Storming Heaven

Chapter Twenty-Three

“My God,” Paula Handley breathed. “Just… look at it.”

The tiny transport had been gliding towards the ruined Killer starship for over an hour, yet she already felt overwhelmed by its immensity. It was the same, on the surface, as the starship she had helped capture, but it was clearly wounded and beyond repair. Great rents and gashes tore at the hull, leaving it exposed to the coldness of space. The eerie nebula-like glow of the murdered star cast strange shimmers of light over the black hull, half-convincing her that it was still alive. The advancing robotic probes, controlled directly by Technicals from a very safe distance, had already vanished against the hull. She only knew they were there from her HUD.

“Never mind that,” Captain Chris Kelsey said, through their private communications channel. He hadn’t been too pleased at having been drawn away from Star’s End and sent to the dead star system, but Paula suspected that he found the sight inspiring. It was proof that humans could kill entire Killer starships, even if the collateral damage was a little high. “What the hell did they do to the star?”

Paula shrugged. Unlike the Footsoldiers, she had a good background in stellar manipulation — at least in theory, since proper experiments were banned — and she had a fairly good idea how the supernova bombs had worked. It was something she had been warned, in no uncertain terms, never to discuss, although she was fairly sure that the information wouldn’t remain a secret forever. The more… isolated Community asteroids had their own scientists and access to humanity’s vast database of scientific knowledge. It wouldn’t take them long to deduce the operating principles of the supernova bomb and, if they accomplished that, they would be halfway to building their own. The hell of it was that Paula suspected that that wouldn’t be a bad idea. If every human settlement started building more supernova bombs, they’d be able to wipe out most of the known Killer star systems before they learned how to counter the tactic, or decided to complete humanity’s destruction.

But the politicians and the Defence Force commanders evidently didn’t agree with her. Her combat suit reported the presence of two full attack wings of Defence Force destroyers — a hundred and forty-four starships — as well as hundreds of survey probes and support ships. Only a handful of actual researchers, including herself, would be going into the Killer starship, but thousands more would be watching through the communications network. They’d soon start trying to issue orders to the people on the scene, as if they were nothing more than automated robots, but until then, Paula would be happy. It was all there for her to examine and learn how it worked.

She glanced down at the diagram from Star’s End, pasted over the view through her suit’s visor. The researchers were slowly unlocking the secrets behind Killer science, although there was still a long way to go, but they had mapped out most of the nooks and crannies in the captured starship. Assuming that the Killers had created all of their starships according to the same plans, they would be able to find their way around fairly easily, perhaps even find damaged components that the researchers would want to dismantle. The captured starship was unique — in theory, it was still in working order, if anyone could figure out the flight controls — but the broken starship could be taken apart at leisure. Paula couldn’t wait to get her hands dirty.

“Hey,” one of the Footsoldiers said. “Are you sure that this thing is dead?”

“As sure as we can be,” Chris said, flatly. They’d discussed it at some length before they’d slipped out into interplanetary space and ghosted towards the damaged starship. A human ship that had taken such damage would very definitely be dead — the crew would have uploaded themselves to the MassMind or died on the ship — but no one knew how resilient the internal structure of the starship would be. The Killers might already be using their nanotech to rebuild the ship, or another starship might arrive at any moment to recover the broken ship. “Take nothing for granted and watch your backs.”

Paula smiled, inwardly, as they began the long fall towards the Killer starship’s hull. There were researchers, even now, screaming their outrage that the first team onboard the captured starship included Footsoldiers, rather than additional researchers or their support staff. A year ago, Paula might have agreed, but after nearly being killed on the other starship, she was glad to have the Footsoldiers along. If the starship was just nearly dead, as opposed to actually being deceased, the Footsoldiers would be able to complete the job of killing it. Researchers or scientists would probably be killed by the same automatons that had threatened her life, two weeks ago. They certainly wouldn’t learn anything from the experience.

“Contact in ten seconds,” Chris said. “Nine… eight…”

Paula felt her suit jerk slightly as they touched down on the hull and broke through it. The hull shattered like ice, sending the team crashing through into the internal levels, filling the channels with random chatter as the shocked humans responded to the new threat. Everyone knew that Killer hull material was effectively impregnable; nothing short of a supernova would damage or destroy it. The fifteen men and women of the first exploration team had crashed through it as if it were made of fake glass. Shreds of former hull material crashed down around them.

“Keep it calm,” Chris snapped, sharply. “Paula; environmental statistics?”

Paula blinked, but complied, realising that it would help keep the team calm. “Only a tiny gravity field and a complete vacuum,” she reported. The mists they’d seen on the captured vessel had probably been blown into space or ignited by the fury of the supernova. It wouldn’t have mattered in any case. The mists were hardly a breathable atmosphere. “No local power signatures, but considerable amounts of hard radiation. Check your suits.”

