Ragnarok 03 - Resonance (41 page)

When the war leaders reconvened, eight of them floating in a circle surrounding Kenna at the centre, they raised their arms and tuned their minds to the crystalline armies standing to attention on those silver and crimson pseudo-continents
banding the globe, to the eight waves floating ready across the solar system, and for a time they became one being, unifying their purpose: protecting life, protecting the galaxy.

We fight until we win.

Or die.

It was thought and emotion combined, shared and uniting them all. Then every warrior raised a weapon and transmitted a single intention:

Win.

Nine times nine billion warriors were ready for the fight.

For Ragnarökkr.

SIXTY-TWO

SHADOW GATE AT HALO'S EDGE, ARCHAIC GALACTIC ANTI-CENTRE, 1005300 AD

The galaxy had continued to rotate, but the jet had not, relative to distant stars: it still pointed in the direction of Auriga, though Valhöll-once-Earth no longer lay exactly on that radial line. The enemy's bridgehead linked the dark-matter star at the galactic core to the intricately structured dark-matter halo enclosing the galaxy like an eggshell.

A black bridge from intergalactic space stretched from beyond a distant void all the way to the galactic core: so long that it would take photons hundreds of millions of years to travel from end to end. Beyond the galaxy's halo, it was thick and intricate and strong; inside the galaxy proper, its narrower presence could be sensed only by the spotter squadrons, deep space reconnaissance groups composed of Haxigoji warriors, their crystalline bodies resonating with the zero-point energy of spacetime itself, needing no ships to fly, no more than fish needed assistance to swim.

Among the living-crystal Haxigoji were crystalline Seekers, entangled in constant communication with their brothers and sisters, remaining alert for hostile feelers along the hyperdimensions, for the Anomaly had also enjoyed a million years in which to prepare: the darkness was not without allies among the baryonic-matter entities of the galaxy.

The location where the jet ended was designated Shadow Gate, and unless something unexpected occurred, this was where the battle would begin. For all the timescales involved in reaching this moment, no one expected this to be
an extended campaign: this was a single confrontation, with everything at stake.

When Schenck's renegades of distant memory had tried such a strategy in a different universe, they had failed and died; luckily they were the enemy. Here in realspace, Kenna and her fellow war leaders intended to do better.

The first test was upon them.

It was darkness with structure: a three-dimensional moving maze of invisible matter and energy falling upon the spotters and the lead warriors of Roger's army: phalanxes of crystalline fighters floating in space, some in human form, others morphed into dart-like shapes, all trained to lay down devastating fire by cracking apart raw vacuum, by letting rip with zero-point energy.

The greater darkness was here.

—Now.

Warriors attacked.

Explosions and death were everywhere.

Around the fiery end of that great spindle, the galactic jet emanating from the core, spacetime burned, and gamma- and X-radiation spurted like blood, while squadron after squadron threw themselves against the dark, complex structures of the enemy: a ghost creature or creatures wide enough to devour stars, crawling along its black bridge from who-knew-what dark-matter hell, pushing implacably on into the precious galaxy, advancing despite its wounds and losses, for the squadrons
were
damaging it, that was certain, even as they died.

An honourable death is still extinction.

—Fall back.

Roger had delayed as long as he dared, but to lose his entire vanguard was not his purpose. A huge mass of darkness, all right angles and hollows, was growing large before him; standing on his shield, he focused along his spear and used it to direct his vacuum-splitting beam, gamma-rays and sapphire
light spilling everywhere. Then he tipped back, whirling through a vertical half-circle, crouched on his shield as he accelerated hard.

Angular dark extrusions grew on either side, soundless yet seeming to clatter into place, attempting to enclose him; but he swung his glowing spear and spacetime shimmered and the darkness shrivelled back, unable to touch him as he flew to rejoin his retreating army.

Angular extensions of darkness were expanding to follow but that was all right because they had hoped for something like this.

—Having fun, brother?

—Wonderful, sis
.

Freya's death squadrons came hurtling in from Roger's left, screaming out of spacetime distortions like sapphire starbursts, and they tore through the darkness-extrusions, breaking them apart. Complex angular structures of non-matter tumbled off, twisted and bent, apparently inert.

Suddenly they returned to life, those fragments; but Freya had foreseen the possibility and a hundred more squadrons followed, taking the smaller structures apart, wielding zero-point energy with exactitude, obliterating the enemy offshoots.

A partial victory, so early on, built confidence.

But the greater mass of darkness was still advancing.

Magni's people materialised then, glowing blue and directing destructive energy back along the length of the darkness, but still it came. And then space was glowing the colour of sapphires, and the best part of a hundred worlds shivered into existence, transported by an unimaginable spacetime distortion.

