Authors: Greg Fish
“A little aggressive, aren’t we?” Steve exhaled.
“Oh yeah,” confirmed Dot without stopping.
Steve lifted himself out of the water and sat on the edge as Dot’s lips traveled down his stomach and her fingertips rested on his hips. With a delighted, confident smirk, she worked her way down with an amazing level of expertise.
On the other side of the hot tub, Ace pulled Christine out of the water and placed himself on top. He playfully teased her with the tip of his tongue, kissed the most sensitive spots on her body and drove her into a frenzy. As his head dipped between her legs, moans of lust and pure pleasure echoed across the chamber. They would continue for hours, mixed with soft growls from the males and the occasional primal scream of an otherworldly climax...
A soft buzz from a mobile device stirred Ace from his sleep. Next to him, Dot mumbled something incoherent in her slumber, wrapping herself tighter in the sheets. After satisfying their mutual urge for sexual experiments and an unhurried, light supper, the couples went to their respective bedrooms exhausted and satisfied. Ace and Dot crawled into their bed and promptly fell asleep until the sleek mobile device buzzed next to Ace’s ear.
With a disappointed, sleepy grunt, Ace picked it up and brought up a holographic screen with his e-mail inbox making a mental note to chew out whoever was disturbing him at this hour. He opened the message to find a series of disturbing images taken by a spy probe in the Dark Gods’ territory. He scrolled through the seemingly endless swarms of battle cruisers gathering way too close to the edge of the Nation’s territory. As he looked at the final image, he saw the spiny, spire-like temples of the aliens loaded onto massive chunks of space rock, obviously copying the Nation’s space cities.
The alien killer worms were coming.
[ chapter _ 041 ]
On the edge of a galactic arm, a typical solar system rotated around the galactic center as it had for billions of years. At its heart was an orange sun approximately the same size as the Earth’s parent star. It was an older, hotter star which was headed towards becoming a red giant and shrouding itself with a thick cloud of dust as it died. But it would still be millions of years until that phase and the star was still as stable as it has been since birth.
Grazing the star’s corona was a gas giant. Tidally locked to its parent sun, one of its faces was a maelstrom of vaporized metal and concentric circles of gas created by the solar winds. Its opposite face was a churning vortex of super-heated elements baked by the howling winds radiating throughout the planet. Auroras danced around the gas giant’s poles and a stream of matter spewed into space, torn away by the energy of the violent eruptions of the star’s corona triggered by the planet’s gravitational yank.
Much farther away was a second gas giant, this one much colder and far more peaceful. Whirlpools of beige and dark red gas swirled slowly around the equator, streaming into wide, rotating bands as the individual gas layers entered the hemispheres. The aurora at its poles was subtle and elegant by comparison with its superheated sibling.
It had two moons which were just slightly bigger then Mars. One of them had oceans of liquid water and wide swaths of land from which the unmistakable lights of a hyper-city emanated. It was the only city on the moon and the home of the Dark Gods. From its twisted spires, they ruled the galaxy and coordinated their armies. A million years ago, the Shape Shifters almost destroyed this world as their warships carried out their siege of Abydos. Just moments before the Guardians and the odd liquid ships that brought them could topple the temples of the Dark Ones, the Shape Shifters surrendered and the hyper-city escaped destruction by a miracle.
Acutely aware of how thinly their forces were spread, the Dark Ones considered their options. If they were to wait for the Nation to make a move, the cyborgs would most likely attack their home world and risk sacrificing theirs in a replay of what happened during the last Sentry war. Considering just how close to defeat they were at the end of that battle, they didn’t want to take the risk.
After spending many weeks in meditation around the Cube, they began to think that removing the relic from the City of Ghosts cursed them to repeat the grave mistake of the Shape Shifters and empower those who would one day acquire the power to destroy them. But there was a way out. They would take the Cube back to the accursed world of Abydos and wipe out the Nation before it had a chance to rebuild its forces to full strength and invade their skies. To prevent a counter-attack on their temples and capitol buildings, they would take them with their armada the same way that the Nation shuttled outposts in deep space. And to ensure that the invasion was successful, all six of the Dark Ones would personally supervise the mission.