She followed her own advice and checked the suit’s status. The Armoured Combat Suits could tolerate considerable degrees of radiation, and their internal nanites could heal any minor damage, but a long stay wasn’t recommended. The suit’s internal systems decided that three hours would be fairly safe, although they did warn that further exposure could prove deadly. Humans were engineered to be resistant to radiation, unless they were baseline humans from a religious sect that disapproved of such engineering, but there were limits. At some point, even the most perfect human form began to break down.

“All right,” Chris said. “We have two hours on this hulk. Deploy probes.”

Paula touched a control in her suit and launched a spread of tiny probes, which raced deeper into the ship, allowing them to chart out its interior. The damaged starship was awash in considerably more hard radiation deeper within the hull — it dawned on her, suddenly, that some of the radiation must have been funnelled into the heart of the starship by the armour — but the probes could go where no human could follow. There were also bursts of odd emissions further into the starship, although none of them seemed to be as… focused as any on the captured ship. The starship might be dead, she decided finally, but it was still bleeding out.

“Probes deployed, sir,” the Sergeant said, finally. “It doesn’t match.”

“No,” Paula agreed. It had only taken a minute to confirm that the interior of this ship was very different to the interior of the captured ship. Paula wasn’t entirely surprised. The Killers could manipulate matter and energy on levels humans could only dream of and it would have been simple to redesign the entire starship on a whim. There were humans who lost themselves within AI worlds, but the Killers were almost god-like; they didn’t need dreams to give them delusions of grandeur. They had enough power to dismantle half the galaxy.

“Just great,” Chris said. “Very well; team one, with me. Team two; follow Gavin.”

“Yes, sir,” Gavin said. “You lot; follow me.”

Paula found herself at the back as the Footsoldiers advanced carefully into the interior of the starship. Part of her wanted to be at the front, seeing everything as it just appeared, but the rest of her mind decided that the rear was probably safer, even though she was confident that the starship was dead. The captured ship still gave her the creeps — she was convinced that it was watching her and the remaining humans on some level — but this one was as dead as Earth itself. The interior was dark, lit only by flares of light as power cells discharged or glowed with radiation, giving it an almost spooky air. She was just relieved that there were no mists. That would have been almost intolerable.

“The gravity field comes directly from the mass of the starship,” she said, aloud. It was somehow easier to vocalise her thoughts. “It’s not caused by the starship’s power source.”

“Ah, the power source,” Chris said coldly. “Are you and your fellow researchers going to let us in on the big secret?”

“It’s not my decision,” Paula admitted. The research team had cracked that particular secret, only to find themselves confronting a thousand more questions. They knew what the Killers did, but how? “We do need to get down towards the rear of the starship, sir; we have to know if the power source is still there… ah, still online.”

Chris said nothing, but she knew he’d caught her slip. The Footsoldiers were far from stupid; they probably guessed the truth. It had been evident to her ever since their first encounter with the captured Killer starship, but humans being humans, the other researchers hadn’t wanted to believe her. It spoke volumes about just how advanced the Killers actually were, or how likely it was that they could track their lost starship to Star’s End.

“I found a column, sir,” one of the Footsoldiers said. “It looks to be dead.”

Paula stepped over to the column and scanned it. The amount of radiation inside the column shocked her and she stepped back automatically. Suit or no suit, if she stepped inside, she’d be dead within seconds. It was weird. The transparent unit had held part of the Killer controlling the starship, yet it hadn’t provided any protection against the deluge of radiation that had struck and disabled the starship. It made no particular sense to her, but at least it confirmed that the Killer was well and truly dead. The researchers suspected that the Killers would be far more tolerant of radiation than modified humans, but even their cells would be killed by such a flux. She almost felt sorry for the creature. It had died alone, far from home, after watching the planets it was supposed to be protecting torn apart by human technology.

And then she remembered how many humans had died at Killer hands and shook her head. The Killer had deserved to die, hadn’t it? Whatever had caused their insane crusade against all other races, there was no doubt that they had vaporised thousands starships and slaughtered hundreds of entire worlds. If humanity was the only race to survive their attentions, it spoke volumes about just how effective their campaign had been. How many races had been destroyed by the Killers? Did even they know how many they had killed?

“Leave it,” Chris said, shortly. “We have to get down to the power source.”