It was all the hellworlds, linked together and teleporting into place.

The Anomaly joining the fight.

And it reached out through the hyperdimensions into the
crystalline warriors' minds, eager to absorb them. It was Magni who sent the desperate call.

—Harij! We need your army now.

Seekers were everywhere among the squadrons, but this threat was something that Harij's people needed to face together. In his original life, Harij had been the first to break Anomalous links; now his Seeker battalions fell upon the hellworlds, disrupting the distortions that were subverting human warriors and killing Haxigoji.

They died in their millions, those diving Seekers; but in doing so, they split apart the links, separating hellworld from hellworld. Finally, they reached a critical phase transition in the Anomaly's destruction, like a neurotoxin preventing the chemical flow of thought; and every one of those planets exploded in time, but at such a cost.

The Anomaly was dead for ever.

And so were five million Seekers or more. Kenna sent out her questing thoughts with increasing desperation, but no answering resonance occurred, no response to the ping.

No trace of Harij.

Around the glowing line of the galactic jet, Roger and Gavriela and Magni's forces were falling back, retreating towards the galactic centre, employing ever more frequent hyperdimensional jumps as the great mass of darkness chased them: somehow the dark vanguard dragged itself faster than lightspeed towards the core.

—Break off now
, Kenna commanded from a distance.

She turned to her massed battalions: nine billion crystal warriors blazing with reflected light, floating in formations like quivering arrowheads, close to the centre of the galaxy they were sworn to defend, while a billion suns shimmered all around.

—This is our time, warriors.

Nine billion hands raised nine billion spears.

—Now.

They streamed out along the galactic jet.

*

Warfare is fractal, self-similar at every scale, a truth Kenna and Roger, as one-time Pilots in the ancient past – and Freya, given her own mu-space origin – had always known, deeply and intuitively.

To follow a skirmish or a continent-wide campaign is to understand geometry and weakness, aggression and failure, in a way that translates to two creatures fighting with claws and teeth, all the way up to a battle whose field is a galaxy, the fate of billions of stars and baryonic-matter life itself the prize.

But simulation and practice, even across a million years, were not the real thing: this was many times worse and more horribly exhilarating than any had imagined, even Kenna with her knowledge of other destinies, of infinitely many modes of failure.

The battle raged along the fifty-thousand-lightyear length of the galactic jet, and it was magnificent as much as it was tragic; because everybody dies, but how many get a chance to spend everything in a cause and setting such as this? Forget mythology: they
were
gods, and they knew it; and everything boiled down to this: defeat the vastest of enemies or let the galaxy perish.

Kenna would not allow that to happen, and neither would her warriors.

They gave their lives by the million, by the billion.

But still it came, the darkness.

—Fall back. Disperse.

No ruse this time: not the order Kenna had wanted to give. It advanced like a galaxy-devouring worm along the pathway defined by the glowing jet: the titanic darkness that was angular and complex, perhaps infinitely so, pouring onwards towards the centre. Legions and battalions of Kenna's finest warriors were beaten back and fell away, meaning only one thing: the beginning of the end.

Shimmers of blue grew around the darkness, surrounding it. Then new, unexpected forces spilled out into view:
crystalline creatures with jagged wings, angular and strange, a billions-strong army great enough to change the momentum of the battle, led by the war leader who had been missing from Kenna's awareness since Roger's vanguard engaged the enemy at Shadow Gate.

Kenna's prismatic face split into a rainbow smile.

—Dmitri-Stígr. You
are
the Trickster.

The reply came resonating back.

—More than you know, War Queen.

Kenna had believed that the darkness would reserve its worst horrors for any who betrayed it. Could this be the critical miscalculation leading to her armies' defeat?

Perhaps Dmitri had waited until now in order to be sure of which way the battle's momentum went. To determine which side was the more likely winner, having devised some way of avoiding destruction by the darkness. Now, as he directed his forces to the attack, his analysis would be the same as Kenna's: that
likelihood
was a weak term for the virtual certainty of victory that now obtained.

His Siganthian-derived warriors fell upon Kenna's forces, killing multitudes.

I trusted the Betrayer.

Kenna bent her head and concentrated, linking to her six war leaders that remained: to Roger and Freya at the galaxy's periphery, to Magni and Gavriela halfway along the jet's length, and to Sharp and Rathulfr, whose forces were still standing off, ready to swoop at the opportune moment – except that Kenna no longer believed the moment would come.

—We are lost
, she shared with them.

Overwhelming desolation suffused her: the pseudo-memories of all those other realities, that infinity of failures; and now this, here in the only physical reality, the only true life, that she would ever know.

