Authors: Greg Fish
He turned his attention to holographic screens floating around him, each with the face of a cyborg. Ace, Dot, Nelson, Sergio, Alice, all the big shots of the Nation were catalogued and profiled. Now, he made two more additions to his files, that of Steve and Christine. To the Reaper, their fate was sealed. He knew that they were destined to become Children of the Stars if not Shadow Demons. They were also the symbol of the Dark Gods’ ultimate fear. Humans from Earth who were ready to join the Nation.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he asked aloud. “All these humans are so young, not even close to their second millennium. And yet, virtually every one of them is a major threat. We knew it would come to this, we just didn’t know when.”
Behind him there was a low pitched grumble in reply.
“No, I don’t think Mai would be able to undermine their efforts. Any of her actions would probably cause the Nation to up the ante. I do think that getting her on our side is an accomplishment in itself. It means one less High Commander to worry about and she might even help us in the near future.”
Behind him, another rumble that resembled rolling thunder of an approaching storm. It was deep, echoing and reverberated in the vast, dark chamber.
“I have no clue what their strategy might be,” replied the Reaper. “But I would assume that they’ll go for surgical precision. We’re not the Rexx. They won’t be able to make their usual statement and they probably won’t even try. If what my sources tell me is right, they’re preparing to retaliate and they wouldn’t do that unless they had a few tricks up their sleeve.”
After a short pause, he added,
“Of course, I will deal with Ace personally since he’s my former student and my responsibility.”
Behind him, a giant, Dark God opened his huge red eyes which ignited with an infernal fire, surging with power. He stepped towards the dim light of the holographic screens, shaking the ground beneath with his tremendous weight. The light tried to reflect off his carapace which was so dark that it seemed to absorb the faint beams cast on it. In the faintly illuminated chamber, his vague shape was somewhat reminiscent of a super-sized T-Rex, fading in and out of focus. The Dark God opened its massive mouth. The faintly visible jaw was lined with enormous fangs. A forked, snake-like tongue rested between the muscular gums.
It roared. The thunderous sound shook the chamber as it spread and produced echoes, gathering ominous tones that would make any sane creature flee for its life the moment it registered the sound.
“Very well,” replied the Reaper as the roar settled down. He hit the very bottom of his scythe’s handle on the chamber’s floor and his red eyes flashed in confirmation. “And so we go to war.”
[ 003 ]
war of the sentries
[ chapter _ 030 ]
Perhaps the strangest thing about the imminent showdown between the Nation and the Dark Gods was the fact that only a tiny fraction of the galaxy was concerned about the war’s fallout. Even after leaving their marks across hundreds of thousands of planets, thousands of light years from their respective home worlds, both species barely touched the galaxy and its inhabitants. Over a trillion planets and hundreds of billions of stars made up the Milky Way. Hundreds of millions of species lived in every nook and cranny in which life could hold on, many of them nothing more than bacteria and vegetation; only a select few attaining sentience. The hundreds of worlds burned by the Dark Gods and the Nation were just an infinitesimal fraction of what was out there.
And yet, there were dozens of intelligent, space faring races with good cause for alarm. These alien life forms knew about the Sentries. Some have even been around long enough to witness their great wars in passing. They saw mysterious lights in their night skies, detected a few strange objects making their way through deep space and a few have even seen entire fleets headed for an enemy stronghold. Despite the fact that many advanced space farers worked with Dark Gods and the Nation on a number of trade agreements, none had never seen either of these species face to face. They just knew that these hyper-powers ran the galaxy like a mafia, collecting taxes and keeping those living in their shadows quiet and cooperative with the threat of unspeakable violence that could be unleashed at any moment. Unfortunately for the fans of the alien utopia theory, this is how the galaxy was run for over a billion years. Ultimately, all the power, wealth and resources belonged to the oldest and most powerful race around, a race known as a Sentry to its subjects.
Despite the brutality of the Sentries’ rule, having such powerful monsters claiming a galaxy as their turf was in the best interest of all other species. By fending off attacks from pillagers and keeping out intergalactic conquerors by either force or sheer intimidation, these Sentries created long periods of calm and stability for the rest of the galaxy they ruled. Evolution could do its job and intelligent species had enough time to build civilizations and set out into space. It was ironic to think that without the Dark Gods who wanted to reduce the Earth to an asteroid field, humans could’ve never appeared but that was exactly the case. Well aware of their position and their duties to their home galaxy, the Sentries contained their wars as not to kill off too many promising races in their conflicts. Strict, almost religious codes of conduct adopted by each new Sentry prevented them from going on a rampage to eliminate any possible competitors until they reached a quasi-Sentry status and tried to assert their power.
When the Sentries were almost inevitably defeated by a stronger, more ambitious species, they went into exile, drifting across the pitch black, trackless void between the galaxies for thousands of years. Often, they would try to start a new empire in another galaxy, going to war with the local rulers. In the intergalactic realm, the banished Sentries looked for a new territory to call home, warring with the masters of a distant galaxy or living in the shadows, suffering from nostalgia for their past glory and power.
Most exiled Sentries faced grim fates, slipping into stagnation as their civilizations crumbled and their species became extinct. But for some exiles, being cast out of their galaxy was just the beginning. A myriad of extragalactic voices whispered about alien titans ruling entire galactic clusters. Their grip on power was no small feat since the technology they used was a quantum leap above anything that a galactic Sentry would have. Traveling between stars was enough of a challenge as it was. Traveling between galaxies was over a thousand times more difficult. Eventually, both the Dark Gods and the Nation would have to encounter these cosmic overlords, but right now they were too concerned with each other. Their odds to survive after a defeat weren’t exactly what one would call encouraging.