Paula dismissed the HUD display of the captured Killer starship as she moved further down towards the heart of the disabled ship. It was only confusing her mind and she couldn’t take many more deviations from the other ship. Instead, she watched as the radiation levels kept rising and falling, studying the burned-out components and corridors they were passing through, shaking her head in awe. The Killer starship should have been vaporised. Instead, it had barely survived — no, she corrected herself; it was still dead. It was not beyond salvage, perhaps, but it was definitely dead. If it had survived the supernova…

She remembered the images the Lightning had recorded, the massive Killer cities floating up, trying to reach clear space before their planet exploded below them. The Killers had an awesomely effective launch system, or so Captain Ramage had believed, but Paula suspected now that she knew how it worked. The weird radiation emissions from the dead planet confirmed it, even though the supernova wavefront had blown much of the burning gas into space. The Killers didn’t use drive fields. The Killers used…

The thought vanished from her mind as they stepped through the control centre of the ship. It was the first compartment of the new ship that was identical to the old and she felt a flash of Déjà vu, remembering how she’d killed the Killer and saved the entire team from being wiped out by the Killer automatons. The radiation detectors sounded the warning before they stepped into the compartment; there was enough radiation irradiating the interior to kill them all within minutes. Chris led them away from the compartment, slowly finding a new way around the radiation and down deeper into the starship, leaving Paula to muse on what had killed the alien. It was almost as if the Killer had tried to suck in the radiation and had overdone it… or had it meant to commit suicide? There was no way to know.

She found herself pulling up the diagrams of the captured starship again as they advanced down into the rear, preceded by the drones. This compartment was far more standard, although there were still odd differences. Very few of them seemed to make sense, at least to her, yet she had the feeling that if she had enough time to study them, she would understand what the Killers had been thinking. They stopped, weapons snapping into position, as they encountered one of the Killer automatons, but the device ignored them. It was trying to repair part of the ship, Paula realised, yet it was completely alone. The task would take it centuries.

Chris pointed a plasma cannon at its heart. “Should I?”

“Take it out,” Paula agreed. The automaton could become dangerous very quickly, or so she explained. “It’s only going to become a danger to us.”

Chris pulled the trigger and a searing burst of white light blew the automaton apart. “Got it,” he said. She heard the smile in his voice and rolled her eyes. There was no real skill involved in hitting an unmoving target at point-blank range. “I love having the plasma cannons back.”

“Don’t get used to them,” someone said, over the open channel. His voice was vague and slightly amused, as if he were joking to avoid the tension. “I heard a rumour that we might be sent to board more starships, with the same weird atmosphere and no plasma weapons.”

“Nonsense,” another Footsoldier put in. He sounded very definite. “I heard that they’re going to work on finding a way to ignite their atmosphere and blow the ship up. Hey, Paula, would that actually work?”

“We don’t know,” Paula said, finally. Truthfully, she had no idea if the idea had even been considered, but she suspected that the Killer starships were more robust than that. The detonation of their atmosphere might hurt, but probably not kill, unless some of the more interesting theories were accurate and the mists were actually part of a Killer mind. “We’d have to try it and find out.”

“Knock it off,” Chris snapped. His voice had become tense again. The other Footsoldiers sobered quickly. “We’re coming up to the power core now.”

Paula nodded, checking her internal sensors for possible dangers. The Killers had armoured their power cores with enough armour to contain a nuclear explosion, or perhaps even an antimatter strike. It suggested that they were worried about the dangers of losing power, for the armour alone would add to their mass and cost them additional power to drive the starship to its destination, but Paula — for once — could understand their logic. Losing control of the power core would almost certainly destroy the ship. She was happy to see the disabled ship, but… it should have been destroyed.

“I’m picking up low-level power readings,” one of the Footsoldiers said. Paula quietly confirmed his results, checking to ensure that the power surges posed no actual danger. It didn’t seem likely. There was barely enough power to light a match. The remaining power had been expended. “They seem to be on standby, or powering down. I’m not sure what they are and… I’m getting some very odd readings concerning the interior of the core.”

Chris looked over at her, his face hidden behind the black armour. “Well?”

“Give me a minute,” Paula said, examining the shielding surrounding the core. It was cracked and broken, bearing mute testament to the forces that had been unleashed in the starship’s hellish final moments. The power levels required to crack that shielding were nothing short of astonishing. “Here… no, stay back.”

She stepped forward, carefully, and peered beyond the shielding. Unyielding blackness looked back at her, yet when she activated her suit’s illumination and shone lights into the darkness, it revealed a vast spherical chamber, empty apart from strange distortions in the air. She ran a quick measurement with her suits sensors and concluded that the distortions were fading away along with the power readings. The Killer’s automated servants had saved the wrecked ship from complete destruction by pushing the power core out of reality, leaving it for the human race to salvage. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the humour of it.

“All right,” Chris said, angrily. He’d reached the end of his willingness to accept her silence… and she could understand his point. “No more games. What the hell is that thing?”

Paula suppressed an insane urge to giggle.

“Well,” she said, finally. “Not very long ago, Chris, it was a black hole.”