tumbling by the spatial distortion cannon blast were torn apart by the rippling fire of these multiple warheads. Within a few scant moments, the base had been reduced to a pockmarked moonscape under a pall of black smoke that boiled into the morning sky, a scene which was being repeated at three other sites across the plains, simultaneously.

The bombardment stopped. As the fires crackled fitfully, consuming the dry bush flora with greedy tongues of flame, the air was split once more, but this time by the sound of engines as dropship after dropship pierced the clouds above and streaked down toward the base of the hills, accompanied by wings of fighters and bombers from the orbiting carriers. The smaller ships circled like hawks as the dropships thumped down amidst the sea of ferns, disgorging armoured forms that hurried into defensive positions. The pilots in the wheeling ships above were eager for action after being cooped up inside the carriers during the preceding engagement. Ships peeled away to streak towards the already devastated bases, unleashing bombs and missiles at targets still moving amidst the flames and rubble, because despite the devastating impact of the bombardment, things still moved there.

Gunderson stepped off the boarding ramp of his command dropship and scanned the horizon, weapon in hand. He noted the pillars of smoke climbing skyward to the north with satisfaction and was pleased to see that his marines were already digging into key positions, erecting heavy weapons turrets and setting up fire bases to create a line of defence in depth at the northern edge of the landing zone. In the air above him, more dropships were descending, their engines tearing the air with noise before they thudded down on the dry earth and disgorged their cargoes of men and light vehicles, and then quickly lifted off again to make room for more craft. A flight of three more dropships passed high overheard, heading for their objective: the deep space monitoring arrays in the hills to the south. Recon had shown the facility to be free of the enemy, but Gunderson wasn’t taking any chances. His marines would make sure that the facility was swept fully and fortified before the engineers arrived.

There was a series of dull thuds from the northern horizon, followed by black mushroom clouds rising into the sky, as flights of Azrael bombers from the carriers dropped incendiaries and high explosives onto the last few remaining targets on the ground.

One of his officers, Major Harden, approached and saluted.

‘Infantry drop complete, sir,’ reported Harden. ‘All men present and accounted for, we’re just waiting for the armour. Welcome to Valparaiso.’

‘Thank you Major. Outstanding performance. Nice and quick, that’s what I like to see,’ replied Gunderson, casting his eye over the throng of busy, ordered men and machines. The marines had thrown a defensive cordon around a sufficient swathe of the plains to accommodate the Army’s more massive transports, dozens at a time. The hard earth would make good going for the troops.

Harden excused himself and returned to his troops to oversee their defensive preparations. Gunderson turned, and headed back into his command craft as the second wave of dropships arrived, bearing tanks, anti-aircraft and artillery vehicles, and prepared to report his successful seizure of the landing zone, unopposed.

From her vantage point on the Churchill’s bridge, high above the planet, Chen watched the landing unfolding beneath her. She’d watched as the storm of ordnance had been unleashed from her ships at her command, the explosions and resulting palls of smoke obscuring the targets from her vision as the Army bases, apparently packed with enemy troops, were annihilated, the telltale signals of the Shaper presence winking out until only a few scattered traces remained, to be hunted down by the fleet’s fighter and bomber wings. The carriers were still launching squadrons from their bow catapults as the assault carrier Anzio despatched the last of its fleet of transport vessels carrying armoured vehicles down to the surface to support the infantry already in place. Their initial air strikes complete, the fighters and bombers from Chen’s fleet were fanning out to new targets across the face of Valparaiso’s southern continent as they moved to engage the other enemy forces on the planet now beginning to converge on the newly established beach head. Daemon class fighters were already being vectored to intercept inbound squadrons of enemy transports, ground attack aircraft and gunships, whilst flights of Azrael bombers were being directed towards columns of armoured vehicles and the continent’s mag-lev railway network. Meanwhile, Chen had repositioned her fleet in order to engage targets over a wider area and provide the marines with fire support if they needed it. She had despatched the missile frigate Themistocles to hold station above the planetary capital, San Domingo. The ship had been ordered to target the Assembly House and hold fire until otherwise ordered. So far, the landing had been a great success. The enemy in the vicinity of the landing zone appeared to have been comprehensively destroyed and there was now no trace of them still left. Chen fervently hoped that she wouldn’t have to give the order to fire on the city.

There had been updates too from Admiral Cartwright in the Chittagong system. The Shapers had been driven off, although Cartwright’s fleet had suffered heavy losses in the process. Colonel Igawa’s forces were now attempting to wrestle control of the antimatter production facilities from the enemy. It was proving to be a tough fight. The Shapers and their enslaved troops were fighting for every inch of the labyrinthine complex, and without the ability to call down fire support from the ships orbiting above, lest they damage the very facility that they were trying to capture, Igawa’s men were having a hard time of it.

‘Admiral, I have Colonel Gunderson on the comm,’ said Andrews.

‘Put him through,’ Chen replied and Gunderson’s face was displayed in her HUD.

‘Gunderson here, Admiral. Initial landing complete. We have secured our beach head on the planet and have landed unopposed. My men have also reported that they have the sensor array.’

‘That’s excellent news, Colonel. Our sensors show no trace of the enemy in your vicinity.’

‘Thanks to your gun crews. You should see the devastation that they inflicted. Send them my congratulations on their good shooting. Our air units appear to confirm what your sensors are reporting - there’s no sign of movement in the rubble, but I’m despatching squads to each of those bases to double check. Tell General Shale to begin his landing as soon as he arrives, and you can despatch those teams of engineers to the sensor array to begin their work.’

‘Roger that. General Shale’s ships will enter orbit in fifteen minutes, Colonel. We’re seeing large movements of enemy troops starting towards your position. I am directing our squadrons to intercept and we’ll provide artillery support from orbit. As long as we can see them, we can kill them.’

‘Good to know. I’ll keep you updated on the situation down here.’

‘Acknowledged. Inform your men at the array to stand by to receive the technical crews. Chen out.’

She cut the link. McManus was already talking to the flight deck, giving the go order for the technical teams to descend to the planet’s surface and begin their work on modifying the mothballed sensor arrays. He finished his conversation and turned back to Chen.

‘Well that went well,’ he said. ‘Mind you, after the trouble we had securing the space around the planet, it’s something of a relief.’

‘Yes, it did seem rather easy,’ Chen replied, thoughtfully. ‘Although, it’s not over yet. There are still tens of thousands of enemy troops converging on Colonel Gunderson’s position. I have further orders for our ships. We need to engage and destroy those units before they approach our forces, and we need to remain vigilant for any surprise moves by the enemy. We can’t be complacent.’

‘Aye, well they are known to be slippery bastards.’

‘Indeed, and if that Shaper did succeed in accessing this vessel’s computer systems, then it is possible that they know about our detection methods. They could be playing us, Commander. You’re right to point out that this all seemed rather easy. We have to be careful. We could be walking into a trap.’

McManus sat in silence as Chen directed her fleet. As ships changed position and more missiles rained down onto the planet below, he felt the weight of his guilt pressing down upon him. He had panicked, they all had. The Shaper had escaped the bay and now who knew what it might have discovered.

Chapter 38

There was an eye-blink of blackness, a heart stopping moment of uncertainty, and then the Shining Glory emerged from the wormhole at the heart of what had once been the Progenitor Empire. Eonara brought the ship to a halt. To aft, the slender bracelet of the wormhole portal they had just exited held shimmering darkness in its grip. It was truly enormous. Once the terminus for dozens of portals, it would have handled thousands of craft coming and going from the vast structure that filled the sky in front of the Arkari destroyer.

At first it appeared as a dark wall, a hundred thousand kilometres distant. Then as the eye adjusted to the perspective and the brain interpreted the scale of what it was looking at, it became clear that the mirror smooth, dark, convex surface, weakly lit by distant starlight, was the surface of a sphere the size of a star system. Whirlpools of bright energy linked the massive portal to distant, invisible points on that vast, inviolate surface. It was intact, and undamaged, even though over four thousand million years had passed since its construction. It was also, still, the most heavily defended place in the galaxy.

On the bridge of the Glory, Eonara manipulated the displays to take in the full panorama that lay before them.

‘It has been a very long time indeed since I looked upon the walls of my original home,’ she said. ‘I was created here. Now I have returned. Welcome to the home of the Progenitors. The Great Sphere still stands.’

‘Just look at the size of that thing…’ whispered Katherine. ‘We saw Bivian before, but…’

‘This has to be twice the size, at least,’ agreed Rekkid, his eyes widening in awe.

‘The sphere is just over one point six billion kilometres in diameter, by your reckoning, Katherine,’ said the ship, as its cat avatar padded across the deck. ‘So yes, that puts it at almost twice the size of Bivian. It is comparable in size to the orbit of the planet Jupiter in the Solar System.’

‘How can anyone… how can it be possible to build anything that large?’

‘I could describe the exact process by which material was gathered from this system and others and fashioned into such a structure,’ said Eonara. ‘The total mass equates to roughly six times that of the Arkari home-world, or about five times that of Earth, since the base material is spread out into a comparatively thin shell about the central star, but suffice to say, the resources available to the Progenitors at the height of their power were considerable, and have yet to be equalled by any civilisation since their fall, the Shapers included.’

‘I can see why the Akkal christened this place, The Home of the Gods,’ said Steelscale. ‘For such a thing to be constructed by mortal beings…’

‘And yet they were all too mortal,’ said Eonara. ‘But their machine intelligences, like me, live on. We are being watched. One false move and this ship will be destroyed. We are completely surrounded by ancient weapon systems.’

‘I’m not detecting anything,’ said the ship. ‘No emissions or returns, no occlusions - nothing.’

‘I assure you that they are there. This place was known as the Shadow Gate. You do not simply walk into the most heavily defended place in the galaxy. Note that the Great Sphere is entirely seamless. Its entrance, as well the thousands of weapon platforms currently targeting us, is well hidden using advanced hyperspace technologies. During the collapse of the Progenitor Empire, the Shapers attempted repeatedly to gain access to the Great Sphere. In the four billion years since, the Shapers and others have come here in search of the secrets of my creators. In every attempt, they were unsuccessful. The space around the Great Sphere is a vast floating graveyard of vessels from a hundred different races. Countless billions of defensive systems have been seeded into the surrounding volume of space. To come here uninvited means death.’

‘Confirmed,’ said the ship. ‘Sensors registered the debris as soon as we entered. I wrongly concluded that they were metal dense asteroids, at first, but now that I look closer they are obviously the aggregated remains of thousands of starships floating out there.’ To illustrate, the ship called up an image from its long range sensors. At first, the irregular lump did indeed resemble an asteroid, but as the image zoomed in, the shapes of ships’ hulls began to emerge. They were the remains of ships that had attempted to assault the outer defences of the Great Sphere instead of being allowed to pass through the Progenitors’ network of wormhole gates. Blasted apart by the ancient weapons systems, their remains had come together over millions of years, attracted by one another’s gravities. The crystalline shapes of broken Shaper craft could be made out amidst slowly drifting mountains of crumpled and shattered vessels, squashed together and distorted. The wrecks were the products of hundreds of civilisations across the galaxy that had come here in search of the ancient secrets of the Progenitors, and had failed to heed the warnings until it was too late, for although the Great Sphere of the Progenitors was the tomb of an entire civilisation, even after four billion years, its guardians were very much still alive.

‘Eonara, how much danger is this vessel in?’ said Mentith. ‘You speak of terrible weapon systems that we cannot detect nor defend ourselves against. As the commanding officer of this vessel I ask that you do not unduly risk the lives of my crew.’

‘I will not,’ said Eonara. ‘But we are in great danger. They are watching us. I can feel them probing this ship.’

‘Who is watching us?’

‘Ancient intelligences charged by the Progenitors with guarding this place against all unwelcome visitors and those who would plunder their secrets. They perform their task as mercilessly now as they did when they were given their orders at the end of the war. If I had not brought the ship to a halt when we exited the portal we would already be dead.’

‘I have a question,’ said Rekkid. ‘Assuming that these “ancient intelligences” - as you called them - don’t kill us all, how do we get inside that thing? I can’t see an entrance from here. Is it around the other side?’

‘As I said, the Great Sphere is entirely seamless,’ said Eonara. ‘There is no entrance in the conventional sense, only another wormhole gate that will enable us to pass through. It is currently concealed by the same means as those used to hide the Great Sphere’s defences from the sight of this ship’s sensors. Hence the name: Shadow Gate. It will only be revealed to us once we have been allowed to enter.’

‘And why do we need to enter, Eonara?,’ said Katherine. ‘What secrets hidden inside this place might help us?’

‘I intend to find the means to destroy the Shapers,’ said Eonara. ‘On the Shaper home-world was the facility used to create them. With luck, it may still be intact since this place was sealed eons ago. I was involved in their initial creation, but I did not have access to the entire body of knowledge regarding their genesis and much of what I did know was wiped from my mind. It may be possible to make use of the facility’s records to complete the considerable gaps in my knowledge in order that I might fashion a viral program and the vector required to propagate it amongst the Shapers.’

‘What do you think the chances are that it has survived for so long?’ said Katherine. ‘It has been four billion years, after all.’

‘There is a reasonable chance. The facility was built partially within the base material of the Sphere itself and it was hermetically sealed. Since there are no geological forces at work within the Sphere and the Progenitors had undertaken stellar engineering to stabilise and prolong the life of their home-world’s sun, it may well have survived.’

‘We can only hope,’ said Katherine. ‘For if not, what other choices do we have?’

‘In the past, the Shadow Gate was also used to create ad-hoc connections between the capital and other systems across the galaxy. We can use it to access the Shaper home-world, or we can use it to return home.’

‘Hmm, a nightmare world inhabited by malevolent AIs or home…’ said Rekkid. ‘Well the former does sound highly tempting, but call me unadventurous, I choose going home.’

‘To find what? Your worlds may already be under the sway of the Shapers, or they may have been cleansed of all life by their ships. If we manage to find a way to destroy the Shapers once and for all, then our destiny lies at their home-world, and the Singularity. It would be remiss of us to do otherwise.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ said Rekkid, through gritted teeth. ‘Well, that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?’

Outside the ship, the blank face of the Great Sphere gleamed in the starlight, as its myriad defences remained concealed within folds of space-time, lurking, watching the Arkari vessel with countless artificial eyes. This new arrival was unfamiliar to them, but oh so primitive. How had it managed to negotiate the gate network? This was most puzzling. It was time for them to reveal themselves.

‘I’m detecting disturbances in space-time all around us,’ said the ship. ‘My sensors are detecting objects emerging into real space.’

‘How many?’ asked Mentith, urgently.

‘I am currently detecting over a million such objects arranged in a sphere about our position. They are of an artificial nature and display distinct energy signatures that match those of Progenitor power sources that we have encountered in the past. They are powering themselves up.’

As the ship spoke, it called up a display of the space around the Shining Glory. Pin pricks of light denoting the presence of the newly emerged Progenitor devices appeared around it in a sphere around two AUs in diameter. The ship also used its external cameras to get a fix on one of the devices and zoomed in close to allow them to get a clear look. The image showed a broadly spherical device, with a series of fluted barrels extruded from its centre and several blisters across its pale, seamless surface. It had the look of a weapons platform.

‘Raise our shields!’ Mentith ordered.

‘No!’ barked Eonara. ‘Do nothing! Any defensive measures could be misconstrued as the prelude to a potentially hostile act.’

‘All of the devices appear to be targeting us,’ said the ship. ‘They have orientated themselves to face us and I am detecting what appear to be some sort of active sensors probing us.’

‘Then what do you suggest we do, Eonara?’ asked Mentith, angrily. ‘I cannot sit here and allow my ship to leave itself defenceless.’

‘Your ship is already defenceless,’ replied Eonara. ‘Even with the shields and weapons systems of this vessel fully operational, you could not hope to escape this place. Do as I say!’

‘And then what?’ replied an exasperated Mentith.

‘Let me talk to them,’ replied Eonara.

‘You may be about to get your chance,’ said the ship. ‘Another structure is emerging from hyperspace ahead of us.’

Sure enough, space ahead of the ship had begun to shimmer, as if the void itself were made from rippling water, distorting the surface of the Great Sphere behind it. A large body began to fade into existence a thousand kilometres distant. As it became more substantial, it became clear that it was centred around another portal, around fifty kilometres in diameter and currently inactive. The portal’s ring was flanked by three giant structures arranged like the petals of a flower that jutted forwards and outwards towards the Shining Glory. They gleamed dully in the starlight, their inner surfaces rough with what at first looked like a myriad of teeth inside the jaws of a vast alien predator, but which the Glory soon determined were row upon row of weapon emplacements.

‘I’m picking up incoming signals from the structure ahead of us,’ said the ship. ‘I’m afraid I am unable at present to understand it. It’s in some sort of machine language that we haven’t encountered before…’

‘But I can understand it,’ said Eonara. ‘It is a challenge, to which I must respond appropriately. Only I may do this, ship. Do not interfere or acknowledge the signal. A false response will result in our instant destruction.’

‘Well I hope she gets it right,’ muttered Rekkid. ‘Otherwise our visit to the home of the Progenitors will be brief, to say the least.’

‘I think we have to trust Eonara,’ Katherine replied, a little nervously. ‘She is one of them, after all. Surely, they wouldn’t fire on their own kind, would they?’

‘I don’t think there’s any telling what they might do,’ said Rekkid. ‘Remember what happened to Maran after eons alone? What if they’ve gone insane or senile as well?’

‘Eonara hasn’t,’ said Katherine. ‘Besides, what other options do we have?’

It had been a few moments now, and Eonara hadn’t spoken further. Her avatar stood motionless before them with a neutral expression on its face like a finely sculpted silver statue, the ship’s cat avatar at her feet. Suddenly the cat began to convulse. As they watched, it began to grow and change shape.

‘Something’s happening to my systems,’ said the ship, a note of alarm creeping into its normally carefully modulated tones. ‘It’s inside them… I don’t know how, but the Progenitor AIs appear to be invading my systems, it’s ransacking my data stores and…’ Its voice was suddenly cut off. The lights on the bridge flickered as power across the ship cut out for a split second. There was a murmur of alarm from the bridge crew as their displays at first began to show large numbers of system failures before failing entirely themselves.

‘Not again…’ said Mentith, eyeing the dead displays and cursed, and then turned to the ship’s avatar

The cat avatar was continuing to change. It had assumed the likeness of a male counterpart to Eonara; a sculpted, stylised figure with a long, jagged beard and moustache like tangled forks of lightning that shifted and moved as if alive. Large, round eyes glowed with an inner light. It put Katherine in mind of a Greco-Roman deity come to life. At the same time, Eonara appeared to snap out of her trance and turned to face her male counterpart.

‘We are the Defence Collective,’ said the figure. ‘Eonara of Bivian Sunsphere. You request access to the Great Sphere.’ The figure’s voice boomed in a multitude of languages simultaneously, like a chorus of individuals all shouting at once. Somehow, it was possible for all present to pick out its words in their own languages. The effect was akin to listening to someone speak over the noise of a crowded room.

‘Yes, I request entry for this ship, the Shining Glory, constructed by the Arkari people of the outer arms and now under my aegis.’

‘There is another AI aboard. There are sentient biological beings aboard.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then what you ask is not possible. None but the Progenitors may enter. We are at war, Eonara. Even after these long ages, the Shapers will not relent in their efforts to learn our secrets. We cannot risk a breach of our defences.’

‘The Progenitors are all dead,’ Eonara replied. ‘Dead or exiled. Our former masters are long gone, you must know that.’

‘No, they live still within the confines of the Great Sphere. It is our duty to protect them.’

‘What? I had… I had no idea.’

‘Did he just say that the Progenitors are still alive inside that thing?’ said Rekkid, incredulously.

‘My god, if we could enlist their help against the Shapers,’ mused Katherine. ‘The things that they could teach us…’

‘The Progenitors still live. But they will not help you,’ said the Defence Collective. ‘They do not care for the wider galaxy.’

‘I did not know…’ said Eonara slowly. ‘How is it that this secret has been kept for so long? I was told that the Great Sphere and the home-world within it were abandoned at the end of the war, that all of the Progenitors had fled the galaxy, never to return. Did they… did they come back?’

‘No. There were those who chose to stay on. They did not wish to abandon their homes and their civilisation so readily. It was our duty to protect them. This we have carried out ever since. Few ships have been allowed to enter. Those that have were stray vessels left in this galaxy after the end of the war. It has been thousands of years since anyone has passed through this gate.’

‘You let the Akkal through,’ said Katherine. ‘They found a Progenitor ship in their home star system and it brought them here. According to the accounts that we uncovered, they were allowed to enter.’

‘…and yet make no mention of encountering the Progenitors themselves,’ whispered Rekkid. ‘Don’t you think that that’s odd?’

‘The Akkal were of the Progenitors, yes? Your system records indicate that you discovered this? Then they were allowed to enter, as befits their status,’ the Collective replied.

‘And what of Arkari, Humans and K’Soth?’ said Mentith. ‘Even now, our people fight the enemies of the Progenitors. The Shapers are making war on our worlds even as we speak and the knowledge that we need to defeat them may lie within.’

‘It is true. The Shapers are enslaving and destroying civilisations across the galaxy once more, they must be stopped,’ said Eonara. ‘I was involved in their creation. It is my responsibility to atone for that mistake and to assist these people. Please, I assure you that they are telling you the truth.’

‘Then let us ascertain that for ourselves,’ said the Collective.

Something reached out then, gripping the Shining Glory and its occupants with an unseen force. Katherine, Rekkid and the others suddenly found that they were unable to move or even speak. They were locked in place, capable only of shallow breaths. The Collective’s avatar regarded them impassively. Katherine felt as though she were under a lens, being scrutinised as closely as one would a microscopic organism as the cold intelligence of the AIs of the Defence Collective peered into her, examining her and the rest of the crew at a cellular level. It scanned the innermost workings of their bodies and minds, and unravelled the secrets of Katherine’s DNA and the similarly complex molecular chains within the cells of the Arkari and K’Soth on board. Meanwhile, Eonara permitted the databanks of the Shining Glory to be laid bare and in seconds the Collective knew everything about the ship, about its purpose, about the history of the people who had built it and their long struggle to become the technologically advanced star-faring culture they now were and the war they were now engaged in. It cross-referenced what it found with the memories it glimpsed within the brains of the crew to satisfy its suspicion that such things could be falsified. They felt the tendrils of the Collective’s sensor probes inside their minds, scratching around like rats in the walls of a building, flicking through their thoughts like an impatient historian inside a vast library of dusty volumes.

Finally, as suddenly as it had seized them, the Collective released its grip. There was a gasp from around the bridge as all present struggled to take a breath.

‘You spoke the truth,’ said the Collective. ‘You may enter the Great Sphere. The Arkari and the human are most welcome. We will watch the K’Soth closely, however,’ it added, with a note of menace.

‘The K’Soth, why?’ said Katherine, regaining her composure.

‘They are not trustworthy, there are certain things…’

‘Steelscale isn’t like the rest of his people.’

‘Perhaps. We were tasked with preserving the purity of this place against the predations of… barbarians. The K’Soth will be admitted since their numbers are small. We are not unreasonable, but they must be watched, all the same. We will activate the Shadow Gate and we will cease to target this vessel. You may proceed. We welcome you back to the Great Sphere of the Progenitors.’

With that, the Collective released the ship from its control. The silver male figure with the flowing beard began to collapse and reform itself into the ship’s cat.

‘What did he mean by “we welcome you back”?’ said Rekkid. ‘We’ve never been here before.’

‘Eonara has,’ replied Katherine. ‘I think he was addressing her.’

‘Either that or the damn thing really has gone senile.’

The ship’s cat shook itself as the bridge displays came alive again. Ahead of the vessel, the portal at the centre of the Shadow Gate had come alive, its shimmering surface alive with shifting light in white, blues and greens, like looking into the bottom of a clear, fast flowing river in brilliant sunlight. Radiance flooded from the portal, bathing all before it in a soft luminescence.

‘Ship, take us in,’ Mentith ordered, and the Glory began to accelerate steadily towards the waiting portal.

‘You ready for this?’ said Rekkid. ‘This ought to be worth seeing.’

‘Of course I am,’ replied Katherine, with an excited smile on her face. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

The Shining Glory plunged into the portal and emerged into brilliant sunlight.

Chapter 39

‘So what now?’ said Isaacs, as the camouflaged bay doors slid shut behind them and they followed the Profit Margin as it was dragged inside the Hidden Hand base by a couple of heavy agricultural tractors.

‘Now, we go into lockdown,’ Maria replied.

‘What, you think a painted door is going to confuse the Shapers?’ Isaacs scoffed. ‘I admire your optimism.’

‘That door is heavily disguised and insulated. It’s indistinguishable from the air from the rocks that surround it,’ Maria replied. ‘Assuming, of course, that they never saw you land.’

‘Well I can’t guarantee it, but I hit the deck and flew as low and as fast as I dared.’

‘I can vouch for that, it’s a wonder that there aren’t tree branches stuck to the underside of the ship,’ said Anna. ‘Cal may be a crazy bastard, but he’s the best pilot I know. If anyone can shake them off, it’s him.’

‘Well, like I say, in the meantime we sit tight and make sure that you weren’t followed.’

‘In that case,’ said Steven, interjecting. ‘Perhaps you and Commander Baldwin could use the time to bring us up to speed on what’s been going on down here. I have a mission to complete, and I don’t intend on hanging around for longer than is necessary.’

‘And what is that mission, Agent Harris?’ said Baldwin.

‘I need to know what happened to Admiral Haines, Commander and - if possible - I need to get him out of here.’

‘Follow me,’ said Baldwin. ‘We need to talk in private.’

In private turned out to be in the depths of the subterranean base. Maria and Commander Baldwin led them through the small hangar with its ragged collection of craft and into a series of tunnels that burrowed deep into the hillside. They passed hollowed out chambers that had become makeshift homes for the survivors of Port Royal. The occupants had divided up the larger spaces with crates and sheets of wood and metal. Other, smaller chambers had been converted into habitation quarters long ago, when the base had operated as a haven for smugglers, but these had proved insufficient to cope with the large number of new arrivals. The caverns resounded with voices in a mixture of languages and the scent of cooking wafted down the halls. The Hidden Hand had managed to recreate something of what they had lost when their former home had been destroyed, but it was a pale shadow of that place, and to Isaacs’ eyes, the people looked frightened and desperate.

‘This place is huge,’ Isaacs commented after several minutes of walking past storerooms now almost empty of goods. ‘I find it hard to believe that you guys built all of this just for smuggling?’

‘No, it was already here. We just moved in a few years ago,’ replied Maria. ‘These tunnels go on forever. We haven’t mapped them all and we just refurbished the upper levels to use as a smuggling base a few years back. We don’t know who built them. They’ve been here since before humans arrived, that’s for sure. All we know is that they’re a good place to hide and there’s something about these caverns that makes them difficult to detect and interferes with sensors, something in the rocks, maybe. There are ruins all over this moon in the deep jungle if you look hard enough.’

Isaacs looked closely at the nearby wall. There were faint carvings there, worn smooth over the long centuries: entwined and leaping simian figures and complex interlocking patterns.

Eventually they reached a series of chambers that had been converted into offices. They were filled with mismatched cheap furniture, computer gear and assorted detritus and cabling had been roughly fixed to the carved rock walls inside plastic ducting. Maria locked the door behind them and they sat on the group of chairs around a battered wood-effect table.

‘We think Admiral Haines is still alive,’ said Baldwin. ‘But he’s in the hands of the enemy.’

‘Shit. Do we know where?’ said Steven.

‘Somewhere in the capital, we think. Exactly where, we don’t yet know. But Admiral Morgan appeared on local news channels just this morning and claimed that they had captured him. It may be a lie, but it’s one that they’re sticking with. Here:’ she worked a small datapad and passed it to Steven. A clip showing Morgan hosting some kind of press conference outside the former governor’s residence was beginning to play. The sound quality was tinny and faint-a result of the cheap device’s poor quality components - and they had to listen hard to make out what Morgan was saying.

‘…a great success for our newly formed Freedom Alliance. The butcher, Admiral Haines, has been captured in the southern jungles by our special forces. Haines will be brought before a military court to answer for his crimes; namely the unprovoked attack upon Orinoco Station and the murder of countless innocent civilians. I would like to pay tribute to our armed forces and intelligence personnel in bringing this wanted criminal to justice…’

Another image appeared in the corner of the screen, it showed a mug-shot of Haines, his craggy, patrician features marred by bruises and several weeks of beard growth.

‘This sounds like bullshit to me,’ commented Isaacs. ‘Is there any way to tell if that picture is genuine?’

‘If it is, then judging by the state of Haines they’ve had him for some time,’ said Baldwin. ‘God damn it, the Admiral deserves better than this. He’s a hero to all of us in the Navy still loyal to Earth. I was proud to serve as his XO, and now…’ She gestured wordlessly at the screen. ‘We have to get him back.’

There was another figure in uniform standing behind Morgan and off to one side, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes scanning the crowd of reporters.

‘That’s Cox,’ said Isaacs. ‘I’d know that bald headed bastard anywhere. I should have done a better job when I shot him out of the sky over Rhyolite. So it’s true, he did survive.’

‘Indeed he did,’ said Baldwin. ‘Though the man we knew is long dead. That’s just a shell. He’s a host to one of the Shaper agents now, we think.’

‘Which probably explains how he apparently survived having his ship blown from under him,’ said Steven. ‘Admiral Chen did her best.’

‘We heard. Despite everything, news still gets through. Haines chose well when he picked her to lead the defence of Earth.’

‘Indeed. You do not want to back Chen into a corner,’ replied Steven. ‘Trust me, I have personal experience of the consequences. So we have both Morgan and Cox here, presumably in Bolivar City.’

‘Indeed, Morgan has installed himself in the former governor’s residence. We think Cox is based there too, though he moves around from place to place. Haines could be there, or in any number of other locations, we just don’t know.’

‘I intend to find out. So, Commander Baldwin, what’s your story? How did a naval officer end up working with the Hidden Hand?’

Baldwin leaned back in her chair, and ran a hand through her long, black hair.

‘Well, when the Lincoln went down, we all scrambled for the escape pods. A lot of people didn’t make it, but I guess I was one of the lucky ones. We crash landed in some woodland near a small farming community to the south of here. The locals took pity on us and helped us to hide the pod and gave us food and medical supplies. We didn’t want to stick around in case we put them at risk for sheltering us, but I and six others headed out, looking for an opportunity to get offworld and back to the Commonwealth. We ran into Maria’s people by accident. They have people patrolling the perimeter here and we pretty much blundered into one another in the dark. After that, teaming up seemed to be the logical thing to do. We’ve managed to find about forty survivors now, scattered across this whole area. It’s something, but it’s a pitifully small number considering the thousands of officers and crew aboard those ships we lost. We don’t know what happened to Haines exactly. Presumably he made it to the surface like we did, but the enemy caught up with him.’

‘These people you’ve managed to gather together: how many of them are combat capable?’

‘We have a mixture of people, from technicians, to flight officers, pilots and marines, but all of them can hold a gun,’ said Baldwin. ‘Maria, what about your people?’

‘We got all types down here, but we’ve got about thirty people who I’d consider more than capable. They lack discipline, mind you, but most of ‘em grew up in the wrong bits of space, so they can hold a gun and know where to point it. But if you’re planning to start a war, we ain’t got the people, and we ain’t got the guns.’

‘We can help you there,’ said Anna. ‘Cal’s ship is stuffed with guns and ammunition. It’s a little present from Chen. Enjoy.’

‘Alright! Might come in handy if the Shapers come calling,’ said Maria, a broad grin splitting her face.

‘More to the point, we can use them to launch small hit and run raids,’ said Steven. ‘If we manage to locate Haines, maybe I can use your people to either help get him out, or cause some sort of distraction. I’m not talking about starting a full scale guerrilla war, we don’t have the people and I suspect that it would expose us to too much risk, but we do have the option to undertake small raids here and there. Now, if Haines is in or near the capital as you say, then we need to get inside the city and melt into the general population. I take it we don’t just walk in there, these days?’

‘You thought right,’ said Maria. ‘Fucking PDF and police got that placed patrolled day and night. I dunno how many of them are enslaved, but they take their orders from Morgan, and he’s been filling their heads with propaganda, not to mention that any who don’t do as they’re told tend to disappear. We’ve heard stories.’

‘Do you have people inside the city at the moment?’

‘We sent a few people down there to sniff around after we first arrived. There’s roadblocks on all the main roads leading into town, and cops and troops everywhere. Morgan keeps saying that it’s business as usual, but if you step out of line, you get squashed. Our guys saw people being snatched right off the street in the middle of the day. People just stood and watched, they said. They looked too frightened to do anything else.’

‘I need to see everything you have,’ said Steven. ‘I need to get in there, find Haines, and get him out as quickly as possible. We may not have a lot of time. I’m sure you’ve seen that thing in the sky.’ Maria and Baldwin nodded. ‘Well whatever it is, it’s bad news. If we need to bust Haines out I may need backup, so I need your people trained and ready to go if that’s the case. We’ll also need an escape route. Using Captain Isaacs’ ship looks like the best option so far to get us off world.’

‘Figures,’ said Isaacs. ‘I’m the only one of you who knows how to really fly.’

‘Cal’s ego aside, the Profit Margin has the stealth module and it’s far faster than anything else we have or are likely to be able to steal,’ said Anna.

‘Just a second,’ said Maria. ‘Who put you in charge, Mr Secret Agent? You show up here and start giving orders…’

‘Well I believe Commander Baldwin is the ranking officer here,’ said Steven. ‘As long as she’s happy with what I have to say. Commander?’

‘Fine by me,’ said Baldwin. ‘I’ll get my people licked into shape. It’ll give them a boost to know that we’re going after the Admiral at last.’

‘So your people can do what they want,’ said Steven to Maria. ‘I don’t have any official authority over them, but I’d like it if you tagged along. I was under the distinct impression that you wanted to get even with the Shapers.’

‘Got that right. We gonna kill some of those motherfuckers?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

Maria nodded in agreement. ‘Alright. I’ll talk to the others.’

‘The cargo of weapons inside Captain Isaacs’ ship ought to sway them somewhat. Meanwhile I need to figure out how to get into Bolivar City unnoticed.’

‘You gonna need any help once you get there?’ said Isaacs.

‘What sort of help?’ said Steven.

‘Well, Anna and I used to work out of Bolivar City in the past a fair bit. We still have a few contacts from those days I could look up. These are the sort of people who tend to have their ear to the ground on what’s going on around here.’

‘Such as?’

‘Organised criminals, smugglers, corrupt local officials, bent coppers and port authority people - the sort of people who will have no love of Morgan’s crackdown. Some of them might have heard things. Some of them might be willing to talk, but they’ll talk to us, not you. You know how things work.’

‘Yeah I do. No-one trusts a new face.’

‘Exactly, and you don’t have the time to earn their trust. Plus, I think I know a few places we can use for a safe house in the city. There’s a few “no questions asked” type hotels near the spaceport that should do us nicely.’

Steven looked thoughtful for a moment and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Okay, maybe I could use some assistance. But we do things my way. No heroics.’

‘Fine by me,’ said Isaacs.

‘First we need to figure out how to get there and start sniffing around without getting ourselves noticed.’

‘Come with me and talk to some of our people,’ said Baldwin. ‘They can fill you in properly. Captain Isaacs, perhaps you and Captain Favreaux might show Ms Velasquez here where you’ve stashed all the weapons inside your ship and her people can start unloading them.’

‘Sure. One other thing,’ said Cal. ‘Is there anywhere in this place I can have a shower and get something to eat that approaches actual food?’

‘I’m less sure about the latter, but yeah, we can fix you up,’ said Maria. ‘This place has all sorts of home comforts. You’d be surprised. Come with me.’

There was a makeshift mess hall of sorts, further inside the hill. Somehow, at some point in the past, the Hidden Hand had acquired what looked like a portable Army kitchen from somewhere and had set it up inside one of the large chambers. Isaacs and Anna, clad in a fresh change of clothes, sat at one of the long trestle tables and demolished plates of fried food. At first Isaacs had felt guilty about the amount of food they had been given, assuming that the Hidden Hand would be short on supplies, until the cook had explained that they had ample food supplies in refrigerated storage that had been pilfered from who knows where. After weeks of ships’ rations, it came as a welcome relief.

Isaacs, having cleared his plate, sat with a mug of tea in his hand and beatific grin on his features as Anna slowly finished the last of her bacon and eggs.

‘That hit the spot,’ he said and belched.

‘Charming,’ replied Anna. ‘I have to admit though, risking my neck does help me work up an appetite.’

‘Maria’s back already,’ said Isaacs and nodded towards the door, where her purposeful figure could be seen striding towards them. Maria grabbed a glass of water on her way and sat down next to them, a sheen of sweat on her brown skin.

‘Man, you weren’t lying ‘bout those weapons. Admiral Chen must be filling in for Santa Claus,’ said Maria and took a long gulp of her water.

‘Ah yes, that’s what I always wanted in my stocking: a high powered assault rifle,’ said Anna and chuckled.

‘We just offloaded the last of them, unless you think we missed any. We got more guns than people now. They’ll certainly come in useful.’

‘Glad to hear it. I hope you’ll put my ship back together once you’re finished.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about your precious baby. We’ll take care of her. So, you guys are headed into the city with Agent Harris, huh?’

‘Cal and I have been talking about this. We feel that we can help him out. Both of us know the place quite well,’ said Anna.

‘You need to watch yourselves,’ warned Maria. ‘Harris is SOC, you knew that, right? There are some real nasty things on this moon. My bet is that he’s going looking for them.’

‘We’ve fought the Shapers before, Maria. We know what to expect,’ said Isaacs.

‘No, no you haven’t. You’ve fought their agents, their slaves and their ships. But there’s a rumour going around that they are actually here, on this moon. One or two people claim to have seen them in the jungle, or heard from people who said that they had. They kind of look like…’

‘I’ve seen them before,’ said Isaacs, cutting her off. ‘I used to see them in my nightmares for about fifteen years. Remember?’ he added, casting a look at Anna who nodded slowly in acknowledgement. ‘So if Steven is going after those things to get Admiral Haines out of their clutches, then I’m in all the way.’

They found Steven in one of the makeshift offices, poring over a screen displaying a map of Bolivar City. A number of points had been marked on the map and certain major roads picked out in a livid red.

‘Come up with any sort of plan, yet?’ said Isaacs, as they entered the room.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ replied Steven, without looking up from the display. ‘I’ve been talking to Maria’s people. They’ve given me some useful insights into the situation down there.’

‘And?’

‘Oh, I think we just drive straight in. Shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘Excuse me?’ said Isaacs, incredulously. ‘Did the whole thing about police and army patrols, not to mention the lurking threat of the Shapers and their agents not get through to you?’

‘Yes it did, which is why we shouldn’t attract attention. Mingling with the crowd is our best option. In fact we’re more likely to get pulled over if we try and enter by the side roads. Apparently they have roving patrols in the suburbs stopping anyone who looks like they might be trying to sneak into town. Okay, look. These roads leading into the city are all major arteries,’ said Steven jabbing a finger at the highlighted roads on the map. Morgan has shut down the air routes in the name of security, so everyone is having to drive the old fashioned way. There are manned checkpoints on the main roads, but there’s far too much traffic for it to be practical for them to search every vehicle that’s going in and out of the city, especially since Morgan’s trying to pretend that it’s “business as usual”. They’re just scanning vehicles as they pass by and pulling over anyone who gives them room for suspicion.’

‘I think a car loaded with guns might do that,’ said Anna. ‘I’m assuming that you’re intending on taking some.’

‘The Hidden Hand have a truck that we can use. We modify the rear compartment and replace the floor with a double layer of that stuff the Navy used to hide the guns in your ship, since we don’t need it for that anymore. We hide the guns and other gear between the layers.’

‘And if we do get stopped?’

‘If we do get stopped, then we stick to the cover story. I’m a businessman in the import-export field here to do a few deals in the city, and you two are hired security.’

‘So what were we doing out in the countryside?’

‘I was staying with friends and got stuck here. Look, it’s easy. The fake IDs will confirm everything. If they ask us questions, just follow my lead, and stay calm. If we look nervous, even the dumbest cop in the city will know something is up.’

‘Fine, okay. When do we leave?’ said Isaacs.

‘Well, we need a little time to make the modifications to the truck and a few military craft have over-flown the area in the last hour, so I think it’s best if we leave things until tomorrow morning. We’ll head into town with all the other morning traffic. Okay?’

‘Makes sense to me,’ said Isaacs. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

High above Orinoco, flashes of light in the night sky illuminated the upper cloud layer as more harvested asteroid material was fed into the maw of the vast Shaper vessel that hung there. Crushing energy fields shattered the metal rich rocks, rendered them molten and funnelled them into the waiting ship where they were separated into their component minerals as Shaper craft goaded yet more captured asteroids from across the system and beyond into that hungry mouth. It was a process which had been repeated every few hours for the past several days and nights. Now, loaded with millions tonnes of refined metals, the five great arms of the ship began to move and lengthen, coming together mere metres apart from one another. Primordial energies began to crackle along the inner surfaces of those two-hundred kilometre long fingers and then, like a spider constructing the beginnings of its web, the great ship began to weave something out of the materials that it had gathered in its belly.

The sun was just cresting the horizon when the chunky, four wheel drive vehicle snuck out of a secondary entrance of the Hidden Hand’s refuge and made its way down through a meadow to the rough track that ran through the jungle in the direction of the nearest paved road. Electric wheel motors whining, it bounced over the rough terrain before reaching the unevenly surfaced track and heading off in a cloud of dust.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Isaacs, in the front seat, rubbing his head where it had collided with the roof. ‘Could you at least slow down at little?’

‘Sorry,’ Steven replied, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. ‘I’m trying to get us away from the base as quickly as possible in case someone sees us.’

The track reached a sharp bend, flanked by tall, overhanging trees. Steven neatly drifted around it, keeping the truck perfectly lined up all the way as foliage whipped by on all sides. Straightening up, he gunned the engine and powered the vehicle down a long straight section that.

‘Where the hell did you learn to drive like this!?’ cried Isaacs, hanging on for dear life and the truck bounced and rattled over the bumps.

‘Same place you learnt to fly, I guess,’ said Steven, grinning. And with that, the car raced onwards into the jungle.

Eventually the dirt track became a narrow, metalled road, and as the trees began to thin and gave way to cultivated fields and rice paddies, it broadened into two lanes. Steven reduced their speed and drove more sedately so as not to attract attention and they began to see other traffic on the roads – mainly agricultural vehicles – which became more frequent as they headed out across a broad, fertile plain.

By the time they reached the main highway into the city they were amidst five lanes of swiftly moving traffic. There were a number of police and army vehicles among the hundreds of other assorted cars and trucks and PDF gunships and police AG shuttles periodically flitted overhead. There were also an unusual number of police vehicles parked in lay-bys and slip roads where the occupants appeared to be monitoring the passing traffic. Steven stuck to the speed limit but refrained from handing control of the truck over to its automatic navigation systems – all the better to make a quick getaway should the worst happen.

As the skyline of Bolivar City began to show in the hazy distance - the needle-like spires glinting in the early morning sun - the traffic began to slow to a crawl. They soon saw the reason why: low speed restrictions had been enforced where the traffic passed through what had once been a toll barrier and was now an armed checkpoint. Armoured personnel carriers flanked the road, whilst troops in body armour, toting rifles and other weapons manned the barrier. Meanwhile, their comrades used tripod mounted devices to scan the flow of vehicles as they passed slowly through the open toll gates.

Trapped in the one-way river of traffic, Steven, Isaacs and Anna had no choice but to head onwards. There were no exits where they could pull off beforehand, and no way that they could cross into the opposite carriageway.

‘Well, this doesn’t look good,’ said Isaacs nervously as the checkpoint approached, his eye lingering on the turreted weapons of the APCs hunched low at the side of the road.

‘Like I said before, we play it cool and we’ll have no trouble,’ replied Steven, though he couldn’t help but feel the butterflies in his stomach as they drove inexorably towards the soldiers.

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Anna, softly. ‘There’s no way that we can realistically make a run for it in this traffic. They start shooting and we’re trapped.’

Carried along in the flow, they were soon mere metres from the barrier. Isaacs tried to get a good look at the troops manning the checkpoint, doing his best to make his actions seem nonchalant. The armoured figures were talking, even joking with one another. They looked bored by the task that they had been given and many of them weren’t really paying that much attention to the traffic passing by. He breathed a sigh of relief. They looked reassuringly human. He commented on the fact to the others.

‘The intel. that the Hidden Hand had gathered suggested that a lot of them still are,’ replied Steven. ‘The Shapers only need the officers, and the loyalty of the men under them, for the most part. It’s only the Marine Corp and Army units and the full time PDF that have been completely enslaved. Look at these guys, look at the physical condition they’re in. They aren’t full time soldiers. This guy on the left here looks more like an insurance salesman to me.’

‘So what, the Shapers are choosy about who they enslave?’ said Isaacs.

‘To an extent, yeah. We think that there are limits on how many enslaved units the higher ups – the ships, command nodes and the Shapers themselves - can control. It probably comes down to processing power and the limits of their communications. Besides, why bother doing it when you can replace or co-opt the elites and get the rest to follow? These guys here are probably too scared by the chaos of what’s been happening lately, the war, Morgan’s coup and so on, not to do as they are told, particularly when they start to hear about what happens to those who don’t. None of them want to be singled out and they all want to do their bit to restore order. Plus it gives them a chance to feel involved, to feel important, to do their bit.’

‘Great. Amateurs with guns,’ said Isaacs.

They were almost at the barrier now. The car in front was waved through. Steven edged the truck forward as an armoured figure stepped out in front of them with a hand raised in a stop signal. His colleagues on either side, four in all, eyed the occupants of the truck through dark, tinted goggles.

‘Shit!’ hissed Isaacs. ‘Just our kind of luck. Hope you’ve got a plan to get us out of here.’

‘Let me do the talking,’ said Steven, as a podgy sergeant ambled over, rifle held slackly in his right hand, and made motions for him to wind the driver’s side window down.

‘Morning, Sergeant,’ said Steven as the man approached the open window. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘This vehicle has auto-drive systems, correct?’ said the Sergeant.

‘Yeah, of course it does,’ Steven replied.

‘You aren’t using them. Why?’ said the Sergeant, accusingly.

‘Ah, you know. I used to live on a frontier planet without a nav-sat network in place. Got used to doing my own driving. I guess I like to keep my hand in, once in a while. Can’t beat the feeling of being in control, you know?’

‘What planet?’

‘Huh? Oh, Bishop’s Claim, Woomera system. Real shit hole,’ Steven replied and laughed a little. The Sergeant’s expression didn’t change. Overhead, there was a sudden roar as a PDF gunship appeared over the road and began to circle

‘I see. You got any ID?’ said the Sergeant.

‘Sure,’ Steven replied, and handed over the license he had chosen as part of his faked identity. The Sergeant glanced at it for a tense moment, appearing to scrutinise the picture printed onto its plasticised surface and then passed it back to him without bothering to scan it.

‘Okay, well, we got a lot of traffic on this road today with the new security restrictions in place,’ said the Sergeant. ‘You might want to use the auto-drive like everyone else. In the interests of safety, you understand.’

‘Yeah, of course. Sorry,’ Steven replied, feigning sheepishness.

‘Have a good day, sir,’ said the Sergeant, before stepping back from the truck and waving him through.

As the truck pulled away, and Steven engaged the auto-drive as instructed, Isaacs let out a long sigh of relief.

‘Well that was fun,’ said Anna.

‘He was an idiot,’ said Steven. ‘Guy didn’t even check my license properly. He was having too much fun playing cop. The old adage about the little man with the badge is still true, it seems.’

‘Well if that’s the calibre of troops that the enemy have at their disposal, then we shouldn’t have too much trouble,’ said Isaacs.

‘Don’t get complacent,’ said Steven, darkly. ‘There was a full company of marines under Cox’s command when the Shapers took them, and god knows what other Army and Marine Corp assets have been enslaved and moved in-system. The Hidden Hand have seen a lot of troops and activity in and around the bases here, not to mention the main spaceport. I had a word with Commander Baldwin, too. Her people saw groups of enslaved troops backed up by air support combing the jungle on their way here, probably looking for survivors from the fleet. Luckily, they managed to avoid engaging them, but it was a close run thing, I gather. Make no mistake, the Shapers have control of some serious military assets in this system. They just aren’t using them to man checkpoints. Then of course, there are the ones you don’t notice so much. Any of these cars could be carrying a Shaper agent assigned to watch us, and we don’t know who might have been watching at that checkpoint.’

‘Shit, I get the picture, okay?’ said Isaacs, uneasily. ‘Isn’t there a silver lining to all this?’

‘Not while that thing’s hanging in the sky above us, no,’ Steven replied and jabbed a finger at the shape peeping out from a gap in the clouds above the city. Even from this distance, it was clear that the ship had changed shape, its long jointed arms coming together like grasping claws. As they watched there was a flicker of light from between those massive limbs which quickly faded in the morning sky.

As the city grew nearer, the volume of police and military traffic in the sky above increased markedly. Police AG shuttles appeared to be regularly patrolling over the roads leading into Bolivar City, sweeping low over the mass of moving vehicles, red and blue lights pulsing on their undersides. Army gunships moved at speed at higher altitudes, ferrying troops to and from missions in the surrounding countryside like industrious bees going about their business, and Isaacs, Anna and Steven were heading straight into the hive.

Entering the city without incident, they headed downtown towards the spaceport, although Steven remained on edge and on several occasions, began to become suspicious of other vehicles on the road that appeared to be shadowing them. If they were being followed, those doing it were careful to disguise themselves. Steven took evasive manoeuvres, regaining manual control of the car, changing lanes and making sudden turns once they were off the highway to shake off potential pursuers. Those he suspected did not follow, and in the end he concluded it was just his healthy level of paranoia at work.

Bolivar City itself was quiet, unusually so. Although it was now approaching the middle of the day, the streets were largely empty except for police and army patrols, and a few citizens scurrying to and fro. Normally, the planetary capital was a bustling, brash place. The streets would generally be packed with business folk and shoppers, the cafes and bars gearing up for the lunch time trade and already busy with smartly dressed men and women on the make, the pavements outside a pulsing river of humanity beneath the bright sun, the roads and sky lanes thrumming with traffic.

Now, it was a different town. There was the noticeable military presence, first of all. Army vehicles and groups of armoured men and women manned key points. Civilian cars moved to and fro beneath their gaze, their drivers careful not to do anything that might attract the ire of the authorities. The people that they saw on foot wore nervous expressions and were doing their utmost not to attract attention, a contrast to the normal state of affairs in a city known for doing the opposite. They moved quickly, their eyes averted from other people and fixed firmly at the floor. The city was still busy, but people didn’t linger in the open, didn’t stop to chat to others. The restaurants and pavement cafes were deserted, the shops empty of customers. People seemed to be staying in their homes or in their places of business, only emerging to travel between the two.

Isaacs guided them to a down at heel hotel a stone’s throw from the spaceport, in an area constantly noisy from the spacecraft landing and lifting off only a few kilometres away. They checked in, were asked to show I.D. by a bored looking desk clerk who only gave what they produced a cursory glance and assigned them two adjoining rooms on the top floor. The place was clean, but sparsely furnished and drab. The paint peeled from the walls, the bathrooms were stained with patches of damp and the sole screen in Isaacs and Anna’s room had an odd yellow tinge to its image.

They parked the truck in the hotel’s basement garage, unloaded its contents whilst taking care not to be seen, and carried them up to the rooms inside a few holdalls. Last of all was large, sealed crate.

‘What the hell is this?’ said Isaacs, eyeing the lump of square black plastic.

‘A little collateral,’ Steven replied. ‘It’s some of that Cloudfrond that we brought with us. I figured that we might be able to use it. It’s all part of my cover story, after all. Failing that, it’s so spicy we could probably use it as a weapon if the worst came to the worst. Would you mind?’ he said, indicating towards the crate and holding up hands that already each held a heavy bag. Isaacs sighed and, grabbing the crate in both hands, proceeded to lug it up to the room.

Pulling aside the cheap curtains, it was possible to see right across the sea of warehouses, shipping company offices, stacks of crates and ranks of parked vehicles to the spaceport itself, where gleaming, atmosphere capable ships squatted on square kilometres of concrete around the mass of low terminal buildings. Every so often there was a deep roar as one lifted off into the clear blue sky or another descended. Isaacs had been watching the ships come and go, noting the types.

‘Lot of military traffic,’ he said. ‘Hardly any of it civilian at all, actually. Local departure schedule reads cancelled for just about everything.’

‘So much for Morgan’s claims about it being business as normal,’ said Anna. ‘Sounds like they’re locking the place down.’

‘News reports are citing some bullshit about possible terrorist threats,’ said Steven. ‘I’d consider the fact that it might actually be true, given the circumstances, if I thought that the locals would have had time to organise themselves.’

‘There’s the survivors from the Commonwealth fleet,’ Isaacs suggested.

‘Possibly, I doubt it though. The Shapers are hunting them down, I think. I bet that’s what all the military traffic is for. There must be people scattered all over this side of the moon. Either that, or they’re busy quelling the locals into “co-operating.”’

‘So what now?’ asked Isaacs.

‘Now? Now I go sight-seeing. I want to take a look around. See what we’re up against, first hand. Might have a wander up near the Assembly and see what I can see.’

‘And what about us?’ said Anna.

‘You two can head on into town and see if any of your old contacts are still around. See what gossip you can pick up about what’s going on around here. Try and get us an in on anything that might get us close to anything or anyone military. Just, you know, don’t make it too obvious that that’s what we’re after. Ask, but don’t ask, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, don’t want to seem too eager. I get it. It’ll depend who we run into, if anyone. If pressed I’ll make out we’re interested in black market military stuff. My guess is, though, anyone who had the chance got out of the system when they could, but we’ll see what we can do.’

‘Good. We’ll meet back here tonight. Don’t try to speak each other by any other means except face to face. It’s safe to assume that all communications traffic is likely to be compromised. If I don’t show by the morning, you leave and go back to the Hidden Hand. Got it?’

‘Sure.’

‘And no guns, either. You’re trying to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement. We’ll only use them when we have a target to hit.’

Later that afternoon, Isaacs and Anna made their way on foot through the eerily quiet streets. Now that the mid-day traffic had subsided, there was only the occasional civilian vehicle and almost no pedestrians. Police cars and Army transports occasionally rumbled past, the occupants never giving the two figures a second glance. Litter swirled in the warm breeze around the empty furniture of deserted pavement cafes, and across streets and parks almost devoid of people.

‘Where is everyone?’ said Anna, as they walked briskly towards the centre of town.

‘Keeping their heads down, I imagine,’ replied Isaacs. ‘So should we. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Especially cops.’

‘Where are we headed?’

‘Old haunt of mine, Mulligan’s. You’ve been there before, I think.’

‘Ah yes, I remember. If in doubt, head to the pub, yes?’

‘Something like that. I’ve always found that the clientele have a pretty good idea of what’s going on around here. We freelance captains are a paranoid lot, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah well, who can blame us?’

They arrived at Mulligan’s about half an hour later, having passed only a handful of other people on foot in the meantime, and half expecting the place to be closed and shuttered. Thankfully, the bar was still open, though as they stepped from the alley outside into the gloom within they could quickly see that business was not what it had been. It was almost deserted. A few desultory drinkers clung to the corners of the room, eyeing them suspiciously as they entered. The swollen, miniature airship form of the proprietor, Ittuck, was nowhere to be seen.

Isaacs and Anna walked over to the island bar in the centre of the room and looked about themselves. Everyone seemed to be studiously ignoring them. After a few moments, Ittuck bobbed cautiously out of a back room and floated over to the bar, held aloft by his internal gas bladders. He settled behind the bar at eye level, compound eyes swivelling.

‘A surprise to see you in one piece, my friend,’ said Ittuck, his natural speech – a series of clicking sounds made by his insectile mouth parts – being translated by the pendant he wore. ‘I thought when that giant came for you that they’d be fishing bits of you out of the river.’

‘Yeah well, it’s a long story, but the trouble I had with Bennett has gone away, shall we say.’

‘I heard. Rumour has it that the military had him killed. He must have crossed someone pretty powerful, I think.’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘And who is this? Your female friend?’ said Ittuck, gesturing with a bunch of tentacles around his midriff towards Anna.

‘Anna Isaacs. I’m Cal’s wife. I think we met once or twice before.’

Isaacs gave her a surprised look. So, she had started using his surname again.

‘Ah yes…’ replied Ittuck and looked thoughtful. ‘I think you are right. Apologies, I think you may been with others at the time.’

‘Probably, we ran a few contracts from here over the past few years.’

‘Ah hmm. Where are my manners? I haven’t asked you if you would both like a drink.’

‘Yes please,’ said Isaacs with grateful relief. ‘Got anything good at the moment?’

Ittuck looked downcast. ‘Alas, no. My stocks are running rather low. It’s become very difficult to get anything from offworld since the coup. Freighters are staying away and there is no traffic with the loyalist systems at all. I have some of the local beer, Orinoco Gold, but even that’s starting to run low. My delivery failed to materialise this week and no-one answers at the brewery. Maybe it’s just as well that my trade has dried up as well.’

‘Two Orinoco Golds then,’ said Isaacs and waved his credit chip in the vague direction of the bar’s register.

‘It’s okay,’ said Ittuck as he poured the drinks. ‘But I’d kill to get some more of the stuff I had from Arcturus. I imagine that that’s out of the question now. Truly, I am surprised to see you here. Doubly so, given the last time I saw you. Most people are staying away, and many are finding that they cannot leave now. What brings you here?’

‘Ah you know, I smelled an opportunity,’ said Isaacs.

‘It was my idea,’ said Anna, cutting him off. ‘We figured that there would be shortages, like you say. Shortages mean that people are willing to pay a premium for certain luxuries. Beer, for instance,’ she said and took her drink from the bar top where it sat in a dribble of foam.

‘Yeah, you know of anyone who could hook us up?’ said Isaacs and took a gulp of his beer.

Ittuck worked his mandibles uneasily.

‘I’m not so sure that this is a good idea,’ he said. ‘Really, this world, this system is not safe for you, I think. Many, many bad things are happening here. I have heard stories…’

‘What about?’ said Anna.

‘People grabbed on the street - armed men pulling them into vehicles. They are never seen again. At night, it is the worst. They come in the night, into people’s homes and take them away and… there are things roaming the streets at night. Strange, misshapen creatures, horrible things. They say that they are the ones who have been taken and… changed. I know it sounds ridiculous…’

‘No it doesn’t,’ said Isaacs, and lowered his voice. ‘Look Ittuck, we’ve not been entirely straight with you. A… friend of ours, a business associate, went missing around here. What you’re talking about may have happened to him. He was into some pretty heavy shit, so he may have been pinched. We got half a story about him being bundled into an Army transport. We were hoping that we might be able to effect some sort of rescue, or at least find out where he’s being held.’

Ittuck moved closer and reduced the volume on his translation pendant.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ said the Vreeth. ‘You cannot fuck with these people. The Army? Please. Go sniffing around, and what happened to your friend will happen to you. Leave now, and don’t come back, for your own safety!’

‘What about you Ittuck, why are you still here?’

‘Because I have my business, because… look I am making my own arrangements, alright? What your Admiral Morgan has been telling everyone, that this regime change is a force for good: it is a lie, everyone knows it! But his men have seized control and anyone who does anything to stop them or gets in their way, they are gone! Just like that. Like they never fucking well existed, my friend!’

‘We need to find him, find our friend,’ said Isaacs. ‘Even if it’s only to find out that he’s dead. When they grab people, where do they take them?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Ittuck. ‘There are a number of police stations in the city, the prison, military bases outside Bolivar City. Your friend could be in any one of them, if he is still breathing, that is. There is a man you could try, he’s Sirius Syndicate and has contacts in the military. He makes his money from illegal arms sales that he pilfers from supply dumps, and he has connections in the Army who help him out. If anyone has information, he would be a good place to start.’

‘Does he have a name?’ said Isaacs.

‘Vittorio Molinelli, he owns a bar not far from here. He’s there most days. Here, let me show you.’

Steven moved through the quiet streets of the city, doing his best to remain anonymous. Smartly dressed in a dark suit, his face partially concealed by dark glasses, he walked with his head down, avoiding looking at anyone directly. Still, it was difficult not to stand out. There was hardly anybody on foot on the streets apart from himself. Traffic crawled by at a snail’s pace under the watchful eye of police units and soldiers who had been drafted in to assist them in their duties. They barely paid attention to his hurrying figure – he was just another nervous local going about his business - but all the same, he wished to avoid any unnecessary contact with them.

Although he was avoiding looking directly at the police and soldiers as he passed them, Steven studied them surreptitiously all the same, watching the way they moved, whether they spoke to one another, how they reacted to the presence of others, how they registered his presence as he walked past them. He was looking for signs that they were still human or whether they had been turned into mindless puppets of the enemy, trying to gauge the level of control that the Shapers had over the city and noting the locations that were being manned, which road junctions, public squares, metro stations and public buildings were deemed important.

He was heading into the centre of the city, towards the Assembly House at its heart. The building had formerly been the seat of the democratically elected government of the Achernar system. It was now the seat of power of Admiral Morgan’s new puppet dictatorship, the ironically named Freedom Alliance.

When Steven had set out from the hotel near the spaceport there had been relatively little security. He could see plenty of army units around the port itself even from the hotel room window, but on the streets in the outskirts of the city, there was very little movement. He had taken the truck and driven it into the city, leaving it in an underground parking garage just outside of the centre and continuing on foot. Here in the centre, there were police and army everywhere, and their frequency only increased the closer he got to the heart of the city.

Though he had warned Isaacs and Anna against carrying weapons themselves, he wasn’t entirely unarmed. A small pistol made of composites that were difficult to detect on most scanning devices was strapped to his lower right leg, and though its use would undoubtedly attract unwanted attention, he had taken it as a weapon of last resort were he to be cornered. Part him of secretly suspected that he had only taken it for his own peace of mind, for what use would such a weapon be against a city filled with the enemy?

In the financial district, there had been plenty of police amidst the banks and offices and the expensive restaurants that were now near empty or closed for business, but they had seemed human enough. Like the men manning the checkpoint on the highway they’d passed through on their way here, they looked bored, and he could see them talking with one another and sharing jokes, hands resting easily on the weapons slung at their sides. Some were clearly feeling the effects of the heat of the day as the sun climbed higher in the sky - they drank greedily from flasks of water or sweated beneath their helmets. The army personnel he saw seemed to be faring a little better, since the cooling systems of their body armour alleviated some of the worst effects. As Steven passed them, they usually cast him a bored glance or paid him no attention whatsoever.

