The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO
GENERAL NALANI KEAH

As commander of the Confederation Defense Forces, Nalani Keah knew when the battle was lost, whether or not she wanted to admit it. But leading the CDF involved more than just numbers and analyses. She had a heart, too, and fiery passion, and she knew damn well she was never going to give up.

The roiling shadow cloud hung in space like a stain on the universe. Even though the gigantic Shana Rei cylinders did not move, they seemed to pulse out waves of chaos and disaster.

Two verdani battleships again hurled themselves against the ever-growing nightshade, but the obsidian hex plates were more than just opaque: the darkness seemed to drain life itself from the huge treeships.

And the eclipse barrier continued to drown the whole planet in darkness. The worldforest was dying.

Klikiss robot vessels streaked out from the dark nebula like attack dogs. On the Kutuzov’s bridge, Keah sounded battle stations and summoned her scrappy Manta cruisers into defense formations. “The bugbots are after our asses again—let’s show them what scrap metal looks like.”

The rattling call to arms made the pulse pound faster, the adrenaline flow.

The black robots attacked at random points, caused whatever destruction they could, and then retreated into the shelter of the shadow cloud. The CDF had destroyed dozens of the enemy ships, but they kept coming! How many armored vessels did the damned bugbots have? Did they keep replenishing somehow?

Standard CDF weapons did little or nothing against the hexagonal plates or the Shana Rei cylinders, but at least the robots were an enemy her people could fight. It did her soldiers good to blow up a few bad guys every once in a while.

“Mr. Patton, power up the magnetic fields on our railguns. Let’s get rid of some of those spare projectiles we’ve been hauling around.”

The weapons officer grinned. “My pleasure, General.”

The Kutuzov thrummed as a blizzard of high-velocity projectiles sprayed across space, turning three oncoming robot ships into metal confetti. The other enemy vessels spread out in evasive courses that—because they were robots—were not quite random enough to fool Keah’s tactical team. They anticipated the paths of the robot ships and sent out another spray of projectiles.

Yes, it was good to blow up a few bad guys every once in a while.

Keah’s green priest looked up from his treeling with a horror-stricken grimace on his face. “General, I think the worldforest is under attack!”

“That’s old news, Mr. Nadd.”

“Not the Shana Rei—it’s… faeros!”

The Kutuzov’s imagers were focused on the nightshade, the Shana Rei shadow cloud, the attacking robot ships, but when the General scanned down at Theroc, she saw a cluster of shooting stars roaring toward her from below, streaks of fire like the ones that had caused horrific devastation during the Elemental War. They had hammered the worldforest, caused tremendous destruction to Ildira, and shattered the Earth’s Moon into a million fragments.

“Oh, crap. I could have gone my whole day without seeing them again,” she said. “All ships, prepare to defend against the faeros!”

“But… how, General?” asked the first officer.

Good question.

Like fiery comets, the faeros hurtled out of the Theron atmosphere, leaving sooty trails behind them as they rushed toward the defensive line.

“They’re coming right at us, General,” yelled Tac Officer Voecks.

“Brace yourselves!” Keah said.

At his treeling, however, Nadd’s expression changed from terror to confusion. “Wait, General, they’re not… attacking. Something happened down there—none of the green priests can understand it.” He blinked in surprise. “Prince Reyn says the faeros are here to help.”

The molten cannonballs rocketed past the CDF battleships as if they weren’t there and headed straight for the gigantic nightshade blocking sunlight from Theroc.

The first two fireballs splattered against the interlocked black hexes, and the impact spread across the eclipse barrier like napalm. Even though CDF ships had been bombarding the nightshade without success for days, the faeros shattered some of the hexes. Dazzling cracks began to show between the plates, as long-blocked sunlight streamed through the gaps.

Another fireball slammed into the eclipse plate near where the weakening verdani treeships had been trying to rip it apart. The force was sufficient to dismantle a wide segment of the occultation barrier. Even more sunlight flooded through, carving a bright blade of daylight across the night-smothered planet.

In response to the unexpected threat, the black Shana Rei cylinders finally began to move. The huge battleships spilled out dozens more hex plates that twirled in to rebuild the nightshade as fast as the faeros could destroy it.

An explosion shook the Kutuzov, and Keah held on to her command chair to keep from being thrown to the deck. An attacking robot warship soared past, launching another volley of weapons at them.