A strange spaceship hovered a few thousand miles above the white, flowing glaciers of an icy world several times the size of Earth. This bizarre machine was built with what seemed to be utter disregard for symmetry and aesthetics. In fact, the word spaceship was the last thing that came to mind when looking at this shapeless, formless black blob with chrome tentacles chaotically wrapped around itself. But, oddly enough, this craft so reminiscent of a huge heap of scrap metal was a very close relative of the Nation’s sleek destroyers.
Several Dark Gods operated this craft from an airy control center deep in the core of the shapeless blob to which the craft’s long metal tentacles were anchored. A million years ago, the first armada of these ships darkened the skies of the world on which the Nation built its capital city and conquered the alien civilization which ruled much of this galaxy for over a million years before.
The previous Sentries were known as the Shape Shifters, an odd species which could change their bodily shapes on command. Their evolutionary origins and early history are poorly known mostly because little information on these subjects exists. Unlike the flamboyant and aggressive Dark Gods, the Shifters took charge of the galaxy with a light touch, ruling from the shadows. For eons, they nurtured many sentient races, including the giant killer worms which would become the terrifying Dark Gods that conquered their throne.
Ironically, these giant killer worms made a very similar mistake by experimenting with the Nation. As they discovered the creation of the Children, they caught themselves in an unpleasant double take and with the fall of the Shifters flashing in front of their eyes, they started to send warnings to the cyborgs. The Rexx were intended as a polite reminder that the Dark Gods wouldn’t hesitate to attack Earth if they felt it necessary. Mai’s attack was supposed to generate outrage, to infuriate humans and prompt them to send the Nation into exile.
Neither warning seemed to work. Now, Rexx Prime was stripped of its military hardware and its inhabitants were loyal subjects of the Nation. Mai’s scheme only helped the Child High Council to solidify its relationship with Earth and manipulate a key election. The Nation clearly understood the warnings and the real message behind them. It just chose to accept the challenge rather than shy away from it.
Now, the only option available to the Dark Gods was a military one. This is why two actual Dark Gods were in the cavernous, seemingly empty bridge made of smooth obsidian, keeping an eye on the huge holographic wall in front of them which projected what was going on outside of the ship.
The white and blue-gray planet below was a giant iceberg almost five times as big as Earth. Any bigger and this world would collapse under its own gravity. But as it was, it provided the Dark Gods with trillions of tons of hydrogen, enough to fuel their war machines. The craft in orbit kept a watchful eye on the slithering, spiny refinery that gathered millions of tons of snow and ice, melting its cargo into pure water and liberating the hydrogen with electric currents.
Then, it would force all the oxygen out of itself and cool its load of hydrogen into a liquid form. After filling its bins, the refinery would travel to military bases where the hydrogen would be modified into a mix of deuterium and tritium necessary for the fusion process which acted as a throttle for the collisions and explosions inside the reactors of their warships.
The two Dark Gods piloting the craft were resting on the floor of the bridge, their giant bodies coiled in on themselves and their wide heads with a crest of saber-like spikes rested on their tails. They had no arms, only thick, muscular legs similar to that of a tyrannosaur on primeval Earth, complete with killer claws. With low pitched purrs, they talked about the humans, including the cyborgs in their definition of the word human. Like most of their kind, they saw the Nation as a spreading virus infecting all of space. They praised their rulers for recognizing the mistake of creating the cyborgs’ empire and willing to fix this mistake once and for all.
Suddenly, an alarm interrupted their conversation. The ship’s sensors detected something very strange in the vicinity. It was an oblong shape screaming towards them at an insane speed.
Seconds later, a giant cylinder with a domed tip and glowing red engines warped into focus, heading straight for the planet. It was a jet black structure with no markings and without a corkscrew trail of the typical space missile propelled by electromagnetic fields.
As the Dark God ship darted forward to intercept, the top half of the cylinder shattered into pieces, revealing sixteen IGFs traveling in interlocking concave joints. The joints and the massive engine which carried them here, exploded in unison with a blast powerful enough to shove the bizarre blob with tentacles several thousand miles away from the huge missile.
The IGFs came to life and zoomed towards their targets below in a fascinating display of precision targeting. Before entering the thick atmosphere of the planet below, they automatically adjusted their trajectories to slam into the ground with the maximum amount of force, triggering two hyper-dense pieces of matter inside to collide at nearly the speed of light.
Coming down like meteors, the IGFs raised towers of ice, snow and rock high into the air. Inside the hollow spheres, two incredibly dense pieces of matter created by a powerful laser array housed in the IGF’s thick shell collided. Even though they were denser than any other form of matter in all of the known universe, they behaved like droplets of thick, black liquid as they wrapped around each other and fused into a highly unstable and extremely energetic micro black hole.
Before the towers of snow and ice launched in the air by IGFs on impact had a chance to start falling down (mere milliseconds on this high gravity world), two focused beams of red light rotating around a common axis pierced through them. Just a fraction of a second later, the black holes collapsed one by one, sending out blinding flashes of white light. When the light from this event would reach worlds hundreds of light year away, the aliens who would see this bright flash would mistake it for a small nova. As the blinding light faded, it revealed monstrous mushroom clouds rising to the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
Every blast sent out a horizontal avalanche of white plasma with a terrifying blast wave which stripped millions of tons of mater from mountains and carved out valleys from plateaus. For several seconds, the entire world was obscured by the mushroom clouds and the tsunamis of vaporized material thrown high into the sky by the blast waves they sent out.
As the explosions began to dissipate, meandering rivers of superheated magma appeared all over the surface. The IGFs cracked right through the miles of ice which chained the planet’s core, kept red hot by the gravitational tugs of the planet’s neighboring gas giants. As the rivers of magma melted giant ice sheets, vast clouds of steam enshrouded the planet in a fine mist of water vapor.