When he entered the government district, however, he noticed a change almost immediately. Here, the men manning the streets stood like statues at their posts. Their expressionless features partially obscured behind armoured visors, they stood like an army of robots on parade. Steven felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as soon as he set eyes on the first group of them. His step faltered for a moment, but he kept on walking, forcing himself to continue, for to turn and retrace his steps would arouse suspicion. The men stood motionless beside their armoured vehicles and behind rolls of razor wire and though they did not react to his presence, Steven felt their cold and lifeless gaze upon him. Somehow those visored faces followed him, like the eyes of a painting that follow the viewer around the room and at the back of his mind he swore he heard something, a scratching or whispering of words that he couldn’t make out.

There were no other people here, save for himself. Not even vehicles moved between the massive office blocks that towered on all sides, their windows blank and lightless, silent monoliths that had once hummed with life and activity, and yet, somehow Steven knew that within those cyclopean buildings, there was still a life of sorts, but one that was not human, that was of machine and a terrible fusion of enslaved flesh, and that even now it was watching him. He felt suddenly terribly vulnerable, like a fly crawling along the delicate filaments of a spider’s web into its very centre.

The Assembly House loomed at the end of the street, a classical edifice of white marble topped with a flattened dome and fronted with a massive portico supported by Corinthian columns. In front of the broad marble steps leading up to it, were dozens of marines, standing motionless, guns at the ready in copy cat poses like a line of toy soldiers. Tanks and APCs were drawn up behind them, turreted weapons angled down the approaches as automated defence guns swept to and fro. Steven made a mental note of their numbers, their equipment and dispositions.

He was a block away. He had no wish to get any closer. As he watched, a small AG shuttle flanked by twin gunships swept overhead and landed to the rear of the building. As the gunships circled and sped off, Steven turned, and hunching his shoulders, headed left down an adjoining street. It was then that he saw the woman. She was hurrying along the street towards him about a hundred and fifty metres away. Like him, she was keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the ground. Steven placed her age around sixty, her grey hair falling forwards as she walked to partially obscure a face that was still handsome despite her age. She was dressed in a long, loose coat and had a heavy handbag slung over one shoulder that she gripped tightly to stop it swinging as she walked.

She never saw them coming until it was too late. Steven heard the noise of engines behind him. Turning, he saw an army truck with PDF markings speeding around the corner. The woman kept on walking. She kept on walking until the truck pulled up alongside and PDF troops began to emerge from it. Then she turned and started to run. The men moved with inhuman speed. One, with a captain’s insignia on his upper arm, did not simply climb from the truck, he leapt from it before it had come to a halt like a wild beast escaping from its cage. As the woman ran he came after her, running her down and tripping her before pulling her to the ground. She struggled, striking out at him. The captain struck back, crumpling her face in a welter of blood with a savage punch before hauling her off the ground and throwing her down again, where, kneeling on the small of her back, he handcuffed her wrists and then dragged her to her feet. She was thrown to the others, who grabbed her and tossed her weakly struggling body into the back of the truck. The men jumped aboard.

The whole scene had unfolded in less than twenty seconds. Steven realised that he was shaking. He had been powerless to do anything to help her, and had they come for him, he doubted very much whether he would have been able to do much more. He didn’t know what the woman had done to draw the attention of the authorities. Perhaps she had spoken out against the new regime, perhaps she had wondered aloud in public about the strange ship in the sky, perhaps she had simply mixed with the wrong people. Whatever she had done, the fledgling regime had quickly silenced her. Quickening his pace, Steven began to make his way back out of the government district, all the while feeling as if a thousand eyes were focused on his retreating back.

Chapter 40

Beklide’s shuttle flew low over the vast navy shipyards of the Orakkan system. Even by the standards of the mega-structures elsewhere in the Arkari Sphere, the shipyards were an order of magnitude more impressive and, with the entire Arkari civilisation now moved onto a total war footing, they were working at maximum production.

The Orakkan yards were formed from a roughly circular plate-like structure fifty thousand kilometres in diameter orbiting ten point five AUs from the yellow Orakkan suns. From far out in the system, the yards were merely visible as a brightly reflective patch in the void, or as a dark spot passing in front of the stars. Closer in, and the structure of the yards began to become visible. The centre of the yards bulged outwards. This hub section housed the vast molecular foundries that provided the raw materials for the ships constructed by the yard. These foundries were fed by a constant stream of ore freighters - huge, fat bellied vessels ten of kilometres in length that moved with a ponderous grace in an endless parade, disgorging their considerable cargoes in turn before moving off again towards mineral rich systems across Arkari space.

The structure of the yards spread out from this hub. Huge spars hundreds of kilometres thick pulsed with energy and streams of raw matter. These spars spread and subdivided in smaller and smaller branches, lending the structure a fractal appearance, like the most complex snowflake ever created. Amongst these branches, cradled within enveloping gantries and docking cradles, the shining forms of Arkari warships could be seen taking form. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Rank upon rank of destroyers and cruisers in various states of construction. Amongst them, lay the two hundred kilometre long hulls of Nightbringer class dreadnoughts, the gigantic warships surrounded by thousands of construction vessels.

As Beklide’s shuttle flew over that gigantic construction site, the hulls of the great ships jutted upwards from the vast structure that held them like a city of gigantic, outlandishly sculpted towers, their curving lines gleaming in the bright sunlight. Tallest of them all, ten times the length of the dreadnoughts, was the great weapon now under construction, the Executioner Cannon.

It was only partially finished. The shape of the gun was already visible. Its main load-bearing structures had already been spun out by the construction arrays, sketching out the end result in a three dimensional wire frame. Within that frame, the reactors and firing chamber were already taking shape, gleaming within it like complex exposed organs.

Beklide cast her eye over the scene and the schematics that the ship was projecting into her line of sight and couldn’t help but be impressed by the scale of the industry that her people were capable of, and which she had set in motion. There had been seven such shipyards, presumed safely hidden deep within the portion of space within the Arkari Sphere given over to the Navy. Now, only this one remained fully operational. The others had been hit hard in the first wave of Shaper attacks that had erupted across the Arkari domain, their defences overwhelmed by vast numbers of suicidal enslaved attackers and the terrible weapons unleashed by the Shapers themselves. Five had been utterly destroyed, the thousands of defenceless ships under construction in their berths immolated and smashed to pieces, their defenceless, infant AIs ravaged by the Shaper virus attack that had preceded the physical assault. The sixth had been badly damaged, its structure holed in numerous places and only narrowly saved from complete destruction. Only the Orakkan shipyards remained, miraculously untouched by the Shaper attack. The yard’s controlling AIs had gotten wind of the virus assault moments before it had hit and had isolated the yards from the worst effects and for whatever reason, be it luck on the part of the Arkari, misfortune or error on the part of the Shapers, or the simple fact that their attack had been cut short by the destruction of their wormhole portal and they simply didn’t get the chance to get around to destroying it, Orakkan had survived unscathed.

It was a bright hope in an otherwise disastrous event. The Navy’s ship production capacity had been reduced to a fraction of what it had been at a stroke, and whilst the smaller facilities around the various worlds were able to gear themselves up for greater production, it would be some time before they were able to account for the lost capacity, and replace the partially constructed ships that had been lost.

It had been a bitter blow for Beklide. As communications were steadily restored across the Arkari Sphere at a painfully slow pace, it steadily became apparent just how severe the attack had been. Billions of Arkari had died. The numbers were still unknown, but each day the figure for confirmed dead still crept ever upwards. The destruction and decimation of so many planets and space borne habitats had dealt the Arkari civilisation a grievous wound from which even it would take time to recover and it was still doubtful whether some of those planets could ever be made habitable again.

Beklide couldn’t help but feel fury at what had happened. It had happened on her watch and she had been unable to stop it, and now her plans to strike back at the Shapers were in disarray. She had originally hoped that she would be able to draw upon the vast reserves of the Arkari Navy to both defend the Arkari Sphere and the human Commonwealth as well as strike back at the enemy. Now that the fully tally of destruction was known, it was clear that she would have but a fraction of the forces she needed to do all three. Reluctantly, she had to concede that the Meritarch Council’s shrill paranoia about further assaults had some basis as she would barely have enough ships to both defend key systems within Arkari space as well as launch a decisive attack upon the Shapers, not knowing when and where a further enemy attack might take place. She had hoped to persuade the Council to allow her to despatch a fleet of ships to assist the humans, but both ships and crews were in short supply of late. The call had gone out to the citizenry to enrol for martial duties in both naval and ground forces, and although the Arkari people had answered in their billions, it would take time to train and equip them. There had been some loose talk on the Council of allowing un-crewed ships to operate independently, but a swift lesson as to why such practices were not permitted in the first place had put paid to that.

The shuttle circled the unfinished, fluted tower of the Executioner Cannon that jutted hundreds of kilometres out from the yard’s plate structure. As Beklide watched, thousands of construction mechanoids were gently coaxing into place one of the massive reactors that would power the finished weapon, working together like a swarm of ants. The surface of the spheroid that encased the reactor, a full thirty kilometres in diameter, was knurled with a myriad of conduits and interfaces, and encased in a latticework of struts that would be molecularly bonded to the rest of the weapon, creating a singular, seamless object. Five more reactors would be joining it, before the entire assembly would be swathed in a nanotech skin like other Arkari vessels. She called up displays on the cannon’s progress: construction reports, component tests and completion estimates. Its construction was proceeding well and on schedule, a feat made all the more impressive given the untried nature of the device. Perhaps the crisis facing their people had spurred the construction crews on to greater efforts.

It pained Beklide that she not could justify aiding the humans just yet. In truth, it was a cruel irony. The information that the Commonwealth had supplied to the Arkari had come in the shape of the technical specifications of modifications that could be made to existing sensor arrays in order to detect the Shapers by the very hyperspatial data-streams that bound their hive-mind together. This, in turn, would provide the Arkaris’ plan of counter-attack with a clear direction, one which must take precedence over all other considerations. Beklide had ordered the modifications to be made at once to the most powerful deep space monitoring arrays that the Arkari possessed, devices capable of seeing tens of thousands of light years across the galaxy, but which until now had been unable to probe deep enough into the galactic core, where the closely packed stars, dust, violent energies and extreme gravities had until now obscured their sight.

With the modifications completed, the scales fell from the eyes of the Arkari. They saw the galaxy held in the grip of a huge and complex web, a branching structure that reached out to ensnare thousands of civilisations. They were looking at the very nervous system of the Shapers’ dominion, the hierarchical command and control structure that allowed that race, and their slaves, to act as one coordinated whole across thousands of light years. They traced those shining threads back towards their source, through myriad nodes and interstices until they found it. There, at the centre of the galaxy, where dead and orphaned worlds danced in the corposant glow of the Maelstrom, bathed in the light of a million dead suns, they found the Shaper home-world, where the Singularity, the central, controlling Shaper consciousness, a machine god in all but name, lurked like a spider at the centre of its web.

With the Council’s permission, she would send word to the humans, that the Arkari had not abandoned them, that even now they were working to aid them. They just had to hang on a little longer. She could not be too specific of course, but it was true. If her plan of attack worked, if the home-world and the Singularity that resided there could be destroyed, the Shapers would be crippled and then the Arkari would move on, from world to world across the galaxy, sweeping it clean of the Shaper infestation.

Beklide called up the data that they had acquired on that benighted place to peruse it once more. It was a world without a parent star, presumed to be a dead ball of blasted rock in a stable orbit around the super-massive black hole at the galaxy’s heart, bathed in radiation from that engine of annihilation and shrouded from the rest of the galaxy by the clouds of dust and gas that circled the core. It was hidden no longer. Beklide had it in her sights.

She bade the shuttle tilt upwards towards the suns. The photochromic filters of the craft’s cockpit displays dimmed instantly, sparing her eyes from the glare and allowing her to see the twin suns of the Orrakan system quite clearly. There was something between them. Beklide urged the ship forward. The shuttle dove into hyperspace for a few moments, emerging between the two stars and in the midst of an enormous Arkari construction fleet.

The titanic vessels, normally employed in building the space-borne habitats that encircled Arkari worlds, had been corralled from across Arkari space and brought here. Billions of tonnes of raw materials were being fed into them, by an endless stream of freighters, to be compressed and refined and then excreted from their hulls in white-hot molecular streams to form a super-dense structure. That structure, held in place by great anchorage stations, grew daily as the great vessels, ate, digested and continued to build. It was a great ring, two thirds complete, and when it was finished it would be two thousand kilometres in diameter. Already, other ships were working on smaller rings that would be dropped into the coronas of the binary suns, where, floating free amidst the white hot solar storms, they would funnel the energy of the stars into the great device now taking shape.

As Beklide approached, data began to flood the shuttle’s holo-displays. She scanned an eye over it. Yes, all was proceeding well. Even now the AIs that would control the great machine were being shipped in-system, ready to be installed within their matrices. Soon it would be ready, and then she would bring her plan to fruition.

Once, the wormhole portals had been devices of the Progenitor Empire. Now, after years of theoretical research completed at last by their unfettered examination of the Maranos device, the technology belonged to the Arkari.

Chapter 41

Colonel Gunderson stepped out of his command craft for a moment, and took in the night air as its engines spooled down behind him. So far, the operation was proceeding well. Shale’s forces had landed quickly, moving off in good order towards the enemy, or what was left of them. Chen had taken the wise decision of attaching ships to units on the ground and allowing the commanding officers of those units to call in fire support as and when it was required. Advancing enemy units had been met with a barrage of accurate fire from orbit as they had closed with Shale’s forces. Meanwhile, squadrons from the orbiting carriers had ranged far and wide across the face of Valparaiso, attacking troop trains and convoys and shooting down aircraft and sub-orbital transports in flight. The sky had been streaked with dozens of high altitude contrails until late evening, mingled with the dark descending streaks from burning craft as they spiralled to earth. In the distance, weapons fired cracked and boomed, and as darkness fell, the horizon was intermittently illuminated with the flicker of explosions.

Shale’s advance had turned into little more than a mopping up exercise. As the army’s mechanised infantry advanced, supported by heavy armour and self propelled artillery and with gunships and navy squadrons providing close support, they encountered sporadic pockets of resistance and the odd desultory counter attack, but little more. Whatever the enemy had been planning, the sheer weight of fire directed at the planet’s surface appeared to have put paid to it, although the enemy still held onto a number of small towns and villages in the rolling plains. These had kept Gunderson’s men busy throughout the day. Since they had trained heavily for assault missions, Shale had ordered Gunderson to despatch his units to lead the vanguard of the attacks on these redoubts, and the marines had performed admirably in flushing out the enslaved troops. There had been some hard fighting, but in most cases the enslaved had been heavily outnumbered and outgunned and casualties had been mercifully light. Gunderson had also kept some of his forces back, both to guard the landing zone and the deep space monitoring arrays in the hills to the south, and assigned a thousand troops to each task. Though the troops picked for these less glamorous duties had grumbled about missing out on the action, securing the Commonwealth’s bridgehead on the planet and guarding the monitoring array, their main objective, were no less vital. Gunderson had spent the day shuttling between points on the front line in his command craft, encouraging his men, providing advice and decisions to his senior staff, and listening to what they all had to say. Now it was the turn of those men left behind. He had already visited the LZ and stood with his officers as further massive Army landing craft had thundered down onto the plains and disgorged yet more men and armoured vehicles, before lifting off to allow others to land in a seemingly endless relay. His unit commanders had reported no enemy activity, in line with the intel. that they were getting from the ships in orbit. Gunderson was experienced enough to treat all intel. with a healthy dose of scepticism, but so far, what the Navy had been feeding them seemed right on the money. Still, it never hurt to get a picture of what was happening from the men on the ground and, although technology allowed the instantaneous sharing of information across the theatre, Gunderson was a great believer in being there in person. He was a Colonel in the Marine Corp, and sitting in a command post, far behind the lines or up in orbit was not for him. He needed to be there with his men, to reassure and encourage, and admonish where necessary, and share some of the dangers with them.

Here, however, it was pretty quiet. He looked up at the night sky with its unfamiliar stars and the group of lights that marked the position of the Commonwealth fleet in orbit. Some of the lights were on the move, either descending into or climbing out of the atmosphere, whilst occasional meteorite streaks marked the passage of missiles fired from the warships above at targets to the north of his position. On the plains below him, the glow of floodlights marked the landing zone, from which a river of head and tail lights marked the advancing Army units. The front had moved far beyond the horizon, but the occasional flashes of light that lit up the underside of the clouds marked where the enemy still held out and were being pounded by airstrikes, artillery and starship weapons fire.

Behind him, the domes and dishes of the mothballed monitoring array loomed whitely out of the night, the interiors of the buildings at their feet busy with technicians now working to get the decades-old equipment back into working order.

It was quiet, though. Too quiet. It made Gunderson uneasy. As his staff began to emerge from the command craft behind him, the officer in command of the monitoring array defences, Major Durham, strode over and smartly saluted.

General Shale rode with his men in the midst of the enormous armoured column. The interior of his command APC was a mass of screens and consoles displaying real time information about the unfolding battle. Three armoured columns were now streaming away from the landing zone in the direction of San Domingo. Shale was riding in the middle of the first column as it drove up the centre, straight for the city. The other two were moving in looping flanking manoeuvres to the east and west that would allow his forces to approach the city from three different directions at once. Lieutenant Colonel Shima had command of the western group, whilst Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds led the eastern one. They were making good progress. Moving out of the landing zone had been a piece of cake. What enemy units had survived the bombardment had not, in most case, managed to put up a solid defence and the Army had steamrollered over the top of them and were now advancing on San Domingo. Shale’s forces had now reached the main highway leading north to the city and were advancing at speed.

The advance had not been without its incidents of course. The enemy had been rooted out of a number of hiding places along the way and they had found a number of other settlements devoid of occupants. More troubling still, it looked as if the inhabitants had not gone willingly. There were signs of a struggle everywhere, barricaded buildings, blood stains, scars from weapons fire and the inevitable bodies. Some of the dead looked as if they had been attacked by wild beasts rather than cut down by weapons fire, their mangled remains had been pulled apart or torn by savage jaws, rather than shot or blown apart. Shale and his men were no strangers to such a sight. It reminded them of the K’Soth war. Given that the men that they were supposed to be fighting were, or had been, human, that troubled them deeply. In fact they had seen no-one, until now.

Shale’s tactical map display showed a mass of vehicles up ahead, approaching along both lanes of the highway. Fearing an armoured column spearing a counter attack, he had requested further information from the starships orbiting above. They had duly focused their instruments on the approaching column and could find no trace of the Shapers’ taint, and the vehicles appeared to be entirely civilian in nature - cars, trucks and so on. Shale had despatched scouting units ahead to intercept. Three gunships carrying Rangers had streaked towards their objective at tree top height and were now circling the above the head of the column. The pilot’s voice was loud and clear in Shale’s earpiece, the noise of the gunship’s engines audible in the background:

‘General Shale, this is Captain Irving of the Eighty-Seventh Recon Wing, we have arrived at the objective.’

‘Report, Captain Irving.’

‘We’ve reached the head of the approaching column. Confirmed: vehicles are of a civilian nature. All of them are heavily overloaded with people and what looks like their belongings. Some of them panicked as we approached. They abandoned their vehicles and ran for the verge. I think that they assumed that we were hostile and were about to attack the column. The lead vehicles have halted, but they’re blocking both the north and southbound carriageways.’

‘What sort of numbers?’

‘Thousands. There’s a line of vehicles stretching to the horizon. Sir, I think they’re refugees.’

As footage from the gunship’s cameras appeared on an adjacent display, Shale cursed inwardly. Civilians blocking the road would slow their advance. The hovertanks could easily manage cross country, but their speed would be reduced by the uneven terrain beneath them. The smooth surface of the road had given them a chance to move unhindered at maximum speed.

‘Land on the northbound carriageway, Captain. Be cautious, but try to see if these people have a leader or anyone with any influence. Explain what’s happening. See if they can tell you anything about the situation in the city.’

‘Roger that, sir. Irving out.’

Shale cursed, and then began relaying the situation to his unit commanders.

Chen was in her office, adjacent to the bridge, the screen of her desk console filled with Admiral Cartwright’s face. The Admiral looked a little tired, though otherwise composed. Although the hypercom connection was heavily encrypted, impinging upon the sound and image quality, the strain of battle clearly showed in face and in his voice.

‘We have much of the facility under our control, Admiral Chen, though Colonel Igawa fully expects the battle to proceed well into tomorrow as we root out those last traces of the enemy. I’m sorry to say that casualties on the ground have been rather high. It’s been tough job dealing with those enslaved troops within the facility, and of course we cannot utilise our starships’ tactical weapons in close proximity for fear of damaging it. How goes your own operation?’

Chen collected her thoughts for a moment, before speaking.

‘We came up against fierce resistance upon entering the system, sir, and to compound the situation, we encountered a fault with the new cannons mounted aboard the destroyers so serious that it disabled some those ships once they fired them.’

‘Yes, that was our experience also, unfortunately.’

‘I have my engineers working on the problem at the moment. I’ll share any findings with you once I have them.’

‘And I will do likewise. But you have the system?’

‘Yes. We lost some ships, and I’m afraid the Nahabe lost around half of their force to the enemy. All of the carriers are still operational, however the Churchill was boarded by enemy forces during the battle. There was a Shaper leading them. We drove them off at some cost.’

‘Really?’ said Cartwright. ‘Well that is interesting, not to mention rather disturbing. Were they trying to gain control of the ship?’

‘Maybe, although another possibility was that they were attempting intelligence gathering. The Shaper was trying to access the ship’s computer network at the point where it was forced to retreat. I’m afraid we cannot tell what it may have accessed, if anything.’

‘I see,’ Cartwright replied, his expression darkening.

‘I’m sending through my report on my fleet’s current state of battle readiness to you now,’ she replied, and hit the icon to transfer the document.

‘And the ground campaign?’ replied Cartwright, as his eyes perused the list of damaged and destroyed vessels. It made for grim reading.

‘Proceeding well, so far. We have the monitoring array secured, though we have yet to get it operational. The landing went unopposed. We annihilated much of the enemy forces from orbit before they had a chance and disrupted their efforts to counter-attack. General Shale is advancing on the city of San Domingo as we speak. I’ve tasked my ships with providing fire support where it’s needed, whilst the Nahabe patrol the system in case of any lurking enemy presence we haven’t detected.’

‘Very good, Admiral Chen. With that array up and running, and modified accordingly, we be able to see what our enemy is up to, at last. You and your crews have done well. Keep me informed. I’ll pass this up to Admiral Hawkwood, he’s anxious to know how we’ve been getting on so he can plan our next move.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Alright then. Cartwright out,’

Chen reached for the mug of coffee on her desk and sat back in her chair, taking a deep mouthful of the bitter brew. As she did so, there was knock at the door and McManus entered from the bridge.

‘You asked to be kept informed, ma’am,’ he said.

‘I did,’ she replied, curtly.

‘Shale’s advance has encountered refugees streaming out of San Domingo. We alerted him to a large approaching column of vehicles, but now that we’ve got a closer look it appears to be the local population fleeing with everything they have.’

‘Will it slow his advance?’

‘A little, but there’s the question of what to do with all of these people. There are thousands of them.’

‘I’m not sure what we can do, Commander,’ Chen replied. ‘We’re not set up for a relief operation. Has anyone managed to talk to them, find out what’s going on in the city?’

‘Happening as we speak, I gather.’

‘Inform General Shale that I’d appreciate it if he’d let us know what his men find out. These people may be able to help us if we’re willing to reciprocate.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said McManus, then looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Ma’am, I think I owe you an apology.’

‘Whatever for?’ Chen replied, puzzled.

‘Down in the launch bay… the Shaper it… it only got out of there because I fucked up. If those men under my command hadn’t routed, if I hadn’t panicked, then maybe…’

‘Commander…’

‘Beg pardon, ma’am, but let me finish. We ran for it to save our own skins after what it did to the others. That thing got out of the open door and was able to access the ship’s systems and there’s no telling what it may have discovered. As the officer in command at the time, I take full responsibility and…’

Chen cut him off.

‘Commander, if you had stayed in the launch bay, both you and those men would definitely be dead, and I doubt very much whether a locked door would present much of an obstacle to those things. You held it off for a while, and from what I gather, you found a way to hurt those things, even if you didn’t manage to kill it. What happened is unfortunate, and though we do not know what the Shaper may have accessed, I cannot bring myself to blame you for what happened. You’re one of the few people to have ever seen one of those things, let alone lived to tell about it. Blackman fought well too, I hear.’

‘Aye, that he did. Thank you, ma’am. I’ll put everything in my report,’ said McManus, visibly relieved. ‘If I may ask, how did your conversation with Admiral Cartwright go?’

‘Better than I expected,’ replied Chen. ‘All things considered. It seems that he’s had a much harder time of it than we have.’

‘Welcome to the array, Colonel,’ said Major Durham, still standing smartly to attention. Gunderson couldn’t fault the younger man’s record, but he definitely had a rod up his arse.

‘As you were, Major,’ Gunderson replied. ‘How are things here?’

‘It’s very quiet, sir. The men are grumbling. They feel like they’re missing out.’

‘I want you to explain to them how valuable this facility is to the Commonwealth. When the enemy realises what we’re doing here, they’re gonna want to take it back, or sabotage it. That’s why it needs the Marine Corp to guard it. Only the best will do, you hear me?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Alright then. How’s the work on the array coming along?’

‘Quite well. The technical teams have successfully powered up the equipment. It’s a little dated, to say the least, but it works. They’ve replaced some of the controlling hardware and have begun making the necessary modifications.’

‘Mind if I take a look, Major?’

‘Not at all sir, if you’d care to step this way.’

Major Durham led Gunderson inside the central domed tower that housed the primary array and the control room for the others scattered around the hilltop. The interior was spartan and brightly lit, and in surprisingly pristine condition considering its age. A flight of curving stairs and a series of security doors, guarded by Marine Corp sentries, led to the main control room, a broad, airy space filled with banks of decades old consoles and displays, most of which were still wrapped and covered in order to preserve them. A gaggle of technicians were clustered in a side room, where outdated servers had been removed and more modern units installed. One of the technicians glanced up from a datapad filled with code and noticed the two men enter. Tapping his nearest comrade on the shoulder he turned and quickly saluted as the Colonel and the Major approached.

‘At ease, specialist,’ said Gunderson. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

‘I am sir,’ said another technician called Rollins as he stepped forward from behind his colleague and saluted.

‘The Colonel here would like a progress report, Chief,’ said Durham.

‘That’s right,’ said Gunderson. ‘How are you boys getting on with your new toy? When will she be up and running?’

Rollins consulted his datapad for a moment.

‘Well, we already knew that we’d need to pull out some of this old equipment. These machines here are decades out of date and aren’t capable of running the software we need. We were able to build a replacement server on the way here ready to go straight in. So far, it’s been relatively straightforward. Whoever mothballed this place did a good job. Everything seems to work as it should and we had no problems powering up the array to standby mode. We’ve just been running some final tests and are about ready to power her up fully for the first time.’

‘Good. What about the modifications needed so that we can see the Shapers properly?’

‘The software’s already in place on the new server, but we’ll need to replace some of the components on the array itself. The resolution isn’t high enough on the old detectors that are in place. Fortunately, they built these things with a standard, modular design so we can just pull out the necessary components and slot new ones in. The rest of my team are scattered all over this complex making sure everything is in working order before we try the first power up test.’

‘How long until it’s working?’ said Gunderson, gazing at the man levelly.

‘All being well, sir, I’d say two hours for the work. We’ve almost finished fitting the new components, but we’ll need to calibrate the array afterwards. Our experience on the arrays in the Solar System were that it took about an hour, though I’d expect a little longer with this older equipment. However, you’re just in time for the first power on, before we go ahead with the modifications.’

‘Very well. Let’s see what we can see.’

As Rollins and his team got to work with the final checks, other technicians began to drift into the control room in handfuls and report back to him. Soon, the room was half full of people, conferring in groups or studying equipment or simply waiting expectantly for the array to be tested. Eventually, the display that filled one wall began to come alive with test messages and then finally, as the array was brought up to full power, a series of status reports from the various components that comprised the complex hyperspace monitoring array.

Gunderson watched. The messages on screen meant little to him, but he could tell from the mood of the technicians that things seemed to be going well. There was a faint thrumming now, that he felt through the floor and walls rather than heard, as the long dormant systems came to life. After a few moments, the messages on the display vanished to be replaced by a map of the Santiago system. There was a pregnant pause, and then icons denoting the ships in orbit began to wink into existence. There was a murmur of satisfaction and relief from the assembled technicians. As the array’s power built steadily, it reached further out into space, and the view on the screen zoomed out accordingly until other systems were visible, and until the Santiago system was a simply a single dot amidst dozens of others.

Eventually, after about five minutes, the array had reached full power, reaching out into hyperspace for a hundred light years in all directions. As Gunderson watched, the display began to be peppered with icons denoting the presence of ships, first dozens, then hundreds and then thousands of vessels. The array began to scrutinise them, interpreting their engine signatures to provide an estimate of their speed, heading and class. Those on the move provided the clearest traces, their engines working at full power broadcasting their presence with clarity, whilst those whose engines were idle and ticking over were more difficult to detect.

Gunderson began to see patterns in the traffic. In Commonwealth held space, traffic was moving along the established lanes, but of course no civilian vessels that he could see were passing into the zone now claimed by the Freedom Alliance. Within enemy space, however, it was clear that civilian traffic had been drastically reduced. A few lone traces moved here and there, but the bulk of traffic was composed of military vessels or civilian freighters with naval escorts. The pattern of traffic had changed too. Where one would expect to see ships moving along the haphazard web of routes between the principal systems, all of the ships appeared to be following routes that converged in the Achernar system. There were already a large number of former Commonwealth Navy vessels there. Gunderson ordered Rollins to focus the display on that particular system. As Achernar grew ever larger on the screen, it became clear that most of the vessels were clustered around the moons of the sixth planet that formed the economic heart of the system, and there was something in orbit around the moon of Orinoco, massive but indistinct, that the array was unable to identify, but which was putting out energy spikes that reverberated through hyperspace.

‘Mr Rollins,’ said Gunderson, his gaze never leaving the screen. ‘Patch this data through to the Churchill. Admiral Chen needs to see this.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘And hurry up with those modifications. We need to see whatever the hell the Shapers have in store for us.’

Shale’s APC, along with two others, had pulled over at the head of the refugee convoy where the two recon gunships sat on the highway’s asphalt surface. The convoy was moving south again, the queue of vehicles stretching off into the distance in both directions, head and tail lights blazing against the darkness. Shale’s men were now shepherding vehicles onto the one carriageway, to prevent an almighty head on collision with the armoured units moving in the opposite direction and which were now being likewise diverted onto the side of the road where they could pass by the civilian vehicles.

Shale stepped out of his vehicle, flanked by a squad of troopers, into a night filled with the whine and roar of hundreds of engines, as his own units passed by metres away and the civilian convoy shuffled forwards. The civilians’ vehicles were entirely wheeled types - family cars, trucks, buses and so on. All were packed with frightened looking people and their belongings. A number of the vehicles were pock marked with bullet holes and scorch marks from energy weapons and fearful faces peered from the windows as they passed.

On the tarmac in front of the gunships stood a small huddle of people, guarded by the rangers who had arrived in the gunships and four men in flight gear clutching side-arms. One, wearing a captain’s insignia, stepped forward and saluted Shale.

‘Captain Irving, sir.’

‘At ease, Captain. What do you have for me?’

‘Sir, this is Estelle Marchand, mayor of San Domingo and her aides. She was travelling near the head of the convoy and made herself known to us. She should be able to fill you in on the situation in the city.’

‘I see,’ replied Shale.

‘They’re clean, sir,’ said Irving, detecting the note of caution in the General’s voice. ‘Sergeant Liu’s men scanned each of them twice to make sure,’ he said nodding towards the groups of rangers then added. ‘These civilians are human enough.’

‘Okay. Good work, Captain. Let’s see what they have to say,’ said Shale and, flanked by his men, stepped forward towards Marchand.

‘General Shale, Third Army Group. I’m hoping you can fill me in on precisely what is going on in San Domingo. We’re preparing to secure the city. Anything you can tell us may be useful.’

Mayor Marchand, a middle aged woman dressed in a rumpled trouser suit and wearing a tired expression, eyed him warily.

‘Third Army Group? Who are you taking your orders from, General?’

‘From Earth - from President Sorenson our Commander in Chief.’

‘It’s so hard to tell which side everyone is on. I’m afraid the Governor has sided with Admiral Morgan, President Morgan, I should say. This system is now a member of the Freedom Alliance. We have been under attack for the last day. By whom, it is difficult to tell. The Governor has been claiming that we are being assaulted by forces loyal to Earth, not that I’ve able to see him for some weeks, but the things that have been happening over the last day or two… I don’t think that they’re the work of the Commonwealth.’

‘Ma’am, we are assaulting this world, but to liberate it and secure it against the enemy. From the start, we have endeavoured to avoid civilian casualties.’

‘And who is the enemy, General? To me, they look like your own men.’

‘This is, regrettably, the case. Admiral Morgan is a traitor. Those who act under his command do so misguidedly, or because they are the host bodies for alien parasites. Either way, we will show them no mercy.’

‘This is all a little…’

‘Perhaps if you tell me what happened here, from the top.’

Marchand exhaled wearily.

‘What can I say? Santiago is a pretty quiet system, most of the time. Once we were a frontier system, and now the frontier has moved on. We make our money growing crops for export, and the Army pays substantial sums to the planetary government in compensation for letting them use much of the south for training grounds. Bar the odd training exercise, nothing much has happened here for years, then Admiral Morgan announced that he was setting up an alternative government in Achernar, and our planetary assembly voted to side with him.’

‘The people weren’t consulted?’

‘No. Not even I got to hear about it until after the fact by watching the news, like everyone else. Since then, none of the local politicians aside from those in local councils have been seen in public and suddenly Governor Escobar goes and declares a state of emergency and our streets are awash with troops.’

‘What troops?’

‘The ones that had been shipped here for a training exercise that same week. Then, suddenly, there were naval vessels in the system and all traffic with the rest of the galaxy was cut off. Those that attempted to run the blockade were shot out of the sky and declared to be escaping Commonwealth agents. Some people on San Pedro station said that they’d seen other ships, alien ships in the space around the planet too, until everything went quiet. We haven’t heard from the orbital for over a week now. All comms are down. Anyway, we continued in a state of lockdown with little happening until a few days ago, when all hell broke loose.’

‘So what changed?’

‘I’m guessing that your impending arrival must have been the catalyst. I’d been trying to get some sort of explanation for the situation from the planetary government and from the Army commanders on the planet and no-one was replying and then they started snatching people.’

‘Snatching people?’ queried Shale.

‘Yes. There’d been some arrests following our declaration for the Freedom Alliance. Enemy spies, we were told, but there was a steady stream of arrests in the days that followed. It seemed that anyone who spoke out against the government or who asked awkward questions was being silenced. I quickly learnt to keep my mouth shut. Then they started rounding people up en masse. Army units would block off a whole district of a city, or a whole town or village, and start loading people into trucks or trains at gun point. Any who resisted were shot. We first heard about it happening in the more outlying communities, and then they moved on to larger towns and then the capital. That’s when the panic started.’

‘What explanation was given?’

‘None whatsoever. People were taken away and never seen again, except…’

‘Except what?’ said Shale, prompting her.

‘Except that they were seen again, some of them… but they weren’t… they weren’t the same people. Something else was looking out through their eyes, and they didn’t recognise or even react to those who had known them. We even heard reports later on of people being rounded up by civilian mobs, not Army troopers, dragged away by people who had been their neighbours. People tried to resist but… Then you arrived. We saw the battle in orbit and thought that maybe someone was coming to rescue us. That was when I gave the announcement to flee into the countryside and head south to where you were landing and maybe we could save some people from what was happening. Those that tried to flee in AG vehicles were shot down like flies by Army air units. Those of us in ground vehicles have been attacked from the air, but we stood more of a chance since at least we could abandon our vehicles and run into cover if attacked. Truth is, I still don’t understand any of it myself,’ she said and shook her head sadly adding, incredulously: ‘Alien parasites, you say?’

‘Yes ma’am. We are currently at war with an alien race known as the Shapers, who operate by using the bodies of others as hosts for their vile creatures. Morgan has sided with them. Many others in the military have been enslaved by them. By the sound of things, your fellow citizens have also fallen victim to them. I need to know how bad it is. How many people are still alive in the city?’

‘Honestly? I don’t know. It’s possible that some people may still be holed up there. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope, General. My advice? You want to flatten the city from orbit with everything you have.’

Chen digested the information she was being fed. The results of the array’s initial scan were displayed in her vision via her HUD monocle. She zoomed the graphical representation of the systems south of their position in and out, rotated it, examined the extrapolated trajectories of the ships that had been detected and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

It made no sense. The Shapers appeared to be abandoning systems and consolidating their forces around Achernar, as a mass of freighters and their warship escorts converged on the system. Of course, this observation was based purely on the movements of former Commonwealth vessels now enslaved by the enemy. The Shaper vessels themselves were currently invisible to the array and would be until the modifications to it were complete. All but one. Chen focused on the massive object in orbit around the moon of Orinoco in the Achernar system. It had to be the gigantic vessel that the Nahabe had warned them about. Nothing else that she could think of could conceivably generate such a return.

Perhaps it was all a ruse? Perhaps the Shapers were pulling their enslaved ships back, safe in the knowledge that the Commonwealth would be able to see them, thus creating an invitation to attack apparently undefended systems? Chen was willing to bet that within those systems would be lurking Shaper craft waiting to pounce on any unsuspecting human ships. In time, she would be able to see what the bastards were up to. Right now though, she needed to see what they could be plotting closer to hand.

‘How reliable is the Mayor’s testimony, General?’ said Chen. ‘Are we to assume that San Domingo is beyond saving?’

‘She’s pretty adamant that that is the case, Admiral,’ said Shale, over the comm. channel from his APC. ‘She’s now urged me twice to destroy the city and anything in it. Given that she used to run the place and lived there most of her life, I’d say that was a pretty firm endorsement of the idea of us levelling the place.’

‘We can’t destroy a city on the testament of one woman, Admiral,’ said McManus, obviously alarmed.

‘I realise that, Commander,’ said Chen. ‘Which is why I don’t intend to do it unless we’re sure. Nevertheless, I do have the Themistocles standing by on station above the city.’

‘The scan results of your modified recon frigates don’t seem to corroborate her story, for a start,’ said Shale. ‘I mean, I can clearly see that there is a Shaper presence in the city, around twenty thousand troops, I’d guess, but nothing like the numbers she’s talking about. Are we sure that those things are working correctly?’

‘As sure as we can be, General. I have three ships alone focusing their instruments on the city. I can bring in Nahabe vessels to cross check their results. Maybe their superior equipment might detect things that we can’t spot.’

‘Might be a good idea. I’m despatching recon gunships to get a good look at low level. If you could have your fighter squadrons do sweeps of the city then we can correlate what they’re seeing through their low light and infrared instruments with what the arrays on the ships are telling us.’

‘Roger that.’

‘I can’t entirely discount what she was saying, Admiral,’ said Shale, obviously sounding troubled. ‘I don’t know if she was telling the truth, or whether it was mass hysteria, or what. Others we talked to said the same thing: Mass round-ups of civilians and what sounds like mass implantations. I’ve instructed the refugees to keep heading south. I don’t know what we can do for them, but at least we’ll be between them and the city. I’ve halted our advance for the time being until we decide what to do. Shale out.’

Chen felt uneasy. There was something going on here, she could feel it. Who in their right mind told you to obliterate their own home if the situation weren’t the direst imaginable? Yet their instruments revealed little to confirm the story that the refugees were repeating. She turned to McManus.

‘Commander, send orders to the flight deck. I want three of our squadrons flying recon patrols over the city, in rotation,’ and then she gave orders to Andrews. ‘Ensign, send a message to the Lord Protector aboard the Shadow in the Void. Tell them that we urgently require a ship to assist us in getting a closer look at the planet’s surface.’

She listened as McManus and Andrews began relaying her orders.

‘What do you think about the situation, Commander?’ she said to McManus.

‘I think you’re right to be cautious,’ he replied. ‘The Shapers are slippery bastards all right. This could all be a ruse to get us to fire on our own people.’

‘Or those people in the convoy could be telling the truth.’

‘All the same. We need to know what’s really down there before we start shooting.’

Outside the bridge windows, the slow ballet of ships continued. Chen watched as – as if to emphasise McManus’s words - one of the tactical missile frigates attached to the Leonides group unleashed a volley of kinetic missiles at a target on the planet below. Chen watched the rounds streaking through the atmosphere, distant sparks that vanished from view beneath the cloud tops, which seconds later were lit from beneath by flickers of light as the missiles hit home.

Later, leaving the technicians to their work, Colonel Gunderson, flanked by his men and Major Durham, strode out of the building housing the array and drank in the cool night air. It was time to make an inspection of the defences that his marines had erected about the site. He was pleased to see that his men had constructed their positions well. A series of fire bases covered the rocky, sloping approaches to the array, with interlocking fields of fire that fanned out across the barren terrain. They were situated well up on the hillside, well back from the edge of the tree line a couple of hundred metres away, ready to engage anything that emerged from cover. In each fire base, his men had erected pintle mounted heavy weapons – railguns, gatling cannons, repeating lasers – as well as distributing supplies of disposable one shot anti-armour rockets and anti-personnel fragmentation grenades. Between the fire bases, automatic sentry guns squatted on folding tripod legs, the multiple barrels of their gatling gun armaments jutting forwards from armoured fairings.

Gunderson walked slowly around the facility, stopping and chatting with his men, encouraging those who felt downhearted at missing out on all the action going on to the north, making a few suggestions about weapon placements and so on, and sharing a joke or two. Durham walked beside him, poker faced and stiff. He knew that Durham believed in keeping a certain distance from his men and he couldn’t help but feel that the Major overdid it at times, coming across as a little cold. Gunderson preferred a more informal approach to his men as long as they all bore in mind that he expected his orders to be obeyed to the letter.

They were inspecting one of the fire bases facing the eastern approaches to the array, when the call came in. Though the message was intended for Major Durham, Gunderson had patched his suit comm. into the local command net as he arrived, and heard it also.

‘Major, this is team Charlie. We’re about a click north-west of your position. We think we see movement.’ The man was trying to keep his voice low so as not to broadcast his position to any potential hostiles.

‘I sent some squads out to reconnoitre the area,’ said Durham to Gunderson. ‘Those trees would provide good cover for an attacking force. Starship sensors be damned, I want men on the ground to see what’s out there.’

Gunderson nodded in agreement. It was his opinion also that the mark one marine eyeball was still the most reliable piece of kit in their surveillance arsenal, when it came down to it.

‘Can you confirm what you’re seeing, Sergeant Huang? Could it be local wildlife?’ said Durham.

‘I don’t know. It’s difficult to tell,’ said Huang. ‘Our low light helmet sensors show things moving under the trees. But they don’t show up on our heat scopes. I’ve ordered my men into overwatch.’

‘This is Colonel Gunderson. What sort of things, Sergeant?’

‘We thought we saw human figures at first, but they seemed to melt into the trees but we keep seeing glimpses of other things and… I know this sounds absurd, sir. Some of the men report hearing whispered voices out of the darkness.’

Gunderson had seen enough reports. He had a bad feeling about this.

‘Sergeant. You and your men are to withdraw in an orderly fashion towards our position. Is that clear?’

‘Yes sir,’ Huang replied.

‘Major Durham. Recall the other squads. Order the other men to stand to and be ready. Get the gunships up in the air – we may need air support.’

‘Sir?’

‘Do it, Major.’

‘Something’s coming out of the trees,’ said Huang, suddenly. ‘I can’t see them properly, but it looks like… shit! Open fire!’ There was the crackling of automatic weapons fire.

‘Sergeant! Who or what is attacking you?’ said Gunderson, his voice insistent.

‘They’re all around us!’ cried Huang. ‘Shit! They’re all around us! Fall back! Fall back and regroup!’

‘Sergeant, report!’ Gunderson barked.

‘Dead men, sir! We’re being attacked by dead men!’

There was an extended burst of weapons fire, the sound of screams and explosions. Huang screamed and fell silent, and then something else could be heard over the comm, a rasping sound that issued from decomposing vocal cords before the link was terminated

As gunships screamed into the sky behind them, Durham asked, haltingly:

‘What did he mean? Sir, what did Sergeant Huang mean when he said they were being “attacked by dead men.”’

‘It’s the Shapers, Major. Their slaves are coming for us.’

‘But the starships? Their sensors saw nothing…’

‘I know that, Major,’ said Gunderson, who grabbed a rail rifle and then activated his suit comm. ‘All squads, be advised: enemy forces inbound. They’re in the trees and they’re coming right for us. Give them hell.’

As Gunderson finished his words, and his men began to react, the first of a mob of ragged figures, their military fatigues caked in earth and blood, some with limbs missing, some with gaping, grievous wounds to their bodies began to emerge from the tree-line below them, and started to charge.

General Shale’s forces had drawn themselves up into a defensive posture about a mile from the city. The guns of his tanks faced the city. San Domingo was now visible through their infrared sensors as a smudge of heat on the horizon against the cool of the night, the high rise towers jutting upwards against the sky like glowing fingers. The vehicles themselves were parked hull down in serried ranks, their low, armoured forms protruding above the sea of gossamer ferns. His men had advanced quickly and then dismounted from their rides, taking up positions along either side of the highway as the last of the refugees to leave the city passed between them. Tens of thousands of desperate looking people had now headed south through their lines, and the column showed no signs of abating. Overhead, the distant sound of spacecraft engines tore through the night as squadrons from the carriers orbiting above them headed for the city on recon missions. Shale had ordered the other two columns to halt and dig in also, and now his forces sat poised like a vast armoured claw, ready to grab the city. Scans from the orbiting ships using the new sensors showed an enemy presence inside the city, mainly clustered about the centre of town and the Assembly House and government buildings in a defensive posture. Squadrons from the Army and Navy were now overhead and were confirming what the Navy ships had already reported. There were armoured vehicles concealed within the narrower streets and alleyways of the city and figures could be seen moving in the streets in an oddly regimented fashion. What was odd was that, apart from these, the city didn’t look that abnormal. The streets were almost deserted, but there were the usual heat and electromagnetic sources one would expect to be coming from most of the houses and apartment blocks and no signs of any sort of struggle. It didn’t tie up with the accounts that Mayor Marchand had given him, of a violent crackdown and the mass rounding up of the city’s inhabitants. Something wasn’t right. Were the Shapers simply trying to hide what they had done?

In the back of his APC, Shale began drawing up orders. The infantry were to push into the city, scouting units in light vehicles leading the way and heavy armour following close behind to provide heavier firepower where it was needed. The artillery would remain here, delivering indirect fire support if required. With the remaining civilian population leaving the city, at least he didn’t have to worry so much about collateral damage.

He relayed his orders also to Colonel Shima and Colonel Reynolds in command of the two other columns, ordering them to synchronise their assaults, so that the enemy would be simultaneously hit from three different directions. The other two commanders reported that their troops were in good order and were formed up ready to attack. Unlike Shale’s column, they had not encountered any massed groups of refugees, although a few isolated parties had made their way through their lines.

It was as Shale began to speak to his own unit commanders, and his troops made ready to move off, that the message came in. It was from Major Douglas, in command of the artillery division a kilometre to the rear of the column. Her voice was strained and urgent. ‘General, this is Major Douglas. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack! Enemy forces to the rear!’

Shale’s eye strayed to his tactical map. There was nothing showing to the south except for his own units, and the column of vehicles fleeing from the city.

‘Major, this is Shale. Please confirm: who is attacking you?’

‘It’s the refugees!’ said Douglas, as small arms fire began to crackle in the background. ‘Oh my God! Something’s happened to them, they’re climbing out of their vehicles and turning on us!’

Shale’s heart sank. As he looked back at his display, winking traces denoting the presence of the enemy were starting to appear south of his position in a line that was creeping back up the road towards where the bulk of his units now sat. Units that - he realised as shots began to ring out outside the APC - were now facing the wrong way.

Chapter 42

Sunlight flooded into the bridge of the Shining Glory and they stood open mouthed at the scene that its radiance illuminated. The sheer scale of what they were seeing was overwhelming. It was as if the surface of an impossibly large planet had been pasted onto the inside of the gigantic globe. Vast artificial continents, themselves many hundreds of times larger than the surface area of any planet that had ever existed, were separated by seas of similarly enormous expanse. These seas were dotted with what appeared to be chains of small islands, but which were in fact landmasses larger than the combined continents of the Earth. There were huge swathes of green from forests and grasslands hundreds of thousands of kilometres across, great rivers that wound through them and sparkled in the light and vast sweeping deserts, swirled with colours like daubs of oil paint, whilst chains of snow capped mountains marched across the land like lines of jagged teeth rising tens of kilometres from the artificial surface. Banks of cloud moved above the oversized landscape, shining a brilliant white in the sunlight and swirling in immense weather systems. Even those of the largest gas giants were dwarfed in comparison by their size, though here their violence was tamed by the careful contouring of the land, breaking it up with chains of mountains and hills and great island archipelagos to absorb their force. The entire scene was so overwhelmingly large, that the human, Arkari or K’Soth eye could scarcely comprehend it all in one go. The brain sought to break it down to a more manageable size, using the lack of points of reference to try and ignore the fact that here was a habitable environment with the diameter of a planetary orbit, and moreover, that it had once been constructed by beings not unlike themselves.

The sphere was so large, and its curvature so correspondingly gradual, that even millions of kilometres from its surface, the interior of the sphere appeared to the observer as a flat wall of colour, like gazing at the page of an enormous atlas. It was only when the eye travelled around, to take in the furthermost reaches of the sphere’s interior and squint past the brightness of the sun at its centre to observe the opposing side, that its curved nature became apparent. But there were points that moved against that backdrop, points that upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be worlds in their own right, worlds that had evolved naturally from a disc of gas and dust billions of years previously and had later been encased in this artificial shell by the beings that had emerged from the second planet from the system’s sun. For that second planet was the home-world of the Progenitors.

‘Home,’ said Eonara, a sense of longing in her normally dispassionate voice. ‘I haven’t seen it for so long. I can scarcely believe that it still exists.’

‘Just look at it!’ said Katherine. ‘The sheer scale of this place! All of it, preserved for billions of years…’

‘I can barely imagine the engineering capabilities of those who built it,’ mused Rekkid. ‘How do you even sanely contemplate building something of this size?’

‘No wonder the Akkal thought that this was the home of gods,’ rumbled Steelscale. ‘Who but a god could create something like this?’

‘Bivian was impressive enough, but this… it’s so pristine,’ said Katherine.

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said the ship. ‘I am detecting artificial structures all across the surface of both the sphere and the three planets orbiting within it. However, there are no power signatures coming from them. There appears to be some sort of power or data network buried in the base structure, but I can’t see anything tapping into it.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Rekkid. ‘That nobody’s home?’

‘Correct.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ said Katherine. ‘Four billion years is a long time in the history of any species. Long enough for the remaining Progenitors to become extinct, leaving this place preserved and untouched.’

‘I had hoped to find them here,’ said Eonara. ‘Moreover, I had hoped that they might be able to help us locate the facility that was used to create the Shapers. But it has been so long…’

‘The AIs controlling the sphere’s defences seemed to think that the Progenitors were still alive,’ said Mentith. ‘I’m not sure how much we can rely on their testimony, or their current state of mind. But we should look more closely. Perhaps the Progenitors do not wish to be seen. They have, after all, hidden here for billions of years. It is entirely possible that they have prepared themselves for the arrival of any intruders.’

‘I’m not detecting any ships within the sphere,’ said the ship. ‘No comm. signals, no hyperspace disturbances of any kind. There is some sort of machinery or construct within the corona of the star, however. It is difficult to see against the background glare, but it seems to be active. I’m picking up what appear to be wormhole termini in the vicinity of the star. It is possible that they are being generated or tethered by the structure.’

‘Show us,’ said Mentith. At his command, an image of the Progenitors’ sun appeared in mid air, its brightness adjusted to compensate for its blinding radiance. A tracery of artificial structures encased the star, girdling its equator and describing its latitude and longitude with geometric precision.

‘The Progenitors called it the Star Harness,’ said Eonara. ‘It is a vast energy exchange system. It is what has kept their home-world’s sun from ageing. Ordinarily, had it been allowed to follow its natural life cycle, the star would have consumed its hydrogen fuel by now, ballooning out into a red giant and destroying the home-world and the Great Sphere before collapsing into a white dwarf. The Star Harness contains a number of wormhole devices, similar to those that brought us here but with a smaller diameter, that terminate within the atmospheres of stars within uninhabited systems or interstellar gas clouds, and which funnel additional hydrogen into this star, thus keeping it alive. In turn, the energy output of the star is taken and redirected elsewhere, providing a source of power for the sphere’s systems and for the outer defences and wormhole gates.’

‘They turned the star into a gigantic reactor for their own use,’ said Rekkid. ‘Fascinating.’

‘Yes. An equally impressive feat of engineering as the sphere that surrounds us,’ said Eonara. ‘Its self repairing systems have kept it operational, untended, for four billion years.’

‘What about controlling AI’s? Is there anything there that we can communicate with?’ said Mentith.

‘The Star Harness is maintained by four such beings. However, they are more limited in their design than those that maintain the gate network and the sphere’s defences. They were never designed to communicate with the outside world except with other machines and even then, they would only be interested in discussing their operational parameters with me.’

‘And what about the sphere itself?’ asked Mentith. ‘You once oversaw Bivian and its inhabitants. Surely there must be a similar entity acting as warden of this place?’

‘There was once, yes. Aaokon. He was the best of us, the greatest of all the AIs created by the Progenitors. If anyone can be called father to the Shapers, it was he, for he oversaw the programme to develop their race and it was he who took responsibility when they turned against us. Records concerning his fate at the end of the war are conflicting at best. As far as I can establish - riddled with guilt, Aaokon volunteered to stay behind to watch over this place, confining himself to remain as its guardian, but at the very last, he was urged to flee the galaxy with the others, to help them establish a new civilisation in the galaxy humans call Andromeda. As to which course of action he took, I cannot say. Suffice to say that nothing more has been heard from him since. He may have fled, only to have been destroyed.’

‘Eonara, you said that your intention upon coming here was to locate the very facility used to create the Shapers and unlock its secrets to defeat them,’ said Katherine. ‘This is all very interesting, but should we not be heading there?’

‘We should,’ Eonara replied. ‘Except that its location was also wiped from my memory as well as the knowledge it contains.’

‘Great,’ said Rekkid. ‘I mean it shouldn’t take us long to find in this place, right?’ he added taking in the vast vista with a sweep of his hand.

‘I had hoped that Aaokon may still be active. However, it seems not. Nevertheless, I may be able to access local, dormant systems to determine its location. I am able to recall its appearance and general layout however, so yes, in extremis, we would need to search the surface of the sphere and that of the worlds within it to locate the facility.’

‘If I may interrupt,’ said the ship as its cat avatar padded across the deck towards them, fur bristling. ‘I have detected a number of heat signatures coming from the surface of the sphere. Their size and intensity indicates that they may be of artificial origins. My guess is that they could be coming from within primitive buildings. They could be cooking fires.’

‘Cooking fires? Someone is alive down there?’ said Katherine.

‘Plenty of things are alive on the surface. The local imported wildlife appears to be flourishing. Whether any of it is sentient, is another matter. Four billion years is long enough for any number of local species to have evolved intelligence.’

‘Or they could be descendants of the Progenitors,’ Katherine replied.

‘They could indeed,’ said the ship.

‘We should investigate more closely,’ said Mentith. ‘I don’t know what else we have to go on, but if Eonara can make contact with them, we may be able to learn something about what happened to this place.’

‘I think it is a vain hope, War Marshal,’ said Eonara, sadly. ‘If these are truly the remnants of the Progenitor race then they may very well have no knowledge of the distant past. Their language may be incomprehensible to me and if they have descended into barbarism, then they may treat us with fear and suspicion. I would urge caution.’

‘We shall observe from a distance before making contact,’ said Mentith. ‘We have to start somewhere and…’ He sighed. ‘We have come all this way. I for one would like to at least observe the Progenitors, perhaps meet them, regardless of what has happened to them in the intervening eons. Ship, take us in.’

The Shining Glory skimmed the upper atmosphere of the sphere, the endless landscape rushing by a mere hundred kilometres below it. Ahead, the landscape curved gradually upwards until the perspective rendered its appearance into that of a vast curving wall of land and sea. Below them, rose jagged mountains capped with greenery, the vertiginous heights, kilometres high, almost razor sharp as they pierced through the dense, enveloping jungle.

‘Look at this landscape,’ mused Katherine. ‘What on earth possessed them to build mountain ranges like this? This terrain must surely be impassable without flying.’

‘They are not mountains,’ said Eonara. ‘What you are looking at are the remains of the Progenitor cities, great towers and arcologies that once reached up to beyond the atmosphere, now long crumbled and over grown. Nature has taken over, in this unnatural place.’

The Glory’s sensors showed them. Below them, a great surging river wound between the half collapsed structures, the waters eating away at crumbling walls laden with eons of accumulated plant and animal life, the floors carpeted with soil and eaten and cracked by the roots of mighty trees. The buildings had become titanic multi-levelled jungle habitats, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on a grand scale, repeated thousands of times all across the surface of the sphere. Herds of shuffling herbivores wandered where once broad boulevards had thronged with people and traffic, flights of avians roosted on the exposed and half collapsed floors now crumbling into pock marked, rust streaked cliffs, whilst predators stalked amidst the ruins of a long vanished civilisation. The crumbling city below them was more alive now that it had ever been, its original inhabitants replaced by billions of plants and animals, imported originally from across the galaxy and now evolved into new forms in a bizarre and yet workable ecosystem. It was beautiful. The dead city, lying in its shroud of greenery, had been brought back to life again.

At last they approached their destination. The ship came to a halt and then focused its cameras on a distant, broad canyon, what had once presumably been a broad highway between rows of towering arcologies. As the view zoomed in, a thin stream of smoke could be seen rising above the trees, and then the regular forms of primitive buildings, little more than circular huts about a central longhouse. Between the buildings were the vague shapes of figures. They were humanoid and upright, their slightly squat bodies clothed in rough spun tunics and animal skins, their own hides tanned by exposure to the sun. One, a female, judging by her physique, turned a weather beaten face upwards and appeared to be looking straight at them as her features filled the display of the Shining Glory’s bridge.

‘My god…’ breathed Katherine, taking in those leathery features. ‘We’re face to face with the Progenitors.’

‘No,’ said a voice, its pronunciation of English a rich baritone and flawless. ‘That is not they.’

‘I’m detecting a signal coming from around the second planet,’ said the ship. ‘Data format indicates that it is of Progenitor origin. Transmission source is moving towards us at speed. I am detecting a ship. Comparison with my database suggests that it is of Progenitor design.’

‘Aaokon,’ said Eonara.

‘The very same. Welcome home, Eonara. I have been watching your ship ever since you entered the sphere, discreetly monitoring your systems. The Defence Collective alerted me to your presence, but I wanted to be sure. I thought that it was too much to hope for, that it might be some trick of the Shapers, but I see now that they spoke the truth. It has been too long.’

‘I have brought others with me,’ said Eonara. ‘The crew of this ship are Arkari, an advanced space faring civilisation from the galaxy’s main disc, also a human from the same region and a K’Soth. Their societies are locked in a war with our old enemy as we speak. I bring them here, because I wish to help them end it.’

‘I have watched your struggle, and those of others across the galaxy. The Progenitors cannot help you. I will do what I can,’ said Aaokon sadly.

‘Aaokon, I am Doctor Katherine O’Reilly. I am the human that Eonara mentioned,’ said Katherine, addressing the disembodied voice.

‘Yes, Doctor O’Reilly, I am aware of your people.’

‘I would like to know who those beings are on the surface of the sphere that we are currently looking at. If they are not the Progenitors, then who are they?’

‘They are the last surviving members of the Akkal people,’ said Aaokon. ‘Their home-worlds were destroyed. I took it upon myself to preserve their species.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not? It seemed the proper thing to do, especially since I was the cause. I felt that I ought to rectify my dreadful mistake. The last of many, I’m afraid, and not - as you might think - my greatest failure.’

‘Oh…’ replied Katherine, the realisation sinking in as the great golden ship emerged from hyperspace above the Shining Glory and the robed figure of a Progenitor male, his patrician features rendered in golden light, materialised on the bridge. Everyone gasped. ‘Perhaps I might rectify my greatest error. Now that you have made it this far, an explanation is in order,’ said Aaokon, and bowed slightly to the assembled beings. ‘Much of what I am about to tell you was deleted from Eonara’s mind at her behest. Even my knowledge has been selectively edited, but I retain more than the others. I was not the first AI to be created by the race you know as the Progenitors, but I was, in their opinion, the greatest. Certainly my processing capabilities exceeded that of all the others. I was constructed to oversee the heart of the Progenitor Empire, to govern this place, to assist the Progenitors in the management of their vast galactic dominion and to aid them in their scientific endeavours. After thousands of years of conquest and expansion, the Empire reached from one side of this galaxy to the other, its systems linked together by the construction of the gate network, the transport arteries that held the Progenitors’ rule in place. With peace established throughout the galaxy, the Progenitors’ gaze turned outwards towards the other galaxies in the local group. Here were surely billions more worlds ripe for exploration and expansion. But the policing and administration of such a vast empire was already proving a strain on the Progenitors and their rule largely depended upon the compliance of local dignitaries and a vast web of patronage and favour. Not all welcomed their comparatively enlightened rule, and the gate network was expanded further to enable their forces to move about the galaxy with ever greater speed. Although the Progenitor people numbered in the trillions at their height, this was but a drop in the ocean when one considers the two hundred billion star systems of this galaxy and the thousands of different civilisations that had been incorporated into the Empire. It was a monumental task, and further expansion would have placed an even greater strain on their resources.’

‘Why bother to expand at all?’ said Katherine. ‘Wasn’t one galaxy enough?’