“No significant damage, General.”

“That’ll teach me to drop my guard,” she grumbled. “Now let’s teach that bugbot a lesson of our own. You soldiers aren’t getting paid to watch the faeros do our fighting for us—come on.”

Mr. Patton wore a hard grin as he aimed the railgun launchers. He fired a projectile right up the exhaust port of the escaping robot ship, which blossomed into wreckage. The bridge crew cheered. More Manta cruisers chased after the remaining black robot ships as they scrambled back toward the shadow cloud like a child hiding behind its mother’s skirts.

Her sensor chief cleared his throat. “General, this is probably the last thing you want to hear, but I’m detecting a large group of inbound ships. Are we expecting company?”

“Not unless one of my Grid Admirals is acting independently.” General Keah had not called for any CDF reinforcements, which would have proved useless. “How many ships?”

Lieutenant Saliba ran a quick analysis. “Forty-nine, sir.”

“Then there’s your answer.” She felt a palpable relief.

After Mr. Aragao opened a comm channel on the standard Solar Navy frequency, Keah leaned forward. “Z, I think you’ve been watching old Earth cavalry movies. I’m pleased you can surprise me after all.”

Adar Zan’nh’s face appeared on her screen. “The Mage-Imperator’s consort told us Theroc was under attack. As you’ve said many times, General, a good military needs to practice in order to remain in peak fighting condition.”

“Practice away, Z! I hope you brought more than one functional sun bomb this time.”

Zan’nh nodded. “Each warliner is equipped with ten. Do you think that will be sufficient?”

“One way to find out,” she said.

The faeros fireballs continued pounding the nightshade. Looking oddly out of place, the gaudy Solar Navy warliners cruised ahead with angular fins extended. When the Ildirans launched their sun bombs, the result was like a recreation of the Big Bang. The Kutuzov’s screen filters dimmed protectively as one small nova after another erupted against the flat expanse of black plates.

The forty-nine warliners launched their second rounds even before the first had finished exploding. Sun bomb after sun bomb exploded against the occultation barrier, and at last the opaque wall fell apart into thousands of individual hexagons, which tumbled loose through space. The substantiated matter of the hexes dissolved back into nothingness, like shadows vanishing in the dawn.

As soon as the nightshade began to crumble, the faeros fireballs sensed that part of the burden had been lifted from them. They flew away from the broken barrier, but rather than flitting off into open space, they streaked toward the shadow cloud. The hex battleships were already diminished by the ruin of their nightshade.

As the flaming ellipsoids provoked them, the Shana Rei launched the first active weapons that Keah had seen. A mouth opened at the flat end of the hexagonal shafts to vomit out a gout of black static.

The manifested shadow struck and engulfed the first faeros, wrapping around the fireball like a shroud, coalescing and darkening. The black cocoon cracked and trembled. Dark orange lines shivered through the inky skin as the faeros struggled, but gradually it died like a candle flame starved of oxygen.

Another gout of black static engulfed a second faeros, but with each weapon launched, the Shana Rei hex ships seemed to diminish further, as if creating the darkness required immense effort and energy.

And then many more faeros swarmed toward them.

The fiery ellipsoids pursued the retreating hexagon ships into the shadow cloud. Streaking in, the fireballs intensified, as if about to go supernova, inspired by the Ildiran sun bombs.

Klikiss robot ships buzzed around before wheeling back to the safety of the shadow cloud. The dark nebula contracted like a folding fist, and the last of the robot battleships disappeared into it.

The Shana Rei retreated into the tear in space, slipping between dimensions, and the remnants of the shadow cloud swirled like smoke being sucked into an exhaust vent. Then they were gone from the Theron system.

The last remnants of the nightshade crumbled and vanished, ending the eclipse. The surviving faeros flitted about like sparks in an updraft before they shot away into space.

“Guess they didn’t want to stay for the victory party,” Keah muttered, then raised her voice. “But we sure as hell are going to have one!”

Nadd the green priest wept openly. Even the Ildirans aboard the Solar Navy ships were excited. The comm officer was already relaying a congratulatory message from King Peter and Queen Estarra.

General Keah wanted to make some kind of inspirational victorious comment on their victory, but it was unnecessary. Her crew kept yelling and cheering. She decided that she owed Adar Zan’nh another one of her historical ship models. In fact, after today he could take them all.