In the heat of battle on Abydos, they would be safer than being sitting ducks in their city should the Nation try to emulate the Shape Shifters’ final attempts to save their empire. When the cyborgs were no more, they would return the Cube to its place and never tread in the City of Ghosts again. It was too dangerous to disturb the spirits of Sentries past, they thought as their armada gathered on the edge of the Nation’s territory and charted a course for the world that haunted their nightmares...
In the main chamber of the Temple of the Shades, the images shot by the deep space probe were displayed on a giant holographic screen. Sergio, Alice and Ace and his crew examined the menacing hordes of battle cruisers and gunships, focusing specifically on the temples of the Dark Gods mounted on asteroids.
“This is... it’s just weird,” mused Sergio, scratching his chin in deep thought. “I thought their forces were spread too thin and they’re struggling to defend their territory. What’s going on here?”
“I have a feeling that the Dark Ones decided to give up on trying to secure their territory and regrouped their fleet to go for the jugular instead,” said Dot. “By bringing their temples with them, they pretty much guaranteed that any counterattack on their home world would be meaningless and we’d have to stay here and stand our ground. If we try to invade their territory, we sacrifice Abydos so they have us trapped.”
“And the Dark Ones have to be in those spires,” seconded Ace. “They’re here to end it once and for all and because they hate this world so much, they’re here to see it burn with their own eyes.”
“So we need to start recalling as many destroyers, planet killers, space cities and Shape Shifter ships as we can,” sighed Alice. “And we need to get our fleets and remote bombs in orbit as fast as we can. If they’re about two days away, how big of a force does that give us? And is that enough?”
“We’re probably talking about three million units,” replied Dot. “They’ll have more units than us but then again, we have quite a few remote bombs we can use so hopefully, we can turn the tide with that. There are a few experimental things we can throw in too.”
“Ok,” nodded Sergio. “Now, how do we get Steve and Christine out of here?”
“Huh? Wait a second,” protested Christine.
“Yeah, what’s going on?” asked Steve. “We’ve been there for a mission to one of the Dark Gods’ capitol worlds, for the war with the Rexx and on a whole bunch of missions. How come we have to run away now when things are coming to a head?”
“We know you were there for Epsilon 88G,” said Nelson. “That was very stupid on our part to do. We weren’t thinking straight. You might be treated as military personnel, but from a legal standpoint, you are delegates from Earth. The arrangement under which you got assigned to the Nation hasn’t changed and in cases of imminent and assured harm, we’re responsible for your safety.”
“I know you probably don’t like this,” added Ace, “but you have to keep in mind the history the Dark Gods have with this planet and with us and how far they’re prepared to go. They reached out all the way to Earth to get at Nelson, Dot, and me. If we can’t hold our own, they’ll kill us and then practice killing humans on you. Then, they’re going to go back to Earth and kill as many humans as they can. Maybe, if they’re feeling curious, they’ll keep a few million alive and run some experiments on them until they get bored and kill them too.”
“It’s nothing personal, just Sentry business” shrugged Sergio.
A tense silence settled over the chamber. The humans looked at the surveillance probe’s images and calculated their chances. They knew that technically, they had no business being on Abydos when the Dark Gods would attack. But they were soldiers and to them, the anticipation of combat and being on the front lines of what was sure to go down in history as a legendary battle was like a drug, seeping through their veins and beckoning them to stay and fight.
“You know what...” started Dot. “I don’t think we can let Steve and Christine go.”
“Why is that?” asked Nelson.
“Because if we do and the Dark Gods see them, they might think that we’re escaping and hunt them down.”
“And if they don’t care?”
“And if they do? Then Steve and Christine are dead without the decency of being able to fire back when they’re attacked.”
“Ace?” asked Sergio. “Your thoughts.”
Ace glanced at the images of the spiny, menacing alien armada, then at Dot. From the look in her eyes, he understood what she was doing.
“I think Dot’s right,” he finally said. “It would be much safer if we were to put Steve and Christine in an XMOC and have them do what they’ve been doing all this time. I don’t want them to be hunted down and I don’t think an armed escort will help them all that much. And honestly, we can’t spare any ships.”