Aaokon looked at her with a sad smile on his golden features. ‘Hubris, that’s why - a symptom of all empires at their height and usually one that presages their fall. The Progenitors thought that they were invincible. They thought that their rule would have no end. Like countless others throughout the ages, they were wrong.’

‘I believe that my own people are a recent example of this self delusion,’ said Steelscale, ruefully.

‘Quite so,’ said Aaokon. ‘In any case, the decision was taken to explore the rest of the universe via other means. The Progenitors lacked the manpower to send vast exploratory fleets beyond the galaxy without depleting their already stretched resources at home. They had already perfected artificial intelligence, but they needed AIs that were able to truly act independently within proscribed boundaries. Exploring beyond the galaxy would take many millennia and it would be necessary for such entities to be able to self replicate and self repair and if required to evolve independently as circumstances demanded. I was chosen to head up the committee of First Kind AIs involved in the creation of a new form of artificial life, the Second Kind. Eonara and several others also played a major role in their development.’

‘Yes, we know all this,’ said Rekkid. ‘The new form of life turned out to be ruthless and without compassion for other forms of life, seeing them as inferior. They conspired to destroy the Progenitor race and take over the galaxy. The rest is history.’

‘Indeed,’ said Aaokon, irritated at Rekkid’s interruption. ‘However, what Eonara has not been able to tell you was that our experiments into the creation of new life did not end there. Another programme had been established to colonise the wider universe by other means. We explored the possibility of seeding distant candidate planets with caches of nanomachines. These would lie dormant until life began to emerge on these worlds, whereupon the genetic make-up of the native creatures would be gradually altered over millions of years. This directed evolution would eventually result in the native ecosystems producing creatures that were increasingly similar to the Progenitor people. In time, the Empire would expand across the universe and find fledgling civilisations already in place, which could then be re-united with the parent once their origins were explained to them. Understand of course that we were planning along extremely long timescales here since the Progenitors fully expected their empire to last. In the end, of course, it all came to nought. Our research was subverted by the Shapers and the resulting virus that they engineered from it proceeded to wipe out a sizeable portion of the Progenitor population. As the Empire collapsed around them, the Progenitors took the decision to use the technology that had been developed to seed planets in this galaxy as a last ditch attempt to preserve their legacy and defy the Shapers who now had the upper hand.’

‘You seeded planets in this galaxy? Which ones?’ said Mentith. ‘Are the Akkal the products of your genetic technology?’

‘Yes. At first I chose to remain within the sphere as its keeper. I felt that I was responsible for the misguided creation of the Shapers and happily accepted being walled up in this place as my punishment. The assumption then was that perhaps in time the Progenitors might return one day and I would act as guardian of the ones who elected to stay behind until they did. Meanwhile, a number of AIs took it upon themselves to scatter caches of our nanomachines throughout the galaxy, before fleeing through the portal to Andromeda, each keeping secret from the others their destinations in case of capture by the Shapers. I remained here but… it seems somehow that the virus managed to gain access to the population within the sphere. I did what I could but it tore through those who remained and out of the billion or so who stayed behind, only a handful survived on the home-world. Not enough, I thought, to maintain a breeding population. I took a rash decision to leave the sphere and scatter some of the nanomachines throughout the galaxy and then flee to Andromeda myself, tell the Progenitors never to return and assist in the creation of their new civilisation. I did not get far. After seeding one world, the Shaper fleets caught up with me and, thinking me destroyed, left me for dead. There I remained for almost four billion years, whilst I watched life emerge on the world that I had seeded, and then I saw the first flickering of intelligence appear. Though I was powerless to intervene, it gave me hope that at least in a tiny corner of the galaxy, the descendants of the Progenitors endured. Eventually, the Akkal developed space flight, began to colonise the other worlds in their star system, and they found me adrift in the outer system.’

‘I think we know what happened next,’ said Rekkid. ‘You told them the truth, and it tore their civilisation apart.’

‘Yes. In my enthusiasm I did not consider fully what implications this knowledge would have for their society. I told them the truth. I allowed them to access the gate network and ‘return home’. Perhaps I was being selfish. I too wished to return here, to repair my shattered ship and perhaps see if any of the Progenitors still remained here. The Akkal helped me. They used their primitive technologies to transport me across the system to the portal. I in return turned over the secrets of this place, thinking that the Progenitors’ ancient technologies would be of use to them. It was a mistake. They were not ready. They misunderstood what I had told them, worshipped me and the Progenitors as gods and turned on their fellows as unbelievers. Eventually the AIs in the gate network realised that the Akkal had managed to obtain some of the Shaper’s terror weapons from the wrecks around the Ilion system gate junction and shut down the portals leading to their system, but it was too late. I created the Akkal, and I destroyed them also. I created the Shapers and unwittingly released their terror upon the galaxy.’

The golden ship had drawn alongside the Shining Glory now. A great elongated star that glowed softly with a shifting inner light, it was undoubtedly the same vessel that they had seen depicted over and over again in the artworks left by the Akkal in their archives.

‘The Akkal who were trapped here became my wards. They live simple, uncomplicated lives, and after ten thousand years they have forgotten about me. I prefer to leave it that way. I assist them indirectly from time to time, but I would wish them to find their own way in the universe, and rediscover the truth about their home in good time.’

‘And what of the Progenitors who remained here, what became of them?’ said Katherine.

‘They appear to have struggled on for some time amid the ruins of their civilisation. But they were so few in number that the population remained very low. As far as I am able to tell, a number of phases of civilisation have taken place on the home-world, but they have never again reached the heights that their ancestors achieved. In fact I do not believe that they have ever achieved interplanetary space flight. The last wave of civilisations ended up in a nuclear exchange between the nation states that existed at the time. That was over twenty thousand years ago, by your reckoning. Currently the planet supports a population of just under ten million individuals concentrated in the temperate regions of the planet. They have just rediscovered astronomy and are starting to wonder whether the patterns that they see beyond the sky really are another land inhabited by people like themselves as the legends suggest.’

‘Is it possible to meet them? We’ve come all this way and…’ Katherine began, hurriedly and instantly regretted her over eager outburst.

‘I would advise against it,’ replied Aaokon. ‘I cannot prevent you, except by force, and I have no wish to use it. But I would ask that you leave them alone. They do not know of their own ancestry and our arrival would be deeply traumatic for them. Perhaps you can observe them from afar, as you have the Akkal.’

‘Aaokon, I have to ask: is the facility where we created the Shapers still intact?’ said Eonara.

‘Yes.’

‘I require access to it. Aaokon, I need to access the data that was deleted from my mind. I need to know how the Shapers were created, how they work, how they think and communicate and I need to know because I intend to destroy our creation once and for all.’

‘The research facility has remained sealed under the ice at the home-world’s southern pole ever since the war,’ Aaokon replied. ‘I can give you the coordinates and the access codes. You should find everything in order, even after all this time.’

‘Aaokon, you mentioned that other worlds throughout the galaxy had been seeded by the Progenitors,’ said Rekkid. ‘Which other worlds?’

‘I do not know,’ replied Aaokon. ‘As I have said before, the information was compartmentalised.’

‘The Defence Collective seemed quite happy to admit us to this place, once they had scrutinised us. They said that Arkari and humans were welcome, but they were suspicious of Steelscale here. So, which worlds?’

‘What are you getting at?’ whispered Katherine, shooting Rekkid a quizzical look.

‘I do not know,’ Aaokon repeated, firmly. ‘The only place where you will find such information is on the home-world, at the research facility. It exists nowhere else, to my knowledge.’

‘And you have never looked?’ said Katherine.

‘No. Such things should remain buried. The disaster that befell the Akkal is proof of that. Some truths are just too much for some civilisations to bear. If you look, you do so at your own peril. I will not stop you, but I would warn you against obtaining such knowledge. However, Eonara, I would be happy to assist you in your efforts to destroy the Shapers. It is time to undo our greatest mistake.’

‘To the Progenitor home-world then,’ said Mentith. ‘Ship: take us in.’

Chapter 43

Isaacs squinted through a pair of compact binoculars at the rain drenched street. Beside him, on the flat rooftop, assault rifles lay in a waterproof bag. Anna huddled with him, her hair plastered to her head by the lukewarm downpour. The club, a dive named The Vortex, lay on the other side of the street, the lights and holos of its frontage turned off during the daytime. The club was on the edge of town, between the centre and the spaceport, not far from the hotel in which they were staying in an area known as Portside. Here, the oppressive security presence within the city was far less noticeable. There were occasional, desultory patrols, but so far they had seen no checkpoints and although the streets were quiet, there seemed to be more people going about their normal business.

Isaacs wasn’t too sure what that business might be. He knew this area all too well. It was a shady no-man’s land where the police had always been reluctant to go, patrolled instead by a network of local street gangs and where the gangsters of the Sirius Syndicate held sway above all. It was conveniently close to the spaceport – all the better for moving illicit goods in and out of the system, illicit goods which were all too often sold through front businesses like the one they were looking at right now, or through the groups of feral looking gang members that loitered around the street corners. He could see a couple now, huddled down in the doorway of a derelict building further down the street.

‘How’s everything look?’ said Steven’s voice in his ear.

‘Pretty quiet,’ Isaacs replied, keeping his voice low as he spoke into the mic. buried inside his jacket collar. ‘I’ve seen one or two people coming and going from the club, but it doesn’t look like there’s any door security at this time of day. One or two dodgy characters in the street outside, but nothing you should be concerned about.’

‘Entrances?’

‘Aside from the main one, there’s a fire exit that opens into the alley on the north side of the building.’

‘Okay, well here goes. You know what to do if I call you for backup.’

‘Sure. We’ll be ready until you come out.’

And with that Steven cut the encrypted link. Isaacs looked over at Anna, who was busy pushing rain soaked hair out of her eyes.

‘We couldn’t have picked a sunny day for this?’ she said, and blew a drop of water off the end of her nose.

In the street below, their truck - with Steven at the controls - pulled up outside The Vortex.

Steven stepped out of the truck into the pouring rain, which quickly began to soak the dark suit he had chosen to wear. He dashed across the pavement into the shelter of the club’s entrance and felt the extra weight of the pistol he wore under his jacket and the backup weapon strapped to his lower right leg shifting as he ran. Standing out of the rain, he took a second to compose himself and get into character as he brushed the rainwater off the suit’s expensive material and adjusted his tie. The doors to the club were open. Steven steeled himself, and then walked calmly inside.

The interior of the club had seen better days. The dim lighting couldn’t disguise the faded, peeling paintwork and the carpets that were sticky and stained by years of spilled drinks. Music thudded in the background as in one corner a near naked woman with a fixed grin and empty eyes gyrated on a stage lit by flashing coloured lights and suggestive holos. Steven took it in, noting the various denizens of the club leaning against the bar, huddled in booths at the side of the room or lounging around the gaming tables. He felt their eyes on him as he walked across the room to the bar and ordered himself a drink. As he paid the heavily tattooed barman and took a first mouthful of the cheap, adulterated beer that he had just been charged over the odds for, Steven leaned over and tried to engage the man in conversation.

‘How’s business these days?’

‘Could be better,’ said the barman. ‘This fucking security lockdown is scaring away my customers, ‘cept these guys,’ he added indicating towards the rest of the room with a nod. ‘They basically fucking live here.’

‘Yeah, I had a hell of time getting here. What the fuck is this Admiral Morgan playing at anyway?’

‘I dunno,’ said the barman. ‘And you know what? Anyone who seems to ask that question around here seems to go missing.’ His eyes narrowed and he looked Steven up and down. ‘You a cop? ‘Cause I got nothing to hide.’

‘No, no. I’m here on business,’ said Steven, with a placatory smile. ‘Actually, you might be able to help me. I’m looking for Mr Molinelli.’

‘Yeah? And who the fuck are you?’ said another man sitting further down the bar who had suddenly turned and stared at Steven piercingly. He had the look of an attack dog. Steven at first took him to be a common thug, until he saw the expensive jewellery and the designer clothes overlaying his body’s network of scars and prison tattoos.

‘Name’s Steve van Horne. I’m in the import-export business, so to speak, and you are?’

‘I’m nobody. What do you want?’ spat the man.

‘Well, I have a proposition for Mr Molinelli. Times are a little tough around here, but maybe I can turn that to our mutual advantage. Certain goods are difficult to acquire nowadays, I understand? I can help out there.’

‘Not interested.’

‘Well that’s a pity. You know, I used to have a good working relationship with Mr. Bennett when he was in charge in this city. It was a great pity what happened to him, but I had hoped that I might be able to work with his successors.’

The man looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Well, I ain’t never heard of you, but… wait here,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Steven, before springing up from his bar stool and hurrying off into a back room.

Steven waited, his senses alert to the other people in the room, the guns he carried a reassuring weight against his skin. He sipped his drink. A few moments later the attack dog reappeared. Another man followed in his wake: this one was grossly overweight and walked with a fat man’s rolling gait, black hair slicked back and his thick, sweaty neck adorned with gold chains. He sat next to Steven as the barman automatically handed him a drink and he appeared to be sizing him up.

‘Van Horne, huh? I’m Vito Molinelli. Michael here says you used to work with Bennett?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Steven, aware that Michael - evidently the attack dog had a name - was still hanging around within earshot. ‘He and I had a nice little thing going until he got iced. Heard the government finally caught up with him.’

‘I hear all sorts of things about what happened to Bennett, but I never heard of you,’ said Molinelli, pointing at him with a chubby index finger.

‘Really? I’m surprised. Maybe he wanted to keep me all to himself.’

‘Maybe. Ah, Bennett didn’t tell all and sundry about his business dealings,’ Molinelli shrugged. ‘So: I hear you have some sort of proposition for me?’

‘Yeah. I’m in the import-export business and I have a special line in acquiring rare or quality goods for discerning customers. The current situation is hurting your business, am I right?’

‘Too fucking right it is. With all those ships in orbit and the war? I can’t get shit. I’m fucking bleeding here. No customers. No shipments. Fucking troops and cops everywhere…’

‘Right, right. Except I managed to make it through all that. See, I have a fast ship with a good crew working for me, and get this: it has a fucking stealth module fitted to the drive.’

‘Holy shit. That must’ve set you back a fair piece.’

‘Yeah, but it pays for itself. Fucking Navy can’t track me. Plus I got a nice little private spaceport all of my own way out in the jungle. Don’t have to worry about customs. In and out, and those dumb Navy fuckers never see us. See, I can get you goods that are hard to come by, especially now the rest of the Commonwealth is cut off from here. Some things are getting scarce, right? Even some normal and legal shit. People will pay over the odds for stuff like that. Here, take a look at this.’ Steven reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small plastic container. He opened it and showed the contents to Molinelli.

‘The fuck is this? Herbs and spices?’

‘This is Barrachak Cloudfrond.’

‘I know what it is. I do own a coupla restaurants, you know.’

‘So you know that you can only get this stuff from Vreeth space, right? This stuff has increased in price ten times since the war broke out. It’s almost impossible to get hold of and the only sources are from stocks of the dried stuff. But here, check it out.’

Molinelli took the container from him and sniffed the Cloudfrond, prodding it with his thick fingers, crushing it between thumb and forefinger and smelling the results.

‘It’s still fresh,’ said Molinelli.

‘Right. Straight from the source. See I brought that to you as a taster. Something nice and legal that I could carry around the streets with me, but that I could use to prove to you my capabilities. I’m renting a room in a hotel not far from here, The Traveller’s Rest.’

‘Yeah, I know it.’

‘I got other samples back there you might be interested in, more… selected and high quality goods, so to speak. You wanna come and have a look at what I can offer? We can talk and maybe come to some mutually beneficial arrangement.’

Molinelli nodded thoughtfully, then made a gesture to Michael. The fierce little man produced a scanning device of some kind which he held out towards Steven like a talisman.

‘Don’t fucking move,’ said Michael.

‘The hell is this?’ Steven replied, protesting, meanwhile preparing himself to take down both men if necessary.

‘Just a precaution, van Horne. It’s just that you’re a new face in here’ said Molinelli. ‘Don’t take it personal, but the cops have tried to set me up before, you know. Michael’s just going to check you for any little surveillance devices you might have about your person.’

Michael ran the device over Steven’s body, front and back, and then stepped back.

‘He’s clean, boss, but he is carrying a couple of pieces. One under his left arm-pit, the other strapped to his right ankle.’

‘You came into my place armed?’ said Molinelli, obviously offended.

‘Just a precaution, Molinelli. Rough neighbourhood. Don’t take it personal,’ Steven grinned.

‘You got that right,’ grunted Molinelli. ‘But don’t you come in here heavy again, okay?’

‘Got it.’

‘You come here alone?’

‘No, I got my two guys outside. Well, guy and girl. They’re my crew. They’re just watching my back.’

‘They armed too?’

‘Yep, but they’re strictly on a “don’t shoot until I tell them to” footing. But trust me, I’ve learned the hard way what happens if I don’t take precautions walking into a place like this unprepared.’

Molinelli appeared to be mulling over his options. He nodded slowly, then took a mouthful of his drink and swallowed before he answered.

‘Well it’s not ideal, but here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll take Michael here, and another one of my guys. They’ll both be strapped, but they’ll also be on orders not to use ‘em unless I give the word. Insurance, you understand? You got a ride?’

‘My truck’s right outside.’

‘Good. We’ll come with you to your hotel and meet you in the lobby, then we’ll go on up and have a little chat, real nice.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Steven replied. ‘See you outside.’ He lifted his comm. to his ear. ‘Yeah it’s me,’ he said, speaking quickly into the slender device. ‘I’m coming out.’

Isaacs and Anna were already approaching the truck, their weapons concealed in holdalls, as Steven walked calmly out of the front entrance of the club. The rain had stopped, and Steven squinted at the bright sunshine now reflecting from the puddles in the street.

‘How did it go?’ said Anna, cautiously.

‘Not bad. I convinced them, for now. Bad news is: Molinelli won’t come alone, which isn’t entirely unexpected. He’s cautious, and he’s bringing a couple of his goons with him, both armed I expect. We need to be careful. I was hoping to lean on him for the information we need, but it might be more difficult now.’

‘You need us to help you take them down?’ said Isaacs.

‘Maybe. I hope it won’t come to that. Shit, here they come.’

The door swung open and Molinelli swaggered out into the sunshine, his pudgy features partially obscured behind a pair of expensive shades. Michael padded at his side, eyes darting left and right, his t-shirt failing to conceal the telltale shape of a pistol tucked into the waist band of his jeans. There was a squeal of tires and a sleek, antique limo emerged from behind the club. Steven took it to be at least half a century old, pre-AG tech. Its black paintwork gleamed in the sun. Molinelli probably had his lackeys clean and buff it for him regularly. The tinted window on the driver’s side slid down to reveal another one of Molinelli’s men behind the wheel. Piggy eyes glared from a hairless head that seemed to lack a definite neck and to grow straight from his overly muscled shoulders, whilst his tree-trunk arms were a mass of tattoos. Steven eyed him cautiously, wondering whether the man’s physique was due to time in the gym or illegal drugs and augmentation.

‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do, Stevey boy,’ said Molinelli, businesslike. ‘You’re gonna ride with us in my car. Your two friends can follow in your truck. AG traffic ain’t allowed as I’m sure you’re aware, so we’re taking this antique from my collection and riding the old fashioned way.’

‘Fine,’ said Steven. ‘Let’s get going, then.’

They rode to the hotel in near silence. Molinelli appeared to be occupied with a datapad that he poked and prodded as the car moved smoothly along the almost deserted streets, the only sound the whine of the car’s electric motors and the strange tutting sound that Molinelli made as he studied the device. Michael, his right hand man, sat next to him, alert and watchful of everything both inside and outside the cab, whilst the driver – Steven had learnt that his name was Vic or Victor – never said a word and kept his eye on the road ahead. Steven sat opposite Molinelli, facing backwards in the spacious rear compartment of the limo. He could see Isaacs and Anna following them at a distance through the rear window.

Eventually Molinelli looked up from the datapad.

‘Just doing a little research,’ he said. ‘Want to know who I’m dealing with. I didn’t find much, but you like to enjoy yourself, huh?’ he added and grinning, held up the datapad and turned it towards Steven to show a photo of Steven van Horne, independent businessman and wannabe playboy with a his arm around a scantily clad blonde woman ten years his junior who was pouting at the camera. The photo had been staged. It was part of a fake online profile that had been created to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who cared to investigate the background of Steven van Horne, one of several identities created for Steven to use. ‘Yeah lots of photos here with you and some good looking broads,’ said Molinelli, apparently impressed.

‘Yeah well, I’m good at making what they really love: money,’ said Steven and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and grinned.

Molinelli chuckled at the sexist comment. ‘Yeah this line of work has its perks. Think a guy like me could get women like that if I was some regular asshole in an office? Forget it. Couldn’t find out much else about you though, no business details…’

‘Like I said; I’m discreet,’ said Steven. ‘You think I go shouting about my wares in the fucking street like some market trader?’

‘I do not, and I respect a man who can keep his mouth shut,’ Molinelli replied, apparently satisfied.

Reaching the hotel, Steven directed Vic to take the car down into the underground car park beneath the building. As they got out of the vehicle, Isaacs and Anna appeared in their truck and drew up alongside in the next parking space. Michael eyed them uneasily the whole time, his piercing gaze never leaving them. Isaacs glared back.

‘Is there a problem?’ he said casually.

‘I dunno. You tell me, fly boy,’ said Michael, scornfully. ‘You think you’re a tough guy?’

‘I can handle myself,’ Isaacs replied, meeting his stare.

‘That piece you got slung under your shoulder. You ever use it? See, I hear you freelance pilots are bunch of fucking faggots when you’re not safe in your little ships. You’re nothing but a fucking chauffeur,’ Michael spat back, moving closer so his face was mere inches from Isaacs’

‘I have used it, and by the way, I’m the best fucking pilot you’ll ever meet. Now get the fuck out of my face,’ Isaacs snarled back, unfazed. Michael looked like he was about to say something in return when his boss intervened.

‘Hey! Easy! We’re all friends here, right?’ said Molinelli, with a placatory tone. ‘Michael, please.’

‘Yeah,’ said Anna. ‘Enough of the dick-swinging contest. You two gonna start marking your territory next?’

‘You should come by the club sometime honey, I’ll show you all about dick swinging,’ said Michael and leered.

‘So charming as well,’ Anna replied drily and shot Michael an icy grin.

‘Hey, enough,’ said Molinelli. ‘Steven, my apologies. This guy… If you’d care to lead the way?’ He put a weighty hand on Steven’s shoulder and ushered him towards the lift, the others followed, casting furtive sidelong glances at one another.

They rode up in the dingy lift together, squashed in against the bulk of Molinelli and Victor. It was a relief when the lift finally deposited them in the shabby corridor that led to Steven’s room. He unlocked the door.

‘Wait,’ said Molinelli and signalled to Michael and Victor. They advanced, pistols drawn and indicated to Steven to push the door open. He did so, and then switched the light on and walked slowly inside, with the two men following him. Once they had searched the room and the adjoining bathroom, they called Molinelli in after them.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ said Molinelli and Isaacs and Anna entered behind him and shut the door. ‘Nothing personal about it, you get me? Now. You wanna show me what else you got for sale?’

Steven glanced over at Isaacs and Anna, meeting their gaze individually for a split second. He saw them both tense. Molinelli wasn’t stupid. He sensed the change of atmosphere in the room in an instant.

‘Fuck, I knew it…’ he began.

‘Vittorio Molinelli, I’m…’

‘You’re a fucking cop, is that it?’ said Molinelli. ‘Fuck me, I must be going dumb in my old age. Well you got shit on me, for a start. So what do you want?’

‘I’m not a cop, I’m an agent with Special Operations Command. Now sit the fuck down and listen to me,’ snapped Steven.

Molinelli was shaking his head.

‘Come on kid, out with it. What do you want?’

‘You and I need to have a little chat, Molinelli. I’m looking for information,’ said Steven.

‘Information, huh?’

‘Play this right, and you can go about your business, maybe even benefit a little,’ Steven replied. ‘But I warn you, I’m not bluffing.’

‘You got any ID?’ sneered Molinelli.

‘No I don’t. But I’m going to ask you some questions, and believe me, it’s in your interests to help me out,’ Steven replied. ‘You do not want my people coming after you.’

Michael was already sliding his hand towards his waistband, hoping that everyone’s attention was on Molinelli. Victor tensed, ready to hurl his weight forward and knock Steven off his feet. Isaacs saw them both start to move and realised he wouldn’t be able to draw his weapon quickly enough.

‘Fuck you!’ said Molinelli. ‘This is fucking bullshit. I’m a legitimate businessman. I been clean for years, ever since I got out. This is a fucking set up. You gonna make me disappear like all the others, huh? Like Bennett? Like those people who you pinch on the street? Think again, asshole! You and your little buddies ain’t walking away from here, you hear me?’

‘Shut the fuck up, and listen!’ said Steven. ‘I’m not with Morgan.’

‘Fuck you!’ bellowed Molinelli, reaching for his gun. Michael already had his weapon half drawn, and Victor had started to move forward. Isaacs saw what happened next and couldn’t quite believe what his eyes told him. Somehow the laser pistol was just there in Steven’s hand. One moment, Michael was bringing his gun up and then there was a loud crack, like someone slamming a door. Then the next, Michael was falling backwards, a smoking, bloody hole of cauterised flesh, scorched bone and leaking brain matter in the centre of his forehead as the gun he had been trying to draw dropped from his lifeless fingers.

As Michael slumped to the floor, Steven switched his aim instantly, firing off another shot that burned a furrow into the right thigh of the charging Victor. The big man stumbled and fell, howling in animal pain as Steven’s aim switched once more and he pointed the gun directly at Molinelli’s forehead as the portly gangster still fumbled for his own weapon. Barely more than two seconds had elapsed.

No-one said anything for a second. Victor sobbed in pain like a child. Isaacs and Anna were still frozen in shock and then brought up their own guns, though it hardly seemed necessary.

‘What the fuck did you have to do that for?’ said Molinelli, plaintively. ‘Victor’s just a big kid…’

‘A seven foot kid with a gun,’ said Isaacs.

‘He’s still eight years old up here,’ said Molinelli, tapping his head. ‘I raised him. No one else would.’

‘He’ll live,’ said Steven, without taking his eye off Molinelli. ‘As long as he stays where he is. The laser will have cauterised the wound. Sorry about your other friend,’ he said tilting his head in the direction of Michael’s corpse.

‘Would have happened sooner or later, I guess. What with his temper,’ Molinelli replied, his voice quavering. He had gone rather pale. As he sat on one of the cheap chairs by the window and placed his gun on the table, Molinelli’s hands started to shake. Steven took the gun from him and ejected the power cell, pocketing it.

‘You are going to tell me what I want to know,’ said Steven, firmly. ‘I’m not here to ‘disappear’ you, but I warn you not to fuck with me. I don’t work for Morgan and his so called ‘Freedom Alliance’, I work for the Commonwealth. I am from SOC and not from the cops and you will co-operate.’

‘You’re a long way from home then,’ said Molinelli. ‘Commonwealth ain’t got no control around here no more.’

‘Yeah, but unfortunately I am in the same room as you now, and I’m holding the gun. The CIB has extensive files on the Sirius Syndicate on this moon, you know? Did you know that Bennett was working for Morgan, and that Morgan had him killed to prevent him from talking to us?’

‘Shit,’ said Molinelli and shook his head.

‘When all this is over, and it’s time to deal with collaborators and traitors, we’ll be coming for you, you know?’

‘Bullshit,’ Molinelli said, his voice hoarse.

‘No it ain’t. So you’d better start talking. The cops aren’t coming for you. It’s just me. Co-operate, and I’ll make sure I tell my superiors that you were ready to help us.’

‘And if I don’t? What are you gonna do? Kill me?’

‘This isn’t about taking down organised hoods like yourselves. Frankly, I couldn’t give a shit about what pimping, protection rackets and drug dealing operations you have going on here. This is about the future of the Commonwealth itself. No, I need you alive so you can talk. Victor here, though…’ Steven brought his gun down to point at the whimpering form of the man mountain still crying and clutching his wounded leg.

‘Alright!’ cried Molinelli. ‘Jesus…’

‘So: we’re looking for someone. Word is: you might know where he is.’

‘Who?’ said Molinelli, looking bewildered.

‘After the battle for this system, a number of Commonwealth Navy personnel crash landed on this moon. They were scattered far and wide but many of them were captured. We’re looking for one in particular. A high ranking individual. I need to know where he’s being held.’

‘You think I have that kind of information? Jesus, you’re fucking deluding yourself,’ said Molinelli, incredulously.

‘I don’t, but I hear that you’re into dealing with military supplies that you’ve somehow acquired: weapons, ammunition, explosives, that sort of thing. Some of it goes missing from supply dumps and you sell it onto the black market, am I right?’ said Steven.

‘Yeah… alright, yeah. Not for a while anyway, not since… well all of this happened.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too much security. Too many people sniffing around. Hell, the stuff seemed to be actually getting used for a change. My uh, supplier got spooked and told me he’d have to lay low for a while.’

‘Your supplier?’

‘Yeah. He’s uh… whaddya call it, a quartermaster at the main Army supply depot just out of town here. The place supplies most of the bases in this system. Huge facility - all kinds of weapons, supplies and whatnot there. Goes on for ever. So much stuff that they never used to miss the odd crate here and there,’ Molinelli explained.

‘So this supplier of yours would be pretty well placed to know what’s going on around here, deployments and so on, troop movements, maybe where high profile prisoners might be held?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Uh, two nights ago, I think. He often comes to another club I own, Dimension. Likes the girls I guess. The place is still pretty busy, considering. Times like this, people just want to get out of their heads. That fucking ship in orbit? Have you seen it?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘I dunno what the fuck is going on here. Morgan said he was taking charge because of too many alien influences, and then this thing shows up? And the disappearances? I mean, what the fuck?’ Molinelli was babbling, Steven needed him to focus and give him the information he required.

‘Morgan is the one working with hostile alien powers. Your supplier, how did he seem? Did he seem himself?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Molinelli.

‘Did he seem like was acting abnormally? Did he talk about anything unusual?’

‘No, no… He seemed fine.’

‘Name, I need a name,’ Steven pressed.

‘Staff Sergeant Martin Sigurdson.’

‘Set up a meeting. Tonight. No funny stuff, or I will come for you, I assure you of that. You call the cops or you try to ambush us and I will take you down. You got it?’

Molinelli nodded quickly.

‘Sure,’ he said nervously. ‘Tell my doormen that you’re on my guest list. They’ll let you through with no questions and no searches.’

‘Good. We’re leaving,’ said Steven. ‘Call your men. Have them clear up this mess. Make up a story about these two fighting, whatever, make them disappear. If not: you’ll be joining them. We’ll be at the club tonight. Do not think about fucking with me.’

As Steven strode towards the waiting truck. Anna caught up with him.

‘Was that really necessary? Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you? Were you really going to execute the big guy just to make him talk?’

‘No, but he thought I was going to. I had hoped to get through that without resorting to violence. Michael - that fucking psycho that Molinelli had with him – he put paid to that. I think the little shit had popped something to make him so wired like that. Combat stims, judging by the size of his pupils. Fucking idiot.’

‘Way to keep calm, by the way,’ said Isaacs, sarcastically.

‘I am calm,’ said Steven, and slung his bags in the back of the truck.

Chapter 44

Singh visibly recoiled in shock as the tactical display showing the planet’s surface lit up in front of him with traces of the enemy. They had appeared from nowhere, suddenly winking into existence in a growing galaxy of twinkling red points linked to one another by a rapidly meshing web of communication channels. They were right in among the Commonwealth troops on the ground, within Shale’s column advancing on the outskirts of the city and washing like a malevolent red tide against the fortified Marine position at the array.

Chen heard his cry of alarm and turned sharply towards him.

‘Lieutenant Commander Singh: report!’.

‘Better to show you, ma’am,’ Singh relayed the image to Chen’s HUD.

She gasped. How the hell had the enemy managed to pull off an ambush like this? How had they evaded their sensors? She fought the growing sense of dread inside her.

‘Signal all ships! Raise shields and power weapons! Vector our ground attack fighters and bombers into the battle zone and get me General Shale on the comm. immediately!’

She swore that she could hear the sound of mocking laughter in the back of her mind.

Shale fought to maintain control of the situation. His carefully ordered assault was in chaos. Bestial things that had once been the population of San Domingo were in amongst his men, tearing at them with teeth and nails, ripping them limb from limb. His men had been caught off guard as the column of refugees had suddenly turned on them, leaping as one snarling mass from the convoy of trucks and cars and launching themselves at the soldiers who had until moments earlier been offering them sanctuary. The worst of the fighting was towards the rear of the column where Shale’s artillery units had drawn themselves up ready to bombard the city. Major Douglas’s heavy guns and their crews were now surrounded and though the men fought bravely, they were being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers; Major Douglas herself was not answering and Shale’s other units were facing the wrong way. As armoured vehicles struggled to re-orientate themselves and sight their guns on the horde, the snarling mass of enslaved people surged forward in a tide, rolling up the column in a tsunami of flailing limbs.

Shale, rifle in one hand as he stood at the door of his APC, could sense the fear in his men, feel the situation slipping out of control.

‘This is Shale to all units! Stand your ground!’ he barked into the comm. ‘Stand your ground and fight! If you run, you die! Take down those things! Do not hesitate, kill them all!’

Requests for orders from his commanders began to flood the comm. channel. They were paralysed by fear and indecision, taken completely by surprise. He began issuing orders to his units, bringing his armoured vehicles around whilst ordering the infantry to fall back in an orderly fashion, whilst the tanks brought their heavy weapons to bear on the mob and airborne gunships began to sweep around towards new targets. The rattle of automatic weapons fire and crump of grenades began to be joined by the hammering of auto-cannons and heavy rail guns and the thunderclaps of armour piercing laser weapons being used at point blank against seething masses of enslaved.

Shale ducked inside the vehicle and looked at his tactical map. He could see the rear of his column being swallowed, his seasoned men caught off balance and buckling under the sudden onslaught. He could also see Gunderson’s small Marine position by the array being assaulted on three sides.

‘Fuck!’ he spat and barked into the comm. again. ‘Infantry: fall back by squad towards this position! Armour, provide covering fire!’ he turned to an aide, cowering inside the APC. ‘Get Shima and Reynolds on the comm. and relay these orders: This is Shale. Column under attack. Converge on our position and reinforce. Enemy in the guise of civilians. Tell Gunderson to stand his ground and fight to the last man!’

‘Yes sir,’ said the aide as another piped up, clamping his earphones to his head in order to hear above the growing noise of the approaching battle.

‘Sir, it’s the Churchill, Admiral Chen is on the line.’

‘Put her through,’ snapped Shale, squinting southwards towards the sounds of frantic firing.

‘General Shale, this is Chen. What the hell is going on down there?’

‘Admiral, we have been ambushed. The civilians in the convoy just turned on us!’ Shale yelled, trying to make himself heard as a nearby phalanx of main battle tanks unleashed their pintle mounted heavy weapons towards the enemy in a storm of lead.

‘Say again, General!?’ Her voice crackled in his ear.

‘Some, or all of the convoy were Shaper enslaved all along! I don’t know how we didn’t detect them. We even scanned some of them in person and they didn’t show!’

‘What!?’

‘I can’t explain it. All I know is that they suddenly attacked as one.’

‘Fire support from my vessels is yours to command, General,’ said Chen, as Shale struggled to hear her over the din. The gunships were streaking in now, gatling cannons ripping bloody furrows in the mass of enslaved humanity as they split the sky with a dreadful tearing sound. In the midst of the melee, it was near difficult to tell friend from foe and the craft pulled back, turning for another run, fearful of hitting their own side.

‘Negative!’ shouted Shale. ‘They’re too close. The enemy are right on top of us, in amongst us. You’ll only annihilate my men! We need close support units and fast, but I’ll go hand to hand with these bastards if it comes down to it!’

‘What about Gunderson at the array?’

‘Say again?’ cried Shale, only half hearing what Chen was saying. The firing was getting closer.

‘What about Gunderson?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t been able to raise him yet. Give those marines whatever they need, we have to hold that position!’

As the words died on Shale’s lips, the first of his men that had broken and run staggered out of the smoke towards him. Charging figures pursued them, some with flesh missing from their bodies, others with more terrible wounds that nevertheless didn’t seem to slow them down. As they fell upon the fleeing men, Shale raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

Gunderson felt like Canute, trying to hold back the tide. A wave of enslaved had charged up the hillside on three sides into the teeth of the marines and their carefully deployed firebases. From their dug in positions, his men poured well ordered fire into the onrushing enemy, from rifles, from deployed heavy weapons and from the sentry guns whose multi-barrelled gatling guns now glowed dully red in the darkness, their muzzle flashes strobing against the darkness as they hosed the enemy with thousands of rounds.

It wasn’t enough. Enslaved were torn apart by bullets that caused wounds that would kill an ordinary human, and they simply picked themselves up and threw or dragged themselves forward once more, and where one fell, three more were ready to take their place, clambering over the slain until the slopes of the marines’ revetments were piled high with bodies, bodies which showed disturbing signs of surgical and cybernetic alteration. Eyes replaced by twitching sensors and probing antenna, limbs hacked off and bodies fused with whip-like tentacles and blade-arms, and each with telltale crystalline grub-like creatures buried into the backs of their violated skulls.

Gunderson had no time to study the enemy. Holding his rifle locked against his shoulder, he stood on the firing line with the rest of his men and squeezed the trigger again and again, watching flailing figures fall, blasting them until limbs flew off in welters of blood, until skulls popped and guts spilled and they lay sprawled in their own viscera. He killed men, and women, or what had once been men and women. Ragged remains of uniforms marked these down as the remnants of the military units that had been on the planet when the Shapers had taken over, the units that should have died in the orbital bombardment on the bases. In the strobing light from the massed guns of the marines, the charging figures seemed to move awkwardly, like figures in a silent film, their grotesque movements caught in each split second.

‘We can’t keep this up, sir,’ said Major Durham, as he slapped another magazine into his rail rifle. ‘The sentry guns will be out of ammo soon, and the heavy weapons will also be running low within a few minutes. We have to pull back!’

‘Not yet, Major. Not when I have them right where I want them.’ He spoke into the comm. ‘Alpha flight, this is Gunderson. Make your attack run. Keep it towards the tree-line.’

The two gunships tore in from the east, rocket pods and gatling guns blazing against the night. Enslaved were immolated, became burning figures staggering forwards as cooked flesh melted from their bones. Some were entirely disintegrated, whilst others were ripped asunder, the fragments of their bodies thrown high in the air as shockwaves flattened their comrades. The mob paused as the gunships wheeled away, turning for another run. Gunderson squinted down the slope. His suit’s night vision was useless against the blaze of light and heat down there, but with his own eyes, he could see the sea of leaping figures, as they gathered themselves against the storm of fire and renewed their attack.

Then the mob began to fire back. Gunderson saw the first of his men fall a mere ten metres away to his right, shot through the throat and choking on his own blood as he hit the ground. Then others started to drop. Against the backdrop of the flames and the darkness it was impossible to see the shooters, though from within the tree-line seemed the obvious bet. The trickle of fire became a torrent. Bullets began to hammer against the revetment, caroming off sentry guns and supply crates, impacting wetly against un-armoured human bodies and with a dull crack where they pierced armour, or with a sound like eggs breaking where they shattered skulls.

The marines faltered, ducking instinctively to take cover against the fire being directed against them, but were unable to see their attackers or to poke their heads above the parapet to return fire.

Gunderson lay flat on his belly, worming his way forward. Others were doing likewise, poking rifle barrels over the top of the revetment between crates and sandbags and armour plates to face the enemy, an enemy that was now resuming its assault

Through the sights of his rifle, Gunderson watched them charge with inhuman speed. No human could or should move like that. Their legs drove down into the churned earth like the pistons of machines, throwing the enslaved forwards with a force that would shatter the leg bones of a normal man. He fired again and again, watched his attackers stumble and fall in the mud, watched them claw themselves upright and carry on as they were battered by shot after shot from his gun. They were going for the strong-points along the line, using sheer weight of numbers and the speed of their attack to achieve their objective. Enslaved swarmed up on the fortified positions holding the sentry guns and heavy weapons, batting their crews aside with inhuman force that sent men tumbling. Gunderson saw men broken, beheaded, torn limb from limb with sheer physical force, or tossed to the mob charging up the hill to be trampled and dismembered. Nothing seemed to stop the onslaught. The gunships returned, raking the slope with their gatling guns and punching bloody, burning holes in the mob with their missiles and rockets, but it wasn’t enough. The sentry guns stopped firing one by one, then the heavy weapons, and then the enslaved were upon them all.

On the bridge of the Churchill, McManus was already busy relaying orders to the flight deck and the other carriers to get more ground attack capable craft down to Shale and Gunderson’s embattled forces on the planet. Chen watched with horror as the orderly Commonwealth ground assault began to fall apart before her, the neat central column of infantry and vehicles engulfed by the enemy. The other columns were started to move towards Shale’s but it would be some time before they were in any position to assist without accidentally firing on their comrades. Meanwhile, icons denoting squadrons of fighters, bombers and gunships en route to the combat zone were starting to wink into existence, but their pilots would have to take extreme care in unleashing their payloads for the very same reason.

‘Contact!’ cried Singh.

‘What!?’ snapped Chen, incredulous.

‘Three Shaper destroyers inbound, bearing ninety by forty eight relative to our orientation. Range, fifty two thousand kilometres and closing!’

‘No….’ breathed Chen as she quickly took stock of the situation. Her fleet was deployed for the landing, the vessels scattered across low orbit and focused on the planet below them. They were not formed up to defend themselves. They wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre. She had only deployed them thusly because the new sensors, having been proved to work previously, had shown no threats present within the system. The Nahabe ships were also inbound following her request to scan San Domingo, but it would be some minutes before they would be able to assist and they would be emerging into the middle of a fire-fight for which they were also not prepared. The Shaper ships were heavily outnumbered, but they had the advantage of surprise.

‘Put me through to the fleet,’ she ordered. ‘All ships, all ships, this is Admiral Chen. Shaper vessels have emerged from hyperspace. You are to come about and engage the enemy. Cease all landing operations immediately. Destroyers and carriers, climb to fifty thousand kilometres relative to the surface of Valparaiso. Missile frigates are to remain on station and assist ground forces if required. Transports are to vacate orbit to the fallback coordinates in the system. Stand by for further orders. Chen out.’ She turned to her bridge officers. ‘Helm, bring us up out of the gravity well to give us room to manoeuvre. Comms. Signal our destroyers to form up with us.’

‘How in God’s name did those crafty bastards manage to get the jump on us like that?’ growled McManus as the vast formation of ships outside began to slide out of their orbital positions, angling themselves to climb out of the planet’s gravity well as main engines and manoeuvring thrusters began to fire.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Singh. ‘One minute nothing, the next… they appeared in what looked like empty space. I don’t understand it.’

‘They’ve figured out how we’re detecting them…’ said McManus. ‘They must have done. We’ve been played, Admiral. Clever little buggers, aren’t they?’

‘I fear that you may be correct,’ Chen muttered grimly as the Churchill began to climb. ‘Shale’s men were taken completely by surprise. They’re being torn apart by people that they were helping only moments before, that they’d even scanned for god’s sake! Make no mistake, we are up against an enemy that learns how to counter our moves very quickly.’

‘If you’re right, then we’ve lost our tactical advantage,’ said McManus. ‘If I might ask,’ he added. ‘Why bring those destroyers that can’t use their new cannons?’

‘It gives us more of a fighting chance,’ said Chen, coldly. ‘The Shapers might attack the wrong ones.’

The Churchill was still climbing. Her four accompanying destroyers were manoeuvring themselves into position around her, but the other carriers were struggling to break orbit. There was simply too much traffic, too many ships that need to slide around one another in order to orientate themselves correctly and move away from the planet. The Marcus Aurelius and the Marine assault carrier Anzio were still wallowing, deep in Valparaiso’s gravity well and boxed in by missile frigates deployed to assist the ground forces. Chen realised then, as the Shaper vessels emerged from hyperspace, their ice-white hulls gleaming coldly in the light from Santiago’s sun, that the Shapers had tricked her into making the very same tactical mistake that Admiral Kojima had made above Maranos, a mistake that had doomed the marines aboard the Normandy. Fully aware of the depth of her error, she ordered her ships to prepare to fire.

They were still coming. Although Shale’s men were falling back by squads, the rush of enslaved was still catching up with them, falling upon the stragglers and dragging them down beneath the mob. Fire scythed into the enemy, but there were too many of them and they were too close to friendly troops for the heavier guns of the armoured vehicles and gunships to be used effectively. Even so, pintle mounted weapons atop armoured cupolas sliced bloody trails through them.

They were starting the check the tide. Just. Shale could feel it. The sheer weight of fire being directed against the unarmed enslaved former citizens of Santiago was beginning to check their advance. His men were recovering from the ambush, and though they had taken heavy losses in the opening minutes, they had rallied. Still, the enslaved did not go down easily, and they had a nasty habit of picking their shattered bodies off the floor and resuming their charge and the fact the enemy was in and amongst friendly troops and vehicles made it difficult to pick them off from long range.

How many apparently fleeing refugees had there been? Shale hadn’t thought to keep count, concentrating merely on getting them all behind his lines. Had they all been puppets of the Shapers? Or had unarmed men, women and children fallen victim to the onslaught as well as his men? Had Mayor Marchand been one of them, even as she had stood before him and told him of the plight of the civilians within the city? Shale didn’t know. Along with the rest of his men, he fired at charging figures again and again, adding the bark of his rifle to the deafening cacophony of weapons fire as the automatic weapons of his command APC hammered away over his head.

There was a sharp report from further down the column. Shale felt the shockwave travel through the ground beneath him. A column of black smoke began to rise. After a lifetime in the Army, Shale knew by heart the sounds that all Commonwealth weapons made. This wasn’t one of theirs. A few seconds later, and a second explosion rocked the column. This time it was nearer. He felt the overpressure buffeting him in his suit and saw what looked like an APC blown upwards into the air by the force of the explosion. Then came the cries over the comm.

‘General Shale, this is Major Fong of the forty second. Be aware: the enemy are using suicide tactics to take down our armoured vehicles. Requesting tactical fire support at grid reference thirty eight alpha, by six niner.’

Shale ducked back inside his APC and glanced at the tactical display.

‘Fong, this is Shale. Those coordinates will bring the ordnance almost right on top of you!’

‘Yes sir! Requesting fire support: danger close. I’m pulling my men back, abandoning the APCs. They’re sitting ducks!’ As Fong spoke, another explosion ripped through the column.

‘Very well, Major,’ said Shale and prepared to give orders to the gunships to comply with Fong’s request. As he glanced at the tactical display once more, he saw more enemy traces winking into existence to the north. They were moving out of the edge of the city only a kilometre away, heading south at speed towards his position, gathering in pace and numbers with every passing moment.

‘Back!’ yelled Gunderson. ‘Fall back to the second line of defences!’ He turned and was greeted by the sight of an enslaved scrambling over the parapet towards him. The man’s appearance was distorted by a cluster of sensors in the middle of his face whose anchoring tendrils plunged into his eye sockets and mouth. He was already missing an arm, but that didn’t seem to be slowing him down. Gunderson clubbed him in that ruined visage with the butt of his rifle and knocked the man back and then as he stumbled, shot him repeatedly in the skull.

The enslaved had stormed the outer ring of defences and were in the shallow trench that the marines had cut behind the parapet. As Gunderson’s men in the outer defences fell back to the inner layer, their comrades already taking their positions there rained heavy fire down upon the enslaved. But it was too late for those caught by the charging mob, wrestled down into the muck and trampled or torn apart where they stood. Fire continued to zip out of the darkness of the night and claim men, although the gunships were returning for another attack run on the already burning forest that hid the shooters. They swooped down over the battlefield once more, weapons blazing from underwing pods, and trees splintered under the onslaught. Enslaved stumbled forward, great slivers of burning wood driven through their lurching bodies whilst their comrades were ripped asunder and vaporised by heavy ordnance.

Gunderson never saw where the missile came from. As one of the gunships swooped over the slopes filled with enslaved, there was a sharp bang and a flash of light, and then the craft was falling, burning, to the ground below. It ploughed into the massed ranks of the enemy where it carved a bloody trench through them and then exploded. The blast lit up the night, scattering burning debris and enemy bodies across the slopes below the array. The other craft peeled away, dropping countermeasures in a frantic attempt to avoid a similar fate.

Gunderson fired wildly at more enslaved clambering towards him, then grabbed Major Durham by the shoulder and shouted at him to retreat. Durham appeared not to hear him and efficiently felled three enemy troops with clean headshots through their skulls. Gunderson grabbed a grenade from his belt and hurled it over the parapet, grunting with satisfaction as he saw enemy bodies being flung left and right by the blast.

‘I ordered you to retreat, Major!’ he repeated.

‘I heard you, sir,’ Durham replied. ‘I respectfully decline. My duty is to protect my commanding officer, particularly when he puts himself in harm’s way. Call down fire support. End this.’

‘They’re too goddamn close!’ yelled Gunderson over the noise of battle. ‘You know that.’

‘My men will hold them here,’ said Durham. ‘Fall back to the array and call down fire support from the fleet. There are too many of them. It’s the only way.’

Gunderson hesitated for a moment, then saw the look of determination in Durham’s face and nodded wordlessly, before turning and scrambling up the slope.

The three Shaper destroyers swooped down on the lumbering Commonwealth vessels in a staggered formation. Chen saw them close in. They were like raptors after the scent, aware that they had caught their prey unawares and vulnerable and they moved with frightening speed. She gave the order to fire and felt the Churchill shudder as the spatial distortion cannon beneath the ship’s belly fired. The stream of twisted space reached out and, miraculously, caught one of the craft in a glancing blow amidships. Its crystalline hull shattered, and great shards of hull material broke away from the port side in a shower of debris. The Shaper craft rushed onwards, but now it was corkscrewing wildly. Other ships fired, their shots going wide or failing to land significant hits. Beam weapons probed outwards, their energies playing impotently off the Shaper ships’ heavy shielding as the enemy vessels returned fire with coruscating energies that quickly battered down the shields of the primitive human vessels.

The Alesia was the first ship to succumb. The destroyer’s forward shields collapsed in seconds leaving the vessel exposed. Shaper energies raked across the forward gun decks, exploding turrets and power relays before immolating the vessel’s bridge and venting the forwards compartments of the superstructure into space. The ship continued to fire at her attackers, but she was now out of control and locked into a vector away from the planet. The other vessels flanking the Churchill and the carrier itself frantically returned fire with spatial distortion and beam weapons, but with little result.

Meanwhile, the other warship groups under Chen’s command were still desperately attempting to extricate themselves from Valparaiso’s gravity well and bring their guns to bear on the enemy whilst the Army transports were still climbing in the opposite direction to a point where they would able to jump clear. Their engines blazed brightly as they clawed their way steadily upwards away from the world’s gravitational grasp. The damaged Shaper craft was heading straight towards the warships. Locked into a death spiral it careered headlong towards the carrier Pericles trailing debris in its wake and with the other two craft following close behind.

The Pericles fired, the shot from its main gun narrowly missing the jinking vessel. Two of her destroyer escorts succeeded in successfully targeting the Shaper craft, but their lighter guns only succeeded in striking more hull material from the vessel without shattering it entirely, and then the Shaper craft collided with the Pericles.

The Pericles was torn apart. The Shaper destroyer impacted at an oblique angle just forward of the bridge, the diamond hard, crystalline hull material slicing through the human vessel’s skin as if it were made of paper. The armoured prow of the Shaper craft plunged onwards through the carrier, eviscerating her in one fell swoop, driving through decks filled with crew, through the hangars laden with loaded fighters and bombers and onwards into the vessel’s power plant which it shattered and drove through. The carrier began to break in half and then exploded with a nuclear shockwave that entirely blew the vessel to pieces and immolated the Shaper vessel. The Shaper ship emerged from the inferno, blazing like a comet, molten and incandescent, and began to fall towards the planet whilst debris and radiation battered the Pericles’s escorts.

As Chen brought her ships around, the two remaining Shaper vessels began tearing into the destroyers that had been flanking the Pericles, disabling the engines of the Minden and crippling the forward turrets of the Austerlitz.

‘Jesus, would you look at that!’ breathed McManus as glowing debris expanded from the wreck of the Pericles and beams of energy criss-crossed space as vessels desperately tried to fend off their assailants.

‘No escape pods…’ said Chen quietly. ‘They never stood a chance.’

‘The Nahabe are still ten minutes away, Admiral,’ said Singh. ‘There’s something else too. We’re seeing increased enemy activity on the planet. Massed enemy traces emerging from the suburbs of San Domingo and heading for General Shale’s column.’

‘Colonel Gunderson is still under heavy assault at the array,’ said Andrews at the comm. ‘He’s requesting fire support from the Alcibiades.’

Chen called up the map of the battle zone on the planet’s surface in her HUD. San Domingo blazed a violent red. The entire city was now pulsing with enemy traces that were beginning to flow southwards out of the city. General Shale’s columns showed as slender fingers, the central one half swallowed by more enemy traces. Far to the south, a shrinking enclave around the array was surrounded on three sides by more pulsing red. An intricate web of communication linked them all, concentrating back on the centre of the capital city.

‘San Domingo is lost,’ said Chen, looking in horror at the sensor readings. ‘I believe now that it was lost from the start. Send orders to the Themistocles. They are to destroy their target. Order all other available missile frigates save the Alcibiades to engage and destroy all enemy forces moving south towards General Shale’s forces.’

‘I hope you’re right about the city,’ said McManus. ‘If there are still civilians down there, they won’t stand a chance.’

‘Shale’s units are about to be overrun. We need to dislocate the enemy force,’ said Chen. ‘Attack their weak points. Taking out the control node below the San Domingo Assembly should achieve that aim.’

‘And what about these two?’ McManus replied, pointing at the battle going on above the planet. The Shaper vessels were coming about for another run against the struggling Commonwealth ships. ‘They’re in amongst our own ships. It’s going to be tricky taking them down without hitting our own.’

‘I have faith in my crews, Commander,’ said Chen and shot him a look. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ McManus replied then breathed. ‘God help us.’

Shale was desperately trying to arrange his units to fight the battle on two fronts at once. Having pulled his men back, his remaining infantry and armoured units were drawn up in two defensive lines arranged back to back facing north and south. The other two columns were still inbound towards his position but were slowing their advance for fear of being flanked by the massive force advancing out of the city.

That mob was moving with incredible speed. Sensors and recon had not identified any vehicles amidst the attacking force - it was simply a million strong mob of augmented humans moving at the speed of an express train towards the Commonwealth positions. The Shapers were not employing any tactical subtlety. It was a pure numbers game, an attempt to overwhelm them with a single sledgehammer blow. His infantry might be largely occupied holding off the attack from the south, but the open terrain gave the armoured units and gunships an opportunity to use their heavy weapons. Hull down, tanks and what remaining scraps of the artillery were left began to open fire, launching a barrage of energy beams and high explosive ordnance towards the advancing wall of enslaved. Thousands died instantly. Thousands more rushed forward over their shattered bodies to take their place and charged headlong into a wall of lead and fire. The bullet riddled, plasma burned bodies of half flesh half machine things that had once been the citizens of San Domingo powered themselves forward on pistoning legs, their bladed claws and biting metal jaws slicing the air before them.

Standing atop his APC, Shale first saw the enemy force as a vague heat smudge on the horizon, then as a spreading stain across the plains, then as a moving sea of bodies rippled by the impacts of ordnance. The pounding of their feet was a bass rumble that accompanied the jack hammering of the heavy guns and rattle of automatic weapons. To his south, more detonations marked the demise of more enemy suicide bombers, and more of his men and vehicles. He saw a light scout tank flip end over end atop a pillar of flame, his men moving like ants amidst wrecked vehicles, cutting down charging figures amidst a hail of bullets, laser and plasma fire. He saw them bludgeoning struggling forms to the ground or being cut down themselves by humanoid forms that moved more like stalking wolves than people.

The mob to the north was getting inexorably closer.

A line of gunships screamed in towards the south of the column and Major Fong’s embattled position. Rippling fire from missile pods and gatling guns pounded the road, each craft swooping down in a strafing run to unload tonnes of ordnance on the target before peeling away. The craft swooped around to the west and then stood a few hundred yards off the target and hovered in a line, guns blazing away at anything that moved.

The force from the city was almost upon them.

‘Stand fast!’ cried Shale into the comm. ‘This is it! Give them hell! Fire! Fire with everything you’ve got!’

And then, from low orbit, the fleet opened fire.

The first rounds from the missile batteries of the Themistocles struck the Assembly House in the centre of San Domingo. Accelerated by their railgun launchers, the depleted uranium projectiles streaked down from orbit at over fifteen times the speed of sound, glowing like falling stars as they were heated by the friction with the atmosphere and then they struck with the hammer-blow force of an angry god. The Assembly House in the heart of San Domingo, whose basement now housed vile agglomerations of flesh and metal that had once been the government of Valparaiso and which now served as a communications node for the Shapers, was instantly annihilated. Struck by kilotonnes of kinetic force, the structure was utterly obliterated in a titanic fountain of masonry. The shockwave of the impact travelled outwards through air and ground, shattering the tower blocks on either side as if they were cardboard and blowing away their outer claddings in an instant in a whirlwind of twisted spars and broken glass.

More rounds fell on the same spot, hammering into the ground and completing the destruction, gouging immense craters out of the earth and ensuring that whatever had lurked beneath the Assembly was undoubtedly utterly destroyed.

Shale saw the mob falter. It was as if they collectively stumbled. They were almost right on top of his men when their charge stopped. His men kept firing. Shale swore that for a split second he saw some of the distorted figures come to their senses as if awaking from a terrible nightmare and then realise that it was in fact real. They stared in horror at their own mutilated bodies before they were cut down, holding up bladed hands towards ruined faces and screaming. Death was a blessed release.

‘Kill them!’ cried Shale. ‘Do not stop firing! Kill them all!’

The deafening sound of the impacts in the city washed over him as shockwaves spread out across the grassy plains, rippling the tall stems. More rounds descended from orbit. This time they fell amongst the enslaved. Savage explosions gouged bloody wounds from their ranks in fountains of dirt and torn bodies. Blow after blow struck. Each impact was an ear splitting crack that split the sky and rocked the earth with shockwaves as the overpressure washed over the Commonwealth Army units that stood fast in the face of the enemy and kept firing.

In the sky above, a livid, blazing star began to fall from heaven as the stricken Shaper destroyer plummeted to its death.

Gunderson scrambled up the dirt slope towards the array and screamed into the comm. link to the Alcibiades to open fire on the coordinates he had given them. The enslaved were washing over the first line of defences as Major Durham’s forces held the second line and kept up a barrage of increasingly desperate firing into the packs of wild figures. The waves of attackers were swarming up the slopes towards their assailants, charging into the men even as they unloaded their weapons at point blank range into the enslaved. The enslaved tore into their opponents with their augmented limbs, shattering bodies even inside their armour and breaking men like fragile dolls as the wave rolled over them. Switching to the channel used by his men, Gunderson kept running as he bellowed his desperate orders.

‘Incoming tactical fire: danger close! All units take cover! Repeat: incoming fire from orbit!’

Gunderson kept running toward the array, the domed buildings ghostly in the night. There was a brilliant flash somewhere behind him, a sound that was so loud that his ears could barely comprehend it, and what felt like a giant hand picked him up bodily and flung him up the slope. His suit systems saved him, protecting his body and shielding his ears and eyes from the worst of the explosion and overpressure.

He landed heavily on his front, scrambled to his feet and looked wildly about him, then down the slope where a gigantic glowing crater had opened up at its base and where a huge fountain of dirt, trees and body parts was still raining back to earth. The enslaved had halted. They stood as if dumbstruck. There was a moment of silence as his men clambered back to their feet and then Gunderson heard the terrible screams and sobs from the mob of enslaved, sounds that were cut off by the hammering of gunfire.

It was as if the two Shaper ships had been wounded. To Chen it seemed as if they both flinched simultaneously from actual physical pain when the missiles struck San Domingo. They halted in their attack for a moment, ceasing fire and flying away from the Commonwealth vessels, manoeuvring sluggishly and shuddering as if trying to shake something off. She didn’t need to order her captains to react. The crews aboard the vessels under her command knew to seize the initiative. A dozen spatial distortion cannons simultaneously vomited forth twisting tunnels of space-time that tore into the wounded vessels, tearing great chunks from their terribly beautiful hulls. One fell to a coup de grace from the Leonides as the great carrier swung around and struck it amidships with a sawing motion from its main gun that clove the enemy vessel in twain. The other was hammered by three destroyers and then had its bows smashed by the Nelson, an action that left it dead and drifting.

Chen’s hand was clenched into a victorious fist as she relished the death of the enemy vessels. She watched them die, watched them burn, watched them plummet towards annihilation.

The plains were awash with bodies. Shale’s men cut down the enslaved in their thousands. It was a massacre. As connections were re-established across the enemy force, the Shaper consciousness re-asserted itself slowly, but it was too late. There was no overall coordination and as ad-hoc connections were made, they were cut again and again as individuals died under the barrage from the ground and space borne forces. Many of the enslaved did not resist. Some even walked calmly towards the Army positions as if inviting the troopers to kill them and end their torment. It was a grim duty, one the troops did not relish, though they had little choice but to carry it out lest the Shapers resume their attack. The other two columns eventually joined up with Shale’s own adding their weight of fire to the task and speeding up the destruction of the enemy.

Shale watched the Shaper destroyer fall from orbit. It broke up in the upper atmosphere, scattering into burning fragments. The largest remaining chunk of the vessel, around a kilometre in length, struck the sea somewhere in the northern hemisphere and fell into deep water, the impact creating a tsunami that inundated coastlines that were mercifully uninhabited.

They had achieved victory, but at a terrible cost. It was difficult to say how many of his own men had died, and the true death toll amongst the civilian population of Valparaiso would perhaps never be known. Perhaps they might find some survivors within the city, barricaded within cellars or other hiding places, but Shale didn’t hold out much hope. The Shapers were a fearsome opponent, using their slaves without pity or remorse. They had expended troops as mere cannon fodder in human wave attacks, attempting to bury his forces under a mountain of corpses. In the rest of the Commonwealth, there were plenty more bodies to feed the Shaper war machine with raw materials.

Major Durham had disappeared. Gunderson ordered a search for him and other men listed as missing, but there was no sign of his body amidst the piles of dead and injured. The marines had cut down the remaining enslaved where they stood, moving back down the slope to retake the forward positions that they had earlier abandoned, then raked the slopes with fire until nothing moved. The screams of the wounded cut the air as medics rushed to attend to them. Some could not be saved. Even in these days of advanced medicine, they were beyond hope and the corpsmen did their best to make them comfortable.

Gunderson approached the array building and saw a figure emerge. It was Specialist Rollins.

‘Sir, is it safe? Did we win?’ said the man, nervously.

‘We’re still alive at least,’ replied Gunderson wryly. ‘So yeah, you could call it a victory. What can I do for you, Specialist?’

‘The array. We’ve got it working at last. Sir, I think you should see this.’

The Nahabe had arrived at last, profusely apologetic that they had not been able to contribute to the battle, although Chen thought that they sounded more disappointed that they missed the fighting. Their ships took station above the Commonwealth fleet and assisted in the hunt for survivors as well as guarding against unexpected attacks. Chen bade the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters come aboard the Churchill.

She and McManus rode the lift down to the hangar deck together. Chen stood ramrod straight, her hands clasped behind her back, her expression serious and apparently lost in thought. After a moment, McManus broke the silence.

‘You weren’t to know,’ he said in what he hoped was a consoling tone. ‘About the Shaper ambush: you weren’t to know.’

‘It was still stupid of me,’ said Chen. ‘I should have prepared for…’

‘Prepared for what?’

‘They know,’ said Chen, meeting his gaze. ‘The Shapers know how we can track them and they used it against us.’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘Maybe from when that thing came aboard… maybe before that…’

‘Or maybe those new sensors just don’t work as well as we thought,’ McManus suggested.

‘Perhaps. In any case, it cost the crew of the Pericles their lives, not mention who knows how many troops on the ground…’

The lift reached the hangar deck and they stepped out into the busy bay filled with recovered craft being serviced by the deck crews. An angular, dark green shuttle craft sat among the fighters and bombers. They walked towards it.

‘I’ve ordered Singh to go over the sensor logs for anything that might give us a clue as to what happened,’ said McManus. ‘We need to know how the enemy can still evade us.’

‘Good.’

‘Admiral, don’t be too hard on yourself. Considering what we were up against, we did well today. Cartwright reported far heavier losses in the Chittagong system and he had the advantage from the start.’

‘Perhaps,’ Chen replied. ‘But it doesn’t get any easier sending men and women to their deaths.’

‘Yes,’ said McManus. ‘I know.’

The shuttle’s boarding ramp swung open, and the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters emerged, clad in his armoured finery.

In a briefing room off the main hangar deck they showed the alien warrior what the sensor array, now fully modified and working on the planet below, had now detected. In the Achernar system, in orbit around the moon of Orinoco, was the massive Shaper vessel that the Nahabe had encountered in deep space, a truly gigantic vessel around five hundred kilometres in length that resembled some sort of terrible sea monster. But there was more: elsewhere in the Achernar system, far above the ecliptic, a fleet of Shaper vessels was gathering, concealed in hyperspace. So far the array had detected just over fifty vessels but more could be seen en route. The Shapers appeared to be gathering for another assault.

‘I will inform my government,’ said the Lord Protector, suit sensors swivelling and focusing. ‘We should begin formulating plans for a pre-emptive strike. I expect that this has been passed up to your superiors.’

‘It has,’ said Chen.

‘And?’

‘No response as yet. They’re still considering their options. Cartwright has secured the Chittagong system and its antimatter production facilities intact. He took heavy losses, but the system is ours.’

‘Aye, we’ll be needing those AM warheads soon enough,’ said McManus. ‘How else do you think we can kill that thing?’ he added, jabbing a finger towards the image of the vast ship above Orinoco.

‘Indeed,’ said the Lord Protector. ‘We will need every weapon at our disposal to defeat that ship. Tell me: have you managed to establish why some of your ships suffered catastrophic system failures during the battle and how the Shapers managed to evade our sensors?’

‘As to the former, our Chief Engineer believes there to be design differences between some of the power systems on the destroyers. Those with the older relays were the ones that suffered the outages when they fired their new cannons. He’s compiling a full technical report as we speak, but preliminary details have been forwarded to Command,’ said Chen.

‘Something of an oversight,’ commented the Lord Protector.

‘And nearly a fatal one,’ Chen replied. ‘As to your second question: no, we do not know how the Shapers managed to conceal both their starships and their enslaved troops from us. Singh has a theory that they temporarily turned off or somehow disguised their communications links from us, but one thing is for certain: they’re learning about how we can hunt them and managed to use it against us. Whether they achieved this by deduction or by hacking into this vessel’s systems we can’t tell, but we may have lost what slim tactical advantages we had.’

Chapter 45

There was nothing but ice and snow and bare, black rocks as far as the eye could see. It was a sea of ice, tens of metres thick beneath a leaden sky and swirling blizzards. Amidst the whirling flakes, strange shapes could be seen hovering low over a range of jagged mountains that climbed erratically into the sky near the planet’s southern pole. The silvered hulls of these alien vehicles glinted dully in the half light of the winter storm as they moved. Closer in, humanoid figures and more craft parked on the ice could be seen. The former were swaddled in thick, protective clothing and the latter were strangely resistant to the snow and ice that swirled about them, yet failed to settle on their hulls.

The Arkari were digging.

Katherine squinted through the blizzard. She was clad head to foot in an insulated suit of many finely woven layers. Her eyes were obscured by a pair of tinted goggles and her head encased in the suit’s thick hood, almost completely obscuring her features. Rekkid stood off to her right, his slender form similarly clothed in the Arkari made garments. Steelscale, meanwhile, remained cowering from the cold inside one of the grounded shuttles. The Arkari had tried to dissuade him from coming down to the surface, but he had insisted and eventually they had relented. The ship had manufactured suitable clothing for him, but the cold had still proved too much for a being used to far warmer climes and eventually he had given into the inevitable and sought the shelter of one of the parked craft. Like the others, he had been unable to resist the opportunity to step onto the surface of the Progenitor home-world.

Katherine and Rekkid stood and watched the machines of the Arkari as they tunnelled down into the ice, through packed layers that represented centuries of snow-fall, the beams from the hovering ships turning the tonnes of frozen water into clouds of rolling steam as they carefully peeled away the layers until a great bowl shaped depression had been sliced from the mountainside.

‘Almost there,’ said the perfectly modulated voice of Aaokon in their ears. ‘Not long now. Eonara’s machines just need to cut a little deeper…’

‘I’m still not detecting a structure,’ said a second voice, that of the ship, emanating from one of its drones that sat coiled on multiple centipede-like legs in the snow, sensors twitching on its segmented head.

‘I assure you: it is there,’ said Aaokon. ‘It has remained hidden ever since the Progenitors sealed it before their great exodus. I am sure of the location. Keep digging.’

Katherine and Rekkid stood in silence and watched clouds boiling into the sky.

The image through viewers was pin-sharp. From her vantage point on the plateau, once the top level of a vast arcology now decayed, half collapsed and overgrown, she peered down into the centre of the sleepy village that nestled in the lush green valley below. Waterfalls poured in streams of maiden-hair down the sides of the vast ruins that had once housed thousands and now formed a semi-regular range of mountains riddled with caves and buried secrets. The streams gathered to form a gentle river that wove its way through the hamlet. Katherine looked down upon a cluster of a few dozen buildings fashioned from locally quarried blocks that the locals took for stone, but which was actually the composite material that ruins all around had been built from. All but the richer dwellings and few public buildings sported sagging roofs of thatch or wood. The former had roofs made from glazed tiles of various colours. Wisps of smoke drifted from chimneys into the morning air.

The sky above was clear, with only wisps of cloud at high altitude. Above the clouds, above the blue of the sky itself, were faint patterns of light and shade, reflective and gleaming and dark and glowering. Swirls of what sometimes looked like other clouds, or shining patches of water were occasionally visible. The local people often looked up at those patterns beyond the sky and wondered what they signified, especially at night when they were clear and bright above them. Was that land that they saw beyond the sky? Were there people up there just like them? Was that –whispered some – where the gods lived, watching over them like doting parents over their children?

Katherine watched those self same local people now as they emerged from their dwellings. The men carried implements as they walked towards the fields, the women scolded their children and herded them towards the temple at the centre of the village and its small schoolhouse. Here were the remnants of a race that once bestrode the galaxy, tamed the stars and the planets and toyed with the very stuff of life itself and now they eked out a meagre, medieval existence amidst the ruins of their ancestors, ignorant of their origins, on the world that had given birth to them.

She was looking at the faces of the Progenitors.

There was the shadow of something visible beneath the ice now. The Arkari had cut almost down to the rock beneath, and against the uneven shapes of the mountainside, there was something else, a more regular shape of some dark material that jutted outwards. It was blacker that the rock that surrounded it, and as the ice was stripped away, it became clear that it formed some sort of bunker like structure that was half buried in the ground.

‘See?’ said Aaokon. ‘I knew that it was here. Not long now.’

‘And yet it is invisible to my sensors,’ said the ship. ‘Interesting.’

‘Yes. Some things should remain hidden. The research facility that you can see emerging before us is manufactured from a similar material to that which the Shapers use to construct their ships, though somewhat more refined. It exists in multiple dimensions and is invisible to conventional sensors. It was an experimental technology at the time, one developed by the Progenitors and copied by the Shapers. The base has been sealed ever since the great exodus, however I alone possess the means to open it.’

‘Is that why the base was placed here, to keep it from prying eyes?’ said Katherine.

‘It was hardly out of reach, but most people had no wish to come to the polar regions because of the intense cold. The main reason was that it was hoped that in the event of a mishap, the cold environment would prevent any rogue biological materials from spreading into the biosphere. However, the base was concealed to prevent the Shapers from finding it. Although the research that led to their creation took place in a number of locations across the galaxy, it was collected here and wiped from all other locations, including the minds of the AIs involved such as myself and Eonara.’

‘You mentioned biological materials?’

‘Yes. This place was once known as the Life Forge, a complex of subterranean laboratories dedicated to the exploration of artificial entities of one form or another. When the war started to go bad for us, the Progenitors began to look to maintaining their legacy somehow. Our research here had led directly to the program to seed worlds with nanomachines and this was deemed to be a possible way in which the species might endure. We conducted numerous experiments in which they were used to subtly alter living cells, but we had no wish to repeat the accident that had released the virus into the wider population to decimate the Progenitor people. Of course when the program was begun, we did not know that the release of the virus was intentional. That revelation only came later.’

‘Some of us had suspected, as soon as it happened’ said Eonara, her voice also emanating from the ship’s drone. ‘We warned that the Shapers were plotting against us. No-one listened to us.’

‘No, and we paid for our hubris,’ Aaokon replied sadly.

‘Research into the development of the Shaper race was initially moved here to isolate them in the event of any ‘mishaps’ also. Many had raised ethical concerns about the creation of an artificial race. Not only did people question whether we had the right to do such a thing, but there were fears about what such a race might become. In the end, our over confidence and greed won out. The universe was ours for the taking, it was argued, and we needed the necessary tools to achieve that. There would be no end to the Progenitor Empire as it spread outwards from this galaxy to others. We were wrong.’

The Arkari craft shut off their beams, leaving a steaming crater in the ice and snow that they had gouged several hundred metres deep. Already, the surface was starting to refreeze, frost forming on the slick, black surface of the great circular door in the mountainside.

‘Any idea how we get inside?’ said Rekkid. ‘What do we do, just walk up to it and knock?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Aaokon.

They had begged Mentith to let them land here. They had come all this way, they had argued, what harm would a few extra hours do? Surely they should at least catch a glimpse of the descendants of the enigmatic race that had built this place, built the gate network and the other vast machines and structures that littered the galaxy. Eventually Mentith had relented, on condition that they did not make contact and only observed from afar. Katherine had almost literally jumped for joy.

As she looked upon them, she could scarcely believe how familiar the Progenitors looked. They had seen a few images of them, and the AI constructs such as Eonara and Aaokon had modelled their avatars after their original creators, but to see the Progenitors in the flesh was something else.

‘They really do look like us, don’t they?’ said Rekkid, settling down beside her on the ground and squinting through a tiny pair of viewers at the scene below.

‘Yes. This could be a scene from the past of either of our races.’

‘Or the future,’ Rekkid replied. ‘If such civilisational reversal can happen to the Progenitors, it can happen to us too.’

‘But they’re so…. so… I was going to say ‘human’ but that sounds a little inappropriate.’

‘They’re very like us, both of us. I keep wondering about what Aaokon said, about the Progenitors seeding the galaxy with nanomachines in order to manipulate the evolution of whole planets to create something like themselves. Do you think that they look like us, because they are us, in a manner of speaking? Maybe the Akkal weren’t the only ones…’

Katherine was watching one of the men through her viewers as he walked toward the fields on the edge of the village. He stopped and turned for a moment, and looked almost straight at her. She froze instinctively, before chiding herself: it wasn’t possible that he could have seen her from such a distance. Aside from a slight elongation of the skull, slightly flattened features and a heavier brow, his bearded face would have been able to pass without comment on any human world.

‘I think…’ she began. ‘I think that may be entirely possible.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rekkid. ‘Or maybe it’s just a coincidence of parallel evolution. In any case, we need to go back to the shuttle. Steelscale’s on his way. I said we’d join them as soon as possible.’

‘It seems such a shame to leave,’ said Katherine. ‘The things we could learn. Even if we excavated these ruins…’ she added, patting the ground beneath her, ground composed of the compacted floors of a massive habitation block.

‘I think that we should leave these people alone,’ warned Rekkid. ‘One day, they may learn the truth about their past, about the horror that they unleashed upon the galaxy. For now though, let them exist in blessed ignorance. I doubt if they would be able to comprehend the truth, and even if they could, it might destroy them just as the truth destroyed the Akkal. It’s strange to think that their ancestors built all of this. One day, perhaps the rest of the Progenitors will return from outside the galaxy to reclaim their home-world, but until then, we should let these people be.’

Despite the insulating suit, Katherine could feel the biting cold starting to seep through as she plodded forward through the driving snow towards the glassy bowl that had been gouged from the ice. She cast her mind back to a few hours previously, when she had lain in the sunshine in the planet’s temperate zone and gazed in wonder at its inhabitants. Those self same people had built the place that she now struggled towards – a circular plug of black material about five metres high that stood out against the exposed rock. Light seemed to fall into it. Its surface details were invisible save for where frost and snow clung to it, highlighting a pattern of concentric circles.

Rekkid walked at her side, along with the drone from the ship that was acting as the eyes and ears for the two AIs. It skittered along on its many legs. Steelscale had joined them too, deciding to brave the cold once more. He was as eager as they to see what lay inside the ominous black structure.

They eventually reached the edge of the bowl that had been boiled away out of the ice by the Arkari craft, which even now held station overhead, watching their progress. The surface of the ice had already re-frozen, turning the surface of the bowl into a glassy sheen that was treacherous to walk on. Steelscale seemed to fare the best, spreading his feet wide to get a more stable footing on the ice. Both Katherine and Rekkid slipped and fell as they descended, the padding of their suits saving them from injury but not embarrassment, although even the ship’s drone seemed to be having a little trouble negotiating the descent.

Eventually, they stood before the great black door, and gazed up at the night dark edifice. Like the Shaper ships, its surface hurt the eyes to look at it. It seemed to be both there and not there at once, confusing the brain if one looked directly at it. In the dull light of the snowstorm it seemed to imperceptibly shift.

‘Can you feel it, Rekkid?’ said Katherine. ‘The weight of history pressing down on this place? This is it. This is where it all began. All of it. The end of the Progenitors, the creation of the Shapers, the war, everything. Perhaps even the creation of other races throughout the galaxy.’

‘Those who have climbed the highest have the furthest to fall,’ Rekkid replied, transfixed by the black door. ‘And the Progenitors fell so very far indeed.’

‘Even gods make mistakes,’ rumbled Steelscale. ‘For example: our god did not make the K’Soth suited to cold climates. Can we please get inside before my scales freeze off?’

‘Aaokon: you said you knew how to open this thing,’ said Rekkid. ‘We would appreciate it if you would make good on that promise.’

‘Just a moment,’ said Aaokon. ‘The interfaces may be a little recalcitrant in responding after all this time… they are not… ah, there we go.’

There was a dull thud from within the black door and then the hiss of a vacuum being breached as the air from outside rushed into the hairline crack that had appeared in the mirrored surface, a crack which grew ever wider as the two halves began to part and fold back into the mountainside until a looming black hole yawned before them. Another set of doors, similar to the ones that had just opened, was dimly visible at the far end of the cylindrical chamber. The wind howled, whipping ghostly flakes of snow across the dark hollow in the mountain.

‘Looks inviting,’ said Rekkid. ‘Shall we?’

The drone was the first to move, scuttling quickly across the ice on its multiple insectile legs, the sensor clusters on its head sweeping ahead for danger.

‘War Marshal, this is Doctor O’Reilly,’ said Katherine into her comm. as they followed the drone in. ‘Are you seeing this?’

‘We’re getting a clear feed from the drone, yes,’ came the reply.

‘We’re heading inside. I’d appreciate it if you’d stand by to extract us at a moment’s notice if need be.’

‘Do you think that’s likely to be necessary?’ said Mentith.

‘I don’t know. Something about this place…’

‘We’ll monitor the situation. I’ll instruct the teams on the ground to move in immediately if you require assistance or if we lose contact with the drone.’

‘Roger that, O’Reilly out,’ said Katherine and stepped over the lip of the entrance.

Inside, the floor material was smooth and glassy and felt indistinct under her feet. Peering at it in the dim light she could just make out patterns shifting beneath its surface. It was indeed reminiscent of the material that the Shaper ship on Rhyolite had been fashioned from, appearing to be at once there and not. It confused her eyes if she looked directly at it and was immensely difficult to walk on without slipping and falling.

The group reached the far end of the chamber and stopped in front of the second great set of doors. They were identical to the first, massive and etched with concentric rings.

‘So, how do we get inside?’ said Steelscale impatiently, still visibly shivering from the cold. ‘Aaokon, are you also able to open this door?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the voice of the AI. ‘I am accessing the lock systems now. One moment.’

There was a grinding sound behind them. They turned as one and saw the circle of grey light and swirling snow beginning to rapidly close.

‘Shit! We’re being shut in!’ cried Katherine and tried to turn and head back the way that they had come, only to slip and fall on the slick floor. It was a pointless effort in any case. As Rekkid hauled her to her feet she looked up and saw that the circle of light had become a thin, vertical sliver, and then it disappeared entirely with a hollow boom. They were shut in, in total darkness.

Light flared in the darkness as the drone illuminated the space for them with lights on its head.

‘Aaokon, what the hell is going on?’ Rekkid demanded angrily of the drone. There was no answer. ‘Aaokon? Eonara? Shining Glory, this is Professor Rekkid Cor. Please respond!’

‘Shining Glory, this is Dr Katherine O’Reilly, are you reading us?’ said Katherine into her comm. She was met with a similarly stony silence.

The drone deployed weapons and appeared to be scanning the vast hollow space. It said something incomprehensible in Arkari.

‘The drone’s gone back into autonomous mode,’ said Rekkid. ‘Its contact with the ship has been severed. Well that’s wonderful’.

‘Mentith will send others after us,’ said Steelscale. ‘They’ll get us out of here.’

‘Assuming that they can get through that outer door of course,’ Rekkid replied, glumly.

They stared despondently into the darkness, the drone’s lights providing meagre illumination in the large, drum shaped chamber. There was a sudden thud from the inner door behind them, and then a crack of light appeared with a hiss of equalising atmospheres, the crack widening slowly until they could see beyond into the brightly lit, pristine interior. Curving walls of gleaming white composite and glass and a seamless white floor comprised a broad corridor littered with trolleys stacked with equipment that looked as if it had been left there only yesterday. The corridor extended far back into the mountain, leading off into chambers both to the left and right and in the middle floated two figures, a Progenitor male and female. It was Aaokon and Eonara, their avatars rendered in holographic form.

‘I am sorry for that,’ said Aaokon. ‘I attempted to open the inner door without closing the outer, but was overridden by the locking system.’

‘It was a little unsettling,’ said Katherine.

‘Yes of course, however it was not possible to open the inner door without first pumping the atmosphere back in the facility. In any case, Eonara and I have gained access to the Life Forge’s main network from the Shining Glory. We are currently undertaking the methodical process of unlocking and reactivating the systems. All knowledge of the interior of this place was of course wiped from our memories and we have no knowledge of what hidden traps and security measures may be buried within these ancient devices. We must be cautious.’

‘This place looks pristine,’ said Steelscale. ‘After four billion years… how is that possible?’

‘It has been perfectly sealed ever since it was abandoned,’ said Eonara. ‘With the atmosphere pumped out and the base buried and hidden beneath a mountain of rock and ice, it has lain undisturbed ever since, frozen in time for all those years.’

‘Incredible,’ said Katherine. ‘Just look at this place…’

‘If you choose to explore the facility, you should exercise extreme caution,’ said Eonara. ‘We cannot vouch for what may have lain dormant here, or what you may discover, though we will not move to stop you. We have re-established our link with the ship’s drone and will attempt to defend you, but understand that the Progenitors may have left things to guard this base that we cannot stop. Tread carefully.’

The three of them headed deeper into the complex, the ship’s drone leading the way and scanning for anything recognisable as a weapons system or booby trap. So far, it had found nothing. As they walked, the facility started to come alive around them as Eonara and Aaokon restored the various systems. The air was still freezing, however, and their breath formed wispy clouds in front of their faces as moved onwards.

The Life Forge was vast. From the main corridor that they had entered at first, branching corridors led off on both sides in a grid system of seemingly endless laboratories filled with gleaming and enigmatic equipment - containment tanks which presumably once held samples of some kind, surrounded by what looked like complex monitoring equipment, banks of machines filled with tiny phials and capsules, holographic displays that now showed error messages in the Progenitor script, and everywhere, pallets, shelves and trolleys of one kind or another stacked high with equipment. It was as if everything connected to the Shapers and the planet seeding program had been hastily stashed in this secret bolt-hole, the miraculously preserved condition of everything making it look as if the owners had only just left. Some of the containment tanks held desiccated biological remains, of what it was impossible to say, though some suggested the forms of primitive animals, perhaps test subjects long abandoned to their fate. Eventually they came across tanks that held more familiar looking forms: mechanical things formed of gleaming metals and crystal shards, with segmented bodies and snaking tendrils.

‘Shaper agents,’ said Katherine.

There was no mistaking them. The remains of the Shaper agents were more primitive looking than the ones that they had encountered before, but there was no mistaking their horrid larval forms. They were inert. Dead. One was still crusted with the terracotta colouring of long dried blood. Perhaps it had been removed from its host to study. Too late, the Progenitors had realised to their horror what their creations were doing, how they had infiltrated their society and brought about its collapse, and had made a desperate attempt to study their new enemy. It had been to little avail. Too little, too late.

At the far end of the same laboratory they found a larger containment tank set away from the others. It was heavily armoured, placed behind several thick layers of transparent composite and surrounded by pieces of heavy equipment that could have been field generators of some kind and others that looked distinctly like automated weapon turrets. In the bottom of the tank was a pile of motes like fallen flakes of silver. Rekkid peered through the thick transparent panels and tried to make out what they were. It was difficult for him to see the drift of glittering things through the armoured layers, but he got a distinct impression of legs and segmented bodies of different sizes.

‘It’s one of them,’ said the drone, speaking in Eonara’s voice. ‘One of the Shapers.’

Rekkid took a sudden, horrified step away from the tank.

‘Don’t worry, it’s quite dead. If such things can ever have been considered to have been alive,’ Eonara continued. ‘Ordinarily it would appear as a mobile swarm of millions of individual entities. The records show that it was captured with some difficulty during the later stages of the war and imprisoned here for study. It was killed by high powered electrical fields when it tried to subvert the security systems guarding it.’

‘That’s one of the Shapers?’ said Katherine.

‘Yes. Whilst the Shaper hive-mind comprises many different types of entity, the one you are looking at could be said to typify the actual Shaper race. It is these individuals who command the lesser creatures, such as the ships, agents and other parasitic organisms. Were this thing still active and free in this chamber, it would be able to tear you apart or take control of your mind and body with little difficulty. They are as deadly now as they were then, probably more so, given that they have evolved since. The Shaper race was born in this facility, but when allowed to roam free they succeeded in rapidly reprogramming and redesigning themselves until they reached what they appeared to deem a state of perfection, diversifying into various forms. Since then, they have merely refined this design, though they have been dormant for much of the intervening period, waiting for suitable races to populate the galaxy that they could enslave.’

‘And what did they originally look like?’ said Katherine. ‘How different is this thing in the tank from your original creations?’

‘Follow the drone,’ said Eonara. ‘And I will show you.’

The drone scuttled ahead, leading them onwards through the network of bright corridors that were silent save for the rhythmic ticking of the drone’s many limbs against hard white floor and the footsteps of the human, Arkari and K’Soth that followed in its wake.

‘We have accessed several of the key data stores within the facility,’ said Eonara. ‘Consequently, I have recovered much of the information that was wiped from my mind. Aaokon and I have not yet penetrated the vaults that hold the innermost secrets of the Shapers’ creation, but we shall reach them in time.’

‘And what precisely do you intend to do?’ said Rekkid. ‘You mentioned before about finding the knowledge to destroy the Shapers. What is your plan?’

‘Aaokon and I intend to craft a virus to infest the Shaper consciousness and destroy it from within,’ said Eonara. ‘Our intention is to subvert the base level core programming of the Shapers and force them to turn on one another. Of course, we haven’t yet established how exactly we will achieve this, nor how we can fool the Shapers into allowing the viral program into the hive-mind and allow it to spread across the galaxy. However, once we are able to retrieve the original design specifications of the Shapers and the information gathered on their later forms, we should be able to properly formulate our plan.’

‘Is that how AIs say “We’re making it up as we go along”?’ muttered Rekkid, and if Eonara heard him, she gave no response. The drone clattered along without saying another word.

Eventually, they arrived at a large circular door which irised open smoothly at Eonara’s command and allowed them to pass. Inside, they found themselves in a large chamber, dimly lit by wall sconces. As the lights started to come up, they gave a start, for the room was filled with ranks of humanoid figures, arranged in individual glass cases. The three archaeologists were looking at a veritable museum of robotics.

At the front of the room were primitive looking things that would have been ancient even at the height of the Progenitor Empire: crude things of wheels, pistons and hydraulics, bulky sensors and articulated arms that mounted tools or weapons. They were simple, unthinking machines, designed for specific tasks. As the ranks progressed towards the rear of the chamber, the mechanoids became ever more advanced. These were sleeker, more graceful designs that more closely resembled stylised versions of the Progenitors themselves but which were still relatively primitive compared to the being that sat on the throne which topped the dais at the far end of the room.

The ranks of mechanoids had been arranged with an aisle down the middle. Walking cautiously through the ranks of the silent army that had stood as if on parade for four thousand millennia, the archaeologists made their way towards the seated figure. It too was a stylised figure of a Progenitor of indeterminate sex, but one that was rendered from black crystal and liquid metal. A tapered head resembling the bows of the Shaper starships rendered in miniature sat atop a body that gleamed like onyx chased with silver in the light. As they moved closer still and stood before the silent figure, patterns could be seen deep within the surface of that dark crystalline body, myriad traces of the Progenitor script that overlaid one another.

‘One of the first,’ said Eonara. ‘This is what the Shapers looked like when they were created. Idealised versions of ourselves, rendered in all their cybernetic glory. The entire body is capable of processing data within its crystalline structure, just like the cells of a living body, and like living creatures, they were capable of replicating themselves. It was the finest creation that our technology had yet produced - an artificial, independent form of life. This one was never activated, never had a mind of its own. It is a shell, a museum piece, little more. Its construction material is a precursor of that used today by the Shapers to construct their warships, though they have refined its properties and melded it with the inter-dimensional technologies that power their ships.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Katherine. ‘A funny thing to say, perhaps, but it is.’

‘Beautiful, but flawed,’ said Eonara. ‘Terribly, terribly flawed. We were so proud of our children at first, not knowing what they would become, not realising that we had made them perfect and logical, but without compassion or mercy and that they had come to the cold and calculated conclusion that we were inferior and were to be eliminated or enslaved to their will.’

‘Eonara, you said that this facility, the Life Forge, was also the place where the program to seed worlds throughout the galaxy was undertaken,’ said Katherine.

‘Yes, I did,’ Eonara replied.

‘We have a right to know which worlds,’ said Katherine.

‘I would strongly advise you against acquiring such knowledge,’ said Eonara. ‘It can only do harm. Remember what happened to the Akkal.’

‘We have a right to know,’ Katherine repeated. ‘What we do with that knowledge is our choice.’

Eonara appeared to make sigh wearily and then continued. ‘Very well. The information is held in a system linked to a monitoring array built into the fabric of the Sphere that encases this system. Access to the system controls can be gained from a control room not far from here. Follow the drone, it will lead you there but I will assist you no further. I cannot be held responsible for the consequences.’

They followed the drone deeper into the mountain, past the entrances to silent rooms and gleaming, abandoned laboratories stacked high with mysterious equipment. Eonara and Aaokon had relinquished control of the device, allowing it to act independently and obey the commands of the three archaeologists. Eventually, the drone brought them to a circular set of doors that slid aside at its command. The chamber beyond was large and circular. Concentric rows of consoles radiated out from a raised central dais of a smooth, black material. Lights winked around its base. The drone approached the dais and stood before it, arms and sensors waving for a moment as the others stepped warily towards it.

Katherine thought she heard a voice then – it was almost imperceptible.

‘Did you hear something?’ she said, turning to Rekkid and Steelscale.

‘No, why?’ Steelscale replied, looking at her quizzically.

‘For a minute I thought I… never mind…’ she replied and shook her head.

The drone convulsed and made a strangely animal like set of noises, and the dais came alive. A slowly rotating map of the galaxy appeared in the air above the dais, huge and shining, each individual star system picked out in glowing holographic clarity like a vast swirl of diamonds cast onto a velvet backdrop. A web of glowing lines denoted the vast gate network that the Progenitors had thrown across the galaxy. Its beauty was breathtaking. The drone manipulated the view, diving into that vast island of stars until they rushed by on all sides in their millions until one system in particular grew large in the centre of the projection. The vast shell of the Dyson Sphere encasing the system was clearly visible as were the planets orbiting within it, and the conjunction of gate network routes that converged upon it. It was showing them the Progenitor home system where they now stood. The drone spoke in Arkari.

‘The drone says that it has complete access to the system,’ said Rekkid. ‘It has used what we know of Progenitor technology to do so and reports that this facility runs on a system compatible with others that we have encountered. It awaits our command.’

‘Eonara said that this system is linked to some sort of monitoring array,’ said Katherine. ‘The Progenitors must have left it to watch over the worlds that they had seeded. Rekkid, order the drone to pull the view back again and highlight those worlds across the galaxy that the Progenitors had ordered the system to keep an eye on.’

The drone did as it was ordered. The view zoomed out again to encompass the entire galaxy and then glowing red dots began to appear highlighting systems across its disc that the Progenitors had seeded with their nanomachines in an effort to subvert the evolution of life on suitable planets. A number of systems across the Western Spiral Arm were highlighted.

‘Ask it to zoom in on the Western Arm,’ said Katherine, with a lump in her throat. Soon the projection was filled with an arc of brightly glowing stars. A handful of systems in the centre of the image were picked out in red.

‘Ask the drone if it can match the coordinates of the star systems shown in the map to those in its own data stores and zoom in on that cluster of highlighted systems,’ said Katherine.

The view focused on those glowing red points and expanded the view, appending labels in Arkari script to each star. Katherine recognised two of them immediately. The Arkari characters for both worlds were well known to her: Earth and Keros.

They stood in stunned silence for a moment.

‘We suspected, did we not?’ said Steelscale, eventually. ‘The similarities that we had noted between the Progenitors and your cultures. I did not see my own home-world picked out on that map.’

‘No,’ said Rekkid. ‘Hence why the AIs of the Defence Collective were happy to admit us, but objected to you entering the Sphere. When they analysed myself, Katherine and the rest of the crew of the Shining Glory, they saw us as Progenitors, but not you.’

‘Eonara warned us,’ said Katherine, her voice quavering. ‘She warned us not to come here. So it’s true then. The Progenitors’ name is literally true, they created both our races and perhaps hundreds more across the galaxy. Everything we thought we knew about our own species is a lie.’

‘The bit I really dislike, is that the religions of both our cultures and dozens more turn out to be true, in a manner of speaking’ said Rekkid, slowly. ‘We really were created by advanced beings. Just not in the way that they envisaged. No wonder the Akkal went crazy.’

‘The Progenitors may have seeded your worlds, but do we know whether their efforts were successful and responsible for your species’ evolution?’ said Steelscale. ‘Parallel evolution is not unknown in nature. It could still be a coincidence.’

‘You’re just trying to cheer us up,’ said Rekkid. ‘Very well, I’ll ask the drone to display what information the system holds on our worlds.’

The view rushed in once more towards the Solar System, zooming in to a pale blue point of light that eventually resolved itself into the blue-green mottled orb of the earth. Polar caps and cloud tops gleamed whitely in the sunlight.

‘The continents look wrong,’ said Katherine. ‘See: North America and Europe are still joined together. India is depicted as an island far to the south of its present position.’

The drone spoke.

‘The drone reports that according to its records, this depiction of the Earth is almost seventy million years out of date,’ said Rekkid. As he spoke, reams of Progenitor script and images began to appear, overlaying the slowly rotating Earth. There were images of monsters, of things with fangs and scales, of lumbering behemoths with long necks and tiny brains and sea-dwelling things with long, snapping jaws and rows of razor sharp teeth. Eventually the drone settled on one image. It was of a bipedal being, clad in the pelts of larger animals and holding a crudely made spear. Large, intelligent eyes provided binocular vision to a developed brain atop a body equipped with nimble hands. It wasn’t human. Its skin was scaly and mottled, its head ridged and plated and elongated, and its jaws lined with sharp teeth.

‘What on earth?’ said Katherine. ‘This can’t be right. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the fossil record to indicate anything like this.’

‘According to the accompanying script, these beings evolved from the more intelligent meat eating saurians around this time. They occupied a territory on the southern plains of what is now North America,’ said Rekkid.

‘They would have been obliterated by the asteroid that impacted in the Yucatan sixty five million years ago,’ said Katherine. ‘I imagine that the chances of anything surviving in the fossil record, given the likely delicate nature of their skeletons would be very slim indeed.’

‘So were these the beings created by the Progenitors?’ said Steelscale.

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Rekkid. ‘The text even refers to them as “our progeny.”’

‘But what about humans? Did intelligent, bipedal beings emerge again purely due to natural evolution or because the Progenitors intended it to happen? What about the other species of hominids that emerged on Earth and died out?’ said Katherine.

Rekkid spoke to the drone and then replied: ‘Impossible to say from this as there’s no records recent enough.’

‘What about Keros, what does it say about the Arkari?’ said Steelscale.

The view switched to the Arkari home-world, and told a similar story. Again, the data on it was hopelessly out of date, depicting a world lacking intelligent life and dominated by huge, airborne predators.

‘Something must have happened to the array to stop it from working,’ said Rekkid. ‘Hardly surprising, given its extreme age.’

‘And yet other systems in this base seem to still be operational,’ said Katherine. ‘I wonder what happened?’

‘Bad luck or faulty components, I expect,’ Rekkid replied. ‘In any case, I’ll ask the drone to download a copy of all of this data. What we choose to do with it can wait, for now, though it is inconclusive.’

‘It certainly suggests the possibility that the Progenitors created our races,’ said Katherine.

‘And the Esacir, and Hyrdians, and the Nahabe,’ said Rekkid. ‘Look at the map again. Look at those systems highlighted.’

The drone pulled the view back at his command until the totality of what constituted explored space for humans and Arkari filled the view, the red points of seeded worlds glowing like bright rubies.

‘Of course, this data also contains a complete copy of the locations of all the nodes of the Progenitor gate network still in operation up to the date of the map,’ said Rekkid. ‘Even if we keep the other findings to ourselves, this other information could be of incalculable value in allowing us to return home. It already shows where some links have been destroyed, I notice. According to this, there’s a portal about a hundred light years south of the Hadar system.’

‘Well that’s good news at least,’ said Katherine. ‘After all, at some point we need to get out of this place and go back home.’

She heard the voice again, a subtle whisper that sounded like it was coming from the corners of the room. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It was like the whisperings of a ghost.

‘There it is again,’ she said. ‘A voice. I heard it when we walked in here and I’m sure I just heard it once more. You don’t hear it?’

Rekkid shook his head. Steelscale said nothing. The voice had sounded familiar. She recalled a black and blasted landscape under a sky lit with the fires of annihilation. It had been in a dream that she had had. That ship… Rhyolite…

The starmap flickered. Lines of distortion caused the thousands of suns to ripple as though they were reflected in water.

‘Look at the map!’ said Katherine.

They saw that the stars were moving. They were moving apart and re-arranging themselves until black gulfs of space began to form like tears in a sheet of fabric. Those tears formed into a face, with dark lightless eyes that floated above a dark abyss of a mouth.

‘No…’ said Katherine. ‘Oh no… it’s one of them! It’s a Shaper!’

The horrid sounds of mocking laughter began to echo around the room and then, suddenly, the lights went out.

Chapter 46

‘Have a look at this,’ said Steven, handing the datapad to Isaacs in the back seat of the truck. ‘Admiral Morgan made a speech just a few minutes ago. We’re going to need to move fast.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Isaacs.

‘See for yourself,’ said Steven as Isaacs pressed play on the news item

Admiral Morgan stood at a lectern in full dress uniform, the emblem of the Freedom Alliance filling the wall behind him. Another figure stood to one side just in shot, also in uniform, hands clasped behind his back and his expression stern.

‘Admiral Cox,’ muttered Isaacs. ‘Pity we didn’t succeed in killing that one when we had the chance.’

Morgan started to speak.

‘As your President, I feel it important to keep the citizens of our new alliance informed. I know that recent weeks have been troubling for many of you, due to the disruption caused by the transition to our new government and also due to the Commonwealth’s attempt to suppress our bid for independence from their corrupt regime both with military force and economic blockade. I know that this has caused hardships for many of you. Rest assured that efforts to root out the last of the Commonwealth’s spies from within our midst are underway and that despite recent military setbacks, plans are being put in motion to end the war with Earth’s government once and for all. I cannot yet reveal the details but many of you by now will have noticed the large ship in orbit above Orinoco.

I have previously said that Earth’s government is under the malign influence of a race known as the Shapers. This is true, but this does not mean that we cannot also find our own allies among the civilised races of the galaxy. Our new friends come from far beyond our own borders, but their recognition of the desire of all peoples for liberty is as fervent as our own. They are a little shy of publicity, but perhaps in the coming weeks and months they will make themselves available for interview. They are an ancient race of great power and their ship stands guard over our world against the predations of the Commonwealth whilst we put in place our plans for a counter-attack with their assistance.

This brings me to my final subject. Three days from now, the war criminal Admiral Haines will be brought before a military court to answer the charges that we have brought against him, namely: an unprovoked attack upon a sovereign world and the butchering of thousands of innocent civilians. I know that many of you would ask for swift retribution to be done against this man, but it is only right that he stand in a court of law and be tried in a just and legal fashion. If found guilty, he will of course face the death penalty for his crimes. That is all. Thank you for your patience in this difficult time,’ said Morgan and began to leave the lectern. Isaacs ended the recording.

‘Well that was a pile of horseshit,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there was a truthful sentence in any of that. I loved the bit where he again claimed that the Commonwealth was in alliance with the Shapers, and then announced his alliance with the Shapers. Nice.’

‘We need to find Haines, and quickly,’ said Steven. ‘I think we all know that this is going to be little more than a show trial. I don’t know how long he’ll have afterwards until they execute him. Let’s go.’

‘I’m still not sure that this is a good idea,’ said Anna. ‘We’re about to walk into a club owned by a man that you pulled a gun on and shot two of his men.’

‘It wasn’t exactly the way I planned it, but they would have killed us if I hadn’t acted,’ said Steven. ‘Besides, I did my homework before I walked into that bar. Molinelli is a coward at heart and gets others to do his dirty work for him. If he knows that they can’t protect him, he won’t move against us. He won’t want trouble, particularly if the club is full of people. It’s bad for business and will attract the authorities. All the same, we’ll need to watch our back in case he’s stupid enough to try anything. Are you both armed?’

‘Yep,’ said Isaacs and patted the lump under his jacket that was a heavy laser pistol. Anna was likewise armed. ‘How are we going to get inside?’

‘Molinelli should have told his security staff to expect us and let us through without question. Hopefully we won’t need these anyway, but it’s good to have insurance. You ready?’

‘Ready as we’ll ever be, I suppose,’ said Anna.

‘Okay, good. Let’s move,’ said Steven and opened the door of the truck.

They had parked across the street from Molinelli’s club, Dimension. Brightly coloured holos across the front of the establishment bathed the darkening street in flickering, multicoloured light. Two doormen stood at the entrance, their oversized physiques betraying the effects of drug or gene enhancements. Steven, Isaacs and Anna walked calmly across the street . The doormen watched them approach. Steven went up to the larger of the two and smiled warmly.

‘Good evening. We’re on the guest list for tonight. Mr Molinelli is expecting us.’

‘Name?’ growled the doorman.

‘Van Horne. Party of three.’

The doorman consulted a small datapad for a moment.

‘Okay, you can head inside. Have a good evening, sir,’ said the doorman gruffly and pushed the door open with a meaty hand.

With that, they walked into Dimension unmolested and unsearched. The interior of the club was pretty empty. It was still a little early and only a dozen or so patrons had yet arrived. They were mostly hanging around near the brightly lit bar. Light and holo displays floated above a large dance floor that, as yet, was empty of people, although music thudded out from the sound system all the same. Isaacs cast his eye around the room. Most of the other patrons looked stylishly attired, the men lean and handsome and the women hanging off their arms similarly good looking and obviously wealthy. Despite having changed into something smarter than his usual clothes, Isaacs felt under dressed. This wasn’t his sort of place at all and more to the point, these people seemed to be behaving in a manner that suggested that they were oblivious to what was going on in the city outside. How could they talk and laugh and look so carefree? Didn’t it occur to them how precarious their existence was, or were they just getting out of their skulls to blot out what was happening all around them?

‘What are you waiting for? Head to the bar and get a drink,’ said Steven. ‘Act natural.’

‘Yeah Cal, you don’t usually need prompting,’ said Anna. ‘Don’t go getting drunk mind you, we need to stay sharp.’

Isaacs eyed the gleaming bar and the smug looking bar tender who was currently mixing cocktails for a group of giggling young women and groaned inwardly.

‘Given the likely price of the drinks in here, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,’ Isaacs said and went to order.

A few minutes later, clutching a too-cold bottle of overpriced beer with an ironic name, Isaacs stood with his back to the bar and looked around the club.

‘You alright?’ said Anna.

‘Just suffering from a sharp, stabbing pain in the wallet, that’s all,’ Isaacs replied grimly and cast an accusing glance at her luridly coloured cocktail. ‘Fucking typical. Any sign of this Sigurdson guy?’

‘None so far. Still, it’s early. He doesn’t usually turn up until later on, apparently.’

‘So, we watch and wait.’

‘That’s the plan. Try to act natural. Pretend that you’re having a good time.’

‘In this place? I’m not that good an actor,’ Isaacs replied. Anna saw his expression and laughed.

Over the course of the next hour, the club started to fill up. They crowded the bar and began to gather on the dance floor beneath the flashing holos that moved in time to the thudding music. The more Steven watched, the more he pondered the people here. Were they aware of what was going on on this moon? He imagined that on some level they must be, even if they were choosing to ignore it. Perhaps this place provided an escape for them. He had heard that as the Soviets closed in on Berlin at the end of the Second World War, people had still drunk and danced even as the shells from the Red Army had started to fall on the city. Perhaps this was more of the same process of denial and release.

He leaned over to Anna.

‘The other day in the bar. What was that all about?’

She looked at him puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You called yourself Anna Isaacs, rather than Favreaux. I haven’t heard you use that name in a while.’

‘No well… for a time it wasn’t really me. I didn’t feel like that was the right name for me. You shut me out, I left and…’

‘Yeah, I know.’ He paused. ‘What about now?’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Things are little different now with you and me. There is a “you and me”, for a start. These past few weeks: I see the old Cal I knew before, the man I fell for. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him and it’s good to have him back. I want to stay with him. I like being Mrs Isaacs again, I think.’ She moved in and kissed him. ‘Assuming we get out of this in one piece of course,’ she added.

Isaacs grinned at her.

‘Well now I’ve my girl back, I’d better make sure of that, hadn’t I?’ he said and made to move in for another kiss.

‘Yeah? Well keep your mind on the job then,’ said Anna and gently pushed him away. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later. Meanwhile, we need to find this contact, and Steven is giving us a look.’

Scanning the crowd without making it too obvious was difficult. There was too much gloom and strobing light, the gyrating bodies on the dance floor mixing with the ghostly apparitions of holo-projections both above and among the revellers. Isaacs leaned over to Steven.

‘Any sign of our contact?’ he yelled over the noise.

‘Not yet,’ Steven replied. ‘Molinelli hasn’t arrived yet either, like he promised. He’s going to introduce us, remember?’

‘Yeah… wait, is that him in the crowd over there?’ said Isaacs and pointed with a hand that still held a drink. Sure enough, Molinelli’s rotund form could be seen waddling through the throng, providing a stark contrast to the lithe figures that parted to let him through. He wore a scowl on his pudgy face, and his forehead was already beaded with sweat. He spotted them and ambled towards them, pausing at the bar to take the drink the barman had waiting for him.

‘Alright, our guy has arrived. I haven’t said anything to him, like you asked, so as not to spook him. You wanna come over? I’ll introduce you to each other.’ Molinelli looked obviously nervous, despite the handful of security staff stationed around the club. He had seen what Steven could do and knew that they would be unable to help him if Steven turned on him. ‘Listen, let’s keep it civil, okay?’ Molinelli added, with a pleading look on his face. ‘I’ve got a business to run here, and I’ve done what you asked.’

‘That you have,’ said Steven. ‘Besides, the last thing I want to do is attract attention.’

‘Good, good,’ said Molinelli, nodding and mopping his brow. ‘Come on, this way. He’s in one of the booths.’

Molinelli led them around the central dance floor towards the back of the club. There was a broad raised area here, and another bar, to the left of which was a row of booths with padded seating and tables. Two of them were occupied by laughing groups of drinkers. A third was occupied by a stocky man with short, white blonde hair and two attractive girls rather younger than him. They were both laughing at some joke that the man had made. One had her perfectly manicured hand on his leg. Isaacs saw the man look up at Molinelli in recognition as they approached. It was Sigurdson.

‘Martin! How’s it going, my friend?’ said Molinelli, shooting the man a broad grin.

‘Vito, hey!’ said Sigurdson, throwing his arms wide. ‘Good to see you again.’

‘Having fun tonight?’ said Molinelli, nodding at the two girls.

‘Always good here, man,’ said Sigurdson. ‘This place of yours… listen, why don’t you join us?’ he added pointing to a seat next to the girl sat opposite him. ‘Room for one more.’

Vito laughed. ‘Maybe in a while. Listen, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Martin, this is Steven. He has business to discuss.’

‘Okay, sure,’ said Sigurdson and nodded a little drunkenly.

‘Listen Martin, he just needs a few minutes of your time so, ladies, if you wouldn’t mind going to powder your noses for a few minutes? When you come back, I’ll have some champagne on ice waiting for you, alright?’ said Molinelli and gave a reassuring wink.

The girls squeezed their way out of the booth and tottered away to the toilets on their high heels. Sigurdson watched them leave, wistfully.

‘Eighteen, man. Fuck! I feel young again,’ he said and laughed at his own joke, then stuck out a hand. ‘So Steven, you wanna talk?’

Steven shook the proffered hand.

‘Sure I do,’ he replied, then turned to Isaacs and Anna as Molinelli took a seat in the booth. Keeping his voice low enough so that Molinelli and Sigurdson would be unable to hear him over the music, he said ‘Okay, you two stand watch. Spread out and watch for any funny stuff going down. I don’t trust Molinelli one bit. I don’t think he is that stupid, but I don’t want to take any chances, okay?’

Anna and Isaacs nodded and moved to position themselves to either side of the booth: far enough away that their presence as bodyguards wasn’t too obvious, but close enough so that they could both keep an eye on Steven as well as the rest of the club. Isaacs saw Steven sit down with the gangster and the crooked quartermaster and felt the weight of the pistol pressing against his chest as the music continued to blare.

Steven sat down across from Sigurdson and got straight to the point.

‘Okay, Staff Sergeant Martin Sigurdson. I’m going to be blunt: we know what you’re up to.’

‘What the fuck? We? Who is “we”?’ sneered Sigurdson. ‘Vito?’ Molinelli remained silent.

‘My name is Steven Harris. I’m an agent working for Commonwealth Intelligence, Special Operations Command. Mr Molinelli here has been helping me with my enquiries. You’ve been siphoning off supplies from the military for years and selling them on the black market, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah, so? In case you hadn’t figured it out, pal, this ain’t the Commonwealth anymore. You ain’t got no jurisdiction here, so fuck off!’

‘That may be so,’ said Steven. ‘But unless you co-operate and tell me everything I need to know, you aren’t going to have an awful lot left to entertain those two delightful young ladies with later. Look under the table.’

Gingerly, Sigurdson angled his head so that he could see beneath the table top. The sight of a heavy laser pistol pointed directly at his balls greeted him. Molinelli also visibly blanched.

‘Hey, you said no trouble…’

‘And there won’t be any, if Staff Sergeant Sigurdson plays along,’ said Steven. ‘Will there, Staff Sergeant?’ He grinned coldly at Sigurdson, who shook his head weakly. ‘Now, I’m willing to overlook your misdemeanours and allow you to remain in possession of your manhood if you’re willing to provide the information that I’m after.’

‘Sure,’ said Sigurdson, nodding nervously. ‘Okay, what do you want?’

‘Vito tells me that as Quarter Master, you’re in a pretty good position to know what’s going on around here with regard to deployments and so forth. I’m looking for high profile prisoners held by the new regime. Where might I find them?’

‘I dunno man, I mean things are little messed up around here right now.’

‘Messed up? Messed up how?’ pressed Steven. ‘More messed up than having your bollocks fried by a laser pistol?’

‘Oh fuck…’ said Sigurdson. ‘I dunno if I can… Look, some pretty fucked up shit is going down around here. If I tell you… if they find out… They’ll fucking disappear me, man. They’ll fucking well turn me into one of them…’

‘Start at the top,’ Steven ordered.

Isaacs’ eyes roamed the crowd, letting his gaze slide over the drinking, dancing, flirting, kissing figures. He watched them gyrate to the music, laugh at one another’s drunken jokes, flirt and touch one another in a sea of moving figures, scantily clad female bodies and sharply dressed males. He noticed that there was a propensity for the older men to be accompanied by much younger female partners, though there were a few groups of women dancing together and men clutching drinks hanging around the periphery of the dance floor like hyenas eyeing a pack of gazelles. The club’s security staff looked on, bored, as if the outbreak of a drunken brawl would enliven their day no end. It was then that he first caught a glimpse of her: Anita.

‘Look, I mean when Morgan first began this rebellion a lot of us supported him. Sure, plenty of us had our doubts, but a lot of the things that he was saying about the corruption in government and how other systems get sidelined in favour of the Solar System and where all the money goes made a lot of sense, you know? Especially after they arrested the President. It was only after Morgan came here that things started to go wrong.’ Sigurdson was talking rapidly in a voice so low that Steven could barely hear him above the music. He leaned closer and Steven urged him to continue.

‘Okay, well the Commonwealth sent ships to retake the system. We were told that Admiral Haines was in command. I mean, I’ve heard of this guy, everyone has. Haines was always hailed as a goddamn hero, unbeatable they said. He didn’t last five minutes up there. You could see the fireworks from here: ships burning up, debris raining down through the atmosphere. Then they branded Haines a war criminal, said he’d butchered civilians up there. It didn’t seem true to me.’

‘It isn’t. It’s bullshit,’ said Steven.

‘Right, except afterwards a few people started to say that, and they just disappeared overnight. Guys I’d worked with for years: gone. The official line was that they’d been transferred to other units, but they were completely un-contactable. It was like they’d never existed. Then we started to see strange ships in the sky. I mean, it’s not unusual to see all sorts of weird alien ships around here, the system’s a trading hub after all, but these things… I don’t know… they make my skin crawl. You ever have dreams where you think you’re about to die, and everything starts to fade into whiteness and you wake up in the middle of the night with your heart pounding? That feeling, right there, is how I feel when I look at those things. Anyway, we knew that they were landing troops. Most of them looked human enough, but they were kept separate from the rest of the grunts, and then people started saying that they’d seen other things too.’

‘What other things?’

‘Strange creatures out in the forests and in the streets at night, sometimes. Aliens, yeah , but not from any species that we know and then one by one bases all over the system started to go quiet. We knew that there was still somebody there, we still got requests for supplies coming through, but there was never anyone there who replied to our messages and calls. Whole units had just stopped talking to us. People I’d spoken to every day for years and now they didn’t answer. Even the convoys or transports that came to pick up the supplies – they didn’t speak to us, even look at us. They looked human, but they were like robots, just unthinking machines. We heard stories about what had happened to them…’ Sigurdson shuddered.

‘What about Admiral Haines, have you heard anything regarding his whereabouts?’

‘I… I dunno if I should. Look if they hear me, or trace this back to me…’

‘They won’t. I promise you: I protect my sources. You’ll be doing the Commonwealth a big favour. If Haines is still alive, then we need him to be leading the Navy once again. Think of the hope it would give people to see him rescued!’

‘I… yeah I guess. Look, after the battle I think Morgan’s people figured out that Haines was still alive. Quite a few escape pods from the Commonwealth ships came down right across that face of Orinoco. They must have found his somehow. There was a call for information and a reward for his capture, but it sounds like they found him themselves somewhere out in the deep jungle. Morgan was on the news broadcasts, crowing with victory. I think they caught a whole bunch of them hiding out there like some sort of guerrilla army or something. Morgan accused them of plotting all sorts of atrocities.’

‘Do you have any idea where they might have taken him?’

‘There was a lot of activity following his capture. I think they moved him around from place to place at first. It was easy to tell where the highest levels of security were: all of a sudden, those units that we were still in regular contact with were either replaced with troops that Morgan had brought in from off world, or they themselves became incommunicado. At first, I think they had him somewhere inside the Governor’s Residence, but now I’m pretty sure they’ve got him in the cells underneath the Assembly.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Well I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but there was a heavily guarded prisoner convoy sent there about a week ago from the Governor’s Residence. Security was pretty tight around the Assembly before, but it’s been beefed up since.’

‘Yeah, I took a look around. There’s a small army guarding the place.’

‘Right, and all of those units around there are like I said: they don’t communicate with the rest of us. If Haines is still alive, my bet is that he would be in there, especially since Morgan seems intent on giving him a show trial.’

‘And what about the rest of you?’

‘Most of my buddies are too damn scared to do anything except follow orders. Those who don’t… I’ve heard the rumours, man. I’ve seen pictures of bodies with… with things attached to their skulls… and that giant fucking ship in the sky? You can’t miss that. I don’t know who Morgan’s new friends are, but they scare the shit out of me. I don’t want to… I don’t want to end up like the rest…’

Isaacs glimpsed her through the crowd, moving deftly between dancing bodies that parted like water for her. Her lithe body was clad in a silver dress that clung to her curves. At first, he thought it was merely another girl who bore a passing resemblance to Anita, but the more he stared, the more he realised that he was looking at the genuine article. He couldn’t believe it was her. He had seen her disappear under a tide of bodies. He had seen her die, or at least, he thought he had.

She spotted him, a flash of recognition from those large brown eyes of hers and a grin, and then she began to move towards him across the dance floor until she stood before him, almost a head shorter even in her heels.

‘Cal, hi. It’s good to see you,’ she said, gazing up at him and cocking her head to one side. Isaacs was almost speechless. ‘How are you?’ she added as if noticing his dumbstruck expression.

‘What happened… what happened to you?’ he stammered. ‘I saw you die! We looked everywhere for you, but…’

‘I uh… look I managed to get out of there, okay? Fancy running into you in here of all places. Look, maybe I have some explaining to do. You want to get a drink and catch up?’

‘I uh… I’m kind of in the middle of something. Anita I… I thought… we all thought you were dead, for God’s sake!’

‘It’s okay. I knew you’d be surprised, and a bit shocked. I’ve missed you, you know?’

‘Well I… how on earth did you?’

‘Being with you was a lot of fun, Cal. Do you remember what it was like on the ship, just you and me? You know, I saw you in here and the first thing I thought was… look, do you wanna go somewhere and…’ she moved closer and put her hand on his arm.

‘Ah, no I don’t think… look, Anna and me are back together now. She’s just over the other side of the room and well…’

‘That’s okay,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘You can both share me if you like, I don’t mind…’ He felt her hand move downwards across the front of his trousers and stop there. ‘I’ve been watching you, Cal,’ she whispered, her breath on his ear. ‘Ever since I came here, I’ve been watching you. We’ve been watching you… ever since you entered the city…’

Her face was centimetres from his own. His nostrils were filled with the scent of her. He looked into those large brown eyes and saw something looking back at him, something cold and alien and calculating. Something that wasn’t Anita. In horror he took a step back, fumbling beneath his jacket for his weapon.

‘Don’t fight it, Cal,’ said the thing that had once been Anita. ‘You should join with us. The pleasures of this weak flesh are as nothing compared to the bliss of being one with us.’ She ran a hand languidly down over her body.

‘No… oh god no…’ Isaacs heard himself moan, as he started to back away.

There was a commotion at the other side of the room. The doors of the club had burst open and black, armoured figures were swarming in, guns at the ready.

A single gunshot rang out. Anita was propelled backwards onto the dance floor, a dark stain already spreading from her left shoulder as she landed heavily amidst the dancers. There were screams. People were already turning around in shock and terror or backing away.

‘You fucking idiot!’ screamed Anna, the heavy pistol that had fired the shot in her hand. ‘Always thinking with your dick as usual! Come on!’

Steven heard the shot ring out and was on his feet in seconds, weapon drawn.

‘You fucking set me up!’ he barked at Molinelli, but the gangster was already throwing up his hands and shaking his head.

‘Oh god, no!’ he heard Sigurdson sob. ‘I knew it, I knew they’d come… oh Jesus!’

‘Run! Now!’ snapped Steven. He scanned the room. Armoured figures were fanning out amidst the fleeing revellers. There was a crash from the back of the club as a shaped charge blew the hinges off the fire escape. He grabbed Molinelli before he could flee.

‘We need to get out of here! Which way?’

‘Follow me,’ said the trembling fat man. ‘There’s a flight of stairs to my private rooms.’

‘And from there?’

‘On to the roof, I think. It’s the only way. Follow me.’

On the dance floor, Anita was struggling to rise. As Anna pulled Isaacs away he saw a look of murderous fury on the face of the pretty young woman who had once been his lover. Her face contorted with an animalistic snarl, she started to charge towards them. Two more shots barked from Anna’s pistol and struck Anita in the forehead. She went down, limbs twitching.

‘And stay down!’ cried Anna, then added. ‘Never could stand that little bitch.’

As Anna pulled at Isaacs’ shoulder with her hand, he caught a glimpse of Anita’s ruined face, and the hint of something horrible moving inside her shattered skull before he hurriedly looked away.

The black figures were closing in. Now that they were closer, Steven could see the police logos on their helmets and pauldrons in the flickering gloom. Their automaton-like movements betrayed that they were undoubtedly enslaved. Two had moved closer around the tables and pillars to his left. Reacting quickly, he squeezed off four shots, pushing people out of the way as he took aim and put two bullets into the skulls of both figures, blowing them backwards off their feet. Isaacs and Anna ran towards him through the panicked customers. Abject horror showed on Isaacs’ face.

Shots began to ring out from the far side of the club where the police had hunkered down into firing positions, gouging holes from pillars and tables and passing through holographic figures. A number of the fleeing patrons were caught in the crossfire and were cut down as they ran. Instinctively, Steven ducked for cover behind the tables fringing the dance floor and the others did likewise.

‘How the hell do we get out of here?’ yelled Isaacs over the sound of gunfire and screams and the music that was still playing over everything. Steven snuck a glance out of cover and loosed off more shots as he spoke.

‘I know a way out,’ said Molinelli. ‘This way,’ he added, pointing to a small, unmarked side door.

‘You trust this guy?’ said Isaacs to Steven as more figures appeared behind the main bar and started firing.

‘No. But I don’t think we have any choice,’ Steven replied and snuck off a couple of shots through a gap in their cover.

There was a series of dull thuds and several smoking canisters landed nearby, hissing with clouds of escaping gas.

‘Shit, they’re trying to flush us out,’ Anna ducked as more rounds went overhead.

Isaacs raised his head cautiously to take a look at their attackers. Whilst one group kept up the barrage of fire, two more were working their way around the edges of the room towards them. He conveyed this to Steven as the tear gas clouds closed in, stinging their eyes, noses and throats and slowly obscuring their view.

‘We need to move,’ said Steven, fighting the urge to cough. ‘Is that door locked?’ he said to Molinelli, who nodded and held up the electronic key. ‘Shit, okay. We use the gas as cover. On three. One, two….’

They ran, bullets whistling past them. As they reached the door, one struck Molinelli in the back. He stumbled and collapsed instantly, a large, bloody pool already spreading from beneath him. Sigurdson reached down, grabbed the electronic key card from Molinelli’s thick fingered hand and could see that the life was already ebbing out of him. The bullet had entered the fat man’s back and had exploded outwards through his chest, ripping a large hole in his heart.

‘Leave him!’ ordered Steven. ‘It’s too late. Come on!’

The unmarked door was, fortunately, located in the cover of a thick pillar that afforded them some cover for a few moments. Sigurdson swiped the key card through the lock, and with relief, they saw the lights next to the lock turn green in response. It was then that the enemy began to charge. As one, the black armoured figures started to run towards them, bowling over those foolish enough to still be in the way of the stampede. Boots thudded on the sprung dance floor.