“All right,” surrendered Nelson. “Just trying to play it safe.”
“We’ve got two days, let’s see what we can do here,” said Ace, slipping into commander mode. “Start getting ready and let me know if you run into any issues with getting our MRDGs back here. I’d also like to start calling units three days out, see if maybe they could step on it and get here at the last second. I’m going to see if we can get a few more groups built in any nearby solar systems. Let’s get to work everyone, let’s get to work.”
In two days’ time, a vast fleet of the Nation’s ships backed up by immense hordes of shape shifting craft stretched for hundreds of thousands of miles around the dust cloud surrounding Abydos. On one side, a massive white sun, the star of the Nation’s home world, quaked with coronal mass ejections, some of them triggered by two gas giants in extremely close orbit. On the other side of the planet, a yellow star in the medium size range spun around its companion with a small clutch of planets of its own.
Shrouded by its vast cloud of dust, Abydos was shielded from the glare of both stars, yet received enough heat from its parent to keep its oceans liquid. Intense solar winds from all sides kept the dust cloud around the planet, stabilizing it into a sphere with a sharp, jagged surface, almost like the business end of an enormous flail. It’s mesh-like structure allowed the light from nearby stars to shine in the planet’s skies. Blue and green coronas danced along the cloudy spikes.
In preparation for the battle, the wispy arches of this dust cloud now hid countless IGFs, the second line of defense and cover fire to give surface based missile and laser systems time to aim at incoming invaders. Autonomous dark matter bombs circled the equator like an anxious swarm of sharks. The Dark Gods had a grueling task ahead of them. The Nation ensured that their siege would not be easy.
Sitting in the command chair of his destroyer, Ace eyed the huge fleet and tried to remember when he last saw that many warships in one place. Even during the expansionary wars, the departing armada was notably smaller.
“Just like old times, eh old fossil?” laughed Sergio as his video module appeared on the bridge’s vast panoramic screen.
“Who are you calling a fossil you escaped museum piece?” Ace shot back with a playful smile. “You’re enjoying this way too much. Right now, I’m not even sure we’ll live to see tomorrow.”
“I know! That’s what makes it so exciting! Like my great, great, great to the n-th degree grandfather used to say ‘come on you dogs, you wanna live forever?’”
“Actually, I do.”
Another video module with Steve and Christine appeared next to Sergio’s. Sitting in a vast control room of the space city, they looked as ready as always.
“Space cities are all set,” reported Steve. “Just give us the word, I’m dying to fire off one of those sixteen core IGF missiles.”
“Copy that,” nodded Ace. “How are you guys doing?”
“We’re good,” replied Christine. “I’m actually looking forward to it. You know, the whole survival of the species at stake thing and all... I figure we’ll all end up in history books whatever happens.”
Nelson joined the chat with an upbeat report.
“Just heard from surface defenses,” he said. “All systems go.”
“Great,” smiled Sergio.
“Hey Nelson, are you sure you want to do this?” asked Ace. “You know, if you don’t fight in the fleet it’s all right with everyone here. The High Council needs you. It’s your baby.”
“Yeah,” laughed Nelson. “But they’ll be fine. Eventually we all have to let our kids go. Remember how long it took me to let Dot go and live with you? I’m not worried. You’re my guardian and I have full confidence in you. I’m here for you and Dot.”
Ace folded his hands and bowed to his friend.
“Ace, Sergio, Nelson, Christine, guys, we got an ETA,” chimed in Dot, her video module squeezing into the crowded side of the bridge’s screen. “They’ll be here in just over two minutes.”
“Roger,” acknowledged Ace cracking his knuckles. “All ships, weapons ready, arm IGFs, missiles up, full power. Planet killers, arm booms.”
As his commands echoed through the fleet, millions of warships unlocked and armed their weapons, emanating the haunting red glow of their powerful guns. IGFs assembled into a crescent, ready to rush towards the enemy like a tsunami of miniature novas. Planet killers pumped more energy into their artificial stars, squeezing them into a smaller, hotter plasma furnace as bolts of energy surged along their booms. Space cities raised their giant laser cannons and opened their missile silos, the warheads of the missiles protruding in anticipation.