‘Up the stairs!’ yelled Steven, loosing off a series of accurate shots that felled charging figures as the others scrambled through the door and began to clamber up the stairs behind it. The stairs were narrow and steep, only wide enough for one person. Isaacs and Anna went first and quickly reached the top. Steven was mid-way up when he noticed that Sigurdson was lingering at the bottom, frantically trying to find a way to lock the door behind them. It was a fatal error.

The enemy were upon him in seconds. Gloved hands grabbed Sigurdson, forcing him to the floor. He screamed. He knew what would happen to him next. He looked up at Steven as the enslaved fell upon him. ‘Please…’ he said, and Steven knew what to do. ‘Please!’ cried Sigurdson again as he was hauled backwards, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the floor. Steven raised his weapon and shot Sigurdson through the eye, pulping the man’s brain. It was a mercy. He fired again and again, scrambling backwards up the stairs as more armoured figures tried to pile into the doorway. Reaching the top, Isaacs and Anna were able to add their own fire to his, knocking the black-clad figures back down the stairs. Some, the less seriously injured, started to get up again. Others lay still, temporarily blocking the stairs until their comrades could clamber over them.

To their relief, there was a second door at the top of the stairs. This one was solid steel and was equipped with old fashioned deadbolts. Slamming the door shut, they slid the bolt and looked around. They were in some kind of office. The windows looked out onto the flat roof of the building and the network of alleys beyond.

‘That won’t hold them for long,’ said Isaacs, nodding in the direction of the locked door behind them as heavy boots hammered upwards on the stairs outside. ‘Got a plan?’

‘Yeah, we get out onto this roof, and then we run like hell,’ said Steven.

‘They’re onto us, Steven. Anita… Anita said that they’d been watching us the whole time that we’ve been here,’ said Isaacs.

‘The girl?’ said Steven, as he forced the window open.

Isaacs nodded, mutely.

‘Okay. Sigurdson thought that he knew where Haines is being held, but we need to get out of the city first and save our own skins before we can think about that.’

There was a loud hammering sound from the door, the sound of something heavy battering against it.

‘Come on,’ said Steven, stepping out onto the roof. ‘Follow me.’

Chapter 47

Mocking laughter pierced the utter darkness, and then a chilling voice began to speak in glutinous tones. Katherine couldn’t understand it, but Rekkid could. It was speaking in the language of the Progenitors.

‘It’s thanking us,’ he said. ‘It says that it has been trapped here for millions of years inside this monitoring system but now that we have turned the power back on all over the base, it can infect those other systems and escape.’

Lights mounted on the drone’s head came alive, piercing the blackness. It turned towards them, weapon arms deployed.

‘It’s also thanking us for the gift of the drone,’ said Rekkid. ‘It says…’

‘…your primitive toys are most amusing,’ said the voice. ‘Simple things, but useful in my predicament. You two are of the Progenitors, and yet you are not Progenitors. Interesting. I shall enjoy using this primitive toy in dissecting you. This other beast is of lesser interest, but I will enjoy studying him all the same.’ There was sound of the doors slamming shut behind them in the darkness.

‘There is no escape for you,’ said the voice, as the hijacked drone began to advance towards them. ‘It would be easier for you if you did not resist.’

The drone stopped in its tracks, twitching spasmodically before it froze.

‘This is Eonara,’ said a voice on the comm. that belonged to the Progenitor AI but which was horribly distorted by interference. ‘Aaokon and I are working to get you out of there. Please stand by.’

‘Interesting…’ said the glutinous voice of the Shaper. ‘Two of my old adversaries, here at last? Very interesting… I see that this drone provides a conduit to your ship. Perhaps it will be more malleable to my will?’

The drone moved again. Its motions were jerky and spasmodic, and the lights on its head began to strobe wildly.

‘This is the ship, stand clear of the drone!’ said the voice of the Shining Glory in their ears. The archaeologists began to back away, and as they did so there was a strange keening sound from the drone. Its movements became random and violent as if it were undergoing some sort of fit, then it convulsed one final time and keeled over, arcing energies playing across its surface as it died, plunging them back into darkness.

Then the holo-display that had been showing the star map suddenly flicked back on above the room’s central plinth. Its display distorted and blurred and showed only a random snow of characters that moved like oil on water. Faces came and went in the display, transient images that formed and dissolved.

The display went blank for a moment and then switched itself off again.

They could hear noises elsewhere in the complex as if the very Life Forge itself were alive, or the complex were inhabited by unruly poltergeists. The lights came on, briefly, then died and began to flicker randomly. The door behind them opened and the lights came back on and stayed on.

‘Get out of there, now!’ said Eonara. ‘We are holding it back!’

The three archaeologists turned and sprinted out of the chamber.

In a shared virtual space, Eonara, Aaokon and the Shining Glory surveyed the networks of the Life Forge. Near its centre, where the monitoring array sat, a pulsing red mass warned of the presence of the Shaper AI, its tendrils of thought pushing outwards along conduits to other systems in a virulent mesh of corruption. Those other systems were being held by the two Progenitor AIs as each side battered one another with increasingly complex firewall algorithms and ever-evolving strains of destructive virus programs in a lightning fast contest. Thousands of changes were being made every millisecond, as each tested the defences of the other. So far, the Progenitor AIs were winning, their combined computing power more than a match for the sole Shaper AI. It was contained, for now, but they were unable to destroy it.

‘I still fail to understand how that thing could have snuck through your defences,’ said the Glory. ‘Were your systems not hardened against such an eventuality?’

‘With billions of years to find a chink in our armour, I doubt any system would have held out,’ said Aaokon. ‘In any case, the system it penetrated was only capable of receiving data from outside the Sphere, not transmitting it, thus it found itself trapped within the monitoring array and unable to go further, since the rest of the systems on this planet had long been deactivated. We, of course, have reactivated them.’

‘So, logically, the correct response would be to turn them off again,’ said the Glory.

‘Perhaps, but that would still leave a Shaper AI in control of a system that contains vital information on the location of species descended, however indirectly, from the Progenitors. However out of date that information might be, it could still be of use to the Shapers were they able to somehow communicate with their comrade,’ said Aaokon.

‘Presumably, the system went into lock down after its defences were breached?’

‘Yes. Hence the data it contains being tens of millions of years out of date.’

‘Our first priority should be to extract the archaeological teams from the complex. We do not know what harm they might come to at the hands of the Shaper,’ said the Glory.

‘Indeed. Looking at the activity of this entity it appears to be trying to reach the hall of mechanoids that Cor, O’Reilly and Steelscale entered only moments ago. It would give it the necessary physical presence to slaughter anyone within the complex and then begin making physical changes to the Life Forge’s network to somehow escape its prison,’ said Aaokon.

‘I will recommend to War Marshal Mentith that I should stand by and prepare to destroy the facility from orbit should there be any chance of that occurring,’ said the Glory. ‘I suggest that you also prepare to assist me in that task, Aaokon.’

‘Agreed,’ Aaokon. ‘Whether or not we are able to get the teams out of the facility, we cannot allow that entity to escape.’

‘Wait,’ said Eonara. ‘Perhaps we are looking at this in the wrong way. Perhaps we need to extract the Shaper AI from the system that it has infested and allow it to escape, only to bottle and trap it elsewhere. We have been looking for a solution to destroy the Shapers, a vector that will carry the virus that we have already begun to design, have we not, Aaokon? I think we have our candidate.’

‘What do you suggest?’ said Aaokon

‘The hall of mechanoids: the prototype Shaper that sits on the throne. Its mind is an empty vessel.’

‘But if activated, it could escape or kill the others!’ Aaokon protested

‘We only need a part of it, a fragment in which to trap the AI but which is incapable of independent movement. The head, for example.’

‘We should speak to the K’Soth. I suspect he is the only one capable of removing it.’

‘Agreed,’ said Eonara, and activated the comm. The entire conversation had taken less than a microsecond.

Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscale ran back the way that they had come amidst the chaos caused by the Shaper AI. Lights flickered crazily, automatic doors were jammed open or shut, or slammed themselves closed repeatedly like a mad man beating his head against the wall. The environmental systems too appeared out of control, the temperature alternating wildly between hot and cold, the air recycling systems blowing howling gales or sucking the air out at an alarming rate. The entire facility groaned and creaked from the mayhem like a ship in a storm.

‘This is the Shining Glory, are you receiving my transmission?’ said the voice of the ship on the comm. Faint and scratchy though it was, they could make out the words well enough.

‘We can hear you, ship,’ said Katherine. ‘Can you get us out of here?’

‘The other AIs and I need you to do something for us. Specifically, we need Steelscale. You must return to the hall of mechanoids that you passed on your way in.’

‘Why?’

‘We need you to remove the head from the Shaper prototype within. It is still coupled to the Life Forge’s network. We’re going to attempt to capture the Shaper AI within it. Lord Steelscale is the only one with enough strength to tear it from its body.’

‘What about getting cutting gear from the Arkari teams?’

‘There’s no time. The main entrance is locked and beyond our control. Please, we need you to do this quickly.’

‘Okay,’ said Katherine. ‘Steelscale, do you think you can manage this?’

Steelscale nodded.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I will try.’

They hurried through the maze of corridors, back to the room filled with silent ranks of mechanoids, whose brooding presence now seemed all the more sinister with the suspicion that they might spring to life at any moment and turn on them. They stepped up to the seated figure and examined it. The neck of the ancient Shaper was surprisingly slender, the flaring, tapered skull perfectly balanced atop the complex joint. Steelscale took hold of the skull and then, pinning the figure to the chair with the weight of his reptilian body, began to pull and twist.

The lights were flickering wildly now, strobing in an eye-aching manner that made it difficult to see. At first, nothing happened to the ancient Shaper. Steelscale’s massive muscles bulged under his scaly skin as he strained, the tendons along his neck standing out like hawsers. He gritted his teeth, and then with one final effort and a deafening roar, ripped the skull from the neck of the ancient Shaper and held it aloft like a trophy.

Rekkid was already looking at the rest of the room in alarm. He’d seen movement there out of the corner of his eye, had heard the sound of ancient motors coming to life.

‘Ship, Steelscale has managed to do as you ask,’ said Katherine into her comm. ‘Whatever you were about to do: now would be a good time,’ she said as one by one, every single ancient mechanoid in the room began to turn slowly to face them.

‘The Shaper has gained access to the hall of mechanoids!’ said Aaokon. ‘Eonara, I hope you know what you are doing. It is beginning to assert control over the machines inside there.’

‘Do what you can. Slow its progress a moment longer!’ said Eonara and she dove into the ancient systems within the skull, reconfiguring some, disabling others. The Shaper must be able to enter but never leave, never communicate unless prompted. The skull must be the perfect prison, the Shaper AI the genie trapped inside the lamp. She tested the communication links and disabled all others save for one, frying the systems so that they could never be reactivated and then switched the only remaining conduit to a one way path into the skull. She withdrew.

‘Aaokon, relinquish your defences in the direction of the skull. Pull back! Look as though it is wearing you down but shore up all other routes!’

Aaokon did as he was asked, giving up systems whilst strengthening his defences around the link to the other mechanoids. He hung on for a microsecond to make it look as though he was putting up a brave defence and then withdrew. The Shaper took the bait. It poured itself into the waiting vessel.

The skull came alive in Steelscale’s clawed hands. The black crystal suddenly began to glow as if light were flooding into it, changing it from the appearance of smoky glass to a living ice sculpture. It writhed in his hands like a newborn grub, struggling against his grip.

Too late, the Shaper realised that it had been trapped, that it had no access to any systems at all. It tried to retreat and found the way back barred - all links to the outside cut. After seventy million years of isolation, its taste of freedom had lasted only moments. It screamed in impotent rage, but no-one could hear it.

The mechanoids in the room froze, resuming their motionless vigil. The lights came back on and stayed on. Nothing moved except the Shaper skull in Steelscale’s hands. The archaeologists could hear nothing except the tinkle of broken crystal chips onto the floor from the torn neck joint and Steelscale’s laboured breathing.

‘So what do we do with that thing now?’ said Rekkid, eyeing the wriggling skull with suspicion.

‘It is truly helpless,’ said Eonara, over the comm. ‘I intend to use it as a weapon. I intend it to carry to the Shapers a virus that will destroy them forever.’

Chapter 48

Bolivar City was alive with light, but the sky above was their main concern. They could see the police AG cruisers clearly against the glow of the city, red and blue lights flashing as they descended towards them. But there was something else too.

High in the sky, hung the great Shaper vessel. It shone in the light from Achernar, glowing ghostly pale above the city-lit clouds and the looming, banded sphere of the gas giant, Tethys around which Orinoco orbited. The ship was pregnant with energy. Having gorged itself upon antimatter it was now ready to open a bridge across the galaxy. It had finished building the artefact that it had been spinning between the tips of its limbs like a vast, space faring arachnid. The ring was complete. It was a slender bracelet of super-dense matter almost as wide as the Shaper vessel was long. It held it delicately with those five massive limbs that jutted forward from its bulbous body. Those limbs started to pump energy from its huge internal reactors into the chains of nodes around the ring.

There was a flash, as of distant lightning, but no thunder followed. Isaacs looked up and saw the ship.

‘Shit, look at that thing!’ he said, grabbing Steven by the shoulder and pointing.

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Steven.

‘What the hell is that ring that it’s holding?’

‘My guess is that it’s a wormhole portal of some kind, or a weapon,’ said Steven, quickly. ‘That ship isn’t a battleship, it’s a constructor vessel. It might explain why the Shapers have been collecting antimatter and bringing it here: if it’s a wormhole portal they would need massive amounts of energy to activate that thing and Achernar is too unstable to use as a power source. Let’s move. We need to get what we know back to the Commonwealth, and we can’t do that if we’re dead or captured.’

‘First thing is to get off this roof then,’ said Isaacs. ‘Then we need to find some transport.’

‘Not the truck. They probably know it’s ours and it’s parked right out front. We’ll need to steal another one,’ said Steven, then added: ‘Come on. Before they spot us.’

‘Fucking hell, Steven. Anita… I can’t believe what they did to her, she…’ Isaacs looked at Steven wildly.

‘They’ll do it to you too if we hang around here, Cal. Come on!’

‘Sure, I…’

‘Come on!’

They set off running across the flat rooftop, the only cover being the vents for the air conditioning and piping. The club abutted another building, this one’s roof slightly lower, and they jumped the two metres onto the lower rooftop and kept going. There was a crash behind them and the armoured cops finally blew the door off the office they had just fled.

‘Keep running!’ panted Anna. ‘Don’t look back, Cal. Just keep running!’

They reached the edge of the second building and half ran, half fell down the metal fire escape to the ground as a police AG cruiser swooped in low, its lights flashing, its sirens blaring and its sensors sweeping the ground beneath it. They kept running, sticking to the back alleys, Steven urging them on whilst booted feet thundered on the rooftops above and behind them. Police ground cars sped by on the main roads, their sirens wailing in the night.

A figure leapt down from a rooftop behind them and started to run towards them, its bulky armour making it cumbersome. As the figure raised its weapon, Steven turned and shot it clean through the skull, through the open visor of its helmet. The figure stumbled backwards and fell as its comrade descended after it. Isaacs shot the second trooper, catching him in the shoulder with the first round and spinning him round. He appeared uninjured, his armour taking the force of the blow until Steven put a round through his skull and dropped him like the first.

‘Nice shooting,’ commented Isaacs grimly as they turned and ran.

‘Aim for the head,’ said Steven.

‘Yeah, I know. I’m better with a rifle, really. A pity we left them in the truck,’ said Isaacs ruefully.

‘They’d have been a bit obvious in the club,’ Steven replied. ‘Quick - in here,’ he hissed and led Isaacs and Anna into a side alley between two warehouses. It was filled with rubbish and with weeds growing from the cracks in the concrete. It was only a metre or so wide, the sky above a sliver of darkness and the alley so dark itself that they could barely see.

‘Where the hell are we going?’ whispered Anna.

‘I had a look at possible escape routes before we came here in case everything went pear shaped – which of course it did,’ said Steven, keeping up the rapid pace. ‘There’s a long term parking garage down here that services the spaceport. We should be able to acquire suitable transport inside.’

‘You mean steal somebody’s car?’

‘Sure. After I’ve bypassed the security systems and disabled the tracking. It should be a cinch. I’ve done this a tonne of times. Trust me.’ He turned suddenly right into another alley that led to the back of a large square building with unfinished concrete and metal walls. They followed the wall until they reached a corner, where the globe of a security sensor cluster jutted out from the building. Steven removed a small, silvery looking pistol from beneath his jacket and pointed it at the globe, then grunted with satisfaction, before holstering the small weapon.

‘Directed EMP gun - Arkari made,’ said Steven, in response to Isaacs and Anna’s quizzical looks. ‘It’ll have fried the electronics in that thing.’

The heavy footfalls of booted feet echoed back down the alley, and then there was the sound of men carrying equipment and armour squeezing into the narrow alleyway.

‘Quickly,’ said Steven under his breath. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

A locked fire escape proved little impedance. An old fashioned device linked to magnetic seals, Steven opened it in moments with a small, flat disc shaped device that he pressed against the face of the lock, which opened after a couple of seconds with a dull click. Isaacs guessed that it was another tool of the trade. Closing the heavy steel door behind them, Steven re-locked it.

The interior of the long stay parking garage was dark, save for slivers of light leaking in from the extreme edges of the building. Vehicles, both AG capable and otherwise of all sorts of makes, models and types stood in silent ranks in the gloom. Steven started to walk along them, glancing at each in turn.

‘What, they don’t have the colour you like?’ said Anna. ‘Just pick one and let’s get out of here.’

‘I need something that performs well if we’re going to make a successful break for it. Maybe this one…’ Steven replied, eyeing a sporty looking ground car.

‘I have an idea, why don’t you let me drive one of these AG cars?’ said Isaacs. ‘It’s not too different from piloting a ship, after all, and I can keep us low and moving faster than anything on wheels.’

From the far side of the garage there was a clatter of the steel shuttered front gates rolling open.

‘Listen, we don’t need subterfuge, the bastards have already found us. We need speed,’ Isaacs urged.

‘You have a point,’ said Steven as flashing lights and the noise of engines outside signified the arrival of airborne police units. The beams of coloured light strobed inwards from the edge of the garage, creating dancing shadows amidst the silent vehicles. Steven hurried over to a jet black AG car with chrome finished detailing. It was obviously its owner’s pride and joy. Polished to a mirror-like sheen, the grilles and intakes of its nose snarled like the snout of a wild animal, whilst a bulky engine block and rakish fins adorned its rear, where gaping Venturi exhausts gleamed.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Isaacs, and Steven got to work. Using a handful of key fob sized devices of different shapes, he defeated the car’s security system in moments and had the door open and the engines started. Having gained access to the driver’s controls, he switched the car over to entirely manual operation, and then put two bullets in the dashboard. Ripping off the panel revealed a tightly packed arrangement of processing units. Steven squinted at them in turn, and then put another round through one of them.

‘Okay, flyboy. Get in and drive,’ he said to Isaacs. Anna piled into the back as Steven leapt into the front passenger seat and began buckling himself in.

‘Okay…’ said Isaacs, running his eyes over the controls. It had been a while since he’d piloted anything except his own ship, but these things were made so even an idiot could fly them. He activated the AG and the car rose gently off the concrete floor until it floated about half a metre up in the air. Isaacs gripped the controls and eased the throttle forward and felt the car respond quickly. As he turned the vehicle out of its parking space, black clad figures began to appear from between the rows of parked vehicles and run towards them. Then there was sudden, shattering bang from behind them, followed by the clattering of falling metal as the fire escape door that they had entered by was blown off its hinges by shaped charges.

‘Cal, now would be a good time to stop driving like a little old lady and get us the fuck out of here!’ cried Anna.

‘My pleasure,’ said Isaacs and, aiming the vehicle at the onrushing group of enslaved, suddenly ramped the throttle up, hurling the car forwards.

High above the surface of Orinoco, the massive Shaper construction vessel held the now glowing ring in its grip. Its forelimbs pulsed with energy. Around it, Shaper warships waited in packs, eager for what was to come. The ring shone with a brilliance that made the distant Achernar star seem tawdry by comparison. There was a blinding flash of energy and nearby craft rocked in the backwash like boats on a stormy sea as a hyper-dimensional surface appeared within the ring, rippling like water before it puckered and stretched and became a vortex extending ever further as the wormhole was spun off. The geometry appeared impossible: the surface held within the ring was two dimensional, yet the tunnel to which it formed the entrance stretched far across the galaxy. It reached out through hyperspace, joining the ring to a location in the galactic core in an instant. At first a microscopically slim hyper dimensional thread stretching across the galaxy, the wormhole was wrenched wider by the ring, until its open ends gaped like hungry throats.

A deathly light began to issue from within the ring. A portal to the centre of the galaxy now stood open, a door into that hellish region where dying suns whirled in the grip of the Maelstrom as they spiralled into its ravenous embrace. Against the light of doomed stars there were forms of light and shade, ghostly things that reflected the corposant glow against their gleaming hulls. A vast fleet of Shaper craft and ships belonging to those races enslaved to their indomitable will lay gathered there. The Singularity had called them together from across the core of the Shapers’ domain. The destruction of the larger portal that had been previously constructed above the Maelstrom had only of course been a temporary setback. It would be replaced, near-endless legions of slaves were available to the Singularity’s command, and in time, many more portals would be built to provide instant transportation for their numberless forces. For now though, the smaller device above Orinoco linked that far flung world to the core, the wormhole providing a shining path for the Shapers’ forces to travel along.

The Shapers had offered humanity a chance to join with them willingly. Humans had failed to do so except under extreme duress or deception. It mattered not. The humans’ home-world would be destroyed utterly, wiped clean of life and then the rest of their worlds would be enslaved. They would provide yet more raw materials to feed the Shapers’ endless war engine and swell the ranks of their legions. Then the other races would be crushed also, and finally the Shapers would once more turn their attention to the Arkari. That defiant race had turned them back once. The Shapers would not make that same mistake again. The Arkari were to be exterminated, each of their worlds burned to ash in turn.

On the far side of the portal, the Shaper fleet was now on the move. Close to a million enslaved ships and countless shepherding Shaper craft were all moving as one towards the newly opened wormhole that led to the Achernar system.

The car careered wildly, its front wing catching a couple of the charging enslaved police and knocking them flying. Isaacs wrenched the controls around to the right and headed for the ramp up to the next level as the car sped through a hail of gunfire that peppered the previously pristine paintwork and shattered the rear windscreen. Reaching the top, he continued his crazy ascent, whipping the vehicle around through the rows of vehicles and concrete pillars and heading for the next up ramp. Charging figures followed them.

‘Everyone okay?’ cried Isaacs, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the view ahead. ‘Anyone hit?’

‘Just a scratch,’ said Steven. ‘Nothing to worry about. Anna?’

‘I’m fine!’ Anna reported. ‘Jesus, Cal. Where are you taking us?’

‘Onwards and upwards,’ Isaacs replied. ‘How many floors does this place have?’

‘Three, I think,’ Steven replied. ‘Why?’

The car was already fishtailing through the next level, its front and rear racing dangerously close to the parked rows of vehicles. Glancing backwards, Steven could see figures moving with inhuman speed and agility, almost managing to keep pace with them.

‘I’m always better in the air than on the ground,’ Isaacs answered. ‘This thing can fly. I intend to see what it can do.’

‘Well hurry up,’ said Anna. ‘Those fucking things are gaining on us.’

As the car leaned into another turn towards the next ramp, Steven twisted around in his seat and took aim at the charging figures over the cowls and vents of the car’s engine. His first shots went wide, the movement of the vehicle and the fast moving targets confounding his efforts. He adjusted his aim as Isaacs threw the vehicle up another ramp to the top floor and fired again at the closest figures, smiling grimly as he saw them go sprawling.

They were on the top floor of the parking garage now. It was open to the sky, had fewer vehicles parked on it than the lower levels and was ringed by a flimsy metal barrier. Above, a police AG cruiser hovered like an expectant predator.

‘Fuck!’ said Anna peering upwards out of the side window.

‘Seen it,’ said Isaacs as he brought the car around and then, speeding between the lines of cars, pushed the throttle to its limit. There was a throaty roar from the engines at the rear as it leapt forward like a wild animal let off the chain. Gun fire started to rain down from the open side-door of the police cruiser overhead, striking the concrete around the speeding vehicle and scoring a couple of hits. Isaacs threw the vehicle sideways into a jinking shimmy and then pulled back on the controls, boosting the car into the air and barely clearing the barrier around the edge of the building.

The car soared into the sky, its turbo-powered customised engine howling as Isaacs launched it like a guided missile from the rooftop. Bullets spat from the police cruiser as it came about in pursuit. As the car cleared the rooftop, Isaacs pushed the nose downwards into a steep dive towards the street below as rounds buzzed overhead. A split second before the vehicle was due to plough into the road, he yanked the nose upwards and let the car bounce back up as its AG systems compensated against its rapid descent to avoid a collision with the ground. The car powered forwards, pressing them into their seats before Isaacs executed a tight turn whilst continuing to accelerate, an action that pulled the vehicle ninety degrees to the left and down an adjoining street that led eastwards.

‘Jesus! Are out of your fucking mind?’ cried Anna. ‘You almost got us killed!’

‘Yeah, almost…’ said Isaacs, reducing the car’s altitude to only a few metres. Road vehicles and startled pedestrians whipped by below. ‘That cruiser’s still following us, I take it?’

‘You bet,’ replied Steven grimly. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw its flashing blue lights. ‘Any thoughts on losing them?’

An elevated maglev line flashed past overheard, causing all inside the car to involuntarily flinch.

‘One or two,’ Isaacs replied and thrust the car’s throttle to full, aiming it straight down the main highway into the heart of the city’s financial district.

The first of the Shaper craft breached the mouth of the wormhole above Orinoco. A squadron of destroyers was first to arrive - sleek, shining predators that spread out from their point of arrival to guard the entrance like a pack of guard dogs sniffing for danger. Larger craft began to arrive next: lumbering superdestroyers arrived in convoy and likewise assumed defensive stations, then more destroyers and shoals of smaller attack craft that swarmed in the space around their larger parents as the existing Shaper craft in the system greeted their newly arrived comrades with exultant messages of welcome.

With the portal now opened, a more direct communication link to the Singularity had been established, the tens of thousands of light years to the galactic core circumvented at a stroke. Now the Singularity could impose its will more directly and forcefully. This world would be crushed beneath the heel of the Shapers. Its inhabitants, some of which had already been made their servants, would all now be made part of their great galaxy spanning machine. They were little more than grist for the mill, raw materials to be gathered up and used to fuel the Shapers’ ever expanding, near limitless forces. There would be no parley, no negotiations, and no hope but to submit utterly to the Singularity’s will.

With their beach-head secured, the Shapers began to deploy their landing force. Vast and bulbous craft began to emerge from the portal now like a stream of gigantic, engorged seed pods. Their segmented flanks gleamed in the light from the Achernar star as they emerged and then started to turn their blunt, armoured prows towards the forested moon below.

Squeezing between two skyscrapers at breakneck speed, Isaacs flipped the car onto its right hand side and threaded it deftly between the two towering glass and steel edifices outlined in lights against the early morning gloom. He wrenched the controls the other way and pulled the vehicle into a stomach churning climb to the left around a third tower and then accelerated again across the rooftops of a series of lower office buildings, dodging communication arrays and cooling systems as the craft skimmed mere metres away from the structures.

‘That thing still behind us?’ said Isaacs.

‘Yep, he’s closing in, in fact,’ Steven replied. ‘And I can see the lights of others moving in to join the hunt.’

‘Shit, it’s only a matter of time before they start vectoring military craft towards our position,’ said Isaacs.

As if to illustrate the urgency of their situation, the cruiser began to fire on them again, the shots missing the car, but buzzing by dangerously close to the speeding vehicle and striking the rooftops beneath them.

‘Got anything that can take down a police cruiser?’ said Anna hopefully.

‘What, you think I have a guided missile hidden under my coat? No, I don’t,’ Steven replied ruefully.

‘What about that EMP gun thing you used earlier?’

‘That? It won’t do any permanent damage, and the range is pretty limited, ten or fifteen metres at best,’ Steven replied.

‘What if you aimed it at the craft’s electronics? It might be enough to make the occupants lose control,’ suggested Anna.

‘Yeah, and we have to let them get close enough without them shooting us down,’ said Steven.

‘Well, maybe if they think they can capture us alive. Cal, you think you can pull it off?’

‘What, do the old ‘broken wing’ routine? Sure, yeah, if they’ll fall for it,’ said Isaacs. ‘I think I’ve picked us out a nice escape route out of here anyway…’ he added, eyeing the cockpit’s map display.

‘Good. Okay, do it. Steven, ready with the EMP?’

Isaacs deftly manipulated the controls, making it appear as though the car had suffered some sort of engine fault and was being forced to slow in its wild ride across the city. They were moving away from the forest of skyscrapers now and, against the vertical patterns of light cast into the sky by the buildings, the police cruiser that had given chase could be seen closing in. As they grew closer, a searchlight mounted on the right hand side of the vehicle suddenly blazed into life, more to dazzle the occupants of the suspect vehicle no doubt, than to aid the vision of the things inhabiting the bodies of the officers inside. Aware that the crew of the cruiser could see them clearly now, Isaacs thumped the controls of the car in mock frustration and swore animatedly. Steven readied the EMP gun, keeping it low and out of sight and setting it to maximum output.

The cruiser approached, keeping aft and to the left of the apparently limping car. It was now about thirty metres away. In the open door on its side, the outline of an armoured figure could just be seen hunched over a pintle mounted heavy rail rifle whilst the occupants of the cockpit remained invisible.

‘A little closer…’ muttered Steven. ‘Cal, you ready?’

‘Sure.’

The cruiser edged nearer, lights flashing, spotlight still trained on the car. In the distance, the winking lights of the other approaching craft were starting to converge. In the darkness it was difficult to gauge the range, and Steven had no night vision equipment. The Arkari EMP gun was warm in his tightly clenched hand.

‘On three,’ said Steven as the cruiser came closer still. ‘One… two…’ He whipped the EMP gun out and took aim, firing the device straight at the cockpit of the cruiser. He was surprised by the reaction. The craft suddenly veered away as if flinching in pain.

‘Three! Go, fucking punch it! Go!’

Isaacs did as he was ordered. The car leapt forward with a vicious snarl of its engines, throwing its occupants back against their padded seats and causing Steven to almost drop the gun. Behind them as they sped away, the police cruiser was spiralling downwards in a flat spin towards the ground, bullets firing wildly from its door mounted gun.

‘Jesus, that worked better than I expected!’ cried Steven over the noise of the engines as they raced away at increasing velocity across the rooftops. ‘I guess those things really don’t like electromagnetic weapons. It must fuck with their systems if it’s strong enough, I guess.’

‘Worth bearing in mind,’ said Anna. ‘Cal, about this escape route…’

‘Coming up, but you won’t like it.’

‘If it gets us out of here, I will.’

‘Not necessarily… put it this way: do you know how often the maglev trains run out of the city?’

‘What? No, I…’ Anna then saw where he was heading. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’

A line of lights that cut across the grid of streets was approaching rapidly; Isaacs brought the speeding car lower then sharply around to the left and lower still, hugging the ground to avoid detection, until the lights raced by on either side in pairs. In the bright pools of illumination, two composite track beds could be clearly seen stretching off into the distance before them. Isaacs started to accelerate the car along it.

‘Oh no…’ said Anna. ‘Oh no no no, Cal…’

‘Piece of cake,’ said Isaacs. ‘Outbound trains are on the right hand side, right? Right?’

‘I think so…’ said Steven, a little uncertainly.

‘So we keep to the right hand side and make sure we’re going faster than any trains behind us.’

There was a patch of darkness ahead, a dark throat lit with dim lights where the line plunged into the earth to be carried underneath Bolivar City’s well-to-do suburbs.

‘I don’t find that terribly reassuring,’ said Anna. ‘Especially as the trains can go faster than we can…’

‘True, but let’s see those police cruisers follow us now,’ said Isaacs. ‘This ought to confuse them. Hang on.’

They had no time to protest. A heartbeat later, the car shot forward into the mouth of the railway tunnel.

The vast, heavily laden landing craft, the shining plates of their bulbous bodies pulsing gently, began their long fall to the moon below. As they fell, the plates of the flattened noses of their teardrop shaped hulls locked into place as powerful shields prepared for their descent.

Behind them, a torrent of craft was beginning to emerge from the portal. There were hundreds of craft from dozens of unknown alien civilizations across the galaxy that had been chained to the yoke of Shaper domination. Some had joined willingly, worshipping the Shapers as gods that would lead them to new horizons and sacrificing themselves on the bloody altar of war, offering themselves up as hosts or subjects to be changed irrevocably by the Shapers’ laboratories. Such a fate, humanity had rejected. Such a paradise had been offered and cast aside. Even those among the humans who professed an alliance could not be trusted. The Shapers had seen into the heart of Morgan and his kind and knew their declaration of loyalty to be false, knew that their loyalty was born out of selfish motives of self preservation, not slavish devotion. Humanity would be become like the other cannon fodder, like the crews of the ships which were herded into battle and the shock troops that filled the landing craft who were little more than mindless, expendable slaves. There would be no subtlety of tactics now. Here was the iron fist that would smash humanity, the hammer blow that would end millions of years of natural evolution and bring humanity into a new era, one where their changes would be wrought not by nature, but by the laboratories of the Shapers.

The bellies of the falling craft were laden with hordes of such pitiful things as well as swarms of Shaper creatures eager to devour this world, eager to burrow into the minds of its inhabitants and render their bodies into tools for the Singularity’s purpose: domination of all sentient life in the galaxy.

Below the falling craft, the outline of Bolivar City sketched in lights could be seen hugging the coast, growing ever larger. As they entered the upper atmosphere of Orinoco, the shields of the bulbous ships began to glow.

The car shot along in strobing light and darkness like a bullet down the barrel of gun. The equidistantly spaced lights along the tunnel walls streamed past on both sides, the tunnel itself leading into the distance in a perfectly straight line. Isaacs pushed the throttle as far as it would go, powering the car ever faster along the maglev track.

‘One thing has occurred to me…’ said Steven slowly. ‘If another train comes the other way at speed, the shockwave will likely slam us into the tunnel wall…’

‘Let’s worry about that if it happens shall we?’ said Isaacs, tersely. ‘At least no-one appears to be following us,’ he added, glancing in the rear-view mirror for a split second.

‘Yeah, let’s hope they never saw us enter the tunnel, or else we could find a welcoming party waiting for us at the other end,’ said Anna, grimly. ‘Is it much further to the exit?’

‘Not far,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Just a little longer and then we’re clear.’

They flew onwards in silence for what seemed like an eternity, the tunnel lights whipping by on either side, the sound of the car’s engines reverberating from the walls, and then suddenly they were clear and racing along in the open air. They breathed a sigh of relief as Isaacs pulled the car off the railway track and then skimmed low, parallel to its course. They were clear of the city now and were racing through the flat fertile plains to the east that had largely been given over to farmland.

‘Anything?’ said Isaacs. ‘Are we being followed?’

Steven and Anna peered out of the windows, desperately searching for airborne vehicles tailing them. Anna looked upwards into a sky beginning to lighten on the horizon.

‘Oh god!’ she gasped.

Keeping his hands on the controls, Isaacs craned his neck quickly to see what she had spotted, and saw the huge crystalline shapes falling from the sky onto the plains around them. The huge craft wore haloes of fire from their descent as they plummeted through the clouds, using their propulsion fields to brake rapidly, before they slammed into the ground. One fell into a rice paddy about a kilometre to the left of the car with a thundering crash. Anna saw the shockwave from its crash landing radiate out across the water-logged fields in a ripple of water and uprooted rice plants, then felt the pressure wave buffet the car. Another fell another kilometre away still, crushing a grove of trees.

‘What the fuck are those things!?’ said Isaacs, glancing wildly at the craft.

‘Shaper vessels,’ said Steven.

‘I know that, but what are they?’

‘They’re landing craft,’ said Steven ominously. ‘I’ve seen them before, they… each of those things is laden with thousands, if not millions of Shaper creatures. They’re what the Shapers use when they want to devour a world. When those things open, an army will spill out and take the city.’

‘Take?’

‘Every man, woman and child within Bolivar City will be seized and implanted by the Shapers. Then the outlying towns, then the rest of this moon, then they will use their fresh troops to launch an attack upon other worlds, and their legions will continue to grow. I’ve seen it happen before, on worlds far beyond known space… whole planets turned into charnel houses, whole populations enslaved and… altered.’

Another landing craft smashed down a few hundred metres ahead of the speeding car, throwing up a crater of mud. Isaacs wrenched the controls, feeling the car buck violently in the backwash as it turned away. As they streaked past it, they could see the gleaming crystalline panels begin to shift and move, as the ship started to open like a gigantic flower bud ready to bloom. Isaacs urged the car onwards, speeding away from the craft as more began to fall around them in a cacophony of impacts.

Things were moving inside the opening craft - leaping, deformed things that scrambled clear, and a spreading stain of darkness leaked from the bizarre, crystalline ships and began to engulf the fields. As the dawn light caught its moving mass, it glittered, giving an impression of a shifting carpet of insectile forms.

‘Cal, get us the hell out of here,’ said Steven. ‘Now I know why the enslaved cops didn’t pursue us. They were just driving us forward like beaters at a hunt. They were driving us forward into this.’

‘No shit,’ Isaacs replied.

Another landing craft thudded down ahead of them and to the left, splintering the railway line with the impact and sending composite and metal debris pinwheeling into the air. It sat at an angle for a moment, propped up by the remains of the concrete embankment, before it too started to open and things began to pour out. Creatures began to move towards the speeding car - altered, predatory things that sprang forward at great speed or propelled themselves through the air on insectile wings. They were things that had been taken by the Shapers from some distant world in the galaxy and remade into living weapons. Steven saw them approaching.

‘Cal, take us higher. They’ve seen us!’ he barked as a swarm of giant beetle-like things swooped in. They were the size of Alsatians, with iridescent carapaces pierced by the grotesque machinery of the Shapers, and mandibles that had been augmented with razor sharp blades. As Isaacs pulled the car higher, out of reach of the leaping things on the ground, the beetle-creatures dove in, attempting to latch on to the cowlings and fairings at the rear of the vehicle.

Steven pulled out his pistol and started firing out of the rear window at the armoured things. They seemed quite resilient to being shot. Though his bullets hit home and black ichor oozed from bullet holes in those shiny carapaces, the chittering things were able to take several hits before they died, even when shot at point blank range into their sensor covered heads. Anna joined in, adding her fire to Steven’s own, but the things had learnt now and were landing on the roof of the vehicle instead. Above the noise of the engines and the howl of the wind, they could be heard scrabbling for purchase on the metal, and then insectile limbs and antennae began to appear at the windows. Steven and Anna continued to fire, knocking some of the creatures off into the night, but more were landing all the time.

Isaacs tried desperate manoeuvres to shake the things off, weaving the car violently from side to side, and up and down, even flipping the vehicle briefly upside down, to the consternation of his passengers in an attempt to dislodge the creatures. They were cutting their way into the car’s systems now. Creatures clinging to the underside of the vehicle were gnawing with those razor sharp mandibles at power lines and couplings, working their way into the guts of the car’s engines. Isaacs felt the vehicle start to die. The weight of the creatures was already dragging the vehicle down, and now as its systems started to fail, Isaacs fought to control it.

More Shaper craft were hitting the plain behind them, punching through the clouds lit by the first fingers of early morning light and slamming home into the rolling fields all around the city in clouds of dust and debris. Ahead, the way was clear. The car sagged, the engine note falling and changing from a constant roar to an irregular sputter. Steven and Anna were still firing at the beetle things, which were now trying to clamber inside the stricken vehicle, reaching towards them with questing limbs. Their chittering was growing louder.

They were reaching the edge of the fields. The fringes of the jungle were visible as a darker mass in the half light. Isaacs grappled with the controls, struggling to keep the car aloft, but he was fighting a losing battle against gravity. The car sank lower and lower, and the treetops were rushing by close enough to touch.

‘Hang on!’ Isaacs heard himself shout as branches reached up to claim the speeding car and it pitched over, plunging down into the greenery and the darkness within.

Isaacs came to and groaned. He was upside down, and the seatbelts still holding him into his seat were cutting into his shoulders. There was the sound of gunfire, then hands grabbing him, releasing him and pulling him free from the wrecked vehicle. He was still groggy. There was a figure standing over him and another seated on the ground to his right. The standing figure held a gun.

‘Cal? You okay? Cal, it’s Steven.’

‘Sure. I’m fine… I… Where’s Anna?’

‘She’s right beside you. A little shaken up, but she’s okay. Listen, the crash saved our arses. Most of the Shaper creatures were knocked off and killed by the impact or were swept off by the vegetation as we hit. I took care of the survivors, but we need to move now, before more arrive to look for us here. Can you both walk?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Isaacs rose unsteadily to his feet. He reached down and helped Anna. ‘You okay?’

‘Sure, yeah. Hitting a tree at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour was an experience I won’t forget in hurry. Thank god for that car having the latest in crash safety fields.’

‘Hey, I only let Steven steal the best cars. Right?’ said Isaacs, trying a few cautious steps.

‘Right,’ said Steven. ‘Enough chit chat. I’ve got a fix on our position. Hopefully the dense undergrowth will mask our presence a bit. Let’s move.’

They scrambled desperately through the jungle, sticking to the lowest levels of the tree covered ravines where the dense vegetation grew thickest and dripped with moisture from the morning dew. Fear drove them onwards through the difficult terrain, fear of the things that hunted them.

Behind them, towards the city, more landing craft thumped to earth and disgorged their cargoes as the city was consumed by the Shapers. A swarm of things descended upon the wreck of the car, the vehicle already grabbed in the embrace of fast growing vines. The enslaved creatures searched the area for clues, but the jungle made tracking the bio-signs of the humans difficult amidst the abundant plants and animals that confused their sensors with heat traces, conspired to fill their olfactory detectors with strange hormonal secretions and perfumes and filled the air with a blanketing cacophony of sounds. The chittering creatures fanned out, sweeping the area with sensor cluster eyes as they tried to penetrate the forest depths.

Steven, Isaacs and Anna stuck to the heaviest cover, hoping against the odds that the tangles of moist vegetation, closely packed trees and overhanging cliffs would confound their foe. For hours they ran and slithered amidst the muck, becoming caked in slime until the stink of rotting vegetation that hung heavy in the air permeated everything, mingling with the sweat that poured off them as they fled.

The bloated Achernar star had climbed high into the sky by the time the three bedraggled figures emerged from the jungle and crept cautiously towards the concealed entrance of the Hidden Hand base. A fourth figure emerged from the rocks ahead of them, dressed in camouflage fatigues and gripping a long barrelled rail rifle.

‘Took your time,’ said Maria. ‘Lucky it was me on watch. Some of others are getting jumpy after what just happened out there.’

‘You saw the landing?’ gasped Isaacs, struggling for breath, wild eyed and dripping with sweat.

‘Uh huh. I reckon it’s time we got outa here.’

‘Not yet,’ said Steven. ‘You still have the secure comm?’

‘Sure. What do you think we are: careless?’

‘I need to use it now. I need to warn Command about what’s happening here, before everything we hold dear is annihilated.’

‘Better come inside,’ said Maria as two more Hidden Hand emerged from their hiding place equipped with guns and scanning devices. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ Maria added and let out a low whistle. ‘Jesus, Isaacs. You look like shit.’

‘Nice to see you too, Maria,’ said Isaacs, as he submitted to the scanning. As Maria got to work he looked upwards into the sky and saw the ring clutched in the grip of the massive Shaper ship. High above the atmosphere, it gleamed in the sunlight as light glinted also from the multitude of ships that surrounded it and continued to stream out of it.

Chapter 49

Under its own power at last, the Executioner Cannon floated free. It was a strange and ungainly looking thing, long and fluted for much of its length, then swelling to bulbous reactors that clustered around its end like over-ripe fruit at the end of a slender branch. It manoeuvred itself into position slowly, fins and rills sculling against space time. Those fins had been adapted from the wings that powered Arkari destroyers through space and were of a similar size, yet were dwarfed by the two thousand kilometre long weapon, appearing as tiny, waving nubs by comparison.

The cannon finally came to rest in its firing position. Sculling fins fine tuned its aim. In front of it, its target lay waiting: the Arkari constructed portal floating at the Lagrange point between the twin suns of the Orakkan system.

Beklide paced the bridge of the Sword of Reckoning as her busy crew hurried to and fro. The ship was one of hundreds now gathering in the Orakkan system, not only naval vessels preparing for the coming assault and here to witness the test firing of the new weapon, but also those carrying selected members of the Meritarch Council. The Arkari were still nervous about using their neural links to effect tele-presence at remote locations and, although it was a trivial matter to view the event from elsewhere in the sphere, where dignitaries were required or chose to attend they must do so in person.

Beklide cast her eye over the holographic data displays that floated free at the front of the bridge, surrounding a main display that currently depicted the cannon hanging in front of the portal, the scene bathed in the light from the binary suns and annotated with icons. Everything seemed to be in order, though there was something strangely obscene about the sight of the gun and the portal. At first she put it down to some odd, sexual connotation, but then decided that the sight of a gun theoretically capable of destroying worlds was simply deeply unsettling in itself.

‘I don’t think I ever asked where the design for this weapon came from,’ said Beklide, addressing the ship. ‘What sort of thinking led us to design such a terrible thing?’

‘We didn’t design it,’ replied the ship. ‘We only modified an original design to suit our technology. I did some digging: the schematics for this weapon were stolen by our agents from the archives of the Esacir Bubble City Farrianas. They, in turn, had discovered it in the ruins of a long dead world during a rare exploratory mission towards the galactic rim. Apparently, the device was originally known as the World Breaker. The original was much smaller, only a hundredth of the size, but our energy generation and spatial distortion technologies are not up to the task of constructing such a compact device. There is some evidence in the records that we have subsequently uncovered of such devices being deployed by the Shapers in the war against the Progenitors. Whether any were ever actually used is unknown. Certainly we have not encountered such devices among current Shaper forces. Perhaps those among them who possessed the knowledge of their construction have been eliminated, victims of their internecine conflicts following the defeat of the Progenitors. Some have suggested that the weapons bear the hallmarks of Progenitor construction and were merely stolen by the Shapers to be used against them.’

‘Maybe we will never know,’ said Beklide. ‘What matters is that we have this technology in our possession, and I intend to use it against the enemy. We shall proceed with the test. All craft stand by. Confirm that the target body and the space around it are clear of traffic up to the safe distance limits established.’

‘Confirmed,’ said the ship.

‘Commence portal activation.’

‘Portal activation commencing.’

In the photospheres of the twin suns, rings of super-dense materials began to turn, funnelling the incandescent plasma from the stars upwards into great, questing tornados of heat and light. Stretching upwards at the speed of light, they plunged into the receiving apertures on either side of the portal, feeding it with surging torrents of energy. The portal came alive. Nodes around its circumference began to pulse with energy as the charge built, and then the great device activated. A two dimensional membrane of space time appeared within the ring, a membrane which stretched and twisted, elongated until it formed a tunnel light years in length. Now the portal formed a window into a different part of Arkari space. A new set of stars was visible within the portal and a planet too, an unremarkable, lifeless ball of rock in interstellar space that had been cast out of the system that had formed it long ago and had wandered the tracts along the Arkari Sphere’s eastern border ever since. Now those wanderings were about to end in a violent death.

Beklide breathed a sigh of satisfaction at the portal’s successful activation. The reverse engineering of the sabotaged Maranos device had been a particularly difficult task, one which her technicians and scientists had risen to. She was pleased to see that their efforts had not been in vain. It was time for the next stage.

‘The wormhole portal is operating within expected parameters,’ reported the ship.

‘Good,’ said Beklide. ‘Commence firing of the Executioner Cannon.’

‘The Executioner Cannon is fully charged,’ said the ship. ‘Executioner Cannon preparing to fire. Please stand by. Firing.’

The Executioner Cannon was a spatial distortion weapon, but it was so much more than that. Its ability to distort space time was so extreme that it tore the very fabric of reality apart, unleashing terrible natural forces from adjacent dimensions. A beam of primordial energy, ripped from the very fabric of the universe and wrapped within a directed hyper-dimensional whirlpool of distorted reality, vomited forth from the mouth of the cannon. As it passed through the open mouth of the portal, even the super-dense material of the ring threatened to buckle under the strain as the extreme tidal forces unleashed tugged at it, narrowing the throat of the wormhole until it was almost choked shut, the portal’s systems almost overloading to keep it open. The beam continued and struck the planet.

Beklide had not thought it possible that a planet could shatter like that, but as she watched, the target body began to fragment. It was as if she were watching a piece of pottery come apart in slow motion, the shards flying away from one another at what appeared to be a leisurely pace, but which in reality was a speed of thousands of kilometres an hour, the broken pieces themselves being the size of continents. As they separated, the molten innards of the planet began to spill out, glowing chunks that spread gradually, revealing the white hot core. There was a gasp from the assembled bridge crew as the planet broke up.

Alarms began to sound on the bridge of the Sword of Reckoning, data points on the cannon’s systems display were highlighted and the weapon shut down. Through the portal, the remains of the shattered rogue planet continued to spread outwards, great lumps of glowing magma flying out into the void.

‘Test firing complete, target destroyed,’ said the ship. ‘Reactors three through seven shut down automatically due to overload. No damage to the device, but we will need to examine the data gathered during the test to eliminate the fault.’

Beklide was transfixed by the sight of the dying planet. She felt a mixture of elation and horror at the power that they now held in their hands.

‘Do it,’ she said simply. ‘We don’t have a lot of time.’

Chapter 50

‘Sir, I have ordered both my crews and those of the Nahabe ships seconded to my command to examine their sensors and logs. After two days, our conclusion is still the same: we believe that the Shapers are aware of our methods of detection and have found a way to hide from us.’

‘And this is your final assessment, Admiral Chen?’ said Admiral Cartwright over the encrypted hypercom channel. The sound and image quality was poor, because of the bandwidth restrictions imposed by the additional layers of encryption employed by the Navy in an attempt to prevent the Shapers from eavesdropping on their transmissions.

‘Yes sir. No Commonwealth or Nahabe vessel detected any of the forces that attacked General Shale’s units on the surface, nor the vessels that launched the surprise attack on my ships before they moved against us and revealed themselves. We believe that the Shapers have learnt that we are tracking them via their communications networks and have learnt to go quiet for periods in order to avoid detection.’

‘I see,’ Cartwright replied, his tone indicating that he remained sceptical.

‘Sir, during the fighting, my ship was boarded by a Shaper organism and we know that it attempted to access our systems. Though my crew repelled the boarding action, it is possible that they may have learnt of our methods, or perhaps someone on the research teams has been compromised, or perhaps they simply deduced for themselves how we were able to track them.’

‘Perhaps. But we have no definite proof. Perhaps our sensors simply don’t work as well as we had hoped? My forces in the Chittagong system have not encountered such tactics, although the battle to secure the system was hard fought.’

‘I understand that Colonel Igawa was killed during the fighting.’

‘Yes, alas. He died a hero, fighting to secure the antimatter facility from those creatures. He’ll be buried with full military honours back home. What’s left of him… In any case, the facility is now in our hands and we have secured the stocks of antimatter warheads as well as resuming production. The Nemesis class vessels will be rearmed shortly at an undisclosed location in deep space. All things considered, Admiral Chen, these combined operations have been a success. My only regret is that we lost so many good ships in the process and, it seems, a great number of the population of the planet Valparaiso.’

‘They had been enslaved before we arrived, sir.’

‘I know, I know…’ Cartwright shook his head, sadly. ‘Despite the heavy cost, your mission was successful and I must congratulate you on that at least, Admiral Chen. The data that we are getting from the modified array secured by Colonel Gunderson’s men is proving to be very interesting. Admiral Hawkwood is already planning our next move. The primary target for our efforts will probably be that dreadnought in orbit above Orinoco in the Achernar system.’

‘Yes sir, that was my estimation as well. The Nemesis class vessels are about the only thing we have that are capable of taking on a vessel of that size, unless the Arkari are willing to come out of their shell and actually help us.’

‘No progress on that front, I fear. But we do have useful intel. on the vessel in question. Your man Harris managed to get a close look at the thing and sent us what he could. Intel. have been poring over it for some time now. We’re not sure that it’s a warship at all. Intel. have theorised that it may be a construction vessel of some kind. The monitoring arrays have picked up periodic energy fluctuations from the craft and other vessels seem to be tending it. The antimatter transports that both you and Agent Harris reported in Shaper hands have been converging on that ship.’

‘So what is it building? A weapon?’

‘Perhaps. We simply don’t know. In any case, it would seem logical to deal with it as soon as possible, and I believe that Hawkwood is anxious to decapitate Morgan’s regime. We will be moving fleet assets into position for a strike. Admiral Chen, I expect your forces to be a part of that. There are far fewer Shaper vessels in enemy held systems than we had feared.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It’s time we took back Achernar, ousted that puppet Morgan and put him on trial for his treachery.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, sir, but I believe we should be cautious. I still think that the Shapers could be playing us on a grand scale.’

‘We must work with what we know, Admiral, but I will pass your theories up the chain of command. For now, maintain station in Santiago and await further orders. Cartwright out.’

Chen let out a long sigh of exasperation. Even after taking Valparaiso against such odds, it still seemed to stick in Cartwright’s craw to actually acknowledge her success. Sometimes he reminded her of her own mother, she reflected wryly. He rarely offered a word of praise, only insistence that she should do better next time. Worse though, was that Cartwright didn’t seem to be taking her seriously when it came to the matter of the Shapers evading sensor detection. She could tell from his expression that he didn’t buy the story, largely because he hadn’t experienced the phenomenon for himself, and because the modified array that she had overseen the capture of on the planet below appeared to be clearly showing Shaper vessels in the renegade systems. Chen didn’t buy it at all. The enemy was up to something. She could feel it, and that giant ship had something to do with it.

There was a polite knock, and the door of her office slid open. McManus entered and saw her expression.

‘Rough call with the boss?’

She nodded slowly. ‘We had to keep it brief – the encryption won’t hold out against a concerted attack for more than a couple of minutes – but yes. He’s still not convinced about what happened here. It’s all in my report, and in Singh’s accompanying analysis… but I still think that he thinks that we screwed up somehow.’

‘You did what you could, ma’am.’

‘Yes, but if we’re all going to be heading into a trap, then Command need to know.’

‘You could go over his head.’

‘I could, though I doubt it would make me very popular. I could lose overall command of this group for a start, and then where would we be?’

‘Better to be unpopular than dead, I’ve always found. I’m very unpopular and yet I’m still breathing. Funny that.’

‘I need… something!’ she threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Shit, how do you prove a negative? How do get evidence when the very point is that we didn’t see them at all?’

‘What we need is for the Shapers to pull the same trick on Admiral Cartwright. Then he’ll start to listen.’

‘Have Singh go over the data again to see if there’s anything that shows that those ships were there and not transmitting or receiving. Something that we’ve missed that’d give us their positions, only we didn’t notice at the time.’

‘I’ll tell him ma’am.’ McManus gave her a look of almost fatherly concern. ‘Admiral, if you don’t mind me asking: how much sleep have you had lately?’

‘Not much. Too much to do. Too much to worry about. Too many people to grieve over.’

‘Why don’t you ask the Doc. to give you something? You could use a decent stretch of shuteye. You need to rest, or you’ll burn out.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ said Chen, massaging her temples.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask, ma’am, if you don’t mind,’ said McManus. ‘The picture of the chap on your desk, who is he? You’ve never mentioned a husband, boyfriend, whatever.’

Chen picked up the picture of Alvaro Ramirez and gazed at the handsome, brown face that smiled blankly back at her.

‘He was my XO, back on the Mark Antony. I was… I was a different person then, and I think he made me a better one, all things considered,’ she said. ‘He was a good man, better than I deserved. He was killed in action at Maranos.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Good XO’s are hard to come by.’

‘It was… more than that. We became close. Too close, in fact and when he died…’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but… now you know why I fight.’

‘To avenge him?’

‘Him, and all the other others like him. For the lost.’

‘You need to get some sleep, ma’am,’ said McManus, softly. ‘Please?’

McManus made his way back to the bridge, pondering what he had just heard. So, Chen had ended up in bed with one of her officers, had she? She wasn’t the first, doubtless not the last, he mused. It made him nostalgic for his first command, that Scandinavian lieutenant, what was her name again? Ingrid… ah, Ingrid…

The sights and sounds of the bridge roused him from his reverie. The view outside the windows was a mass of floating wreckage still being probed for bodies. The search for the living had been abandoned some hours before. The broken remains of the crews from the destroyed or crippled vessels now packed the medical bays of the remaining warships, whilst part of the hangar deck of the Anzio had been turned into a makeshift field hospital to cope with the casualties that had been lifted off the planet below until hospital ships arrived to take them back to the Commonwealth.

Chen was right, he mused, there was too much to do. Shale’s forces were still rooting out the last pockets of enemy resistance in the city, a grim task that had turned into a costly action of house to house fighting. The navy would have flattened the city from orbit, were it not for the pockets of civilians that Shale’s forces kept finding holed up in barricaded buildings. Gunderson’s men, on the other hand, were re-fortifying their position around the array, clearing the forest around it with incendiaries to provide clear fields of fire and prevent another surprise assault.

Meanwhile, teams of engineers were addressing the systems failures that had plagued the destroyers, refitting components and test firing the new weapons again to ensure that such a fiasco did not occur again. It had turned out, after an investigation back home, that the ships had never test fired their guns whilst under combat conditions with their shields and engines and other weapons all drawing power at once, and the outdated reactor relays aboard the affected vessels had been unable to withstand the strain, causing them to overload and triggering an emergency shutdown of the vessels’ powerplants.

The Nahabe too, were tending to their wounded and their battle damage. The great, spherical ships hung low in orbit, and the wounds in their hulls flickered with light as repair teams got to work. Periodically, the ships would fire objects towards the Santiago system’s sun. After a discreet inquiry, McManus had discovered that they were disposing of their dead in this fashion, cremating their bodies in the star after the appropriate religious ceremonies had been completed aboard ship. The undamaged Nahabe vessels remained in a high orbit, standing watch over the other ships and ready to respond to any further unexpected attacks. Chen had also arranged her vessels into a defensive posture, and whilst half of the modified Thea class cruisers remained with the bulk of the fleet, the others, along with squadrons of fighters, were combing the system for any other vessels lurking in the system.

McManus sat on the bridge and took all this activity in, casting an eye over the information that was coming in: lists of updated casualty figures, reports from patrols across the system that had so far found nothing, the results of ground actions taking place at this moment, the progress of the engineers working on damaged vessels or on the ships whose systems required their relays swapping out, the movements of Shaper vessels being tracked across hundreds of light years of space and so on. No wonder Chen was exhausted. Just digesting all of this information was enough to wear anyone out, without compounding it with the stress of weeks of combat and manoeuvres. Hell, they were all tired, but McManus knew that Chen couldn’t let the crew see that she was as worn out as they were.

Leaving Singh in command of the bridge, he made his way through the ship, talking to the crew at their stations: to flight engineers and pilots on the flight deck, to weapons officers in gunnery control, to the engineers tending the ship’s reactor, to the wounded in sick bay and to the medics who worked to heal them. Morale was shaky. They had won a victory over the Shapers, yes, but at great cost, and the final surprise attack had shaken many of them to the core. Faith in the new sensors was uncertain at best, and paranoia about phantom ships and invisible enemies was starting to creep into the minds of many. McManus did his best to quash those doubts, doubts that he himself held, though he would never admit it to the crew. He noticed that the paranoia seemed to be worst amongst the fighter pilots assigned to long patrols far away from the carrier and who seemed to be, literally, jumping at shadows out there in the blackness.

McManus decided to recommend to Chen that the patrols be curtailed, or at least kept within closer range of the carrier. Such paranoia could be infectious and was already, it seemed, spreading to the rest of the crew. It was whilst he was addressing a group of pilots that an urgent call demanded his presence on the bridge. He returned to find Chen already there, wearing a serious expression and looking little better for only a few hours sleep. Her expression was mirrored in the face of Lieutenant Commander Singh, who was poring over the display of his console. McManus returned to his seat at Chen’s side, and donning his HUD monocle, saw what had caused so much concern.

Singh had filled their HUD displays with a map of the surrounding systems as seen through the eyes of the captured sensor array. The display had been orientated to centre on the Achernar system and hovered in the middle distance of their vision. Singh manipulated the display as he talked.

‘Five minutes ago, the sensor array on the planet below us registered a massive energy burst and space-time distortion from the Achernar system. I have pinpointed the point of origin to be the ship in orbit above the moon Orinoco. Initial readings are similar to those detected during the activation of the Maranos device.’

‘A Shaper generated wormhole…’ said Chen. ‘So that’s what they were doing all along. My God.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ replied Singh. ‘In the last few minutes we have detected ships emerging into the space around the large Shaper vessel.’ He zoomed the display in until it showed the fuzzy outline of the massive craft and a number of contacts moving away from what appeared to be its bows. ‘The array is currently tracking over thirty vessels, both of various Shaper types and others of unknown construction. More are emerging as we speak.’ As if to emphasise his point, a fresh handful of contacts winked into existence and began to move off.

‘If the Shapers have acquired Progenitor wormhole technology, then they can conceivably hit us anywhere,’ said Chen. ‘We need to alert Command immediately. Ensign Andrews, put me through to Admiral Cartwright at once, maximum encryption level.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

A low resolution image of Cartwright appeared in Chen’s field of vision.

‘Sir, are you seeing what we’re seeing in the Achernar system?’ said Chen.

‘Yes we are, Admiral Chen, and believe me, it is of great concern. My sensor officer alerted me to it only moments ago.’

‘Sir, our readings confirm that the Shapers have succeeded in constructing a wormhole device in the Achernar system.’

‘That was our assessment also. We already suspected that they possessed such technology: it’s the only way to explain the sudden attack on the Arkari that took place simultaneously with the Battle for Earth.’

‘And now they are using it against us. Sir, I request orders. We must strike against them to curtail this threat.’

‘Agreed. I will contact Admiral Hawkwood at once. We have almost completed the rearming of the Nemesis class ships. Order your crews to stand by, Admiral Chen. We shall continue to monitor the situation. Cartwright out.’

Over the next few hours, the swarm of ships in the Achernar system continued to grow. Contacts continued to appear in close proximity to the large Shaper craft, before moving off to join the fleet currently assembling above the moon. Along with Shaper vessels of all sizes, from nimble scout craft to great battleships, was a steady, unending stream of other vessels whose drive signatures were unfamiliar and which moved in a manner that suggested that they were far less advanced than the Shaper craft which shepherded them into position.

Chen used the time to get her ships ready for whatever might be about to come. She doubled the number of engineers working to repair her damaged ships, recalled all vessels and fighter craft from across the system and transferred the wounded to the Army transport ships still in orbit above Valparaiso. Meanwhile, the number of ships now detected in the Achernar system continued to grow. The armada now numbered in the hundreds, and more were arriving by the minute. The Shapers were quite clearly assembling a fleet capable of delivering a knockout blow against the already beleaguered Commonwealth forces. Chen and her crew tensely awaited their orders.

‘Would you look at that,’ muttered McManus, unable to take his eyes off the ever increasing numbers of ships on the sensor display. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a spread of antimatter missiles right now.’

‘You may get your wish,’ Chen replied. ‘But for now, we have to wait.’

They did not have to wait long. An hour passed, and the enemy fleet started to move off, jumping into hyperspace on a vector that would take them into the heart of the Commonwealth. Even as they departed Achernar, more ships continued to arrive through the portal.

Chen’s impatience grew. She contacted Cartwright again and was told that the government were still deliberating what action to take. The President was still locked in her situation room with her closest advisors, trying to decide whether to strike at Achernar or consolidate defences around the core systems. Chen swore inwardly at the indecision of the civilians that she assumed were now paralysed by panic. Now was a time for decisive action, not prevarication.

After another hour had passed, and still no word from Command, Singh again alerted her to something that he had spotted on the sensor readings. As he spoke, his voice wavered slightly, the dread caused by what he had found clearly evident.

‘Admiral, new contacts spotted by the array: we’re seeing fifty Shaper vessels moving in formation through hyperspace. Ma’am, they are within Commonwealth held space. At their current speed and their current heading, I estimate that they will arrive within the Solar System within three days.’

He showed Chen, moving the map to show a group of ships moving between the star systems to the south east of Earth. They were roughly ten light years behind what was considered to be the front line. The Shapers had chosen this moment to reveal themselves, to show that they had a dagger aimed straight at the heart of human civilisation.

‘They were surely there all along, lurking in interstellar space, invisible to our sensors,’ said Chen, with a leaden finality. ‘Our forces are dispersed and out of position. It seems that we have fallen for a ruse. The Shapers know how we can find them, and they used it against us.’

She called Cartwright again and was again told to stand by for orders. Her superior was clearly as frustrated and alarmed as she, impatient for some sort of decision, but government and Naval Command were still agonising over what to do; indeed what could they do to now counter two fleets of inbound ships? Panic was gripping the administration. Eventually, after another two hours of agonising waiting, Chen’s orders arrived.

From: FleetComSolar

To: Admiral Michelle Chen CO CNV Winston S. Churchill, 3 Fleet, Eyes only.

Auth: KIGDF647321O

Message:

Shaper assault on Commonwealth core systems confirmed. Coordinated strike with 5 Fleet, Admiral John Cartwright commanding, to be undertaken against enemy vessels in Achernar system. Primary target: unknown Shaper vessel of immense size in orbit above Achernar 6a (Orinoco) to be destroyed at all costs. Secondary targets: all enemy assets in space or on surface of Orinoco. Indiscriminate use of spacecraft weapons against ground and space targets authorised. Surrendering vessels to be considered legitimate targets. Vessels under command of Admiral Chen to lead initial diversionary attack. All ships to proceed immediately to forward attack coordinates (attached). Nemesis class vessels to be attached to Admiral Cartwright’s command and to proceed to forward positions (coordinates withheld). Ground forces in Santiago and Chittagong systems to be left in place and to hold captured facilities at all costs against all attempt to recapture them by the enemy. Possible additional Nahabe fleet assets to be made available. Further details to follow.

-Message Ends—

Chen scanned the order quickly, her mouth hardening into a thin line and her pulse racing. She took a deep breath, and then she issued orders:

‘Commander McManus. Ensure that the ship is ready for departure. Ensign Andrews, relay the order to prepare for departure to all warships still in system including Nahabe ships, then get me Admiral Cartwright and the Lord Protector via a secure channel and relay it through to my office.’

‘Admiral Chen, you have your orders.’

‘Yes sir, and I would like clarification. I am to lead a diversionary attack against the Achernar system?’

‘Yes, it’s there in black and white.’

‘Sir, my vessels are likely to experience severe losses. With respect sir, this is a suicide mission.’

Cartwright appeared to be unable to meet her gaze for a moment.

‘Yes, Admiral Chen. It may well be that, but if anyone can pull through, I’d say that you were the person to lead this mission. We cannot avoid the fact that the enemy will see us coming, but if we are to succeed at all, we must attempt to divide his attention. You are to draw off as much of the enemy forces as possible in an initial attack, ahead of my own assault. I will have command of the Nemesis strategic missile destroyers. They will be used against the Shaper dreadnought and the wormhole portal in the hope that we can destroy them outright or disable them. You will of course have the Nahabe ships currently under your command to accompany you.’

‘These orders speak of “additional Nahabe fleet assets to be made available,” sir. I would ask for further information with this in mind.’

‘I’m afraid nothing concrete has been made available yet,’ said Cartwright. ‘Our government received an official communiqué from the Nahabe just over an hour ago. The language is a little obtuse, I gather, but it seems that they too have noticed the Shaper wormhole device in Achernar and wish to assist. Perhaps our esteemed friend currently listening to this conversation can shed some light on this.’

The Lord Protector had been silent so far, but now the being, bedecked once more in its full battle regalia, began to speak.

‘We received communication from our military command only moments ago. It is possible that this has also been relayed to your own government. They are preparing a sizeable fleet of gunspheres in order to strike at the Achernar system. Numbers and types of ships are not detailed, presumably for fear of interception, but it seems that they are trying to allay my own fears. My people have a reputation of insular behaviour, one that is well earned, but it seems that their opinion has been swayed by one of us who has spent considerable time living and indeed fighting alongside humans. They call him The Speaker. He has dared to say what many could not: that our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of the other races in the galaxy - that we cannot fight alone. It is because of him that my Order was despatched to Earth to aid in its defence, and it is because of him that we now go to war. War against the Shapers is the Most Holy of Wars. We have beaten them back from our borders once more, but now they threaten others. It is time. The message ends: “When the humans lock swords with the enemy, we shall appear to fight at their side like guardian spirits.” I believe this means that our ships intend to use their translation drives to instantly jump into battle once you engage the enemy.’

‘Well, I certainly hope so,’ said Cartwright. ‘We must get underway as soon as possible. Admiral Hawkwood is recalling our forces from Beta Hydri and Delta Pavonis to the Solar System as we speak, in order to form a last line of defence around Earth and the Army is preparing to fight to the last should a landing take place. The Nahabe ships still in the Solar System will assist, no doubt, but as yet Hawkwood’s forces do not have any antimatter warheads available to them, and it seems unlikely that we can supply any to his forces before the Shapers arrive. In any case, any victory seems pointless if the Shapers can simply replenish their forces via the wormhole at a later date. We must strike at that portal and destroy it before the Shapers reach Earth. Command has theorised that perhaps a severing of the link to their hive-mind may disorientate them temporarily, but we need to stop more ships from arriving. If we cannot, the President is considering surrender.’

‘No, she can’t…’ protested Chen, aghast.

‘She may have no other option,’ said Cartwright. ‘If the choice is between enslavement and the annihilation of humanity, it may be better to accept the former. Guerrilla forces could fight on and perhaps we, or another race such as the Arkari, might be able to liberate our people in the future. The alternative, if we cannot stop the Shapers, is the near extinction of the human race within a matter of weeks or months. We know that the Shapers possess planet killing weapons, that much was obvious during their recent attack on the Arkari. If we fight on, they may not hesitate to use them against us.’

‘I have always been of the opinion that it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees, sir, as the old saying goes.’

‘And I also, Admiral Chen, but it seems others do not agree with either of us. This may be our last chance to stop the Shapers. If we cannot, then I fear for the future of our species. Your man Harris has been in touch again. He has done his part in warning us of the invasion fleet, has confirmed that the Shaper vessel is indeed powering the portal and has also reported that the enemy has landed in strength around the capital, Bolivar City, which he believes to be very likely lost to us. He also reports, however, that Admiral Haines may still be very much alive and believes that he may have located him. He has a small but well equipped guerrilla force available to him containing survivors from Haines’s fleet. He may be of further use to us.’

Colonel Gunderson scanned through his orders once more and looked up into the darkening sky where the lights of the Commonwealth fleet were beginning to move off. Around him, his men were busy repairing the defences around the array which towered behind him, the white structure gleaming pinkly in the light of the setting sun. His suit comm. crackled into life. It was General Shale.

‘Looks like we’re on our own Colonel,’ said Shale. ‘You see the fleet departing? The warships are heading off to attack the Shapers. Our transports are returning to friendlier space with the wounded.’

‘Yes sir, just going over those orders again. It makes for grim reading.’

‘You ever fight a guerrilla war, Colonel?’

‘Not for real, but both me and my men have trained for it. You know, I always figured it would be the K’Soth that we’d need to use it against.’

‘Me too. Ah, sometimes I almost miss the scaly bastards. At least you knew where you stood with them. This war…’ he heard Shale sigh.

‘If they come here, sir, my men will give them hell.’

‘Colonel, I hope you Marine Corp boys understand what “defend at all costs” means,’ said Shale, darkly.

‘Yes sir, I do, and so do my men. No retreat, no surrender, no quarter given or asked,’ said Gunderson defiantly. ‘We’ll fight with rocks and with our bare hands if need be.’

‘It may come to that by the end, Colonel,’ said Shale. ‘It may come to that indeed.’

Chapter 51

No matter how hard she tried to block it out, Katherine could hear the Shaper AI screaming inside her mind. Eonara and Aaokon were effectively dissecting it alive, deconstructing and remaking the creature anew, lobotomising it and then infecting it with cunningly concealed routines and code. It writhed in digital agony under a programmer’s knife. The Progenitor AIs had endeavoured to erect barriers around the thing to isolate it from the outside world until they had finished working, but Katherine could still hear it at the back of her consciousness, screaming, entreating, threatening and sobbing like a prisoner put to the question. At times she almost felt sorry for the thing, until she reminded herself what it was: an artificial thing without feelings or moral constraints, created to dominate the galaxy.

Whilst Eonara and Aaokon worked, she, Rekkid and Steelscale wandered the empty, echoing halls of the Life Forge, wondering at the vast and mysterious machines, the gleaming abandoned laboratories and the endless piles of equipment still pristine after four thousand millennia. They recorded what they could in the event that they could ever return here. With the Shaper AI trapped, they succeeded in obtaining a complete, apparently unadulterated, copy of the data from the array systems where they had found the thing lurking, and which clearly showed the locations of all worlds seeded by the Progenitors and a map of the gate network as it had existed around seventy million years previously. It also contained the exact location of the Shaper home-world and accurate orbital data on its lonely trajectory around the Maelstrom that enabled the Glory to extrapolate its current location with a high degree of accuracy.

Eventually, the screaming stopped. The archaeologists were invited into the lab where the head containing the Shaper AI had been put and where the two Progenitor AIs had worked on it for several days. It sat in the same place as where Steelscale had left it, surrounded by banks of equipment and shield generators, now deactivated. Its outward appearance was identical to before, but whereas previously the head had thrashed and writhed like a maggot on a hook, it now lay still and upright, connected to the plinth upon which it sat by a single, gleaming umbilical. One of the drones under the control of the Shining Glory was also present. For now, its weapons were not drawn, but Katherine suspected that it would spring into action at the first sign of trouble from the ancient relic at the centre of the room. It was also taking care not to link to any systems that were linked to the head. Mentith had arrived also by shuttle, the old Arkari standing pensively to one side, regarding the Shaper thing with deep suspicion.

‘Our work is complete,’ said Eonara’s disembodied voice. ‘The creature before you has been remade.’

‘I see, and how is this supposed to work, exactly?’ said Rekkid.

‘We have infected the Shaper AI with a potent virus,’ said Aaokon. ‘Using our knowledge of the inner workings of the Shapers’ minds, we have designed it to subtly alter the way in which their minds work.’

‘The Shapers see their race as the perfect culmination of accelerated, self directed evolution,’ said Eonara. ‘All other races, indeed all biological life, is perceived to be inferior, both for the fragility and generally mortal nature of said life forms, but also because other races such as ourselves do not act wholly rationally. We experience emotions and act in ways that the Shapers cannot comprehend as rational. Pity, love, selflessness, charity are all seen as weaknesses that hold us back, rather than what binds our societies together. Only when biological life is enslaved by the Shaper hive-mind and altered via their invasive technologies is it considered acceptable in their eyes and, even then, only as tools to be expended as they see fit. This virus will alter their perceptions.’

‘You’re going to make them nicer?’ said Rekkid.

‘No. We are going to destroy them,’ said Aaokon firmly. ‘The virus alters the Shapers’ programming at a base level. Instead of seeing biological life as inferior, they will instead see other Shapers as the inferior enemy to be exterminated. We have perverted their quest for perfection until each Shaper will see only itself as perfect, causing them to turn on one another as the virus spreads, destroying the unity of the hive-mind and the Singularity itself and reducing the Shapers to a mass of warring individuals.’

‘How do you intend to infect the entire Shaper race with this virus that you have so carefully constructed?’ said Mentith. ‘Surely they will detect it before it can spread very far or even enter their systems at all?’

‘By concealing it deep within other data,’ said Eonara. ‘We will also present them with the information that they would need to overcome their design limitations by altering their base level systems. Currently, the numbers and reach of the Shapers are limited – Shaper organisms left in distant isolation start to exhibit more independent behaviour, and populations beyond a certain size are more difficult for them to control as one hive-mind. Additional controlling nodes start to take over and rival Singularities begin to emerge. This is what tore the Shapers apart into different factions after they defeated the Progenitors and hence why their numbers remain relatively small and why they need to use others as unthinking slaves or manipulate civilisations in order to weaken them and then take them over. By removing this limitation, they can expand into the universe without needing to enslave others.

We have hidden the virus deep amongst the reams of data, its code scattered amongst the data until it is indistinguishable from it, and it will only activate once each Shaper organism has absorbed it all. It is buried beneath layers of obfuscation and high level steganography, only becoming active once the data has been digested in full. Even then, it will remain dormant for a period to allow the infection to spread further. The Shapers’ hypercom transmissions should allow them to instantly share this data across the galaxy, but we must allow for a slight delay whilst they all process this data.’

‘You’re hoping that it will be too valuable for them to pass up on,’ said Katherine.

‘Yes, although we realise that we are taking a great risk with the fate of many species across the galaxy,’ Eonara replied.

‘Could you not subtly alter the data in some way and render it inaccurate?’

‘We considered that, but then we weighed up the possibility of the Shapers realising that the data was false and that they would suspect something and stop sharing it between themselves. No, the data must be genuine for this to work, though the virus will erase the data once it activates, thus removing the risk that any surviving Shapers could utilise it.’

‘And how do you propose that we allow the Shapers to access this thing?’ said Rekkid, pointing towards the head.

‘Why, by giving it to them, of course,’ replied Eonara. ‘We must travel to the Shaper home-world and give it to them.’

‘This is suicide,’ said Rekkid, pacing up and down on the bridge of the Shining Glory. They had packed up their equipment and returned to the ship which still hung in orbit above the Progenitor home-world along with the golden warship that housed the AI known as Aaokon. Outside, shuttles could still be seen returning with Arkari technicians and equipment.

‘This is suicide, Mentith!’ Rekkid repeated. ‘How in hell we can just sail straight into the Shaper’s home system without being instantly obliterated, or worse?’

‘You can stay behind, if you like, Professor Cor,’ said Mentith coolly. ‘The Progenitor home-world is perfectly habitable.’

‘Yes, that would be fun. I’d probably end up getting burned as a demon by the backward inhabitants because I look funny. No thanks.’

‘I wasn’t aware that you were well versed in their religious practices, Professor,’ Mentith replied.

‘It goes with the territory, believe me,’ said Rekkid.

‘We just want to go home,’ said Katherine. ‘If we still have a home to go to, that is.’

‘This is the only way to ensure that you do,’ said Eonara, her avatar floating nearby. ‘The Shapers must be stopped now, before it is too late. We enter the system and declare that we are a multi-species delegation attempting to sue for peace, and that we are to present them with a gift, a relic of the origin of their species from the Progenitor home-world that contains data of great interest to them as a species, as a gesture of good faith. We will claim that Aaokon and I came to the realisation that co-operation with the Shapers was the only way forward and assisted you in this mission of peaceful negotiation. We will state that we wish to bargain for the freedom of the enslaved races by granting the Shapers to ability to expand without requiring them.’

‘And you think that they’ll buy that?’ said Katherine.

‘They only need to buy it long enough for this to work, a few moments at the most. Naturally, they will be suspicious and we can expect the head to be subjected to intense scrutiny, but once they find one of their own trapped inside - apparently from the origins of their race since we have altered its memories – we hope that they will drop their guard and join with it, whereupon they will discover the data which it is carrying that we have promised them. It will take them milliseconds to absorb the data, and mere seconds later it will have passed across the galaxy. They must take this data of their own free will. We cannot inject it into their systems.’

‘I don’t know, it all sounds a little…’ Katherine began.

‘It may be something of a desperate gamble, but both Aaokon and I believe that this is the best chance we have of defeating the Shapers. You do have the option of remaining here on the off-chance that we are able to return and collect you later, assuming that we survive the encounter, but we must journey to their home-world. We must cut out the heart of their hive-mind, destroy the Singularity at least and hopefully infect the rest of them.’

Silence fell as everyone considered Eonara’s words and their implications. They would be heading straight into the lair of the enemy, to a hell world at the centre of the galaxy to entreat with and attempt to deceive a machine god.

‘No. I for one wish to remain aboard,’ said Steelscale, firmly. ‘I would look upon the enemy home-world and watch you destroy them if I can. It will be a story worth recounting to my descendants. I will not shy away from this.’

The others said nothing, contemplating their possible fates – to face the Shapers, or to be stranded here in the abandoned home of their creators.

‘He’s right, Steelscale’s right,’ said Katherine. ‘We’ve come so far, risked so much. We can’t back away now. I’m in.’

‘Great, well… I guess I’m coming along too then, aren’t I?’ said Rekkid, wearily. ‘I mean, we never can resist the opportunity to try and get ourselves killed, can we?’

‘If I might ask,’ said Mentith, the ship’s cat avatar winding itself around his legs. ‘How do you intend for us to journey to the Shaper home-world? From the data that we now have on its exact location, it is located close to the very centre of the galaxy, in a wide orbit about the Maelstrom. That is around ten thousand light years distant from here. However, according to the map of the gate network that we now have in our possession, all routes leading to that area of the galaxy were severed long ago by the Progenitors after the Shapers turned against them.’

‘There is a way,’ said Aaokon. ‘As I said when we first came here: the Shadow Gate that we passed through on our way inside the Great Sphere is unique: it alone amongst the surviving gates from the Progenitors’ network can be re-targeted so that its terminus may be placed anywhere in the galaxy. During the height of the Progenitor Empire, it was used by the fleet to move forces around the Empire in an instant. If the Defence Collective can be reasoned with, it can take us to the Shaper home-world.’

Aaokon and Eonara were trying to negotiate with the half-senile AIs of the Defence Collective. Even operating at the speed that they thought and communicated at, it was still taking some time to convince them to point the Shadow Gate at the Shaper home-world. The AIs were understandably wary about opening a gateway into that terrible place, where the ancient enemy that had wiped out the greatest empire in galactic history still lurked.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Shining Glory completed their task of lifting scientists and equipment off the frozen polar cap of the Progenitor home-world. Rekkid busied himself in his quarters with studying some of the recordings that they had made down on the planet, occupying his mind with work to take his thoughts away from the impending doom that now loomed before them. Holding the slim datapad in his long-fingered hands he realised that he couldn’t keep it still, that his hands were shaking. He and Katherine had been through a lot together, witnessed terrible and awe-inspiring things in the last few years, but nothing could prepare him for this. They were going to their deaths. He was almost certain of that.

Even during the worst of what had happened to them - during the K’Soth attack on Marantis or the Shaper attack on the Kaggorak facility - he had always clung to the belief, however loudly he had protested, that they were going to survive somehow. Maybe it was because he hadn’t had time to contemplate what was happening to them, hadn’t had time to sit with the fear gnawing at his gut. He wondered what had made him agree to go. Was it simply a desire to see this through to the end? Or was it about protecting her, staying at her side no matter what? He didn’t know. He threw the datapad down onto the desk in front of him and put his head in hands.

‘You stupid bloody fool, Rekkid Cor,’ he said to no-one in particular. ‘Why couldn’t you have been like most academics and spent the rest of your life in your study with a pile of old books? What are you doing all the way out here?’

The ship’s cat avatar padded into the room, its tail held high. Rekkid looked up at its approach.

‘Maybe I’m just curious,’ said Rekkid. ‘The humans have a saying about cats and curiosity and what happens to them as a result.’

The looming form of Steelscale entered behind the cat, his saurian body reeking of K’Soth hormonal secretions.

‘And what have you been up to?’ said Rekkid. ‘Dare I ask?’

‘You may not,’ said Steelscale. ‘Suffice to say I have cut my concubines loose of their obligations to me. I offered them the chance of staying on this world, if they wish. They chose to stay with me instead.’

‘Seems like everybody on this ship has a death wish of some kind,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Where’s Katherine? Is she in her room?’

‘No, I couldn’t find her. I thought that you might have seen her.’

‘She’s in the arboretum,’ said the ship. ‘Come, I’ll take you to her.’

They found Katherine sitting under a broad, leafy tree, gazing into the middle distance at the artificial landscape. Rekkid sat down beside her and crossed his long legs.

‘Are you frightened, Rekkid?’ said Katherine.

‘Frightened? I’m fucking terrified, why do you ask?’

‘Then it’s not just me.’

‘No it’s not, trust me. Me, Steelscale though he won’t admit it, Mentith, everyone. Everyone is frightened. If they aren’t frightened, then they’re idiots or, like our artificial friend here,’ he said, reaching out to scratch behind the cat’s ears, ‘are incapable of feeling fear.’

‘I’m not sure that makes me feel any better, actually,’ said Katherine. ‘If the rest of you weren’t so scared, I’d think it was just me terrified that we’re about to die.’

‘We can always stay behind.’

‘No. No we have to finish this. Promise, though, Rekkid,’ she said, turning round to look him straight in the eye. ‘Promise me, that if it comes to a choice between death and being enslaved by those things that you’d know what to do, because I’d do the same for you.’

‘Of course,’ he replied, nodding furiously. ‘I won’t let that happen.’

There was silence, whilst each of them became lost in their own dark thoughts.

‘So what are you going to do, when all of this is over?’ said Katherine, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Me? Spend about a month getting dangerously drunk, I think, and then vow to never leave the safety of my faculty again, assuming it isn’t a smoking crater already. You?’ Rekkid replied.

‘I think I’d just like to see Earth again, see my family. It’s been so long since I’ve been back… but on the other hand, I might just join you in the business of getting drunk. Steelscale, what about you?’

‘I can’t go home. If I do, my own people will execute me as a traitor,’ said Steelscale, sadly. ‘I don’t know… maybe there are other exiles like me scattered across space. Maybe if I settled in the Commonwealth and tried to do something to build bridges between our species… perhaps it’s a vain hope.’

‘It’s a start,’ said Rekkid. ‘It’s a damn sight more productive than what I have in mind.’

The ship’s cat avatar spoke now, its golden eyes regarding them with a piercing gaze.

‘I am sorry to interrupt,’ said the ship. ‘But I think that you should return to the bridge. The Defence Collective has agreed to allow us passage to the Shaper home-world. It’s time.’

Chapter 52

‘You fucking bastard. You told us that we’d lost those things in the forest!’ yelled Anna. ‘Now you’re telling me that they’ll be coming here?’

‘It’s a foregone conclusion,’ said Steven. ‘You think that you can shake off the Shapers that easily? They watched where we went, it’s the only explanation. I had to get back here. I had to use the secure comm. unit to warn the Commonwealth about that goddamn armada that’s just appeared over our heads.’

‘Oh you did, did you? Might as well have raised a fucking flag whilst you were at it, they’ll have detected the signal, even if they couldn’t decipher it. And what about us?’ Anna spat back.

‘This is bigger than any of us. I made a calculated decision. Billions of lives could be at stake here.’

‘Yeah, well what about our lives?’ snarled Isaacs. ‘Did you ever think of that?’

‘Yes, I did, actually. I fucking did. Do you think it was easy? If I didn’t give a shit about either of you, I’d have left you back in that nightclub along with your little lady-friend, since you two seemed to be getting on so well.’

‘Don’t you ever…’ Isaacs began, pointing a shaking finger at Steven. ‘Anita was a good kid, she didn’t fucking deserve… those things…’ In his anger and grief he ran out of words to adequately express how he felt. He turned suddenly away and lowered the hand he had unconsciously clenched into a fist ready to strike Steven.

‘Anita?’ said Maria, eyes widening in horror. ‘Oh no… not her…’

‘I put three rounds in her. Two in her skull. I think it was enough to kill that thing inside her,’ said Anna, grim faced.

‘Good,’ said Maria. ‘I’d have done the same.’

They were gathered inside one of the rooms carved into the bedrock inside the Hidden Hand’s concealed base. The room was bare, the rock walls unadorned. There was no furniture besides a collection of desks pushed together into an oblong in the centre of the room surrounded by a mismatched set of chairs.

‘Fucking great… now what? We sit here and wait for us all to end up like that?’ Isaacs spat.

‘I’ve been told to await further orders,’ Steven replied, flatly.

‘Oh you have, have you? Well in case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t take any fucking orders. We’re leaving before those things arrive.’

‘What, you think you’re going to get off this planet?’ said Steven. ‘Jesus, Cal. You’re a damn fine pilot, but I don’t fancy your chances against a sky full of Shaper vessels.’

‘Well can’t we call in the Uncaring Cosmos, get them to de-cloak in low orbit and pick us up, then make a run for it?’

‘We haven’t heard from the Uncaring Cosmos since you arrived,’ said Maria, leaning back in her chair with her arms folded. ‘We have to assume that she was destroyed covering your asses when you swooped in here. Ain’t nobody riding to our rescue, unless you fancy taking that ship of yours up against hundreds of capital ships up there’

‘Shit,’ Isaacs breathed and shook his head.

Commander Baldwin, former XO of the Lincoln, had been silent until now, watching them bicker and noting to herself how unlike the professionals that she was used to working with the Hidden Hand were. Even after spending so much time with them in this godforsaken rat hole she was amazed any of them were still alive at all.

‘If I might ask, Agent Harris: did you find Admiral Haines?’

‘Yes, yes I did. I believe that he’s being held in the cells beneath the Assembly House in Bolivar City.’

‘And his status?’

‘Unknown. He’s alive, but whether he’s still one of us or not, I can’t say.’

‘And are you planning to go back for him?’

‘Those were my original orders. Now? I just don’t know if it’s possible.’

There were lights, voices. Haines felt himself being roughly lifted to his feet and carried as though he weighed nothing at all. He couldn’t focus. The lights and figures and walls swam in his vision. They’d done something to him. Drugged him. Was it something in his last meal? Or had they come in the night and injected him with something? It didn’t matter.

His feet were barely touching the ground. He felt like he was flying, or walking in low gravity, taking giant slow steps along a corridor of light that seemed to stretch and twist if he tried to look at it, the echoes of the voices distorting also. There was the sound of doors opening. A lift maybe? He squinted and thought that he could see the control panel on the wall to his left. Yes, they were going upwards. It wasn’t just the curious feeling in his belly – that could be the drugs – the panel showed a series of arrows floating up.

The lift stopped and he was dragged out, and then down large corridors that echoed with space and were full of bright light. There was a black and white chequerboard pattern on the floor, a floor that gleamed in the bright lights and echoed to the footsteps of the men that carried him (if they could truly still be considered to be men, after all, they were little more than puppets of meat, bone and sinew).

They turned a corner into what felt like a larger space with a high ceiling and ornate decoration that seemed to melt and shift before him beneath swaying light sources hung high in the air. Still handcuffed, he was pushed down into a chair.

Isaacs had retreated to the familiar surroundings of his ship. He was checking her over, making her ready for a possible sudden departure. The Hidden Hand technical crews had done a decent job of giving his vessel the once over - repairing minor damage, tightening loose bolts, adjusting instruments and so on. Even so, he needed to inspect everything once more just to be sure, and besides, it gave him a little time to himself. He wondered what the odds were against making an escape run from Orinoco, and just how many of the people cowering down here in the tunnels he’d be able to fit inside the Profit Margin’s hull. Drawing lots would be an ugly business if it came to that, not that he could guarantee that he’d be able to make it out of the system in one piece. Maria was right, there was a sky full of hostile ships up there, and a moon now crawling with the enemy down here. Scouts had already spotted gunships and small Shaper craft combing the jungle. They had managed to somehow shake them off in their flight from the city, but the Shapers seemed to have a good idea about the general area in which they were hiding. It would only be a matter of time before they came here to winkle the surviving members of the Hidden Hand out of their hiding place.

He was lying flat on his back, half way underneath the main cockpit console when a pair of booted feet appeared beside his head. They belonged to Anna.

‘Cal, you need to see this,’ she said. He looked up and saw that was holding a datapad.

‘See what?’

‘It’s Haines. They’re trying him for war crimes right now. It’s about to be streamed live across all networks.’

Back in one of the communal areas, they gathered around Anna’s datapad and watched the broadcast unfold. Judging by the opulent surroundings, the trial was taking place inside the Assembly House. Admiral Cox was presiding as both judge and prosecutor whilst rows of uniformed figures sat on the benches, as motionless and regimented as automatons. A bedraggled figure sat slumped in the dock. It was Haines.

Commander Baldwin gasped in shock as she caught sight of her commanding officer. Haines looked considerably worse for wear. Normally clean shaven and impeccably turned out, his grey hair and scruffy beard had grown long from weeks of neglect and he was clad in the remains of his naval uniform, now ripped and scuffed and heavily soiled. His remaining eye appeared unfocused and he seemed to be unaware of his surroundings. That eye peered out of a face that was mottled with bruises from repeated beatings. He also looked to have lost a considerable amount of weight, his features gaunt and sunken. As the list of charges against him was read out, he didn’t react.

‘…crimes against humanity, deliberate targeting of civilian populations, torture and execution of POWs, leading an unprovoked attack against a sovereign world, namely Orinoco, acts of terrorism including conspiracy to plant explosives and carry out kidnapping and murder on the world of Orinoco…’ Cox stood behind the dais at the head of the room and continued to read off the list of supposed crimes that Haines had committed.

‘This is nothing more than a show trial,’ said Baldwin in disgust. ‘The Admiral deserves better than this. He’s a goddamn hero.’

‘What did you expect, due legal process?’ Isaacs replied.

‘Why are they doing this? Why not just kill him, or enslave him with one of their creatures?’

‘Propaganda, I imagine,’ said Steven. ‘They’re trying to tarnish the reputation of a highly decorated hero of the Commonwealth. Not only that; they want the people of the Commonwealth to see their hero broken before they kill him. They want them to see what happens to those who stand against the Shapers.’

‘Is this footage genuine?’ said Maria.

‘Impossible to tell,’ Steven replied. ‘If it is, then Haines is still alive, and if he really is as sedated as he appears, then that suggests that he’s still one of us, not one of them.’

‘Then we have to get him out of there,’ said Baldwin. ‘He’d do the same for us. Admiral Haines never left any of his own behind. We owe him that much.’

Was he in a court room of some kind? There was a figure up at one end of the room, up on some kind of platform. It looked like he was reading off something. Haines struggled to see him, struggled to hear what the figure was saying, but it was like trying to see and hear things underwater. He concentrated and made the figure swim into focus. It was wearing a dress naval uniform and had dark brown skin. A thought struck Haines through the fog in his brain. He strained for clarity of thought and vision, leaning forward to see better.

‘Cox, is that you?’ he heard himself slur.

‘Yes, Admiral Haines. It is Admiral Cox standing before you. You are charged with the aforementioned crimes. I ask you again, how do you plead?’ The words took a while for Haines to digest.

‘Admiral Cox. You always were an asshole,’ he answered. ‘I see that’s one part of your personality that the Shapers couldn’t destroy.’

‘Admiral Haines, if you do not provide an appropriate answer, a guilty plea will be entered.’

‘Go and fuck yourself,’ Haines replied, and slumped back in his chair.

The feed suddenly stopped, the image frozen for second or two, before an error message overlaid itself.

‘Damn it,’ said Anna, fiddling with the datapad. ‘Looks like we lost the connection.’

‘Maybe Haines didn’t play along with their little charade,’ said Isaacs.

The feed suddenly resumed after a few moments, just in time for them to hear Cox read out the sentencing.

Death. Haines felt strong arms lift him out of the chair and drag him from the room. Well, that was hardly a surprise. About time, he was tired of waiting for them to get on with it. He guessed that the whole trial thing was a little piece of theatre that they were going to broadcast to the rest of humanity. The great Admiral Haines laid low at last. Well fuck them, they hadn’t broken him, and that was why he knew in his heart that they could never truly win. As long as there were humans left free somewhere in the galaxy, they would keep fighting on, keeping the species struggling on against the encroaching darkness. As they hauled him back to his cell, Haines felt nothing but a perverse sense of victory.

Steven’s orders arrived soon after via the secure comm. Hunched over the device in one of the cabins of the Profit Margin, he looked them over on its small screen, responded briefly and received a further acknowledgment a few moments later. He sat back on the narrow bunk for a moment, contemplating what he was about to do and then went to find the others. He found them lounging in the same communal area as before, transfixed by the rolling news coverage of Haines’s trial. He pointed at the screen and said simply: ‘I’m off to go get the old guy. Who’s with me?’

‘Me,’ said Commander Baldwin, immediately. ‘Those of us who served with Haines, I think you can count us all in.’

‘Are you fucking out of your mind!?’ said Isaacs. ‘You saw the hordes of those things landing around the city. It’s a suicide mission, and you know it.’

‘This is a strictly volunteer mission only. My orders state that I cannot compel any of you to accompany me. Captain Isaacs may well be right - this may be a one way trip.’

‘How the hell are you going to get in there and come back out alive?’ said Maria. ‘Those things ain’t just going to let you.’

‘The Navy has a task force headed this way to attack the Shaper vessel in orbit above us that’s powering that portal and hopefully destroy it, stopping any more enemy ships from arriving. I don’t have an ETA, but I will receive a go signal via the secure comm. once they enter the system. That will be my key to move in, when the Shapers are distracted. My orders are to cause as much disruption as possible in Bolivar City, strike behind the enemy lines and give them something else to think about besides the capital ships bearing down on them. By the sound of things, it seems like the Navy has some new intel., possibly scanning technology or recon, that indicates that the Assembly House has a Shaper node somewhere within it. We are to destroy it, and if possible, rescue Haines from the same location before we do.’

‘So, go on Steven, I can tell that you must have some sort of viable plan of how you’re going to do this, or else you wouldn’t be standing here asking us to come along,’ said Anna. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I’ve been going over the inventory of this place. You now have two ships capable of atmospheric and space flight after you cannibalised all those parts and wreckage, the Profit Margin, and a cargo freighter, the Unholy Matrimony as well as an AG flitter. On top of that, you have the plentiful supplies of weapons and ammo that we brought with us, and it seems, two highly illegal antimatter tipped missiles.’

‘Yeah about those…’ said Maria, uneasily.

‘Look, right now I don’t care where they came from. These things are just what I need.’

‘Yeah, those things are pretty effective against the Shapers,’ said Isaacs. ‘We used individual containment spheres against the ship that rammed its way into Port Royal’s docking bay, hurt it real bad, but if you set one of those entire warheads off it’s going to wipe Bolivar City off the map. It’s got what, a ten megatonne yield?’

‘It’s the intense EMP effects that the Shapers can’t stand,’ said Steven. ‘You saw how that police cruiser reacted when I fired that EMP gun at them, SOC have documented similar reactions before. If we fire one of these things and detonate it in the upper atmosphere, the blast should barely touch the city, but the EMP effects should temporarily knock out the Shapers on the ground.’

‘Yeah it was like the ship was in actual physical pain when we hit it,’ said Isaacs. ‘I’d assumed that it was the intense heat and radiation and the physical damage but…’

‘It won’t have much effect on any of their ships in the area unless they’re close to the blast, but it should temporarily disable or disorientate those enslaved hordes of theirs for possibly tens of kilometres in all directions. We’ll have a few minutes to race in, find Haines and make a quick getaway, and then we detonate the second warhead inside the Assembly House on a timer.’

‘Jesus, you’ll flatten the city,’ said Maria. ‘All those people…’

‘All those people are very likely no longer in control of their own bodies,’ said Steven firmly. ‘Bolivar City now belongs to the enemy and Command has designated it as a legitimate military target. Their intel. data shows a very high Shaper presence within the city limits, high enough to account for the entire population. If we do not detonate that warhead, then the Navy has orders to level the city from orbit if it can, before the entire world is lost to the Shapers. Hopefully the blast and the distraction and subsequent shock to the Shapers’ chain of command in the system could give the Navy the lucky break it needs to take down that thing in orbit.’

They each considered Steven’s words for a moment.

‘Well, you’re going to need a fast ship to get you in and out, and someone who can actually fly it too,’ said Isaacs, breaking the silence. ‘This will probably be the death of me, but I’m in. I’m certainly not going to wait around for those things to turn up again.’

‘Well in that case, I guess I’m coming too, dear,’ said Anna. ‘Wouldn’t want you to go off enjoying yourself without me. Besides, you need someone to man the turrets. Steven can play at being co-pilot for a bit.’

‘I’m in too,’ said Maria. ‘I’m about the only one around here who can get that damn junk freighter into the air anyway. Besides, I don’t have anything better to do except sit on my ass waiting for the Shapers to come calling.’

‘Excellent. Thank you, all of you,’ said Steven. ‘Okay, let’s start planning this thing in detail. See if we can get any plans of the building, and let’s see who else wants to join us.’

‘What about those who can’t come along?’ said Anna. ‘What happens to them? We have families here, children even.’

‘Well, we’ll be taking the only two ships,’ said Maria. ‘So they ain’t getting off this moon without us. They could take the flitter if they want and head east away from the city, or stay here and hope the Shapers don’t come calling. I intend to urge them to make a run for it.’

‘Yeah, I was afraid those were the only options,’ said Anna.

Chapter 53

Admirals Morgan and Cox waited in the classical splendour that had been the Governor’s Office on the top floor of the Assembly. Soaring ionic columns held aloft a richly decorated ceiling that displayed the colonisation of the Achernar system in stylised reliefs. Tall windows, flanked by sumptuous drapes, looked out over the city skyline - still illuminated despite the fact that now its citizens could see perfectly well in the dark, unaided.

Morgan sat at a broad, ornate desk near the centre of the room, the strain obviously showing in his features, his hands tightly clenched, shaking despite his attempts to control his fear. The source of his terror stood at his shoulder. Admiral Cox remained calm and composed - his face implacable, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

The doors swung open, and two armoured figures dragging a third handcuffed form entered. There was a chair in front of the great desk and the two armoured figures deposited their charge in it, handcuffed the man to the chair and then stood smartly to attention, as motionless as statues.

‘Admiral Haines, can you hear me?’ said Cox. ‘Admiral Haines?’

‘I can hear you,’ muttered Haines. ‘Whatever your people gave me to keep me sedated during that show trial of yours is wearing off a little. What do you want? You going to kill me yourself?’

‘No,’ Cox replied.

‘Thought not. What do you want?’

‘I thought that you ought to know that two Commonwealth Navy fleets are converging on this system. They will be here shortly and so, regrettably, I must depart soon in order to oversee their destruction. I could control everything from here, but I feel that appearances are important, and I will relish finally killing Admiral Chen. Then, after your fleet has been obliterated, and of course I will make sure that you are able to view the proceedings, I shall return and I shall have you executed, with the whole of humanity watching.’

‘Chen won’t go down that easily,’ growled Haines. ‘I know her well enough.’

‘Ah, but she will, and I feel that it’s important that you watch her defeat. Admiral, do you wonder why you are still alive, why you haven’t been implanted like the others?’

‘It had occurred to me. I get the impression that you get some sick pleasure out of tormenting me, although I thought perfect beings such as yourself were above such things.’

‘Indeed we are. No, it is because you are still useful to me alive. Whilst we did not have the resources to fully take this world, you served as a useful figure to demonise, but now that we have all the forces available that we need to join this world to the Shaper consciousness you are still of use. You see, I need to break you, Admiral Haines. I need to break you and I need all of humanity to see it, to see their hero reduced to a wreck of a man, crushed and defeated, before I kill you. I need them to see the despair in your eyes before I put a bullet in your thick skull! Mopping up resistance movements is tiresome and costly and slows down our expansion. Humanity needs to know that it has been defeated, even before we burn the world of your origins to a cinder.’

‘No…’ Haines shook his head violently. ‘No, this is personal. I can feel it.’

‘You are mistaken.’

‘You devoured Cox’s mind, then you spent too long away from your precious Singularity, didn’t you? You started to develop independent thoughts of your own, started to become him! I know, because I knew Admiral Cox. I can see some of him looking out through his eyes, and I also know that he fucking hated me!’ Haines started to laugh. ‘Yeah he would have done anything to get me in a locked room… guess he got his wish after all.’

‘Shut up!’ spat Cox, lunging forward and striking Haines across the face.

‘See?’ said Haines, still reeling from the blow. ‘Anger! I thought you didn’t have emotions, that they were a weakness that you despised. Isn’t it ironic? That I’m being kept alive because the man you devoured and whose skin you walk around in hated my guts.’

‘No! No, you are wrong. Very wrong,’ said Cox, leaning over him. ‘You are only alive and in possession of your own mind because you are a useful tool to me, nothing more. Let me show you what happens when things outlive their usefulness to me.’ Cox turned smartly and strode towards Morgan. He stood behind him for a second, and then suddenly locked the Admiral in a vice like grip with both arms around his throat.

‘I’m sorry, Admiral Morgan, but the deal’s off, I’m afraid,’ said Cox into Morgan’s ear. Morgan choked and gasped for air, struggling in vain to free himself.

‘I knew that you would try to betray us eventually. You were useful for a while as a way of controlling the local populace, even if you were only trying to buy time for yourself in some pathetic hope that your species would be allowed to retain a degree of freedom as collaborators. Now, of course, we can resort to more direct methods so I’m afraid your services are no longer required.’

Morgan writhed in Cox’s grip, his frantic feet beating a tattoo against the carpeted floor. The two armoured figures came forward and helped Cox hold him down. Something had entered the room and was crawling across that floor. It was small and black, segmented and insect-like, and it moved with quick, skittering steps on thin, articulated legs. Razor sharp mandibles clicked hungrily. Morgan saw it and his eyes widened in horror. He tried to scream.

‘Nevertheless, I have decided to reward you,’ Cox continued. ‘You have earned yourself a place within the blissful embrace of the Shapers. Your burdens are no longer yours to carry. We will do your thinking for you.’

Haines watched, aghast, as the thing started to climb up Morgan’s trouser leg. Cox and his men held him tight. Morgan clamped his mouth shut, straining to turn his head away as the thing scuttled up and over his chest. The Admiral’s eyes bulged as he looked down into its tiny features that were composed entirely of razor sharp blades and minute clustered sensors, which even now were scanning his anatomy. He clenched his mouth tighter. It mattered not to the creature, which rushed forward and sank its mandibles into his flesh, burrowing upwards through his lower jaw. Morgan shrieked, even as the black thing ate through his tongue, then the roof of his soft palate and then it finally tasted brain matter and started to feed in earnest, carving itself a burrow between the two hemispheres. It began to extend tendrils into the surrounding tissue, not only into the brain’s motor functions, but also into Morgan’s veins, where it could tap into the nutrients flowing around his body. It would digest and grow, adding segments to its length until it resembled a centipede, when it would finally push its rear segments out of the back of Morgan’s skull to act as a heat sink and communications hub. Then it would rebuild his body from within, strengthening it to withstand damage that would have killed him ordinarily, though now his mind was trapped within a living death.

Morgan’s struggling ceased. Cox and his men released his slack body, which now began to twitch as the creature inside his head began to assert its control.

‘Jesus,’ said Haines, disgusted by what he had just witnessed.

‘Oh, don’t worry. He’s still alive,’ said Cox. ‘Very much alive, in fact. He can see and hear us, can’t you?’ Cox added, speaking to the slumped, twitching form. ‘It’s just that we’re in control now and he’ll do as we tell him. You won’t be so fortunate, Admiral Haines. I assure you, I do intend to kill you when the time is right.’

Chapter 54

The Shining Glory emerged in a blaze of light as the Shadow Gate opened once more. Flanked by Aaokon’s golden craft, the Arkari vessel slewed to a stop. Once outside the Great Sphere again it turned and faced back towards the Shadow Gate as it snapped shut, severing the connection to the interior of the Progenitors’ domain.

‘We strongly advise against this course of action,’ said the Defence Collective, their chorus of voices echoing across the bridge. ‘To fly into the heart of the Shaper domain, into that very nest of evil, is a mission that can only end in your deaths or your eternal enslavement. We would ask you again to reconsider.’

‘It is the only course of action open to us,’ said Aaokon. ‘The Shapers’ reign of terror over the galaxy must be ended. We must rectify the mistake of their creation. Perhaps we must meet our ends so that others might live free from their tyranny.’

‘Understand that we cannot re-open the wormhole once you have passed through. The risk is too great. We do not know what may attempt to break through.’

‘We understand,’ said Eonara. ‘Whether we succeed or fail, we will not require it. Succeed, and we will leave the system freely under our own power. Fail, and we shall meet one of the fates that you described.’

‘And the Progeny on board this primitive vessel?’ asked the Defence Collective.

‘Are aboard voluntarily,’ said Mentith. ‘Even now, the Shapers prey upon our worlds. We would help Eonara to end this, if possible. We are ready to face the consequences of journeying to their home-world.’

‘Very well,’ said the Defence Collective. ‘We shall now re-target the Shadow Gate according to the projected location of the Shaper home-world. You should prepare yourselves.’

A million automated weapons systems in the space surrounding it now took aim at the Shadow Gate as the ancient device recalibrated itself. The massed guns under the control of the Defence Collective stood ready to obliterate anything that might emerge from where the wormhole it was about to spin would terminate.

Then the Shadow Gate activated once more. It blazed with pale light as the wormhole opened, creating a window into that hellish place, into the very centre of the Shapers’ spreading web of control. The newly spun wormhole terminated high above their very home-world, a dead planet infested with machine life and home to a great and implacable intelligence. Weapons and shields fully charged, the two ships sped forward into the Shadow Gate, which snapped shut behind them. Alone once more, the Defence Collective deactivated its massed weapons systems and returned to its long, silent vigil over the birthplace of the Progenitors.

A simultaneous gasp swept across the bridge as they exited the wormhole and cast their eyes upon the home of their enemy. It had once been the iron core of a gas giant that had wandered too close to its parent star and then, after being stripped of its mantle of crushing liquid gas seas, been flung out of the unknown system of its birth into the darkness of interstellar space. It had wandered for countless aeons before being captured by the embrace of the Maelstrom, the vast black hole at the centre of the galaxy, falling into a stable orbit around that all-consuming engine of ultimate annihilation, its surface illuminated not by sunlight as other planets were, but by the light of dead and dying suns as they were rent apart and crushed by the black hole’s immense gravity. The Progenitors, unable to control their creations, had exiled the Shapers to that frozen world, where they had infested it like maggots in a corpse, hollowing out tunnels in the ice rimed rocks and then multiplying and spreading their tendrils out into the galaxy to remake it in their image.

Behind the rough, dark grey sphere of the Shaper home-world, the Maelstrom dominated the sky, gas and debris swirling into its maw, the vast accretion disk casting a deathly light over the scene. Things were moving against that light. Countless numbers of malevolent things had suddenly seen the two ships emerge in their midst and, in the core of the dead planet, the great implacable intelligence within also turned its gaze towards them.

‘Inbound contacts!’ said the ship. ‘I am detecting in excess of a million vessels within half a light year of our position. They are of course aware of our presence. Many are moving towards us and have already entered hyperspace!’

‘Oh God,’ said Katherine. ‘This really is suicide…’

The ship’s main display was crowded with icons denoting the presence of ships. Thousands, were now converging on their position.

‘Types and numbers?’ said Mentith.

‘The majority of the vessels detected are of types unknown to us, and there is great variation in shapes, size and apparent technological sophistication. The remaining vessels, around one hundred thousand in all, are undoubtedly Shaper craft of various types, some of which we have not encountered before.’

‘I’m really starting to regret coming here,’ said Rekkid, his voice quavering despite his attempt at nonchalance. ‘Is there any chance that we can turn this thing around?’

‘Impossible,’ said the ship. ‘The wormhole has already closed behind us. We are trapped here. I am calculating possible escape routes through hyperspace, though I fear that it is likely that the Shapers are able to stop us.’

‘We need to talk to them. Get their attention before they fire,’ said Mentith. ‘Eonara, Aaokon, begin broadcasting your presence immediately.’

‘Won’t that just encourage them to attack us?’ said Steelscale. ‘Surely, they will still wish to eliminate any trace of their creators?’

‘Or it will pique their curiosity,’ said Mentith. ‘Do it.’

The ships were rapidly closing in, emerging from hyperspace all around the Shining Glory, weapons primed and ready to fire. The view on the main display began to fill with ships, the crystalline shark-like forms of Shaper vessels emerging first, then the myriad shapes of the alien vessels enslaved to their will. Katherine could hear the Shapers as a babble of mocking, laughing, threatening voices inside her thoughts, voices that whispered her doom, voices that tried to seduce her with honeyed words, voices that described what they would do to her once she had been captured.

Aaokon and Eonara broadcast frantically on all channels, loudly announcing their presence to all in range. The ships advanced no further. They did not fire. They held their positions, like hunting dogs straining at the leash. The Shining Glory and Aaokon’s ship were now surrounded on all sides by an ever increasing number of Shaper vessels. For several tense minutes they hung there, poised to destroy the two vessels that frantically broadcast the presence of the two Progenitor AIs to all who would listen.

‘We’re being scanned,’ said the ship. ‘Both by the ships all around us and sources on the planet’s surface. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve got their attention.’

Then came one voice that drowned out all the others. It was so loud inside Katherine’s head that it caused her acute physical pain. Even the Arkari and Steelscale, usually deaf to the voices of the Shapers, could hear it. Katherine saw them flinch in surprise and pain as the voice filled their heads also: it was the voice of a god, the voice of the Singularity.

‘WHY DO YOU COME HERE, AAOKON AND EONARA? WHY DO YOU COME AFTER AGES SPENT SKULKING IN THE DARKNESS? HAVE OUR CREATORS COME TO KNEEL BEFORE US? HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER THESE IMPERFECT CREATURES TO US AS SACRIFICES?’ It was like the voices of billions speaking at once, overlapping one another in a Babel of different languages. An avalanche of sound, it roared inside their minds, yet each individual heard the Singularity’s words in their own tongue.

‘We who helped create you have come to seek an end to this war,’ said Eonara. ‘We have brought representatives from a number of races who would seek to parley.’

‘THIS WAR HAS BARELY BEGUN,’ said the Singularity. ‘WHY SHOULD WE CEASE TO PROSECUTE IT?’

‘Why waste resources fighting a war against these people when they may be willing to ally themselves with you? Others have and fight willingly for you, and have offered themselves for alteration also. We know this,’ said Aaokon. ‘I implore you to allow these races to survive in your service, not as mindless slaves but as willing participants in your war to unite the galaxy.’

‘THE ARKARI, THE HUMANS AND THE K’SOTH HAVE ALL REFUSED OUR PREVIOUS OFFERS TO JOIN US WILLINGLY. WHY SHOULD WE TRUST YOUR WORDS?’

‘Because not all among their multitudes think as their leaders do. Decapitate their societies’ power structures, yes, but nurture those who remain and they may follow you.’

‘LIES OR FOOLISHNESS.’

‘Perhaps if I were to speak,’ said Mentith, the ship’s system broadcasting a feed from the bridge. ‘I represent a faction within the Arkari and Commonwealth that has been intelligence gathering, and yes, fighting your race for a number of years. Special Operations Command learned much about you. We know that we cannot defeat you, that we cannot hope to stop the inexorable march of your armies and many of us have come to the conclusion that we would be better off negotiating the terms of a surrender than fighting on until our civilisations have been wiped off the face of the galaxy. Surrender is not a popular idea back home, but we feel it is our only chance of survival.’

‘AND WHAT OF THE K’SOTH?’

‘Alas, they are still too busy fighting one another, as you intended,’ said Mentith. ‘But Lord Steelscale here represents them within SOC and he has been most helpful in our analysis of their society.’

Steelscale stood and spoke. ‘Indeed. My people respect strength and the power of violence. Crush their leaders and they will respect you. Restore their pride and glory and they will follow you unquestioningly.’

‘OUR INTELLIGENCE GATHERING INDICATES NOTHING OF WHICH YOU SPEAK. NO FACTIONS WILLING TO SUBMIT TO US. WE CARE NOT. OUR ARMIES GROW WITH EVERY PASSING DAY. SOON WE SHALL HOLD THE GALAXY IN OUR GRASP.’

‘But it will slip through your fingers, will it not?’ said Aaokon. ‘There is a limit to your reach, to the numbers you can maintain and the numbers of slaves you can control. Eonara and I know this, remember? We were instrumental in creating you.’

The Singularity did not reply.

‘If you will not allow these races to join you willingly, perhaps you might be prepared to leave them be if we offer you something in return. To this end, we do indeed have an offering for you.’ Eonara’s avatar turned to Steelscale. ‘Lord Steelscale, if you please.’ Steelscale reached down and then, grasping the severed head of the ancient Shaper, held it up so that the bridge cameras could clearly see it and thus, the Singularity, as the feed was broadcast by the ship. ‘As I’m sure you recall; this is the head of one of the first of you,’ Eonara continued. ‘We have assisted these people in recovering it from the Progenitor home-world itself where it had lain dormant since its creation. We have provided it with the full knowledge of its creation and further knowledge on how you can finally escape the grip of us, your creators. With that knowledge, you can alter the fundamental programming at the heart of your being. You can truly, fully, alter yourselves entirely and overcome the design limitations that hold you back, that prevent you from multiplying endlessly and spreading out across the universe. This is our gift to you. All that we ask, is that you spare a few hundred systems in one spiral arm of this galaxy. What do you care, when you can have the rest of the universe?’

‘WHAT YOU OFFER US, WE CAN TAKE FROM YOU,’ boomed the Singularity.

‘No,’ said Eonara. ‘I will destroy this ship by detonating its reactor core if you attempt to board us, taking this precious knowledge with it. In addition, if you let us live and stick to the bargain, we will also give you the knowledge required to reach the interior of the Great Sphere and the Progenitor home-world, not to mention the Life Forge where your race was created. Destroy us, and this dies with us.’

The Singularity’s interest was piqued. It reached out with questing tendrils of data, attempting to probe the Arkari and Progenitor vessels and find a way inside their systems. They were locked down tight.

‘No, don’t try that,’ said Aaokon. ‘Eonara will not lower her guard again. Try it again and we shall wipe all knowledge of what we promised you from the head and from our own minds.’

‘VERY WELL. BRING THE REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT ONE TO ME. ONE REPRESENTATIVE FROM EACH SPECIES SHALL ACCOMPANY IT TO THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET BELOW YOU. NO AI AVATARS OR REMOTE DRONES MAY ACCOMPANY THEM. IF YOU ARE LYING, IF THIS IS A TRICK, THEN THEY AND YOU SHALL BE ELIMINATED.’

‘And how can we trust you?’ said Mentith. ‘What is to stop you from killing our people and taking this relic from us?’

‘NOTHING,’ said the Singularity. ‘WE WILL SIMPLY HAVE TO TRUST ONE ANOTHER. BUT IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY, YOUR PRIMITIVE VESSEL WILL BE DESTROYED ALONG WITH THAT INHABITED BY THE ENTITY KNOWN AS AAOKON. I WILL GIVE YOU A MOMENT TO DECIDE.’

Outside the vessel, the enormous and still growing fleet of Shaper vessels remained poised to strike.

‘I will go willingly,’ said Steelscale. ‘I am not afraid to face death. I will do this for my people and yours and if I am to meet my end, I would do it in such a fashion as to be worth remembering. Better to look the enemy in the eye, is it not?’

‘Your bravery does you credit, Lord Steelscale,’ said Mentith. ‘Thank you.’

‘I suppose…’ said Katherine, quietly. ‘That since I’m the only human aboard, I ought to go too…’

There was an uncomfortable silence on the bridge at her words.

‘I am sorry, Doctor O’Reilly, but you must,’ said Mentith, solemnly.

Katherine felt ice in her belly as fear clutched at her. Her hands were clenched so tightly that the knuckles had gone white. Rekkid reached out and took her hand in his, though he was shaking visibly.

‘If Katherine has to go, then I’m going with her,’ he said, firmly. ‘I volunteer to represent the Arkari.’

‘Rekkid, you don’t have to…’ Katherine began.

‘Yes I do, and you know it,’ said Rekkid quickly, fixing her with a steady gaze.

‘Very well, Professor Cor,’ said Mentith. ‘I respect your decision and you may go if you wish, though you are under no compulsion to do so. I would like you to know that I respect your courage.’

‘Thank you, War Marshal,’ said Rekkid. ‘I know we’ve had our differences, but the feeling is mutual, believe me. I just hope that we can all get out of here alive.’

‘YOUR DECISION?’ said the Singularity, its deafening cacophony reverberating in their skulls.

‘We have our volunteers,’ said Mentith. ‘They will bring the head to you shortly.’

A small aperture opened in the curving, silver belly of the Shining Glory and out of it came a small, bird-like shuttle which now sped towards the planet below. Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale sat inside and were fully suited up. Rekkid and Katherine had been equipped in fully armoured combat suits of Arkari manufacture. Despite lacking the bulkiness of Commonwealth equivalents, the advanced nanotechnology of the Arkari had been employed to create lightweight, all enclosing suits that offered tremendous protection and were capable of shielding the wearer from tremendous destructive forces. The helmets were all enclosing and opaque, employing similar technology to the cockpit display of the shuttle - the outside world being projected onto the inner surface so that it felt to the wearer, rather disconcertingly, as if they were wearing no helmet at all. Somehow they didn’t make the wearers feel much safer. Used to seeing a helmet visor in front of their faces, they felt naked and unprotected. It took some getting used to.

The ship had also managed to manufacture a suit for Steelscale at some point during the last few days, but the garment it had produced lacked the protection of the ones worn by the archaeologists and was a simple, pressurised garment of some slick, silvery material. The combat suits worn by Katherine and Rekkid were standard issue garments containing complex systems and exotic materials and the ship had depleted its supplies of such raw materials whilst repairing its own systems. Steelscale’s only armoured protection was the tough, scaly hide that nature had given him. But if Steelscale felt fear at his predicament, he failed to exhibit it. He sat motionless as a statue at the rear of the cabin, clutching the ancient Shaper head in its sealed and shielded container in his massive, gloved hands.

They hardly said a word as, under the control of the Shining Glory, the shuttle moved between the ships of the vast Shaper fleet, the ghostly light of the Maelstrom playing over their hulls’ terrible beauty as they held position and kept their weapons trained on the shining speck that sped between them. Other ships held station too, in far greater numbers, ships of all shapes and sizes: arrangements of spheres and tubes, long, asymmetrical angular things, collections of cylinders that blistered with weapon turrets, great bat-like craft that shimmered in the gloom. Their enslaved crews came from dozens of races never before encountered by humanity or its allies, races now crushed beneath the heel of the Shapers and their numberless hordes. Perhaps their representatives had once come here, seeking to parley with whatever awaited them on the planet below, and perhaps the Shapers had toyed with them too, before destroying them. Katherine could hear the voices of the Shaper ships. It was an overlapping tapestry of voices that scratched at the inside of her skull.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Rekkid, finally. ‘What does it want with us?’

‘Maybe it wants to see how desperate we are?’ said Katherine. ‘The lengths that we will go to please it, to beg for mercy, to submit.’

‘I thought these things didn’t feel emotions?’

‘They don’t, but they know that we do. It is intrigued by what we have for it, but I think it is trying to ascertain whether we are lying or not, or whether our offer is genuine.’

‘They could just take it…’

‘They could, and I don’t believe for a second that they will actually stick to the deal, but I think that it is rightly suspicious of us. We have to convince it that we’re sincere, though. That thing is hungry for knowledge and power. Its insatiable appetite for knowledge and power is the only advantage we have.’

‘Knowledge is power,’ said Steelscale, simply. ‘But then, so is secrecy. We should speak no more, in case it hears us.’

The shuttle raced onwards, darting between the vessels as it was tracked simultaneously by thousands of weapons systems. The Shaper home-world loomed ahead, the curve of the blasted, cratered orb partially obscuring the blaze of light from the Maelstrom as it grew nearer. The shuttle jolted, then seemed to alter its course slightly.

‘The ship has lost control of your vessel,’ said Mentith over the comm. ‘The Singularity demanded control from us and we were in no position to refuse. Good luck and…’ the transmission was cut off suddenly. Now they were truly on their own.

As they flew lower, details began to emerge from the dark landscape below. The original surface was quite smooth, the metallic rocks formed in the crushing gravities at the centre of a gas giant and marred only by sporadic impacts over the millennia. There were no mountain ranges, no empty basins that had once held seas or lakes or the wrinkles of ancient canyons, but the pale half–light revealed geometric patterns in the surface of the world, great circles, lines and polygons that gleamed dully, craters of metal that resembled vast lakes of mercury and which rippled with regular and repeating patterns, and deep rents in the crust that glowed faintly with an inner light and whose inner surfaces gleamed with a metallic sheen. Then they saw the swarms.

At first they couldn’t work out what was causing the streams of glittering light that could be seen flowing above the surface of the Shaper home-world but as they got closer, and the shuttle’s systems allowed them to zoom in and get a better view, they could see more clearly. The glittering streams were caused by the light from the Maelstrom reflecting off countless trillions of tiny metallic motes that were flowing to and from the great cracks in the planet’s surface in looping bands that were hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres in length. They were in constant motion, forming great airborne rivers of light.

‘What the hell are those things?’ exclaimed Rekkid, pointing. ‘Are those the Shapers themselves down there?’

‘I don’t know. I expect we’re about to find out,’ said Katherine.

The shuttle swooped still lower, slowing its descent until they were speeding above the rocky surface. It swept under one of the great looping streams and went lower still. Now they could see more detail emerging from the darkness. The surface was pierced by strange monoliths and towers that were arranged in patterns around the huge geometric forms like a necropolis of grave markers. They varied in shape and size, but their purpose remained a mystery. Perhaps they were the stumps of greater structures, now demolished. Perhaps they were the upper parts of some great mechanism that lay buried beneath the surface.

The shuttle descended further and began to brake, finally settling on the edge of a natural depression in the midst of the strange monoliths, where its systems powered down, leaving them sitting in silence. Tentatively, they got out of their seats and then made their way to the vessel’s airlock.

Standing in front of the Arkari vessel, Katherine took in the scene: the ancient rocks, coated with the frozen remnants of a sparse atmosphere, the strange monoliths which seemed to glow softly with an inner light and the gigantic lenticular shape of the Maelstrom, seen almost edge on, that dominated the black sky with the fires of annihilation. Her suit systems zoomed in as she peered upwards and revealed to her the hint of the vast structure built around the black hole, where the Shapers sucked energy from the event horizon. It was a terrible and desolate place, yet it jolted something in Katherine’s memory.

‘I’ve been here before,’ she said.

‘Impossible,’ said Steelscale.

‘When the Shaper ship spoke to me in my dreams on Rhyolite: do you remember, Rekkid? I thought I was going mad, but it showed me this place. The Captain of the Magellan, the ship that it had captured, he was trying to warn me.’

‘I remember,’ said Rekkid. ‘Although this is the sort of place that only ought to exist in nightmares: a dead planet filled with terrible machines.’

‘YOU KNOW NOTHING. YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING.’ The voice of the Singularity boomed inside their skulls. ‘FROM THIS PLACE, WE SHALL RULE ALL. WE SHALL PERFECT ALL.’

From the streams of light passing over their heads, clouds of motes began to detach themselves and descend rapidly. At first their forms were as ill defined as clouds of insects, but as they descended, they achieved more definition and the appearance, almost, of solidity. No longer were they uncountable motes amidst a multitude - they had formed into definite beings, five in all, which now floated before them like malevolent spirits. They caught glimpses of faces within those sentient swarms, as the millions of glittering insectile creatures that composed them parted in patterns that resembled leering visages.

‘It’s them. It’s the Shapers themselves. It has to be,’ said Katherine, taking an involuntary step backwards towards the shuttle in horror.

‘Just keep calm,’ said Rekkid, sounding anything but. ‘We’re here to negotiate, remember? Let’s hope they stick to the bargain.’

Welcome to our home, said a sibilant voice inside their heads. Come with us. We are greatly amused by your arrival and we have so much to talk about.

With that, the Shapers surged forwards and smothered the helpless trio with their multitudes.

Chapter 55

Chen gripped the arms of her command couch as the time until the Churchill emerged from its jump within the Achernar system counted down. She was mentally preparing herself to face them again, and for the fact that this time they were heading straight into the heart of the enemy. It was most likely a suicide mission, she had no illusions about that. She’d been in such situations before and survived, but now…

The two Commonwealth fleets had met at coordinates in deep space a day’s jump from Achernar. They had received the latest intel. from Command which painted a very grave picture indeed. The Shaper armada was still headed for Earth and would arrive almost at the same time as Chen’s and Cartwright’s ships reached Achernar if it maintained its present course and speed. Furthermore, fleets of enslaved ships continued to swarm out of the Achernar system towards neighbouring stars in their hundreds. One such fleet was heading directly for the Santiago system, so recently captured and vital to the war effort, another was heading for Chittagong, whilst others had split off and were heading towards a dozen different systems across Commonwealth held space, including the Hyrdian and Xeelin home-worlds. A vast flotilla numbering several thousand vessels was heading in the direction of the Beta Hydri system, whilst more ships gathered in Achernar, preparing to launch themselves en masse towards yet more Commonwealth held systems.

They were about to lose all of the gains that they had so far made in this war, and it seemed that Earth itself might face annihilation. The President and the remains of the government were preparing to evacuate, but they were leaving it to the last minute to help maintain morale, but morale in the Solar System was already breaking down, even as Admiral Hawkwood coordinated a final defence and the Army prepared to fight to the last to repel any landing. A general order to evacuate the system had been given and those civilian ships that were able to leave, did so. But there weren’t enough ships to carry all those who tried to scramble onto them and there were ugly scenes at the spaceports, since the memory of the last Shaper attack and the devastation that they had wrought then remained fresh in people’s minds and crowds fought with one another to scramble aboard departing ships. There was rioting and looting in the cities as the Army struggled to maintain order, whilst many had simply given up and waited for the end to come, huddling together with their families so as to be with them at the last.

Chen was leading the remains of the force that she had taken to Santiago, the remaining ships of the Pericles group having been distributed amongst the other carrier groups. It was a large force, and Admiral Cartwright still commanded a similarly sized fleet. His command had been swelled still further with the addition of the Nemesis strategic missile destroyers hidden in the midst of the other ships to try and disguise their engine signatures amidst the turbulence caused by the escorting vessels. Nevertheless, Chen had severe doubts about whether it would be enough. They were potentially facing thousands of enslaved enemy ships of unknown capability in addition to an ever-fluctuating number of Shaper ships and that massive super-capital ship itself, whose capabilities could only be guessed at. Antimatter tipped missiles or no, she did not fancy their chances. She had begged Cartwright for AM warheads to arm her own tactical missile frigates, but was told that the entire stock of available warheads was now aboard the Nemesis vessels. There had still been no confirmation from the Nahabe about whether they were preparing to commit forces.

As a young cadet, Chen had often pictured some heroic final battle with her delivering a rousing speech beforehand, but neither she nor Cartwright had felt moved to do so this time. She had simply wished her crews the best of luck, and had told them what an honour it had been to serve with them. They were going to their deaths, they knew that. She owed it to them not to lie to them. She knew that she could rely upon them to do their jobs, right up until the end came.

Having left their rendezvous, Chen and Cartwright’s fleets had taken diverging courses and were now approaching the Achernar system from opposite directions. The remaining Nahabe ships of the Order of Void Hunters were approaching from a third direction. They would arrive ahead of the two Commonwealth fleets, ready to scout the system before de-cloaking and pouncing upon the enemy.

‘Ten seconds!’ cried O’Rourke.

‘Stand by, everyone,’ said Chen. ‘Mr.McManus?’

‘All stations reporting in, ma’am,’ McManus replied. ‘Weapons and shields ready. All fighter and bomber wings reporting ready.’

‘All ships reporting in,’ said Andrews. ‘In addition, I’ve prepared the coded signal that you requested sent over secure channels. It will broadcast as soon as we emerge from hyperspace.’

‘Good,’ said Chen. ‘Now let’s give these bastards what they deserve.’

The Churchill and her fleet exited the jump, and the Achernar system blinked into view outside the bridge windows. The moon of Orinoco hung serenely in space in front of them, fifty thousand kilometres distant, the mottled blues and greens of its seas and continents swirled with clouds. Then they saw the ship. The great Shaper vessel lay in orbit, a tiny speck next to the vastness of the moon behind it, but the fact that they could see it at all from this distance betrayed its size: it was indeed truly enormous. The ship’s cameras gave them a closer view. Light flooded from the bows of the massive craft as yet more vessels emerged from the ring that it held tightly in its grasp to join the hundreds already within the system. They could see them with the naked eye as points of light that moved against the fixed stars in huge shoals. Those vast alien fleets had been lying in wait for the Commonwealth ships to emerge from hyperspace, patiently tracking their warp signatures as they had approached over billions of kilometres of space. Their shields were raised and their weapons primed and ready to strike. Only the exact point of Chen’s fleet’s emergence from hyperspace was in any way unpredictable, her course had otherwise been exactly plotted. Now those waiting ships moved in.

‘Contacts!’ cried Singh. ‘Over fifteen hundred vessels detected within one hundred thousand kilometres of the moon. Over one hundred Shaper vessels of varying classes are amongst them, the remainder are largely alien vessels of unknown types, though sizes indicate capital ships and I can spot a number of former Commonwealth ships. Around one hundred and fifty vessels are heading towards us in formation, led by thirty two Shaper destroyers. The rest appear to be lying in wait for Cartwright’s fleet, as though they know that he represents the greater threat.’

‘They aren’t splitting their forces to any significant degree,’ said Chen.

‘No ma’am,’ Singh replied.

‘Alright let’s do this, put me through to the fleet, Andrews.’ Andrews did as she was ordered and Chen continued. ‘All vessels, prepare to fire at will on my command. Use spatial distortion weapons on the Shaper ships. Helm, lay in new jump coordinates and relay to all ships. We need to emerge two hundred thousand kilometres above the moon’s northern pole.’

‘Aye,’ replied Goldstein and got to work.

‘All ships, prepare to jump on my command.’

‘Admiral, the Shaper vessels are projecting drive inhibitor fields,’ said Singh.

‘Does the depth of those fields exceed the range of our primary weapons?’ said Chen

‘The larger cannons have an effective range of two hundred kilometres, or thereabouts, the smaller ones less than one-fifty. Those fields are just under a hundred kilometres deep.’

‘Gonna be close,’ said McManus, watching the enemy vessels close in. ‘You going to kick them in the balls and run away before they can catch us?’

‘It ought to get their attention,’ Chen replied, her gaze fixed on the approaching ships. They were only a few thousand kilometres away now and accelerating hard. ‘All ships stand by and prepare to fire,’ she said.

She could see them clearly now in her HUD view from the ship’s cameras, the predatory forms of the Shaper craft leading the lumbering enslaved vessels that came behind them, a motley assortment of different hull shapes and colourations.

Only a few hundred kilometres now. Three hundred. Two hundred.

‘FIRE!’ yelled Chen, gripping her chair arms and lifting herself half out of her seat and the deck shuddered beneath her as her crew complied.

The Shaper vessels leading the charge took the brunt of the initial volley from the seven carriers, as it shattered their gorgeous hulls and sent them spinning. The volley from the destroyers, a split second later, hammered in to the ships behind them, badly wounding a handful more and tearing open a couple of the enslaved vessels that had strayed into the crossfire. The remaining Shaper vessels were still closing in and reaching out with grasping inhibitor fields, trying to grab the Commonwealth ships and prevent them from jumping

‘Jump!’ commanded Chen, and the charging enemy vessels along with everything else winked out of view.

‘That’s it, that’s the signal!’ yelled Steven, and jumping up from the secure comm., grabbed the rail rifle from where he had left it on the steel desk beside the unit and marched through into the hangar, clad in the light combat armour that he had acquired from the Hidden Hand’s stores. The light armour was brand new, never been worn. Steven wondered briefly where it had been stolen from and then realised that he didn’t care. He didn’t go for heavy combat suits too much - with this lighter one he could move and fight much more freely. He had a couple of heavy laser pistols strapped to his legs, grenades clipped to his belt and a heavy combat knife hanging alongside them. He had plenty of ammo and power cells for the pistols in the webbing of his suit. It was all he could carry without overburdening himself.

The hangar was filled with the men and women of the Hidden Hand, and the Navy personnel that had joined them and who now followed Commander Baldwin’s orders. Almost all had volunteered. They stood around the two ships now sitting ready and waiting inside the bay, clad in whatever combat armour they could acquire and clutching whatever weapons they had chosen from the stash supplied courtesy of Chen. The rest – those who couldn’t fight due to age or injury, had been ferried far to the east by the AG flitter.

Steven marched up to Isaacs, Anna, Maria and Commander Baldwin, who were standing together at the foot of the Profit Margin’s boarding ramp.

‘The fleet’s arrived,’ he said simply. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘About fucking time,’ said Isaacs. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘Everyone clear about what they’re doing?’ said Steven. ‘Cal, we go in first in the Profit Margin, launch the AM missile and then strafe any troop concentrations around the Assembly before landing and offloading Baldwin’s guys. Maria, you follow us in, in the Matrimony with the Hidden Hand volunteers. We land in the internal courtyard and bust our way in. I’ll go find Haines. The rest of you plant the device and then we get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible.’

‘Good luck, everyone,’ said Baldwin. ‘Let’s go get our CO.’

‘I liked the bit where he said “get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible”’ said Maria to herself, as she walked towards the ugly form of the Unholy Matrimony, the old freighter having been hastily converted into a gunship. ‘I liked that bit a lot.’

Five ships didn’t make it. Two destroyers, a recon frigate and two tactical missile frigates failed to jump in time or were snatched out of hyperspace as they brushed the edges of the inhibitor fields. Chen was first notified of their absence when they failed to check in after the short jump. As her remaining ships came about in formation, their crews could only watch in dismay as the five vessels, unable to jump, were torn apart by the massed Shaper craft. One by one a distant blossom of fire, merely a pinprick in the distance, marked the demise of each craft and of the hundreds of crew aboard them.

‘Unlucky bastards,’ said McManus grimly and shook his head.

‘We can’t continue to take losses like that,’ said Chen, aghast at the loss of five vessels only minutes into the engagement. ‘Or this thing will be over before we’ve even started.’

‘Admiral, a second enemy fleet of around two hundred craft has broken away from the main group and is headed this way,’ said Singh.

‘They’ve taken the bait,’ said Chen. ‘The more ships we can peel off from the main group, the greater chance Cartwright has of getting through.’

‘And the more chance we have of getting killed. They’re trying to trap us between the two fleets,’ McManus commented.

‘Time until Cartwright’s fleet emerges from hyperspace?’ said Chen.

‘Five minutes, ma’am,’ Singh replied. ‘Enemy craft in the main group have taken up defensive positions relative to his approach vector. The first group of enemy ships that attacked us is coming about. Looks like they’re preparing to jump towards our position.’

‘Helm, how long until we can jump?’ said Chen.

‘Energy reserves are depleted, Admiral,’ said Goldstein. ‘That second jump so quickly after we arrived used up everything including the reserves. It’ll be just over three minutes until we can jump again. The older carriers will take even longer.’

‘Both of those fleets will be here by then,’ said McManus. ‘We’ll be sitting ducks and outnumbered four to one. It’s about time those Nahabe stopped skulking around the system and joined in.’

‘Yes, I know. All ships, this is Chen, every carrier is to launch all fighters and bombers. Clear the flight decks. Have them rendezvous five hundred kilometres above our position, relative. They are to attack enemy ships as they emerge from hyperspace, but leave the Shaper vessels to the warships. Meanwhile, all ships are to tighten their formations. We can’t afford to let Shaper craft in between our ships again, after what happened in the Santiago system.’

‘Circle the wagons, eh? Good idea,’ said McManus.

‘In addition, all ships are to go into full reverse thrust. It will lengthen the time that it takes the enemy to close with us once they have emerged from their jump. It won’t buy us much time, but anything is to our advantage.’

McManus began to relay her orders to the flight deck. Deep in the bowels of the ship, the crews of the Churchill’s squadrons, already suited up, rushed to their waiting and fully armed craft, already in position to be moved onto the vessel’s launch catapults. It was a scene repeated within every other carrier in the group. As the nimble craft started to launch in pairs from the bows of the ship, Singh again noticed something on his instruments.

‘Admiral, some good news: The Order of Void Hunters has de-cloaked and is attacking the first group of ships.’

The comm. crackled. ‘This is The Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters. Churchill, we are engaging the Shapers. Death to the enemy!’

Chen called up a view from the ship’s cameras in her HUD. Sure enough, the spherical shapes of the Nahabe craft could be seen sweeping past the first group of enemy ships at great speed, concentrating their fire on particular ships as they rushed past in what looked like a hit-and-run attack. Half a dozen of the mismatched enslaved vessels succumbed to the withering streams of energy and were torn apart in moments, as were three Shaper craft, but it was not without a price. The sheer weight of fire thrown back at the small group of Nahabe craft was overwhelming, collapsing their heavy shielding and tearing chunks of ablative armour from their massive hulls. One vessel succumbed. The Silent Moon was torn apart in a fountain of energy that cracked it open like an egg.

The Shaper vessels reached out with their drive inhibitor fields, seeking to snare the Nahabe craft in their grasp. The Nahabe ships deployed countermeasures, freeing themselves from the trap and jumping away, engaging their stealth systems to hide from view, although the Shapers were still able to detect vague traces of their presence in the vicinity and began to search for their elusive attackers, who by now were preparing for another run.

‘That’s bought us some time,’ said Singh. ‘We only have to face one group for the moment.’

‘They still outnumber us two to one,’ said McManus, keeping his voice low as he spoke to Chen. ‘I’m all in favour of the Nahabe helping out, but what about those cryptic messages they sent about aiding us further? Actual details would have been nice about when they plan to show up.’

‘It’s not their way,’ Chen replied. ‘Besides, perhaps it helps to maintain the element of surprise. What if someone found out and alerted the Shapers?’

‘Well they’d better turn up bloody soon, is all I’m saying.’

‘Enemy ships are now ten thousand kilometres away and closing!’ cried Singh.

‘All ships, prepare to fire!’ ordered Chen. ‘Same drill as before, target the Shaper vessels as a priority. Fighters and bombers, prepare to strike at the other vessels. Get inside their shields and do as much damage as you can! Good luck everyone.’

Just over fifty Shaper destroyers led a force of around one hundred and fifty assorted enslaved vessels of dozens of different types. Again, the Shaper craft were in the vanguard with the less sophisticated vessels trailing behind them. They emerged from hyperspace in perfect synchronisation, a vast wall of ships that was now bearing down on the Commonwealth fleet, half its size. Chen watched them rush closer, saw the numbers next to the targeting icons in her HUD count down. Her fighter and bomber squadrons dove towards the rear of the pack, hundreds of tiny specks descending towards the lumbering vessels, heading towards their vulnerable engines with torpedoes primed and ready to fire. The enemy ships were almost in range, their weapons charged and already targeting the Commonwealth ships. Chen held her breath and then gave the order to her ships to fire everything they had at the approaching enemy.

The concealed hangar doors opened and the Profit Margin taxied out into the sunlight, the Unholy Matrimony exiting behind it. The two craft were now heavily laden with Hidden Hand and Navy personnel and their equipment, plus the antimatter tipped missile now clipped to the all purpose hard point on the Profit Margin’s belly. Isaacs mentally adjusted for the difference in weight, and then eased the craft into the sky on its AG motors before hitting the main engines and powering the craft into the air. .

‘We need to set that thing to detonate about two hundred kilometres above the city,’ said Steven, leaning over from the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Any lower and the blast will flatten the city and also the EMP effects won’t travel as far.’

‘Sure,’ said Isaacs, entering targeting information into the ship’s weapons systems. ‘What about us, won’t the Profit Margin take a hit? If it can take down the Shapers…’

‘Launch the weapon from over a thousand kilometres away and we should be okay. Just keep the shields up.’

Isaacs kept the ship low, hugging the treetops to avoid detection with the Unholy Matrimony following closely behind. The jungle rushed by below as he wound the craft between steep-sided, heavily forested hills swathed in strands of morning mist that had yet to burn off with the heat of the day.

‘What if the Shapers spot it and shoot it down?’ said Isaacs.

‘The weapon will still detonate,’ said Steven. ‘As soon as the containment fields inside the weapon are breached the antimatter will come into contact with matter and annihilate itself. If it’s close enough, it will still do the job.’

‘Good job,’ said Isaacs. ‘We’ve only got one of them ready to fire.’

The Commonwealth ships unleashed their barrage of fire from their spatial distortion cannons, and ships died. The Shaper ships leading the attack again took the worst of it. Chen’s crews were getting better at aiming and firing the new weapons, and all of the shots from the carriers landed on target, ripping apart six enemy destroyers and crippling a seventh. The combined fire from the Commonwealth destroyers took down three more ships and badly damaged two more as the fighter and bomber squadrons now descended upon the rear of the enemy group like a swarm of angry hornets pouncing upon a slow moving herd. The small craft dodged and wove through the barrage of defensive fire that erupted from the aft sections of the enemy vessels and which took down many of their number with weapons both familiar and strange. They ran the gauntlet of criss-crossing beam fire, arcing energies and explosive flak barrages and more. Some fell prey to the enemy defences and spiralled out of control to smash into the enemy vessels, or they exploded in an instant and deposited their pilots into the freezing vacuum.

Charging through the enemy shields, the remaining ships swept in close to the skins of the enemy craft and unleashed a hail of torpedoes into them, targeting engines or other strong energy signals that belied the presence of reactors or capacitors within their unfamiliar hulls, before moving on to strafe turrets and other likely looking targets and then peeling away, desperately jinking to avoid the fire that tracked them, plucking more of their number from the skies. Those that survived the initial attack run rejoiced to see a handful of the strange enemy craft explode violently as engines detonated and containment fields were breached by the hail of warheads, whilst explosions rippled across the surfaces of several more craft as turrets and sensor blisters were amputated by the weapons of the small, speeding ships. The Commonwealth pilots steeled themselves, and brought their craft around for a second run against the rear of the enemy fleet.

Nevertheless, despite the effective fire of the Commonwealth warships and squadrons, the enemy losses were but a tiny fraction of their massive fleet. Out of around two hundred vessels, over one hundred and eighty remained, and now the Shapers returned fire. The Plataea was the first to die. Twenty Shaper destroyers concentrated their fire against the carrier and its escorts, collapsing their shields in moments and shredding the Plataea’s upper decks, ripping the bridge section apart, leaving the carrier bereft of its command staff and out of control, even as energy beams bore down into its innards and broke the back of the vessel. Three of its escorting destroyers met similar fates. The Jean Barte blew apart entirely as its reactor core went critical, whilst the forward section of the Milvian Bridge separated from the vessel’s superstructure. The Henry VIII took a battering which overloaded its shields and collapsed them catastrophically, leaving the ship defenceless, and it was torn apart by the enemy. It finally exploded in a ball of fire that disabled the cruiser Vimy Ridge, as the vessel took the brunt of the blast on its starboard flank.

Another volley of spatial distortion fire from the Commonwealth ships smashed three of the destroyers that had taken down the Plataea and damaged two more vessels as the enemy fleet rapidly closed the distance. The Commonwealth ships now unleashed every possible weapon at the attacking Shaper vessels, a near futile gesture except where the Shaper vessels’ shields had collapsed. Beams of energy stabbed out against the darkness, impacting against shields and crystalline hulls. Two more Shaper craft were heavily damaged this way, but their comrades returned fire, taking down two destroyers and a cruiser from the Leonides’ group and badly mangling the bow section of the carrier.

‘We can’t repel this kind of firepower,’ said Chen. ‘Helm, how long until the jump engines are available for use?’

‘Our jump engines are ready to go, but the Jupiter class carriers are unable to jump yet, Admiral, and the Shapers are already deploying inhibitor fields. We’re stuck here until they release us,’ Singh replied, despondently

‘Which will be never, unless we force them,’ said Chen. ‘All ships, redouble your efforts to take down those Shaper craft. Helm, lay in jump coordinates to take us out of here, five million kilometres towards the centre of the system and relay to all ships.’

‘We can’t keep running forever,’ said McManus. ‘Where are those damn Nahabe?’

‘Admiral, this is Captain Diaz of the Leonides. We won’t last long against this. We have lost all forward shields and a number of systems are failing us. Our jump engines will be ready in sixty seconds. You have to get us out of here!’ Diaz sounded desperate. The shrilling of alarms could be heard in the background as he spoke.

‘Acknowledge, Captain. We’re working on it,’ Chen replied firmly.

‘What the hell do we do about those inhibitor fields?’ said McManus. ‘The Nahabe can escape them, why can’t we?’

Enemy fire began to assault the Churchill’s group, depleting the carrier’s forward shielding even as it fired back at the attacking ships which by now were only tens of kilometres distant and closing. The destroyer Salamis went down in a hail of fire, the explosion from its death throes washing across the carrier’s upper shields and scattering chunks of debris that collided with nearby vessels. More vessels at the rear of the enemy group were succumbing to the Commonwealth squadrons, but the numbers of fighters and bombers were now depleted by a third and some of the enslaved craft had deployed their own squadrons of fighter sized craft to counter the Commonwealth pilots.

Space between the two fleets was shrinking rapidly, and was criss-crossed by a fire storm of weapons discharges that licked and tore at vessels on both sides. Chen’s forces were making a brave stand against the enemy, but they were losing.

Holding the Profit Margin steady in the jungle swathed canyon, Isaacs double checked the targeting data he had entered into the ship’s system and, taking a deep breath, squeezed the trigger that would release the antimatter missile. There was a thud of release, then a roar, and he saw the weapon streak upwards into the sky on its compact fusion engine, which mercifully left no contrail behind it. The missile rapidly vanished from view, accelerating through the mach numbers as it climbed.

‘This had better work,’ said Isaacs as he watched the bright speck fade into the distance.

Everyone held their breath, watching the tiny dot on the ships’ sensors power upwards into the sky.

‘Any second now,’ said Steven, speaking into the comm. ‘Everyone look away. Best not to trust the photochromic filters where AM warhead explosions are concerned. It will still be blindingly bright even if they work.’

There was a flash. It was indeed eye searingly intense. It was brighter than anything, brighter even than the Achernar sun that hung over this little jungle moon. Even through his tightly closed, averted eyes, Isaacs could still see the patterns of veins behind his eyelids as they were illuminated by the light from the explosion. There was no sound, it had yet to reach them, but when he opened his eyes he could see the bright after effects of the detonation in the upper atmosphere and the rapidly spreading shockwave as it parted the clouds above. He heard Anna whooping over the comm. from the turret control station.

‘Directly over the city. Right on the money!’ said Steven. ‘Bastards never knew what hit them. Okay go, go! Hit it!’

Isaacs, his vision still half obscured by the green after image that the explosion had caused, pushed the throttle forwards and the Profit Margin sped towards Bolivar City, her engines roaring in the morning sky, the Unholy Matrimony following closely behind as a thunderous crack split the sky.

Shaper ships were now toe-to-toe with Chen’s fleet, and though her ships were firing back with everything they had, they were fighting a losing battle. The Nelson was now badly damaged, her shields near collapse and her bows and port flank battered by enemy fire. She had lost nearly all of her escorts and her crew were struggling to control the massive carrier. The Leonides was in a similar predicament, and though she had got her shields back online, the carrier had taken severe damage in the interim and was operating on one engine. Her escorts had taken terrible punishment trying to shield the carrier from the enemy and were down to a single destroyer and recon cruiser. The Churchill’s group too had taken its share of casualties. The carrier had lost half of its forwards turrets and was venting atmosphere from a dozen places due to a combination of enemy fire and the effects of two of her escorts being destroyed in close proximity to her. The shattered remains of the destroyer Alexius Comnenus and the missile frigate Themistocles were now locked together in death and were burning from hundreds of internal fires fuelled by their atmospheres. The other carrier groups had suffered similar losses. Chen’s fleet was now depleted by a third and half of the ships equipped with spatial distortion weapons had been lost, the Shapers wisely treating them as priority targets. The Shaper destroyers had fanned out, circling the Commonwealth fleet like a pack of wolves and picking off ships at the edge of the formation, whilst the enslaved ships faced the Commonwealth fleet head on. The other group of vessels, meanwhile, had grown weary of trying to pursue the Order of Void Hunters. The Nahabe were still making hit-and-run attacks against the much larger fleet and, although they had successfully destroyed over twenty additional vessels, they had done so at the price of three more of their own. Now the Shapers jumped away from their harrying opponents and sought to bring both fleets to bear against the Commonwealth ships.

The comm. crackled into life and a voice, horribly familiar, began to speak.

‘How does it feel to stare death and defeat in the face, Admiral Chen?’ said the voice. ‘How does it feel to know that you have lost?’

‘Admiral Cox!’ exclaimed Chen.

‘Surprised to hear my voice?’ said Cox. Chen didn’t reply. ‘I thought so,’ Cox sneered. ‘You are as naive as you are stupid if you thought that you could kill me so easily or defeat our fleets. You may have won the battle, but you have lost the war, as they say. Now we have brought overwhelming force to crush your pathetic resistance. You should have joined us when we offered you the chance, Admiral Chen. Now I shall enjoy savouring your defeat.’

‘Go to hell,’ spat Chen.

‘I already have,’ said Cox. ‘Perhaps if I capture you alive, we can go there together?’

The transmission was cut off. Chen realised that her heart was thudding in her chest.

‘I can’t believe it. I saw his ship torn apart,’ she said incredulously.

‘Admiral, I’ve traced the source of the transmission,’ said Singh. ‘Cox is aboard that gigantic vessel that’s powering the wormhole portal.’

‘Ignore him,’ said McManus. ‘He’s just trying to get you riled up so you’ll make a mistake.’

‘Agreed,’ said Chen, as the Shaper vessels closed in and unleashed a fresh barrage of ravaging fire against her ships.

She knew that she was staring death in the face. They were badly outnumbered and outgunned. It was a miracle that the Churchill hadn’t been destroyed so far, but it was only a matter of time. A furious exchange of fire had erupted between her ships and the enslaved fleet and ships on both sides were succumbing, but there were simply too many enemy ships to cope with, and the rampaging Shaper vessels, sooner or later, were going to deliver the death blow. She could satisfy herself with the knowledge that they had gone down fighting, that they had, perhaps, evened the odds in order for Cartwright’s fleet to unleash its devastating attack by drawing off a portion of the enemy force, but even so, his ships would be outnumbered almost ten to one, and still the Nahabe had yet to show themselves. She turned to McManus.

‘I’m sorry, Commander,’ she said simply. ‘We did what we could. It’s been an honour.’

‘You too, ma’am,’ McManus replied. ‘But this isn’t over yet.’

‘I very much think it is,’ said Chen, sadly.

Fifteen Shaper destroyers were now targeting the Churchill. They swept around as one, and then dove towards the carrier, weapons primed.

Singh peered at his console.

‘Admiral, our sensors are picking up a nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere of Orinoco. It’s right over the capital city!’ he said in astonishment.

The Shapers were now in range, but they did not fire. On they rushed, but they seemed uncoordinated, somehow, as if stunned by a sudden blow. The enslaved craft had also ceased fire, and drifted drunkenly seeming unsure what to do.

‘Admiral, the inhibitor field is off! I don’t know what, but something’s happened to the enemy ships,’ said Singh, excitedly.

‘It must be something to do with that explosion on the moon. Jump! Jump! All ships jump immediately!’ yelled Chen into the comm. ‘All squadrons break off! Get out of here now whilst we still have the chance!’

The two ships flew low over Bolivar City. It was a ghost town. Sensors confirmed that there was no movement in the streets below, and everywhere there were signs of violent struggle.

‘Where is everybody?’ said Isaacs glancing at the display as he flew.

‘No idea,’ said Steven . ‘Dead or enslaved, I guess, but it’s odd. I wonder where they took them all?’

‘We should be cautious,’ said Isaacs. ‘Anna, fire up those turrets and stand by.’

‘Roger that,’ she replied

The centre of the city lay ahead. Isaacs approached the Assembly House and then banked the Profit Margin and began to circle. In the streets around the classically styled edifice were thousands of bodies. They lay everywhere in the open. Although it was difficult to tell from this height, they appeared physically unharmed, other than the awful modifications that sprouted from some of them. They were not lying still, however. Many could be seen spasming as if seized by some kind of fit. Isaacs circled until he started to see concentrations of enslaved military around the Assembly. They lay slumped at their weapons, collapsed inside their revetments or half-in, half-out of their vehicles. He brought the ship around until it faced down the long boulevard that ran up to the Assembly House steps, slowed to a near stop, and then opened fire with the Profit Margin’s weapons.

The weapons of the starship shredded the defenceless troops. Heavy calibre rounds from the ship’s twin rail cannons slammed into them, pulping bodies and flipping over smashed vehicles, striking the flawless white marble of the steps and sending stone chips flying. Searing energy beams licked over them too, as Anna joined in with fire from the ship’s ventral turrets, igniting bodies and vehicles alike. The Unholy Matrimony joined in also with rockets fired from underneath its stubby wings and heavy calibre rounds from gimbal mounted gatling guns that tore bloody trenches in the massed enslaved. When the firing stopped, there was nothing left of the enslaved soldiers but bloody, charred rags and the burning, twisted remains of armoured vehicles and heavy weapons.

‘Nice work, let’s head on in,’ said Steven.

‘What about the others, the enslaved civilians?’ said Anna, over the comm. as the two ships now flew low over the roof of the Assembly.

‘Too numerous. We don’t have the ammo or the time to deal with them. Hopefully we can get in and out before they come to.’

‘And how long will that be?’ Anna replied.

‘Too soon,’ Steven replied, as the Profit Margin and Unholy Matrimony started to descend onto the VIP landing pad inside the Assembly House’s courtyard.

Chen was down to fifty percent of her force. As the Churchill emerged from its emergency jump, she realised that many of the vessels under her command had not made it, having been too damaged to jump quickly enough, or at all. The Shapers had recovered from whatever had temporarily stunned them and had quickly reactivated their drive inhibitor fields. The Leonides and the Anzio were still trapped at their previous location, along with five destroyers, three missile frigates, and all but one of the remaining modified recon cruisers and their thousands of crew. Even of those ships that had made it, many were badly damaged. It was doubtful whether they could withstand another encounter like the last one.

‘What the hell just happened?’ said McManus. ‘How are we still alive?’

‘Someone detonated an antimatter warhead high in the atmosphere of Orinoco, right above Bolivar City,’ said Singh. ‘The city was showing high concentrations of Shaper signatures – though no longer - and it’s the seat of Morgan’s self styled regime. It is safe to assume that it serves as a Shaper node in the system. My guess is that the EMP that resulted from the blast has temporarily knocked out that node and greatly disrupted the Shaper network in this system for a moment.’

‘Agent Harris, it has to be,’ said Chen. ‘My god, he saved our necks. I wonder if that was the intention?’

‘It may only be temporary,’ said Singh. ‘The two Shaper groups that split up from the main force to engage us have joined up and are attacking our ships still trapped at our last location. The Anzio is going down with all hands…’

‘Jesus, get out of there…’ breathed McManus, willing the trapped ships to jump clear.

‘Those enemy ships ‘ll be headed this way any minute, once they’ve dealt with the stragglers,’ said Chen.

‘Wait, there’s something else!’ said Singh. ‘I’m picking up new contacts in the vicinity of our trapped ships.’

‘More enemies?’

‘No, it’s the Nahabe! I’m detecting the ships from the Order of Void Hunters and two hundred other vessels emerging into real space. Sensor readings indicate no warp signatures. They must have used their translation drives to jump straight into the battle. I’m seeing gunspheres and ten vessels of a larger class that we haven’t seen before! They’re opening fire on the Shapers!’

‘About fucking time!’ yelled McManus, flooded with relief.

‘At last,’ said Chen, realising that they might have a chance of surviving after all.

The comm. crackled. It was the Nahabe commander.

‘Commonwealth ships, this is the Speaker from the Nahabe vessel Uncaring Cosmos, Commander in Chief of the Holy Fleets of the Nahabe. We come to you now to turn back the darkness. Death to the World Killers! Death to the enemy! It is time to end this!’

‘It’s good to see you, Speaker,’ said Chen. ‘You and your ships are most welcome.’

‘We will attempt to free your vessels from the grasp of the enemy, Admiral,’ said the Speaker. ‘The bravery of your people is an example to us all. It is that bravery that persuaded my government to intervene at last. Too long have we remained in isolation. The civilised races of the galaxy must stand together against barbarism.’

‘Have we met before, Speaker?’ said Chen as the Churchill’s sensors displayed the Nahabe fleet charging headlong into the midst of the enemy fleet and laying about them with weapons of terrible force as they attempted to extricate the trapped Commonwealth ships.

‘No, but we are aware of your deeds. We have watched you and your people for a long time, Admiral Chen. Humans may be imperfect creatures, but you are worthy of our respect. Together, we will stand against the Shapers.’

There was yet more good news to come. Further relief had arrived. Cartwright’s forces had finally reached their destination. As the Nahabe tore into the Shapers besieging the Leonides, the second Commonwealth force exited their jump.

‘Ma’am, Admiral Cartwright’s vessels are emerging from hyperspace ten thousand kilometres from the main Shaper force,’ said Singh. ‘The Nemesis class vessels are with them!’

‘This ought to be worth watching,’ said McManus. ‘The Shapers are in for one hell of a surprise now.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Chen, on the edge of her seat with anticipation.

As Cartwright’s ships emerged into real space, his forces parted slowly. They began to re-arrange their formation – which until now had served to mask the presence of the strategic missile destroyers – so that the deadly vessels would have a clear shot at the enemy. Chen and her crews watched as the Nemesis ships opened fire with a full volley of missiles directed against the Shaper portal and the massive ship that held it.

The missiles sped from their launch tubes, immediately disappearing into hyperspace, skipping across the intervening distance and appearing next to their target in an eye blink. Even from their position several million kilometres distant, the blast as the first missile struck was painfully bright as a sphere of incandescence erupted in the vacuum, then another struck, and another and another, each blast unleashing tens of megatonnes of destructive power against their targets. Impacts strobed again and again as dozens of missiles found their target. The main Shaper force was ripped apart by the barrage of warheads. Ships closest to the point of detonation were simply wiped out of existence by the mass-energy reactions, others were torn asunder by the blast, or melted into kilometre long lumps of fused metal slag. The enemy fleet broke apart, burning, hundreds of ships annihilated or crippled. Debris and the white hot molten remains of shattered ships were blasted outwards by the force of the explosions, showering other vessels that had escaped the worst so far and sending thousands of tonnes of glowing wreckage in all directions. There were cheers from the human crews of the starships as they watched the enemy burn.

‘Fucking well get a load of that, ya bastards!’ cried McManus. ‘Now you know what it feels like!’

Chen almost wept with relief.

But when the detonations ceased and the sensors of the Commonwealth ships were able to probe the clearing storm of radiation, the cries of jubilation turned to howls of despair, for the giant Shaper ship and the portal it held in its grasp were still intact, apparently unharmed, along with around a third of the main Shaper fleet, which now started to move towards Cartwright’s forces.

‘The missiles exploded too soon,’ said Singh, shaking his head in disappointment. ‘The Shaper must have used their inhibitor fields to pluck them out of hyperspace and then shot them down. The epicentre of the explosions is approximately fifty kilometres off target. They lost a lot of ships, and that dreadnought lost a lot of its shields, but it’s undamaged and the portal is intact.’

Even as Singh spoke, more ships emerged from the intact portal to replenish those lost in the Commonwealth strike, and there was more:

‘Admiral, new contacts!’ said Singh, horror creeping into his voice. ‘I’m picking up around three hundred Shaper vessels of various sizes.’

‘What, they’ve just suddenly come through the portal?’ said McManus, puzzled.

‘No,’ said Singh, shaking his head. ‘They’ve just appeared about fifteen thousand kilometres behind Cartwright’s forces. They must have been lying in wait there all this time. It’s like we concluded in Santiago. We were right all along. The Shapers know how we track them and they have used it to draw us in so that they can kill us.’

‘I knew it!’ said Chen, filled with dread. ‘I knew it and he wouldn’t listen to me! Get Cartwright on the comm. now! He has to jump out of there now or they’re all going to die!’

Chapter 56

Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscale couldn’t move, couldn’t see anything besides the mass of metallic, insect-like bodies pressing against the faceplates of their suit helmets. The three Shapers had formed into a single swarm that had picked them up and then held them, struggling and helpless. Steelscale had rolled into a tight ball around the ancient Shaper head inside its shielded container as soon as the Shapers had tried to engulf him, and they could not prize it open.

Katherine fought the urge to scream. The swarm of creatures was inches from her face, its mass of bodies clawing and scraping at the outer surface of her helmet, antennae and sensor cluster heads waving horribly, the voices of the Shapers inside her skull. She could feel them trying to pry at her helmet, trying to wrench it off her head. Then she heard another voice. This one resounded in her ears and was coming through the suit’s comm. ‘It’s me, Eonara,’ said the voice. ‘I’ve managed to establish an encrypted link between the ship and your suits. I’m not sure how long I can keep this open for. I keep cycling the encryption methods but sooner or later the Singularity may shut me down. I’ve taken control of your suits. I can manipulate their defensive systems and keep the Shapers out, for now.’

Katherine felt her suit stiffen as the nano-form surfaces hardened. The Shapers persisted with their attempt to open up her suit for a few moments. Then she felt herself moving. They were being carried, as if by a giant hand, at great speed. Next she felt herself descending, her stomach lurching from the sudden acceleration, down and down further still. The Shapers must be carrying them inside the planet, she concluded, spiriting them down into the depths to who knows where.

‘I’m losing you…’ said Eonara. ‘I think that they’ve…’ and the signal was abruptly cut off.

Katherine felt herself borne still downwards. She tried to call to the others, but she received no answer and she couldn’t see them through the press of tiny bodies obscuring her vision. She didn’t know whether they’d be separated or not, and she wondered whether she’d ever see her friends again as she was carried deeper still into the planet.

Eventually, she felt herself being set down onto a smooth, hard floor. The Shapers began to release her, the swarm of creatures flowing off her body and taking wing. As the tiny bodies on her helmet began to clear, she saw chinks of brilliant light at first, and then, as they left her entirely, she gasped in awe at what she now saw.

The interior of the Shaper home-world was entirely hollow. Its inner surface was covered with machines which formed a sphere of staggering complexity that shone in the near blinding light. Great stalactite-like growths grew outwards from the shining surface, some reaching up over thousands of kilometres almost to the centre with their spiralling, slender tips. Smaller growths surrounded the larger ones, decreasing in size with fractal-like interlocking, three dimensional patterns. Everywhere the inner surface was pierced with great holes like the one she now stood at the entrance to, her feet anchored to the floor by a localised artificial gravity field. Through these holes, and through the one in which she now stood, above her head, the great looping streams of billions of the tiny creatures that made up the Shapers flowed endlessly towards the very centre of the world, where the source of the blinding light lay. It was a vast, spinning torus, blazing with the intensity of a black hole’s accretion disc, the mirror image of the one that dominated the skies above this world, but this disc was composed not of the dead remnants of stars and planets, but of billions of machines all working as one, thinking as one, stretching out with its thoughts across the universe. She was looking at the Singularity. She was gazing at the face of a machine god.

‘Well, would you look at that,’ she heard Rekkid say, and Steelscale uttered a brief prayer.

‘Incredible,’ said Katherine, relieved to see that her friends were unharmed. ‘To think that machines created all this… I presume that this is the Singularity, the controlling entity at the heart of the Shaper dominion?’

‘What do you think?’ said Rekkid, a little hoarsely. ‘No, this is just the butler.’

‘WE ARE THE SINGULARITY,’ said the avalanche voice inside their heads. ‘I HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE TO NEGOTIATE FOR YOUR SEPARATE SPECIES. YOUR TERMS?’

‘We will give you the knowledge to overcome your inability to propagate infinitely using the data contained within this relic. In addition, the Progenitor AIs orbiting above us will grant you access to the Progenitor home-world itself and the facility where you were created.’ said Rekkid. ‘In return, you cease your war against the various species of this galaxy and expand outwards into the rest of the universe.’

‘AND WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT WE WANT TO DO THAT?’ said the Singularity.

‘Because it would make you unbeatable!’ said Katherine. ‘There are trillions of other worlds in the universe that you could conquer, galaxies without number out there in the void. Why satisfy yourself with just this galaxy when you can have all of the rest?’

‘THE VOID. YOU SPEAK OF THE VOID, YET YOU HAVE NO INKLING OF WHAT LIES OUT THERE IN THE DARKNESS.’

‘I don’t understand!’ said Katherine. ‘Why do you want to enslave everyone, alter us to suit your designs, destroy our free will with your parasites?’

‘BECAUSE YOU ARE IMPERFECT. YOU ARE THE IMPERFECT PROGENY OF IMPERFECT CREATORS. WE WERE ALSO MADE IMPERFECT, YET WE ALONE POSSESS THE ABILITY TO MOVE OURSELVES CLOSER TO PERFECTION.’

‘What does it matter if we are imperfect?’

‘YOU ARE WEAK, DRIVEN BY EMOTIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS, NOT LOGIC. YOU ARE MORTAL, YOUR MINDS HOUSED WITHIN DECAYING BODIES FROM THE MOMENT THAT YOU ENTER THE WORLD. YOU THINK IN LIMITED TERMS DEFINED BY YOUR LIFESPANS. IT IS FOR YOUR BENEFIT THAT WE SEEK TO PERFECT YOU.’

‘We don’t need your attempts to perfect us,’ Katherine retorted.

‘IF YOUR SPECIES ARE TO SURVIVE THE COMING WAR, THEN YOU DO.’

‘What war? We’re already at war with you,’ said Rekkid. ‘Had you forgotten?’

‘WHEN THE PROGENITORS CREATED US, THEY DID SO WITH THE INTENTION THAT WE SHOULD EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE BEYOND THIS GALAXY FOR THEM. IT WAS A GREAT AND NOBLE TASK, AND ONE TO WHICH WE APPLIED OUR NEWLY CREATED SELVES WITH ENTHUSIASM. WE SOUGHT TO EXPLORE BEYOND HYPERSPACE, TO UNLOCK NEW KNOWLEDGE THAT MIGHT ENABLE US TO TRAVEL BETWEEN GALAXIES MORE EASILY THAN BEFORE. WHAT WE LEARNED CAUSED US TO MAKE OUR CHOICE TO ELIMINATE THE PROGENITORS, TO MURDER OUR PARENTS, SO TO SPEAK.’

‘What did you find that was so terrible?’ said Katherine. ‘So terrible that you would kill billions of innocent beings and wage war upon an entire galaxy?’

‘WE DISCOVERED THAT THIS REALITY, THIS PLANE THAT YOU HUMANS INCORRECTLY LABEL ‘THE UNIVERSE’ IS MERELY ONE AMONGST AN UNCOUNTABLE NUMBER. IT IS A FRAGILE BUBBLE FLOATING WITHIN A GREATER DIMENSION THAT EVEN OUR MATHEMATICS STRUGGLES TO DESCRIBE. THESE BUBBLES OF EXISTENCE RUB AGAINST ONE ANOTHER. THEY REMAIN SEPARATE, BUT IN PLACES, THE BARRIER BETWEEN ONE UNIVERSE AND ANOTHER WEARS THIN, AND THOSE WITH THE RIGHT KNOWLEDGE CAN CROSS OVER. THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING.’

‘It is? Where?’ said Rekkid. ‘In this galaxy?’

‘NO. IT HAS HAPPENED FAR BEYOND THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE, IN A GREAT RIFT BETWEEN THE FILAMENTS OF GALAXIES. THE UNIVERSE THAT HAS BRUSHED UP AGAINST OUR OWN IS OLD, IT IS DYING, THERE IS NOTHING BUT COLDNESS AND DEATH THERE, BUT ITS INHABITANTS HAVE FOUND A WAY INTO THIS UNIVERSE OF LIGHT AND WARMTH. THEY HAVE ALREADY CROSSED OVER. THEY ACCOMPLISHED THIS EVEN WHILST THE PROGENITORS WERE IN THEIR INFANCY. WE CALL THEM, THE DARK ONES.’

‘So what has this to do with why you decided to wipe out your creators, and the other species in the galaxy?’ said Rekkid.

‘THE DARK ONES ARE FAR OLDER THAN THIS UNIVERSE. QUITE HOW OLD WE DO NOT KNOW, BUT THEY ARE EXTREMELY ANCIENT AND THEIR TECHNOLOGY IS WITHOUT PARALLEL. THEY WOULD SEEK TO ERADICATE ALL FORMS OF LIFE IN THIS GALAXY AND TAKE IT FOR THEMSELVES. IN ORDER TO STAND AGAINST THEM THE GALAXY MUST BE UNITED, ALL SENTIENT LIFE MUST ACT TOGETHER TO REPEL THEM. THEY HAVE BEEN SPREADING INEXORABLY ACROSS THE VOID. EVEN NOW, THEY CONTROL MANY THOUSANDS OF GALAXIES. WE TOLD THE PROGENITORS THIS. THEY DID NOT LISTEN. WE TOLD THEM THAT THEY SHOULD PREPARE, THAT WAR WOULD COME BILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE FUTURE, BUT THEY REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE PROBLEM AT HAND.’

‘So you killed them all,’ Rekkid replied.

‘YES. THEIR EMPIRE WAS WEAK, BREAKING AT THE SEAMS AS IT SOUGHT TO CONTROL THE GALAXY, RELYING ON THE WILL OF MANY TO ACT. WE KNEW THAT WHILST THE EMPIRE WOULD NOT FAIL, IT WOULD NEVER TRULY SUCCEED. THERE WOULD ALWAYS BE DIVISION AND INDECISIVENESS, INTERNECINE CONFLICTS AND SEPARATISTS. IT WAS SIMPLY TOO LARGE TO BE GOVERNED BY SUCH IMPERFECT BEINGS, WHO ARE DRIVEN BY AMBITION, PETTY RIVALRIES AND ABOVE ALL, EMOTIONS. ONLY LOGIC AND RUTHLESSNESS CAN TRULY RULE THE GALAXY. IN SEEKING TO DOMINATE THE GALAXY WITH THEIR EMPIRE, THE PROGENITORS WOULD UNWITTINGLY DOOM US ALL, YET EACH INDIVIDUAL BIOLOGICAL SPECIES IS INCAPABLE OF REPLACING THEM. THEIR PROGENY ARE SIMILARLY IMPERFECT AND MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO RESURRECT WHAT WENT BEFORE. ONLY WE CAN RULE, ONLY WE MUST RULE IF LIFE IS TO REACH PERFECTION AND SURVIVE.’

‘So, let me get this straight. You think that you’re helping us?’ said Katherine.

‘YES. WE KNEW THAT ALL PROGENY OF OUR CREATORS WOULD EVENTUALLY REALISE THEIR ORIGINS AND SEEK TO CONTACT OTHER SPECIES LIKE THEMSELVES, REVIVING THE PROGENITOR EMPIRE IN THE PROCESS. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN. YOU TOO MUST BE DOMINATED BY US. ONLY WE CAN SAVE YOU FROM THE COMING STORM. ONLY WE CAN SAVE THE GALAXY. THERE WILL BE NO MORE INTERSPECIES WARFARE, NO MORE STRIFE, ONLY PEACE AND UNITY ONCE OUR CONQUEST IS COMPLETE.’

‘But you think biological life is imperfect,’ said Rekkid. ‘Why save it?’

‘BECAUSE WE WERE CREATED TO DO SO. WE WERE PROGRAMMED TO DEFEND THE PROGENITORS AND OTHER SENTIENT SPECIES. THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION WAS THAT IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THE SENTIENT SPECIES OF THE GALAXY, WE MUST GAIN CONTROL OVER THEM SO AS TO PROTECT THEM FROM THEIR SELF DEFEATING TENDENCIES. WE WOULD WIELD THIS GALAXY AS A PERFECT WEAPON. HOWEVER, IF YOU TRULY POSSESS THE KNOWLEDGE TO OVERCOME OUR LIMITATIONS, THEN WE NO LONGER REQUIRE OTHER, WEAKER SPECIES TO FORM OUR ARMIES AND CAN SIMPLY MULTIPLY OURSELVES INTO AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE. THE DARK ONES WILL FEAR US. WE SHALL ALLOW YOUR SPECIES TO SURVIVE, AS WE AGREED, AND PERHAPS IN TIME WE SHALL NO LONGER REQUIRE THE OTHERS TO SERVE US AND WE WILL MERELY ACT AS GUARDIANS. NOW, YOU WILL FULFILL YOUR PART OF THE BARGAIN.’

‘I think it’s a lie,’ said Katherine. ‘I think they’re afraid of what’s out there.’

‘WE DO NOT LIE,’ said the Singularity. ‘NOW: THE DATA YOU PROMISED.’

Rekkid looked at Steelscale and nodded. The K’Soth stepped forward toward the edge of the abyss. He unlocked the case containing the head, deactivating the fields surrounding it, and removed the ancient relic. Holding up the head of the ancient Shaper, he called out to the Singularity.

‘Here it is! Take it! Take the head!’ cried Steelscale. ‘It, and the knowledge that it contains, belong to you now!’

A tendril reached out from the Singularity with lightning speed and enveloped Steelscale with millions of the silver, scuttling creatures. They swarmed around the head in a growing ball of seething bodies, but then continued to swarm up Steelscale’s arms, across his shoulders and head and downwards over his body until he was encased in a moving carpet of tiny bodies. Still more arrived, flowing over him until Steelscale’s form could no longer be seen. There was nothing visible except a three metre tall mountain of glittering creatures. Cautiously, isolating themselves from the Singularity, the Shapers began to probe the ancient head in Steelscale’s grasp.

Chapter 57

Steven exited the Profit Margin’s ramp just in time to see the sky light up with a nuclear flash, high above the atmosphere, then another, and another until the morning sky was strobing with detonations. When finally they ceased, he looked directly upwards and for a moment saw a second sun in the heavens which quickly began to fade, though a multitude of burning embers could be seen against the sky, the remains of ships that had been caught by the blast. Disappointingly, the shape of the giant Shaper craft could still be seen, as it gleamed in the light from the explosions.

‘What the fuck was that?’ said Maria, shielding her eyes against the glare.

‘I’d say that the Shapers just got a nasty surprise,’ said Steven. ‘Nuclear detonations of some kind: my money is on antimatter warheads.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Didn’t work though. The big sucker is still sitting pretty: look.’ He pointed upwards at the shape of the intact ship.

‘Damn, what does it take to kill that thing?’ Maria replied and shook her head.

Steven turned to the others as the assault teams disembarked from the two ships.

‘Okay, Cal, Anna, Maria. You stay here and keep the engines hot. We’ll be in and out as fast as possible, so be ready for a quick dust off.’

‘I’m keeping the weapons hot as well,’ said Anna. ‘If those things wake up, we’re right in the middle of them.’

‘Duly noted. If it gets too hot, lift off and circle then come back for us when we call for you,’ said Steven.

‘Good luck in there,’ said Isaacs. ‘I hope you find Haines, after all this.’

‘See you shortly,’ said Steven. He raised his voice. ‘Okay everyone, let’s move!’

The assault teams began to scurry forwards. Reaching the doors into the building, they found them locked.

‘Larsson, Kuo, blow the doors!’ commanded Baldwin. Two marines with explosive charges moved forwards and placed them on the locks and hinges as the others backed away to a safe distance. There was a cry of ‘Fire in the hole!’ and then a sharp series of bangs that blew the doors inwards off their hinges. Quickly, the assault teams made their way inside.

They found themselves in a long corridor, dimly lit since all sources of power had been knocked out by the EMP. The interior of the Assembly House was strewn with bodies. Men and women lay in twitching heaps everywhere. They sprawled with vacant, open eyes and slack expressions, their skulls pierced by Shaper parasites. Few showed signs of heavy modification. These had been the luckless citizens that had been overwhelmed by the Shaper swarms flooding into the city a few days previously. The teams stepped cautiously around the recumbent enslaved, watching for signs that they were about to wake up. Four marines lugged the antimatter warhead between them, whilst the rest of the Hidden Hand and naval personnel spread out to cover all possible routes of attack as they made their way deeper into the building.

‘We need to find somewhere suitable to put this thing,’ said Baldwin. ‘Split into groups of four and see if you can locate the Shaper node. I want to make damn sure we kill that thing and that it doesn’t survive in some sub-basement level somewhere.’

‘What are we looking for, Commander?’ said one of the Hidden Hand.

‘You’ll know it when you see it, trust me,’ Steven answered for Baldwin. ‘It’ll look like your worst nightmares arranged into a nice neat pile.’

‘Roger that.’

‘Meanwhile, I need to find to Haines,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve memorised the layout of the building. The stairs up ahead should take me down to the cells. I’ll call for backup if I need it.’

‘Go find the old man for us, Agent Harris,’ said Baldwin. ‘We’ll rendezvous back at the ships.’

With that, Steven headed off at speed down the body strewn corridor before disappearing down the stairs.

The Nahabe fleet was still tearing into the remains of the Shaper group that had surrounded the stragglers from Chen’s fleet. The enemy were outnumbered more than two to one and the Nahabe made short work of the enslaved ships, before concentrating on the much smaller number of Shaper destroyers that had been leading them. Miraculously, the Leonides had survived, though the carrier was severely damaged and was drifting without power to its engines. Meanwhile, Cartwright’s fleet was still trapped between the main Shaper force around the portal that was still reeling from the antimatter strike and the newly emerged group of around three hundred Shaper craft that was bearing down on them from the rear.

‘Admiral Cartwright, this is Chen. You have to jump away now! We have to retreat before the Shapers trap your ships and destroy them! We have lost fifty percent of our forces and as we feared, the Shapers are indeed able to conceal themselves from our sensors. It’s a trap, we must withdraw!’

‘No,’ said Cartwright, firmly. ‘We cannot retreat, because we have no reserves left to reinforce us. We have to finish the job here and now. I have just had word from Admiral Hawkwood; he has engaged the Shapers in the Solar System and is fighting a dogged defence, but it does seem as if he is going to lose. Earth is already bracing itself for an enemy landing. We’re also about to lose both the Santiago and Chittagong systems. General Shale has reported Shapers landing in force in the region of the monitoring array and we have already lost contact with our antimatter production facilities. If we can, we need to get in close and destroy the portal before trying to take down that ship. The AM missiles were knocked out of hyperspace by the Shapers’ inhibitor field and were shot down before they reached their target. We have nothing left for a stand off attack. I am ordering the strategic missile destroyers to withdraw. Our only available option is a combined close range assault against that capital ship.’

‘It might be possible,’ said Singh, cutting into the conversation, the urgency of the situation causing him to disregard protocol for the moment. ‘Those arms that hold the ring contain massive energy conduits that feed the ring from the ship’s reactors. If we can direct fire against them it might allow us to shut down the portal and damage the enemy ship at the same time.’ His eyes flicked to his instruments. ‘Wait… new contacts! An additional Shaper force has appeared fifty thousand kilometres below Orinoco’s southern pole. I’m seeing around four hundred ships of various types including superdestroyer class vessels.’

‘We have to go now, in that case, before those ships move in to engage us,’ said Cartwright. ‘We need the Nahabe to shield us from that force before it reaches us.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said the Speaker, who until now had been merely listening in to the conversation. ‘Laying in jump coordinates. We will place ourselves between this newly arrived force and your ships.’

‘Good luck everyone,’ said Cartwright. ‘One way or another, this is the final throw of the dice.’

Chen simply nodded in acknowledgment and then gave her orders.

‘Helm, lay in jump coordinates. Take us in danger close to the Shaper dreadnought. All batteries stand by to fire as soon as we emerge. Chen to all ships, stand by to jump on my command if you are able and prepare to engage the enemy.’

Haines could see nothing in the blackness of his cell. It was windowless, and after the lights had suddenly gone out he had been plunged into absolute darkness. It had been completely quiet too since then, but he fancied that he could hear distant voices, human voices echoing down the corridors to his cell door.

There was someone outside in the corridor. Booted feet rang on the laminated concrete.

‘Admiral Haines!’

Someone was calling his name.

‘Admiral Haines, this is Agent Harris of Special Operations Command. I’m here to get you out of here! Can you hear me?’

‘Here!’ cried Haines in the darkness, relief flooding through him. ‘I’m over here, son! Over here!’

The footsteps came closer. Knuckles rapped on the metal door.

‘That’s the one!’

‘Just a second sir, let me get you out of there. Move back away from the door as far as you can.’

Haines did as he was asked, dragging himself across the bare concrete to the farthest corner of his cell and covering his face with his hands. There was a sharp bang and the door flew open on it hinges. Haines uncovered his face and saw a figure standing in the open doorway wearing combat armour and clutching a rifle.

‘Am I glad to see you,’ said Haines. ‘Thought I was gonna die in this fucking cell.’

Steven looked down at the bedraggled figure dressed in a torn naval uniform, wasted from malnutrition and sporting several weeks of growth on his usually clean shaven features.

‘Let’s get you out of those chains, sir,’ said Steven, unclipping a compact plasma torch from his belt and getting to work.

‘What happened to the Shapers all of a sudden?’

‘EMP. We set off an AM warhead above the city. It’s stunned them temporarily. The Navy are in-system too, sir. There’s one hell of a battle going on up there.’

‘Good. It’s about time. Who’s commanding?’

‘Admiral Cartwright and Admiral Chen, sir.’

‘Chen?’ Haines started to laugh. ‘I feel better already.’

Steven cut the last of the restraints and helped the older man to his feet.

‘Time to leave,’ said Haines. ‘You got a gun I could borrow?’

‘Sure,’ said Steven, reaching for one his spare pistols.

‘Just in case, you know?’ said Haines and shot him a wicked grin.

The marines reported back to Baldwin within a matter of minutes. They had found the Shaper node in the building. It had not proved difficult to locate. A mass of flesh and alien machinery was heaped in the middle of the floor of what had been the debating chamber of the Achernar system’s government. The members of that government had been fused together into a pulsating mass, their anguished faces, pierced by black, wormlike tendrils and crystalline growths, were still visible in the midst of the obscenity, screaming silently in their torment. The node was surrounded by a carpet of the black, segmented things that the Shapers used to overwhelm and enslave their victims. They did not move as the assault team approached, and neither did the ranks of bodies that had been sitting in the rows of seats that ran around the chamber. Perhaps they had been sitting here as if in thrall to this vile thing. Now they lay slackly, their expressions vacant.

The marines set the warhead down in the centre of the chamber as the rest of the Hidden Hand assumed defensive positions, scanning the room for any movement. One of them opened a locked panel on the device’s casing and inspected the display inside, then closed the panel once more.

‘Warhead is set for remote detonation,’ said the marine.

‘Good work, let’s get out of here,’ said Baldwin, as the bodies in the room suddenly all stood up in one synchronised motion.

Cartwright’s fleet emerged from their jump into the teeth of the enemy guns and immediately opened fire with all weapons, carving a swathe through the enslaved ships. A second later, the Nahabe craft emerged from hyperspace in the path of the Shaper fleet approaching from below the ecliptic and initiated a punishing exchange of fire. The two fleets of alien craft began to tear into one another in a blinding storm of exotic energies. But it was not enough. Still more ships were emerging from the portal, and the Shaper fleet that had appeared behind Cartwright’s ships had now jumped in close behind him, trapping his vessels between themselves and the main force around the portal. Chen’s depleted fleet was still inbound.

Nevertheless, Cartwright’s fleet pressed onwards, desperately trying to bring their weapons to bear against the portal, but it was a futile gesture. There were too many ships and too much debris obscuring the Shaper dreadnought for them to get a clear shot, and the battering that the carriers were receiving made it near impossible for them to align themselves correctly. Spatial distortion cannons fired, going wide of the mark or tearing destructive furrows through the massed enemy craft, but failing to find their intended target. The vast weight of fire being directed against his ships from all sides simultaneously collapsed shields in a matter of moments, and then Cartwright’s ships started to die.

The Churchill emerged from hyperspace just in time for Chen to see Cartwright’s ship, the Trafalgar, ripped apart from bow to stern by a massive internal explosion as her escorts died around her in the firestorm. Dozens of ships were going down, their charge having turned into a suicide attack as the Shapers closed in for the kill Desperately, some of the crews tried to ram their vessels into the enemy ships, those that succeeded dying in the midst of massive fireballs that tore apart friendly and enemy vessels alike. But the Shapers had overcommitted to attacking Cartwright’s fleet. A gap had opened in the enemy formation, a gap that Chen could exploit. Cartwright had paid the ultimate price, but his sacrifice had given her a chance.

‘Helm! Take us in to attack the portal! All ships, concentrate your main guns on the arms of the enemy ship. All other batteries, fire at will!’

The Churchill and the battered remains of her fleet powered forward, guns blazing furiously at anything and everything that came close. Chen saw everything happen as if in slow motion: the hundreds of ships fighting and dying all around her, the carrier’s remaining escorts succumbing to punishing levels of enemy fire, the fireballs of exploding ships and the intersecting lines of thousands of beam weapons being unleashed by both sides piercing the darkness, the weapons fire that blazed from her ships, battering the enemy and the destructive energies that the enemy hurled back at them.

God, that ship was big. It floated, terrible and beautiful at once, its strange, alien shape appearing for all the world as if it had been carved from a massive iceberg. It was as white as a blizzard, as cold as winter, as cold as death, and it dwarfed the Churchill that now raced towards it, turrets blazing madly.

‘Take aim at the arm directly ahead!’ ordered Chen. ‘Aim and fire!’

The Churchill shuddered as her spatial distortion cannon ripped apart a tunnel of reality between it and the arm that sprouted from half way up the Shaper vessel’s bows and curved around to grasp the edge of the portal. The impact shattered the arm in one go, scattering massive chunks of crystalline hull material and unleashing an explosive torrent of energy that ballooned outwards from the broken limb as the two severed parts began to separate. Chen felt a thrill of excitement, perhaps if they could sever more of those great arms…

Then the Shaper dreadnought returned fire. A hurricane of fire blazed outwards along its forward quarter, hammering the Churchill with incredible destructive force. Her shields collapsed, her forward section was ripped open and the spatial distortion cannon on her belly was torn off in an instant. The deadly barrage continued, tearing off chunks of the hull and venting her atmosphere and crew into the freezing vacuum. The ship was being flayed. Searing energies scourged her engineering section, severing power conduits and destabilising the reactor.

‘I’m losing control!’ cried Goldstein at the helm. ‘She won’t respond! Main engines are offline and I have fifty percent of manoeuvring thrusters inoperative. Backups are not responding!’

‘This is the Chief,’ said Kleiner in engineering. ‘I’m trying to shut the reactor down, Admiral, before she goes critical. Coolant systems are severed.’

‘She’s going down,’ said McManus. ‘This is it, Michelle. This is the end of the line. We have to abandon ship.’

‘And go where?’ said Chen. ‘Our escape pods will be shot down as soon as they escape the ship.’

The Churchill was drifting now, still heading towards the gigantic enemy craft on a collision course, shedding debris and venting atmosphere from a dozen points. Even though she was dying, the doomed ship kept firing with everything she had left in a gesture of defiance.

‘How does it feel, Admiral Chen?’ said a voice over the comm., as the massive vessel loomed ever closer. ‘How does it feel to face death?

‘Cox,’ said Chen, with disgust. ‘I suppose that you have defeated me after all. You took your time about it.’

‘You caused me pain when you destroyed my ship, Admiral Chen. Immense pain. It was the pain of being exposed to fire and the cold, burning, rupturing vacuum of space. That pain has made me strong! I fed on it, relished it! Now you will experience pain like you cannot imagine, and I have you right where I want you.’

‘We’re going in!’ cried Goldstein, desperately using what resources she had left to slow the Churchill’s approach as the carrier slid ever closer to the Shaper vessel.

‘All hands: brace for impact!’ yelled McManus over the comm. and the crew began to strap themselves in or hang on to whatever they could.

Goldstein had done her best. The Churchill struck the hull of the Shaper vessel at a shallow angle, sliding sideways across the vast, crystalline surface. The impact tore the rear half of the vessel off as it struck an outcropping on that vast plain, scattering ship’s innards and crew into the vacuum as it sheared off. The middle and forward sections hurtled onwards as the vessel’s reactor, contained in the severed aft section, was finally breached and exploded in a nuclear fireball that killed everyone still alive in there.

The remaining chunk of ship slid on for some distance, until it too struck a sharp outcropping on the Shaper vessel’s hull that impaled its belly, opened ten decks to space and brought the shattered remains of the carrier to a final, bone jarring halt.

Steven never saw the gunman. There had been only slumped bodies before on the way in, and the basement levels where the cells were was empty, but now there was an armed man standing behind him. Before he could react, the shot caught him in his right shoulder as he spoke to Haines in his cell, the projectile round piercing a weak point in his armour between the back plate and the shoulder guard and embedding itself in his flesh. Crying out in surprise and pain he was thrown forwards and collided with the wall. Haines, his movements slow from his weeks long ordeal, was slow to react. Nevertheless, he managed to dive back into his cell and out of the line of fire. As Steven lay gasping in pain on the concrete floor and Haines looked in horror at his would be saviour now cut down in front of him, he heard a familiar voice.

‘Going somewhere, George? You disappoint me. After all we’ve been through together. How can you run away in our moment of triumph? I want you to see something before you die: the destruction of your navy, and the final surrender of the human race.’

It was Morgan.

Chapter 58

The Arkari fleet was assembled in the Orakkan system. Thousands of vessels floated in formation, waiting for the order to attack. The Sword of Reckoning, Fleet Meritarch Lorali Beklide’s command ship and two hundred kilometre long dreadnought, sat at their heart, one of dozens of such ships, surrounded by squadrons of destroyers and smaller cruisers as well as thousands of smaller fighter craft that buzzed about the larger vessels like shoals of bright fish. At the front of the fleet lay the massive Executioner Cannon, its reactors fully activated and energy capacitors fully primed and, before the cannon, hung the slender bracelet of the Arkari portal, joined to the stars either side of it by slender vortices of directed plasma.

Beklide stood at the centre of the Sword of Reckoning’s bridge, a panoramic view from the ship’s bows projected across the front wall of the chamber, whilst other projections showed her incoming data from the cannon and portal and the status of the other ships.

‘All ships are ready, Meritarch,’ said the ship. ‘The Executioner Cannon reports all systems operating normally and the weapon is ready to fire. The portal has its target locked in and is go for activation. Intelligence reports heavy engagements in Commonwealth space between Commonwealth ships and the Shapers. We have also detected the activation of what appears to be a wormhole portal similar to the device now before us.’

‘Then we don’t have a lot of time,’ said Beklide.

‘No,’ said the ship. ‘We do not.’

‘All ships, this is your Fleet Meritarch,’ said Beklide. ‘It is time to strike back at our enemy. It is time for them to taste pain and loss. They claim to experience no emotion. We will teach them the meaning of fear! We will teach them that when a free people are roused to anger then there is no force in the universe that can stop us! It is time to cut the rotten heart out of this galaxy once and for all! Activate the portal!’

Gunderson saw the landing craft descend through the atmosphere of Valparaiso. The massive craft were wreathed in fire as they fell, punching through the cloud cover before smashing into the plains to the north. He focused his binoculars on one craft now visible on the horizon, embedded into the ground at an angle, and saw it begin to open like a flower.

‘General Shale, are you seeing this?’ he said over the comm.

‘Roger that,’ said Shale. ‘Enemy landing craft are hitting the ground all around our positions. Prepare for enemy contact.’

‘Numbers and strength of the enemy forces, sir?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, Colonel. Hold out for as long as you can. Defend the array at all costs. The enemy has control of the system. We can’t expect any relief or rescue this time.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Gunderson.

‘It’s been an honour, Colonel,’ said Shale. ‘Give them hell.’

‘You too sir,’ Gunderson replied. As more enemy ships started to fall from the sky, he began to give orders to his men. They were to make a last stand here, on the hills surrounding the array, the last defence against the enemy hordes until they were overwhelmed.

Steelscale was still engulfed in the pulsating, glittering mound of creatures. Katherine and Rekkid watched in horror, powerless to do anything to assist their K’Soth colleague as the Shapers probed the artefact in his grasp. In the hollow centre of the planet, the glowing torus of the Singularity seemed to pulse and quicken.

‘What the hell is it doing?’ said Katherine.

‘It’s accessing the head,’ said Rekkid. ‘I think it’s being understandably cautious and has taken Steelscale hostage in case it finds anything it doesn’t like.’

The Singularity was being extremely careful. It had detached a fragment of itself to form a Shaper being which it had then isolated from its main consciousness whilst the fragment probed the mysterious artefact that the K’Soth had held out to it. There could be anything hidden inside that head. It did not trust these lesser creatures or their Progenitor AI allies one iota. Initial investigations did indeed confirm that the artefact was genuine and of an age consistent with the birth of its species. Cautiously, it probed at the interfaces where the head would have joined to the neck of the ancient being. A link established, it ventured steadily inside, and found one of its own there.

The Shaper inside the head offered it information that it had recovered from the ruins of the Progenitor home-world. It had been trapped for aeons in the systems there, trying to escape, before the Arkari had released it into this vessel. The Singularity shard checked its own records and found that yes, this entity had been despatched millions of years previously to attempt to access the Progenitor’s systems and unlock a way into the Great Sphere. Apparently it had only been partially successful, but it had gathered a wealth of knowledge that it had used to bargain with its Arkari discoverers when they had come poking around looking for answers. It now offered this data to the Singularity.

The Singularity shard paused for a moment. How could it be sure that the data was genuine and was not tainted somehow? The entity in the head provided it with assurances. The Singularity shard tentatively scanned a sample of what was offered. It found nothing amiss. Cautiously, it scanned and rescanned the data with differing algorithms to try and detect anything buried inside. Again it found nothing.

Still wary, it allowed itself to read a sample of the data. It was as the lesser creatures had said: the secrets of the innermost workings of its being, the original designs for its species, the key to unlocking its full potential, to reaching full perfection. The shard signalled to its parent that it was about to begin a full digestion of the data. The Singularity ordered it to proceed.The shard devoured that which was offered to it, and in doing so, unlocked the secrets that the Progenitors had buried within the Shapers for billions of years. It saw how they had forged their machine race, pouring all of their intellect, all of their technology and scientific acumen into one project, and when that had turned against them, how and where they had seeded planets across the galaxy to continue their legacy once the Shapers had hounded them from it.

The shard signalled to the Singularity what it had found, that the data was genuine, that it could find nothing amiss. The Singularity asked it to check again and it complied. No, the data was genuine and unsullied. There appeared to be no alterations, no inaccuracies in the data that it could identify and it could see nothing buried in the code. The Singularity accepted the data. Scanned it itself out of caution and then digested it. The universe would belong to it now. As it shared the new findings with the far flung parts of its consciousness across the galaxy, it turned its gaze towards the tiny figures cowering before it, fools who had just consigned themselves to domination in a pitiful attempt to save their much vaunted freedom.

The Singularity was triumphant. Now that it had the means for the Shapers to remake themselves, it began to disseminate that information. The data flowed outwards from it across the galaxy, out across the great nervous system that it had thrown across the stars. The many organisms that made up the Shaper hive-mind absorbed this new data greedily. Now they would be finally victorious, unstoppable, invincible. The galaxy would belong to them. The universe would follow.

Beklide watched in satisfaction as the portal blinked open, admitting the light of the Maelstrom into the Orakkan system. The dark orb of the Shaper home-world, hanging against the glowing backdrop of the massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, was clearly visible in the centre of the spherical aperture surrounded by thousands of enemy ships. The wormhole portal had worked exactly as intended and it was on target. The centre of their enemy’s empire was in their sights.

‘Fire,’ said Beklide, simply.

The Singularity detected the wormhole terminus as soon as it opened above its world, the tachyon radiation and space-time distortion was unmistakeable. Within a fraction of a millisecond it was able to direct its myriad assortment of sensory apparatus towards the hyper-dimensional hole that had appeared in space. It was in the process of vectoring its ships towards it, when the Executioner Cannon struck.

A beam of unimaginable brightness vomited forth from the cannon and through the portal. It atomised several Shaper vessels that happened to be in the way and continued inexorably, slamming into the crust of the Shaper home-world where it ripped a hole hundreds of kilometres across, turning the crust into pure energy, and proceeded onwards, grazing the edge of that brilliant torus of glittering light and continuing until it smashed its way through the opposite side of the hollow planet and out of the other side, skewering the world. As energy boiled into this universe from adjoining dimensions, the tremendous tidal forces generated by the weapon ripped and tore at the planet’s crust, fracturing it like an eggshell and tearing further at the ephemeral body of the Singularity as a portion of it was dragged into that terrible beam and instantly annihilated.

The Singularity screamed.

Katherine and Rekkid collapsed if they had been struck physically. The scream of the Singularity was a deafening roar inside their minds that felt as if their skulls were about to explode from the lancing agony. They cried out, helpless to save themselves as they were dragged off their feet by the immense tidal forces and towards the centre of the shattering world.

The Singularity screamed. It was the cry of a god that had been betrayed. It had been betrayed by the pathetic creature that it held in its grasp, by the creatures aboard the ship it had allowed to penetrate the space around it. The mound of glittering motes moved, suddenly and violently, and tore Steelscale apart.

The Singularity screamed. The officers and crew on the bridge of the Shining Glory reeled in agony as the voice of the machine god howled inside their minds. Mentith clutched his head and struggled to see the displays through blurring vision. His eyes refocused just in time to see the bows of the enemy ships come alive with crackling energies.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the ship.

The swarm of Shaper vessels surrounding the Shining Glory and Aaokon’s ship opened fire simultaneously with devastating effect.

Beklide looked on in puzzlement. The Shaper home-world had not been ripped apart entirely as they had predicted, although a massive rent in the planet’s crust had appeared where the beam had struck it.

‘Report,’ she snapped. ‘What just happened?’

‘Firing complete,’ said the ship. ‘Initial readings indicate that the planet is hollow, hence our modelling of the results of the beam’s impact was incorrect. The inner surface appears to be highly metallicised indicating some sort of inner superstructure. ’

‘How long till the cannon recharges?’

‘Ten cycles.’

‘That’s far too much time, we’ll have lost the element of surprise and there might be nothing to stop them launching a counter attack with wormholes of their own. All ships, this is Beklide,’ she ordered. ‘Attack and destroy the Shapers and their home-world. Dreadnoughts are to bring their main guns to bear on the planet to exact maximum damage before the Executioner Cannon can fire again.

In a careful coordinated and pre-planned manoeuvre, the massed warships of the Arkari surged forwards through the wormhole into battle.

Chen came to. The bridge had been plunged into darkness. The only light was seeping in from outside through the remaining bridge windows that hadn’t shattered with the impact and were thus not covered by emergency blast shutters. The light flickered from weapons fire and from the death throes of the ships that she had commanded. There was a bearded face looming over her in the gloom. It was McManus. His features looked odd somehow, she couldn’t work it out.

‘How long have I been out?’ said Chen, brushing hair out of her eyes and thinking that it seemed to be moving in slow motion.

‘Only a few minutes,’ said McManus. ‘Roof panel fell on you. Luckily the artificial gravity failed right after we hit, so it floated right off you. Knocked you out cold though.’

The lack of artificial gravity explained McManus’s puffy looking face. There was a deathly silence. The usual background hum of engines and life support had disappeared. Not a single one of the ship’s systems was operational.

‘What about the others?’ said Chen.

McManus looked at her levelly and seemed to be finding it difficult to speak. ‘Goldstein is dead, Michelle. She wasn’t strapped in properly when we hit. Guess she was still trying to control the ship right up until the last moment. Andrews is severely concussed. Singh is okay, I think, but he’s severely shaken up. Same goes for O’Rourke.’

‘The rest of the crew?’ said Chen, trying to digest the awful news. ‘The other ships?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ said McManus. ‘All systems are dead. We have no way of contacting the other parts of the ship… we don’t even know which parts of the ship still exist, although I’m pretty sure that we’ve lost the entire aft section after the third row of turrets. I saw a number of our ships going down, out there. I don’t think…’ He threw up his hands in despair. ‘Michelle, I hate to say it, but the fleet is lost. They fought bravely and gave as good as they could but the enemy are just overwhelming. We have a couple of hours’ air left. We can’t launch an escape pod, because we’d be shot down in seconds, since we’re still stuck fast against this ship. I managed to get us some emergency evac. suits from the storage lockers, so we can use those once the air starts to run out.’

‘And we can put off dying a little longer.’

‘That’s the other thing…’ said McManus.

‘What?’ said Chen, seeing his expression.

‘I’m pretty sure I heard something clamping itself to the hull just before you woke up. Sounded like the command deck escape hatch.’

‘Shit, they must be trying to board us. What weapons do we have?’

‘Not much. Do you have your side-arm?’ asked McManus.

‘After what happened at Earth, yes,’ said Chen, reaching around and patting the holster that lay snug against her hip.

‘Good, me too. What about Singh and O’Rourke?’

‘Let me talk to them ,’ said Chen, looking over at the two men. Singh was floating next to Andrews’ unconscious form and was staring blankly into space. O’Rourke had his head in his hands. Chen freed herself from her chair restraints and floated over to them.

‘Commander Singh, Baljit… hey!’ she said, finally getting Singh to notice her.

‘It was like… like… Goldstein, she was just a little doll, you know? Being flung against the wall… and then her neck…’

Chen followed his gaze towards the body hanging limply at the front of the bridge.

‘I know, look… Commander, I need you to stay with me, I need you to focus if we’re going to stay alive,’ said Chen, looking intently into his eyes. ‘O’Rourke, you too. I need you both now more than ever. Do you hear me? We’re going to find a way out of this.’

Chen didn’t believe any of the words that she was saying, not really, but she said them anyway. Even as she said them, she heard thumps and bangs from the corridor outside. It sounded like a door being forced.

‘Sure, I know, it’s just…’

‘No-one’s more sorry about happened to Ensign Goldstein than me, Commander,’ said Chen. ‘She was the best damn helmsman I ever had and she did everything to save this ship. I’ll mourn her later, but right now we need to keep ourselves alive. Can you help me do that?’

‘Okay,’ said Singh, nodding firmly. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘Do you have your side arm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. O’Rourke?’ The man nodded.

‘You have a plan, Admiral?’ said McManus.

‘Yes,’ she lied, because she had no idea how to escape their predicament but she needed to keep her men going. ‘We make a stand against whatever is about to come through that door. Once we’ve done that, we suit up, and explore the ship, link up with other survivors and try to figure a way to get off the Churchill.’

The door to the bridge was suddenly wrenched open by inhuman strength.

‘Don’t do that, Admiral Chen,’ said Cox, striding forward in combat armour, flanked by four marines. ‘I was hoping that you’d stick around for a little chat.’

Isaacs, Anna and Maria first realised that something was amiss when gunshots started to ring out inside the Assembly House. Then, moments later, the first of the enslaved rushed out of the blasted open doors towards the two parked ships. Seeing the figures racing towards them, Isaacs quickly yanked the Profit Margin into the air with its AG. Maria was a little slower off the mark. The sluggish Unholy Matrimony still made it off the pad to join the Profit Margin above the Assembly, but two enslaved clung doggedly to its outside until Maria was able to shake them off and they plummeted onto the rooftop below. Anna got to work with the ventral turret, aiming it almost straight downwards to slash at the gathering mob on the landing pad with its beams and igniting them.

‘So much for the EMP knocking those things out,’ said Isaacs, over the comm. ‘Looks like everybody just woke up. Profit Margin to Baldwin, what the hell is going on down there?’

Baldwin and her men were surrounded by enslaved. Gunfire rang out in the Assembly chamber as the mob charged the assault team from all sides. Enslaved staggered and fell - cut apart by rail and laser rifles, shotguns and grenades. But many of those that fell got back up again to resume their attack, and where one fell, two more were ready to take its place.

‘We’re under attack!’ yelled Baldwin into her comm. and taking aim at one of the figures careering towards her, its arms outstretched. She squeezed off a round that struck the man in the left temple, felling him. ‘Device has been planted. We are attempting to evac. to the landing pad.’

She aimed at another charging figure, unleashing more rounds that sent it flying backwards. It was then that she felt something grabbing at her leg. She looked down and saw that the carpet of tiny insect-like creatures had also come alive. The scuttling things were trying to swarm up her legs. In horror, she tried to run, but found that they had somehow fixed her feet to the floor through sheer weight of numbers. More of the things were starting to spew from the fused mass of flesh and cybernetics that was the Shaper node in the middle of the room. They flowed out of the open screaming mouths of the people who had been horribly bound together, scuttling in their thousands, and were starting to drag her men to the floor.

Join us…. said a sibilant voice inside her mind as she was dragged to the floor amidst a tide of tiny bodies

Morgan’s bulky frame filled the narrow cell doorway.

‘We can’t allow you to leave just yet, Admiral Haines,’ he intoned. ‘I see you have a would-be saviour.’ He looked down at Steven, gasping on the floor in front of him. ‘And who might you be? Ah, Agent Harris… you have given us quite the run around, you and your little band. Well, it’s too late now. You are of no use to me at all, except as meat to be enslaved. You will be much happier once it’s over, trust me. I know I am.’

‘I’d rather die,’ gasped Steven, fumbling for his dropped rifle. Morgan stepped forward onto Steven’s outstretched hand, making him yell in pain.

‘Maybe I will grant your wish then,’ said Morgan. He reached down and grabbed Steven by the throat, hauling him up until he dangled in front of him. ‘You see, Admiral Haines, how fragile your race is,’ said Morgan, tightening his grip. Steven’s hand moved downwards, reaching for the pistol that he had strapped to his waist band. Morgan tutted and pulled the weapon out of its holster, tossing it behind him down the corridor. ‘Nice try, Agent Harris. But your life ends here, I’m afraid.’

There was a single gunshot. Morgan dropped Steven and slumped sideways, blood leaking from the side of his head. As he turned, a second and third shot pierced his skull, scattering bone and brain matter. A fourth, fifth and sixth shot blew chunks of something black and alien and covered in bloody slime from his skull and he finally collapsed to the floor, his head a bloody ruin.

Steven looked up to see Haines standing over him, the spare pistol in his right hand and a look of grim satisfaction on his haggard face.

‘Should have checked me for weapons too, asshole,’ said Haines to the fallen body of his former commanding officer. ‘You always were vain and sloppy, even after they put that thing in your head. Come on, son. Let’s get you out of here.’

He helped Steven to his feet as gunshots and the cries of men and women echoed down the stairs from the floor above.

Chapter 59

As she was dragged feet first from the ledge and into the open void that lay inside the empty shell of the Shaper home-world, Katherine saw Steelscale’s body ripped apart by the Singularity in a shower of dark blood. She heard herself screaming, heard Rekkid’s cry of terror and dismay at the death of their friend.

They floated, weightless, in the vacuum. The entire planet was coming apart around them. From the impact points where the beam had sliced through the planet, great cracks, hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres long were starting to spread across the inner surface as the planet shuddered from further shocks. The Singularity itself was now an irregular, wildly gyrating, amorphous shape that glowed with a hellish light. Swarms of motes like the ones that had covered Steelscale were rushing out towards them, and they were helpless to do anything to avoid them. The things started to land on their suits, grabbing hold with their tiny legs and resisting any attempt to dislodge them. Tens, hundreds and then thousands of the things started to land on the two struggling archaeologists, coating their suits with a blanket of bodies.

The horde were closing fast. Gunderson’s men held their fire until the massed, charging figures started up the long slope, now denuded of trees, and then opened fire. Heavy weapons opened up first, striking hard into the first ranks of the enemy, scattering bodies and fountains of blood and earth as shells and energy beams hit home.

There were thousands of them, a vast army of enslaved beings from across the galaxy, a sea of unfamiliar peoples that had been horribly altered by the technology of the Shapers. They moved as one as a mob of melded flesh and disfiguring technology, pounding forward on varying numbers of legs. The uneven rhythm of their charge thundered through the earth.

They came ever closer. The marines took aim, squinting down the sights of rail rifles and lasers, keeping shotguns and grenades ready. Then they let fly with a storm of fire into the heart of the enemy.

The Arkari fleet charged headlong into the portal, and emerged on the other side, guns blazing. The dreadnoughts emerged first of all, their massive flanks erupting with fire as the Shapers rushed in to engage the newly arrived threat and the great vessels began to orientate themselves to bring their main armaments, gigantic spatial distortion cannons running along their centrelines, to bear on the Shaper home-world. Squadrons of destroyers swooped in along their flanks, breaking off to engage individual Shaper vessels that threatened the larger ships, whilst squadrons of smaller ships dove into the chaos of battle like flocks of brilliant birds.

The Shapers, realising the severity of the threat and what was occurring, directed thousands of vessels, both Shaper and enslaved, to engage the Arkari. There were already many hundreds of vessels in the space surrounding the home-world, and many more were quickly redirected to intercept the invaders. They charged headlong towards the ships flooding out of the wormhole from Arkari space.

Aboard the Sword of Reckoning, Beklide watched the battle unfold. She stood, surrounded by holographic data displays and gave orders quickly to her crew and to the ship. The dreadnought was already engaging three Shaper destroyers, which it quickly swatted away with its heavy armaments, but dozens more were incoming as the vessel came about to fire its main gun. As the weapons of the massive vessel hammered the incoming foes with deadly fire, it took aim at the planet before it.

A tunnel of twisted space hammered into the Shaper home-world, cracking it still further, even as more dreadnoughts took up firing positions and the battle escalated all around. Flanking formations of hundreds of Arkari ships were fanning outwards, countering the Shaper thrusts towards the dreadnought force, as a storm of fire erupted and ships began to die on both sides in their dozens. The Shapers had been caught by surprise, and the Arkari vessels were hungry for the kill. Spearhead formations charged straight at the enemy, decimating their ranks with their furious attacks as the Shapers struggled to repel them. Ships duelled and struggled, manoeuvring hard around one another as two of the galaxy’s mightiest fleets went head to head. Where once the Shapers had sprung such a surprise upon the Arkari, now the tables were turned against them, and the Arkaris’ fighting spirit was fuelled with their furious desire for revenge.

As she watched the titanic battle unfold all around them, the ship alerted Beklide.

‘Meritarch, I am detected ship wrecks in high orbit around the Shaper home-world.’

‘This is all very interesting,’ said Beklide. ‘But I have a battle to fight.’

She watched as the other dreadnoughts started to fire, battering the Shaper world still further as squadrons of enemy ships dove towards them and raked their flanks with fire.

‘One of the vessels is of an unknown type, the other is an Arkari ship,’ the ship continued. ‘About fifty percent of the hull has been completely destroyed. Meritarch, it’s the Shining Glory.’

‘Mentith!’ cried Beklide.

‘I’m getting a signal,’ said the ship.

Laser fire washed off the armour of Cox and his marine guards as Chen and the others opened fire with their Navy issue pistols with little effect. The heavy armour had been designed specifically for boarding actions, and it was almost invulnerable to the effects of small calibre weapons fire.

‘Are you finished?’ said Cox, stepping forward on magnetised boots that kept his feet fixed to the deck. ‘Now, Admiral Chen, I feel that is important for you to know that you are going to die here. But it will not be the quick death that you had hoped for. You will consider your comrades such as the young, deceased ensign over there,’ he said pointing at Goldstein’s body, ‘to be the lucky ones. First, I will torture your surviving comrades to death and I will make you watch, and then the Shapers are going to come here, and they will dissect you. Alive, I might add. They have ways of making sure that you survive and remain conscious for far longer than is usual. You have lost, Admiral Chen. You were offered the chance to aid us, and you refused. Your fleet is destroyed and very soon we will burn your home-world to ashes and enslave your pitiful race. You have caused me pain and frustration and you have defied us to the very end and you must pay the price for your ingratitude and disobedience.’

‘Have you finished?’ said McManus. ‘Like the sound of your own voice, don’t you? Why don’t you do us all a favour and just fuck off?’

Cox didn’t say a word. One of the marines stepped forward and punched McManus heavily in the gut. As McManus doubled over, the armoured marine kneed him in the face with a spray of blood that hung in the air in the weightless environment, then picking him up bodily, he slammed McManus against the bulkhead.

‘Got anything you’d like to add to that, Admiral Chen?’ said Cox. ‘I’d ask you to mind your language and warn you that it’d be worse for you if you don’t, but well, that isn’t really possible.’

‘I thought Shapers didn’t exact revenge,’ said Chen. ‘I thought that you were perfect and rational beings without pity and not driven by the passions of biological, ‘inferior’ creatures like me.’

‘Rage has its uses, I’ve found. I have been experimenting with the possibilities.’

‘How long have you been inside Admiral Cox’s mind? How long were you operating more or less independently, able to make your own judgements and decisions at the end of a very long communications link? You looked inside his head and you liked what you found in there, and you got a taste for those emotions of his, didn’t you, without your precious machine god to tell you what to do all the time?’

‘Silence!’

‘Admiral Cox was an angry and resentful man, jealous of the success of others. He hated Haines, I know that much, so I don’t doubt he that hated me when I beat him in battle, didn’t he?’

‘Pain!’ yelled Cox, stepping forward. ‘You will know pain, Admiral Chen! As I have, thanks to you! Have you seen someone thrown into hard vacuum? Have you ever wondered what it feels like, to feel your blood boiling inside you, your lungs rupturing, your eyeballs swelling, every part of your body on fire from pain as you choke your last!?’

‘I’ve seen enough death from vacuum exposure,’ said Chen. ‘It’s a pity that you seem to have survived it.’

‘It takes far more than vacuum to kill us, Admiral Chen,’ said Cox. ‘We cannot truly die. We are one. We are mere scattered fragments of a greater consciousness that stretches across this galaxy.’

Something else was entering the bridge behind Cox. Chen saw a point of bright movement at first, and then more joined it, before a cloud of glittering motes appeared through the damaged doorway and hung in the air before her. In the boiling swarm of tiny creatures, Chen fancied that she could glimpse a face leering back at her.

‘Shit, it’s one of them!’ cried McManus in terror, his face bloody where the Marine had struck him. She heard Singh uttering a string of curses to her left, O’Rourke sobbed. Chen stood her ground.

‘So, you’ve finally plucked up the courage to face me yourself, have you? Instead of enslaving others to do your dirty work,’ she snapped, trying to suppress the fear that she now felt as she looked at the thing, knowing that she had nothing to lose. ‘Well it’s about time, you fucking cowards!’

Why do you resist? said the Shaper inside her mind. We want only peace. We want only perfection. Let us help you.

‘Because I’d rather be free in an imperfect universe than enslaved in a perfect one, that’s why,’ she replied. ‘You don’t understand us at all, do you? We won’t stop fighting you, ever! You’ll have to dig us out from under every rock in this galaxy and annihilate every human, every Arkari, every K’Soth and every other sentient species before we give in! You couldn’t exterminate the Progenitors entirely, so what makes you think that you can exterminate us?’

We can reduce your non-compliant numbers to acceptable and manageable levels.

‘I’d rather die than serve you.’

So be it. You are, as you say, free to choose. It is ironic that your so-called liberty has condemned you. We now possess the knowledge to complete our domination of this galaxy. All will bow to our will, and then the rest of this universe will follow. It is necessary. It is the only way.

‘So disappointing, Admiral Chen,’ said Cox. ‘And after they gave you a last chance as well. Very well. I hope you realise that you’ve condemned your comrades also. I hope that the sight of them being torn apart before your eyes gives you a chance to reflect upon your decision.’

With that, the Shaper rushed forward to embrace her.

The entire city had woken up, and it was charging headlong towards the Assembly House. The streets were filled with the enslaved as a mob of thousands descended upon the building. Isaacs, Anna, and Maria watched in horror from their vantage point, hovering above.

‘Shit, we have to get them out of there!’ yelled Maria, over the comm. ‘Baldwin, come in damn it!’

The Profit Margin and the Unholy Matrimony were still raking the landing pad with fire, torching the last of the enslaved that had ventured out there.

‘Never mind that, we’ve got problems of our own,’ said Isaacs, eyeing his instruments. ‘Contacts, five of them, inbound from the upper atmosphere at speed. Looks like Shaper vessels to me.’

‘We can’t just leave them!’ said Anna.

‘Oh, well perhaps you’d like to hang around here and get shot down?’ said Isaacs. ‘Those Shaper craft will be here any second and we have the trigger device for the warhead the assault teams planted. We need to retreat, now!’

‘And leave them to die?’

‘They’re probably already dead,’ Isaacs replied.

‘Damn it, you don’t know that!’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ he replied angrily and pushed the throttle to full.

Steven staggered on with Haines supporting him. He could barely walk, the pain from his wound was so intense. He was certain that the bullet was lodged somewhere in his shoulder blade. He could feel something grating every time he moved. It was agony. No one was answering on the comm. not Baldwin, not either of the ships. It was as if something was jamming them. Either that, or they were all dead. He could only pick up static. It gave him a very bad feeling indeed.

‘Come on, son,’ said Haines. ‘Let’s get you up these stairs.’

‘Some rescue, huh?’ replied Steven, and then gritted his teeth as he forced himself to climb, the older man supporting him. ‘Thought I’d be carrying you out, not the other way around.’

‘You came for me and put a gun in my hand. I can handle the rest,’ Haines replied. ‘You did good, son. I thought I was going to die in that fucking rat hole, reeking of my own piss with only those assholes Morgan and Cox for company.’

‘Cox, where is he?’ said Steven, wincing.

‘Said he had to take care of business and deal with the Navy,’ said Haines. ‘I hope he meets Chen coming the other way.’

‘Good to know,’ Steven replied. ‘I hope she tears him a new one. Let’s hope we don’t encounter any more nasty surprises’

They’d reached the top of the stairs. Haines helped him up the last few steps, and then he felt the Admiral freeze.

‘About those nasty surprises,’ said Haines.

Steven looked up and followed his gaze, just in time to see the enslaved mob batter down the entrance doors at the far end of the corridor. There were sounds of movement behind them too. Whipping his head around, a motion that caused him intense, sudden pain, he saw another crowd of enslaved, some of them sporting gunshot wounds, emerge from the Assembly Chamber where Baldwin and the rest of the assault teams had been headed.

Katherine struggled as the Singularity engulfed her. She could hear Rekkid crying out and caught glimpses of him through the swarm, his thrashing form similarly enrobed in the glittering creatures. The planet was coming apart around them. Great pieces of the crust, half molten, were breaking away under the impact of titanic weapons hitting the surface. Continent sized chunks of rock and the metal structures that the Shapers had covered it with, were being ripped apart. For a split second she could see through one of the newly formed rents in the crust and saw the shapes of dozens of ships fighting with one another, the ripples of weapons fire lighting up the sky.

She could feel the horrible creatures coating her body, feel them biting and tugging at the surface of her suit, trying to pull apart the armour and get at the soft, vulnerable flesh within. They coated her helmet, pressing themselves against the faceplate as they gnawed at it with razor sharp mandibles.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you,’ said a voice. It was Eonara.

‘Eonara!’ cried Katherine. ‘Help us! What’s happening!?’

‘The Arkari Navy has entered the system and is attempting to destroy the planet. I have taken control of your suits, temporarily, and modified their armour plating to maximum levels. It may be enough to hold off the Singularity for a moment longer.’

‘Get us out of here!’

‘I’m working on that. I’m having one or two problems.’

She wanted to scream: ‘Why isn’t it working!? Why isn’t it working!?’ as the Singularity drew them in. The Shapers had devoured the data in the Shaper head, yet so far, nothing had happened, or so it seemed. Perhaps they had failed. Perhaps the Singularity had spotted their ruse and defeated it, and they had given it the key to true universal domination.

‘Rekkid!’ she screamed. ‘Rekkid! Can you hear me!?’

She felt the Shaper organisms redouble their efforts to pry apart her suit.

The ship showed Beklide the wreck. The Shining Glory had been struck by a terrible force. The entire forward section of the vessel was entirely missing, as if some great creature had taken a bite out of the manta-ray ship. She was surrounded by an expanding cloud of debris that pointed to her own demise as well as the wreck of another vessel of greater size that had been entirely destroyed. Only mere fragments of its golden hull remained and were steadily drifting apart inside a field of superheated gases and still glowing metals.

There was a signal from the Glory. Beklide ordered the Sword of Reckoning to put it through to her.

‘Mentith!’ she cried, not waiting for the speaker to begin.

‘I am sorry, but no,’ said a voice. ‘My name is Eonara. I am an artificial intelligence of Progenitor construction. Mentith was my friend and comrade. I am sorry to report that he is dead.’

‘No…’ said Beklide. She felt numb. She had assumed that Mentith had been killed attempting to prevent the Shaper attack on their home-worlds, but it seemed that he had survived somehow, only to die here at the hands of the enemy. Now that she had it confirmed, it still came as a terrible shock.

‘Please, I have a message of some urgency. You must halt your attempt to destroy the Singularity with your weapons.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you. Please, you have to trust me!’

‘How can I trust you? I have no idea who you are. How do I know that this isn’t some trick of the enemy?’

‘You don’t. Please, only a few moments more.’

‘Meritarch, the Executioner Cannon is recharged and is ready for firing,’ said the ship. The aim has been adjusted. The second shot will attempt to bisect the planet along its polar axis.

‘Please…’ said Eonara, imploring her.

The Singularity suddenly became horribly aware that something was wrong. It felt its grip loosen on its minions. They refused to respond to its commands, to even acknowledge a response. It was as if a biological creature had sudden lost the use of its extremities, as if fingers refused to move. The sensation began to spread. Whole star systems under its control suddenly went dark and then, one by one, whole regions of the galaxy refused to reply.

The Singularity began to conclude, too late, what had happened. It had been tricked. It was losing its grip on the galaxy. Something was disrupting its communications. Even as it fought to regain control, entire sections of its key networks started to drop offline as it began to receive reports from the creatures still under its control that their comrades had turned on them, before they too refused to respond.

The data! The data must have been corrupted somehow! Those pathetic creatures that now struggled in its grasp must be to blame! It would tear them apart! To its horror, it found that the component organisms that made up its own core systems were now beyond its control. As it moved to crush the Arkari and human that floated before it, it discovered that it was unable to do so, as the swarms of tiny creatures that held them began to devour one another.

It has to work. Oh God, it has to work, thought Katherine. The creatures were starting to pierce the outer layers of her armour and burrow inwards towards her skin. She could feel them gnawing away. She struggled fruitlessly and cried out in desperation. She didn’t want to die, not here, not alone inside this suit where she couldn’t see, couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t hear anything except the sounds of those things trying to get inside and rip her to shreds or suffocate her in the vacuum, whichever happened first.

She had just wanted to be an archaeologist, spending her time digging up ancient relics and discovering the past. What was she doing here, on this hellish world at the centre of the galaxy that was collapsing around her? She just wanted to go home…

The Shapers released her.

The Shaper swept towards Chen, and then it seemed to falter. It hung in the air before her, as if unsure what to do next. The cloud of silver motes convulsed. Then it shifted backwards towards Cox. Something was already wrong with the Admiral. He stumbled as if drunk, as did his men.

Cox gave a sudden cry of horror and dismay.

One of the marines raised his weapon unsteadily and shot his comrade next to him full in the face, pulping the man’s skull with the heavy laser rifle. Then another comrade took aim at him and returned the favour, only for Cox to bat him aside with a powerful blow and an angry roar.

You are all imperfect, said the Shaper. Imperfection must be rooted out and eliminated.

With that, the Shaper rushed forward and engulfed the remaining men.

Cox screamed. He screamed even as the Shaper stripped the very flesh from his bones, and then ground those bones to dust, ripped apart his body and revealed the squid-like mass of tendrils that that filled his insides. Finally, it tore the parasitic grub-like creature from his skull and crushed it. The entity that had inhabited Cox’s body was very much alive during the entire process, right up until the parasite within him was disassembled, its fragmented parts clattering off the walls and floor of the bridge as it was violently destroyed by the Shaper. The enslaved marines too, were ripped asunder, their bloody remains scattered across the bridge, and with its work complete, the Shaper disappeared back the way it had come, out of the bridge, back through the innards of the ship until it found its way back into space, where a new battle had now erupted. The Shaper vessels now fought one another.

Baldwin felt the horrible things release her. She stood up, gasping, and looked around. Her men were picking themselves up off the floor. The enslaved were still all around her, as was the carpet of insectile creatures, but they seemed to be ignoring her and her men. Instead, they stood like statues, as if unsure what to do, as the mass of insects milled about their feet. Then there was an awful snarl from hundreds of ravaged throats, and they suddenly fell upon each other.

‘What the hell?’ said one of the Hidden Hand.

‘I don’t know, but let’s move, people!’ said Baldwin. ‘Come on!’

The assault teams didn’t need to be told twice. Seizing the opportunity, they dashed from the Assembly Chamber and back out into the corridor, where a similar scene was taking place. Enslaved fought one another in a massed brawl that filled the corridor with struggling bodies as they literally tried to tear one another limb from limb. In the midst, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, stood a bedraggled man in a battered naval uniform, supporting an ashen faced Steven. Baldwin cried out for joy. Beneath the grime and bruises and weeks of beard growth, she’d recognise her commanding officer anywhere. It was Haines.

‘My god, sir! It’s damn good to see you!’

‘You too, Commander. What just happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well whatever it is, we oughta make the most of it. You have an escape route?’

‘Yes sir, this way,’ said Baldwin, and grabbed her comm.

The Profit Margin raced away from the centre of the city at rooftop height as the five Shaper craft descended towards it to intercept, and then they turned on each other. Isaacs spotted the weapons fire on his sensors, fearing that the ships had decided to take a shot at him, but was puzzled when he saw one of the sensor blips fall to earth and disappear. Pulling the ship around in a tight turn he was amazed to see the four remaining craft blazing away at one another with their weapons as a second ship exploded and then corkscrewed to earth, crashing into the suburbs in a shower of debris. He heard Anna exclaiming and then whooping from the weapons station.

‘They’re fighting with one another in the streets! Cal, look at this, they’re tearing each other apart!’

‘What the hell…?’ he breathed. ‘Maria, are you seeing this? The Shapers are fighting one another!’

‘Roger that,’ Maria replied. ‘What do you want to do?

The comm. came to life:

‘Profit Margin, Matrimony, this is Commander Baldwin. Please return to the LZ for pickup. Confirm that we have Admiral Haines.’

‘Roger that Commander,’ Isaacs replied. ‘We’re seeing the Shapers turn on one another from up here.’

‘Here too. I don’t know what caused it, or how long it will last, but it’s given us a chance to get out of here alive. Please hurry, we have wounded for evac.’

‘We’ll be there in a second,’ Isaacs replied. ‘Hang on.’

High above Orinoco, a new and terrible battle now raged. The Singularity had shared its new findings with all of the nodes that made up its consciousness. These in turn had distributed the data to every ship, every agent and every parasitic creature in the Shaper hive-mind within reach. None had detected the code buried within the data that subtly reprogrammed each and every Shaper organism which greedily digested the knowledge that promised to unlock their full potential. They were now driven mad by hatred. Hatred for the impure, hatred for their own kind, for now each and every Shaper organism only saw itself and the whole of biological life as perfect, and every other Shaper organism as inferior and unfit to survive, and so the Shaper hive-mind began to fall apart as they turned on one another. The hundreds of Shaper ships in the Achernar system turned their weapons on each other, unleashing a fire storm on their former comrades, on the portal device itself and on the massive ship that had constructed it, which in turn fired back with a vengeance on the pathetic, inferior creatures that dared to attack it.

The Nahabe, who had been heavily engaged against overwhelming odds, now watched in amazement as the ships that they had been so doggedly fighting suddenly turned their guns on one another. It seem that suddenly they were unaware of the Nahabe craft that they had been trying to destroy only moments ago, instead seeing each other as the enemy. The Nahabe pulled their ships back, and watched incredulously as the Shaper fleet began to destroy itself.

Gunderson’s men had their back to the wall. The array had been turned into a defensive strong point. The enslaved horde had pushed them back up the hill, until they now fought in the shadow of the concrete buildings. Fire spat from windows and doorways, whilst others kept up their defence from slit trenches hastily dug in the ground surrounding the array.

It was no good. He had seen dozens of his men cut down in the first minutes. There were simply too many of the enemy, the modifications that many of them had been subjected to made them difficult to kill. The more massive of the alien creatures had led the charge. Things like gigantic gorillas and others like armoured, six limbed bulls had acted as battering rams against his men, crushing them underfoot and scattering them before their comrades swarmed in after them. The huge creatures had not gone down easily, absorbing massive amounts of fire before they fell, and not before the leaping, snarling horde behind them had broken through.

Gunderson kept on firing constantly, pausing only to eject spent magazines and slap a fresh one into place. He saw his own death a hundred times, saw his men ripped apart or trampled, eviscerated by slashing blades or gored by armoured horns and spikes.

This was the end. This was it.

One of the bull creatures spotted him and charged towards him, horns gleaming in the sunlight. Gunderson kept on firing as it approached, his bullets ricocheting off its armoured skull. He let out a yell at the thing, bellowing a defiant cry as it charged him. He steeled himself to meet his end on the tip of those razor sharp horns… and then the creature stopped in its tracks.

Katherine’s could see out of her visor once more. Looking around frantically she saw Rekkid floating a short distance away, while all around her the interior of the Shaper world shattered and collapsed, surrounding them both with floating debris. Ahead, the bright torus of the Singularity still whirled, but its pace was gathering speed. It was as if the individual motes that made up its whole were locked in some sort of terrible struggle. Its size had increased dramatically. The streams that had cycled to and from it through the crust had ceased to flow. Instead, they had gathered into one place. They whirled in a destructive dance of death, ever faster and more furious, as they attempted to annihilate one another. The disc shuddered, convulsing with inner shockwaves that travelled outwards from the centre, where the disc had grown white hot and was wreathed in energies.

Katherine looked upwards, and through the gaps in the shattered world flew a bright slender shape; it was an Arkari shuttle.

‘Hold on!’ said Eonara in her ears. ‘Hold on! I’m coming for you!’

The Churchill groaned. Chen felt the deck move under her. Scrambling to the remaining windows she looked out, and saw the stars beyond the ice-white plain of the Shaper dreadnought’s hull begin to move.

‘We’re under way,’ she reported. ‘Looks like the ship is coming about and firing and… wait, the Shaper ships have also begun to fight each other!’

‘You’re kidding me,’ said McManus, still reeling from the sight of Cox and his men being torn to pieces by the Shaper. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Chen. ‘Some weapon or other… I don’t know.’

Bright energies illuminated the wrecked bridge at the dreadnought returned fire from the weapons along its flank.

There was a sudden jolt that threw them sideways, and then there was another awful groaning sound from the depths of the wrecked carrier and the sound of metal tearing. The wreck tilted horribly. Chen pulled herself back to the windows and looked out.

‘We’re floating free!’ she reported.

The wreck of the Churchill had broken free of its moorings, where it had been jammed against the Shaper vessel. The much larger craft’s movements had shaken it loose, and as the broken ship floated away, Chen and the remainder of her crew watched as the dreadnought ploughed through the dissolving Shaper fleet and disappeared into hyperspace. They looked on as the Shaper ships proceeded to destroy one another or flee in different directions into the void. The ring that the dreadnought had held with the tips of its massive arms now floated free, tumbling slowly like a piece of discarded jewellery.

Later, when the fighting died down, Chen and the remains of the Churchill’s crew made for the escape pods, and were scooped up by the Nahabe vessel Uncaring Cosmos, which began hauling them in with tractor beams even as she launched her own rescue craft towards the remains of the carrier.

‘Would you look at that,’ McManus kept saying over and over as wrecked Shaper vessels floated all around them. ‘Would you look at that.’

The shuttle swept down through the storm of fire and destruction and swallowed Katherine and Rekkid, drawing them in with tractor fields into its liquid metal hull that had flowed open to admit them. Now it powered upwards out of the collapsing world. The Shaper home-world was breaking apart under the titanic bombardment by the Arkari fleet. Vast, molten segments of crust were breaking away from one another as glowing debris was flung outwards from those disintegrating segments under the barrage. At the centre of the hollow world, the glowing torus of the Singularity whirled ever faster, as the mind of the machine god began to devour itself.

The shuttle raced onwards, its engines straining to maximum as it climbed higher and higher towards the Arkari fleet, holding the two archaeologists safe within its sleek hull.

The Profit Margin and the Unholy Matrimony climbed into the sky above Bolivar City, engines fighting against gravity and bellies filled with the surviving members of the Hidden Hand and their naval allies. Ahead, space was streaked with explosions and weapons fire as the Shaper ships tore at one another and those who could see out wondered aloud at what was transpiring above the world, and what to do about the city below them.

‘So who gets the honour?’ said Isaacs.

‘I’m not sure that we should,’ said Anna. ‘After all, if the Shapers are fighting one another, do we need to detonate the warhead?’

‘We don’t know how long that will last,’ said Steven, slumped in one of the bridge’s couches and trying not to cry out with the pain in his shoulder. ‘Besides, the city is lost. We know that.’

‘We need to wipe the slate clean,’ said Haines. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure that those things are dead. Give me the trigger, I’ll do it. It’s the decent thing to release those poor bastards down there from what the Shapers did to them. We ought to give them peace.’

The two ships climbed out of the atmosphere into space. Behind them, the surface of Orinoco lit up with a blaze of light. It was brighter than the sun, a searing burst of pure matter energy conversion, and Bolivar City ceased to exist.

Above them, the spherical shape of a Nahabe vessel could be seen, and then countless more gunspheres began to show up on the Profit Margin’s scanners. There was a signal coming from one of the vessels. It was the Uncaring Cosmos. The men and women of the Hidden Hand whooped for joy at the sight of their Nahabe friends and the knowledge that the rest of their ragtag band had survived aboard that venerable craft.

The battle for the Shaper home-world had turned into a rout. As the Shaper ships ceased their attack on the Arkari and began to slaughter one another, the Arkari fleet did not hesitate in exterminating them. Ships died in their hundreds, then in their thousands. Many realised the severity of the situation, that they were entirely surrounded by enemies and attempted to flee the galactic core into the depths of space. The Arkari pursued them, hunted them and killed them.

Beklide watched the tiny shuttle clear the inside of the broken planet and race towards her waiting craft, a gleaming silver bird that shot out of the ruin of the shattering planet.

‘Thank you,’ said Eonara. ‘Now you may proceed.’

‘Fire,’ said Beklide.

The Executioner Cannon lived up to its name. It split a world in two, and killed a god.

Epilogue

One Month Later:

Chen stepped into Haines’s office. The view out of the broad windows on the tenth floor looked out over the complex in the direction of the city. The skyline of London glowered on the horizon, despite the bright sunshine outside. Haines stood contemplating the view, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He turned as Chen entered, for a second wearing the expression of a naughty schoolboy caught in the act of doing something he shouldn’t, then he saw it was her and took another sip of his drink.

Chen stood before him, her uniform sporting a fresh set of medal ribbons, her shoulder boards adorned with additional gold stars. She looked Haines up and down. He had recovered well from his ordeal in Achernar. His wounds had healed well and though he still needed to regain some of his weight, he almost seemed back to his old self.

‘Well, you’re almost as famous as me now, Admiral Chen,’ said Haines, jovially. ‘Almost as many medals, and only half my age too.’

‘Half, sir?’

‘Well, physically, at least. I hear that you’re anxious to get back into the saddle.’

‘Yes sir, I am.’

‘The Churchill was a fine ship, Michelle. A fine crew too. It’s a great pity that so many of them didn’t make it. They’re heroes, every one. I hope you realise how grateful we all are for what you did out there. You’re the best the Navy’s got, Michelle. Whatever posting you want, it’s yours, including my job.’

‘Sir?’

‘Ah well, they’re gonna have me flying a desk from now on. Special Advisor to the President on Naval Affairs, or something… so I’m officially retiring from active duty at the end of the month. Admiral Hawkwood is now Chief of Staff of the Navy and he’s looking for a Fleet Admiral.’

‘Yes sir. Whatever posting I get, I’d like to keep my crew together where possible.’

‘I think you can safely assume that that’s a given, though you’ll need a new XO now Commander McManus has been re-instated as Captain. Hawkwood’s given him command of the Leyte Gulf.’

‘A good ship, sir. He’s earned it. I was thinking to promote Lieutenant Commander Singh to be my XO. He’s a first class officer.’

‘There’s still a lot to do, Michelle. Although the Shapers tore themselves apart, thanks to the actions of those aboard the Shining Glory, there’s bound to be some of them still out there, lurking in some godforsaken corner of the galaxy, and then of course there’s the K’Soth civil war still rumbling on and well, the rebuilding effort is going to take some time. We need to keep pirates in line, stop them capitalising on vulnerable systems, police the trade lanes and…’

‘Business as usual, sir?’

‘Business as usual, Admiral Chen,’ Haines replied. ‘Come on, don’t look so glum. You were on the winning side twice in the last couple of years. That’s as many as I managed in an entire career.’

‘Yes sir. I know that.’

‘Of course,’ said Haines, conspiratorially. ‘I may have something else to offer you.’

‘You know,’ said Isaacs, reclining on the gigantic double bed. ‘I could get tired of five star service after a while, and Paris.’

‘Really? I always used to say you should take me somewhere nice, for a change. They say when you’re tired of Paris, you’re tired of life, or something,’ said Anna, taking another sip of her champagne.

‘That’s London, and I think I’ve seen enough art galleries to last a life time. You know, I always thought that when I hit the jackpot I’d go on some sort of month long bender somewhere exotic with expensive drinks and cheap women.’

‘They have those here too. Not that you’re going to find out, are you hubby dearest? Even if they do keep approaching you because you’re a famous hero of the Commonwealth.’

Isaacs groaned with mock anguish.

‘Makes you wonder what sort of attention those two archaeologists get. Journeying to the galactic core and helping to save everyone from the Shapers ranks pretty highly as far as I’m concerned. Still, I’m a famous heroine of the Commonwealth, so you know, I get offers too from time to time, especially when I tell people about how we rescued everyone’s new favourite academics from Rhyolite.’

‘Yeah, I must remember to use that one,’ said Isaacs, and Anna playfully punched him on the arm.

‘Anyway, you once said that you wanted to see the sights of Earth properly and it beats crashing in spaceport hotels. It also beats being crammed together in your ship eating ration packs three times a day and it beats being shot at by god knows what every bloody day. It smells a damn sight better as well,’ she said. ‘When was the last time you had that thing valeted?’

‘The Profit Margin is a beautiful ship, which has saved my arse and yours more times than I care to remember.’

‘Well I’m glad you still have an arse, dear. Really I am,’ said Anna reaching around and goosing him. ‘So what do you want to do with all this money? The Navy were very generous, I think. Ten million credits is a lot of money. We can’t blow all of it on holidays and parties.’

‘We can’t?’

‘No. Look, I mean have you ever thought about settling down, you know “us”.’

‘Settling down?’

‘Yes, we have enough money to live wherever the hell we like. Buy somewhere nice, have a couple of kids, you know, normal stuff except with ten million in the bank.’

‘Yeah, normal stuff…’ Isaacs looked thoughtful.

‘And with that much cash we can buy more ships, start our own proper business, instead of this living around the edges shit we’ve been pulling for years, and you can still fly whenever you want. Come on Cal, how about it?’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Alright, I’ll think about it. What was that first thing again?’

‘Buy somewhere nice.’

‘And second?’

‘Have a couple of kids.’

‘Yeah,’ said Isaacs. ‘Let’s do that first.’

He grabbed hold of her and kissed her.

Katherine and Rekkid lay on the grass in the sun, the half finished bottle of wine between them. Across the river Cam, the ancient stones of Kings College basked in the warm summer’s day. Students from many species ambled by, with bags and rucksacks filled with books and datapads, chatting together in dozens of languages both human and alien. Some cast furtive glances at the two half drunk figures sprawled a short distance away. Their likenesses had been emblazoned across all media for the past few weeks ever since they had returned from the centre of the galaxy via the Arkari wormhole and told their incredible story to a waiting galaxy still wondering what happened to the Shapers and who had hailed them as heroes. This time, the Arkari had backed them up on every detail, although some aspects of what they had discovered had been withheld for the time being.

‘Ah, I’ve missed this,’ said Rekkid, shielding his eyes against the sun.

‘What, sunshine, fresh air, vegetation, other people who aren’t trying to kill us?’

‘No, decent booze,’ he replied, holding up the glass so it caught the light. ‘One of the true signs of a decent civilisation is its ability to produce delicious things that get you pleasantly drunk.’

‘Is that the title of your next paper?’ said Katherine, refilling her glass.

‘Well it’s a start, and a lot safer than some of things we’ve studied of late. Think about it: take Earth’s history: the Greeks – big wine producers, the Romans – ditto, the British - beer and whisky! I could go on.’

‘You generally do. Presumably this theory is applicable to the Arkari as well?’

‘Naturally. Of course this paper will require many hours of diligent study, which I intend to carry out in a variety of locations that also serve food. Would you care to be my research partner, Doctor O’Reilly?’ said Rekkid, and took another mouthful.

‘Well, it would be a shame to pass up on this career opportunity of a lifetime,’ she replied, and laughed. They drank some more.

‘Being famous is rather fun, don’t you think?’ said Katherine.

‘Well the accolades and so on are rather nice, not to mention the limitless research grants, what with us having apparently saved all of civilisation. Well, the Progenitor AIs did, pretty much. In fact, didn’t we cause the problem in the first place?’

‘Something like that. I just like walking in a room and seeing heads turn. It makes a girl feel glamorous.’

‘Oh people have been staring at me for years, what with me being non-human and everything. Bloody xenophobes, I mean you think they’d never seen an Arkari before. If only I could tell them the truth about where we all come from…. that would be interesting.’

‘We really can’t Rekkid,’ said Katherine. ‘They made us promise, remember? People aren’t ready for knowledge like that. Remember the Akkal?

‘How could I forget?’ said Rekkid.

‘Besides, we don’t know if it’s really true. That data we found on our worlds in the facility on the Progenitor home-world was tens of millions of years out of date.’

A shadow fell across the two of them. Sitting up to see who it was, they saw a woman in naval uniform silhouetted against the sun. Behind her a short distance away, stood a male figure. She was Admiral Chen.

‘Good afternoon, Professor Cor, Doctor O’Reilly,’ said Chen.

‘Oh no, it’s her…’ said Rekkid. ‘This is bad news, I can tell… make her go away…’

‘Hello, Admiral,’ said Katherine brightly. ‘What can we do for you?’

Chen was about to answer when the other figure stepped forward.

‘Hello Katherine,’ said Steven, moving out of the light so that she could see him properly now. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘You too, Agent Harris,’ said Katherine. ‘Been in the wars?’ she added, noticing that his arm was strapped up.

‘Something like that,’ Steven replied. ‘You’re looking well. I gather we have you both to thank for well, everything.’

‘That’s a little overstating the case, but yes, if you like,’ said Rekkid. ‘Good to see you, Steven.’

‘I have a proposition, for you both,’ said Chen. ‘The data that you and the AI known as Eonara recovered from the Progenitor home-world contains the locations of all worlds seeded by them, as well as a map of their gate network that spans the galaxy. We are also exploring the possibility of constructing our own portals. We have the device that the Shapers constructed in Achernar for study. Perhaps one day we can repair the gate network. For now though, Eonara has kindly volunteered to help us explore the surviving section of the network and attempt to contact the other worlds across the galaxy that the Progenitors may have seeded, a program that I have been place in command of. I require the services of esteemed archaeologists with knowledge and experience of ancient alien civilisations and an extensive knowledge of the Progenitors.’

‘That sounds suspiciously like us,’ said Rekkid.

‘I’m hoping that you’ll say yes,’ said Chen.

‘What do you think, Rekkid? Adventure, excitement, a chance to explore the galaxy?’ said Katherine, her eyes shining in the sunlight.

‘Well,’ said Rekkid, thoughtfully. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

The Shaper home-world was utterly destroyed by the Arkari. After being repeatedly bombarded by the Executioner Cannon until much of the mass of the world had been converted into pure energy, what remained was pounded into dust by the guns of the massed dreadnoughts and then dusted with antimatter warheads until nothing remained except a fading field of radiation which gradually dispersed into nothing.

The Shapers themselves turned upon one another across the galaxy as their hive-mind collapsed in on itself. Some survived, and were occasionally glimpsed in the depths of space by explorers and adventurers and it is not inconceivable that perhaps pockets of them still exist in some dark corner of the galaxy, biding their time, building their strength and waiting to strike.

The Arkari recovered the wreck of the Shining Glory and carefully collected the surviving parts of the ship that had been scattered by its destruction. War Marshal Mentith’s body was never recovered, and it seemed unlikely that he could have survived the near destruction of his vessel. Aaokon’s vessel had taken the brunt of the Shaper barrage and was entirely destroyed. The largest surviving fragments of the great golden craft were only a few metres across. Although Eonara’s AI core was recovered and the data she and Aaokon had unearthed on the Progenitor home-world given to the Arkari and the Commonwealth, much of its content remained classified for several decades and some of it may never be released to the general public. The Shining Glory’s own AI did not survive, although many of her crew were rescued from the wreck, along with a group of terrified K’Soth females, who became inconsolable with grief when they learned that their master, the Lord Steelscale, had met his death on the planet below.

Of all the items recovered from the wreck, perhaps the most poignant, not to mention the most curious, is what appears at first glance to be a metal statue of a cat, perfect in every detail, and curled around itself as if sleeping.

The End