Failure, bitter and total.

While the galaxy and every lifeform in it paid the price.

SIXTY-THREE

HOME GALAXY, 1005300 AD

Rathulfr moved through space, making distance between himself and his personal squadron, then bent down upon his floating shield, concentrating hard, creating total focus. In a moment, his questing ping was answered; and the tone of Dmitri's reply was mocking:

—How goes it, brother mine?

Rathulfr's crystal face hardened into diamond.

—I killed a poet once, Trickster. He reminded me of you
.

Again, sneering amusement coloured Dmitri's thoughts:

—Poetry? I'll give you a poem. Listen to my saga of death, my epic of destruction.

—Wait, Dmitri . . . The darkness will kill you. You must know that.

—Actually, that's not our agreement.

In vacuum, Rathulfr snarled without sound. So one touched by darkness in a previous life could communicate with it now. It followed from everything that Rathulfr knew of Dmitri's nature, and of Stígr before him, long dead.

—Kenna trusted you
, he told Dmitri.
She trusted you, the Trickster.

—That's her fault, brother, wouldn't you say? Why would anyone who knew me actually believe in me?

There was a smile on Rathulfr's face now, and it was grim.

—Why indeed
, brother?
Why would anyone?

—What do you . . .? You bastard!

Rathulfr, floating in vacuum, laughed.

—Meet my
berserka
regiments. And give my regards to Hel.

His secret force of carls, trained to fight as only he could teach them, burst out of their hyperdimensional hiding-places
and fell upon the Siganthian-descended creatures of Dmitri's army. Those carls were strong and skilful, fast and courageous, able to fight as units or individuals, commanding zero-point energy with a daring no others could match; yet that was not what brought them victory.

It was
berserkergangr
, pure and simple, controlled at will, that rendered them superlative killers. They flew to contact, they fought, and Dmitri's demonic army died, and that was that.

Rathulfr gave the command to his personal squadron.

—With me.

The rest of his army would remain in place, ready for the signal to commit. But he would need to fly himself to the galactic jet where the Trickster's forces were dying, because there was one task Rathulfr needed to carry out in person.

Dmitri's head was his.

It bought them time, no more. Gavriela and Magni were deep in conjoined analytical thought, keeping track of their swirling forces around the mid-point of the jet, fighting not just the great extrusions of the darkness, but something new: split-off extensions, hard to perceive in their angular complexity, fighting like soldiers in their own right.

Dark hordes upon hordes, though whether they were individuals or cell-like components, as the dead Anomaly had once subsumed organic beings, it was impossible to tell.

Gavriela's resurrected warriors, her beloved Einherjar, and those of Magni's people who had remained in this galaxy to fight, did their best against the growing force. But the darkness was increasing in strength, pouring ever more strongly along the bridgehead.

Roger and Freya were still in the midst of fighting, though they had fallen further back again, too busy for the greater strategic picture. Sharp, whose warriors could most clearly perceive the shapes of the darkness, led the only army holding back; but soon enough, lacking a clear target, he
would have to let his fighters loose regardless.

They might at least damage the enemy, just a fraction, before succumbing.

—We're losing
, Gavriela told Magni.

—I'm afraid you're right.

Her crystalline face grim, Gavriela said the thing she had been holding back.

—Your people should get away, Magni. Join the others who've fled the galaxy.

For a long moment, Magni seemed to think about this; and then he smiled.

—That would be sensible, wouldn't it? But the sensible ones left long ago.

Finally, Gavriela smiled back.

—I've had enough of directing from afar. Time to fight?

—Now I know what Roger sees in you. Yes, time to fight.

From their commanding positions, they soared towards the main battle. After a split second to react, their personal squadrons followed, some of them smiling their hard, crystalline smiles.

This was what they had lived and trained for.

But ninety per cent of their fellow warriors were dead already: none of these fighters retained delusions about what they were flying into. This was death. The question was, how much damage could they inflict before they were done?

Now they would find out.

Then Gavriela and Magni were in the midst of it, blasting with zero-point energy in all directions, destroying creatures or extensions of the darkness, whatever the dark warrior-things were: killing them and killing them, while still the darkness poured onwards like a torrent. It was implacable, and when it finally reached the centre of the galaxy, it would lock in place and strengthen, and the black bridge would be in place forever.

Now, for Gavriela, there was only the fight.

As she became the death-bringer.

Fight. Then die.

So simple, in the end.

Dmitri, flying free of his demonic legions to face Rathulfr alone, began a mocking challenge:

—Well met, brother. What do you hope to—?

But a warrior who fought like a wolf knew that conversation was a distraction, that the Trickster intended to elicit a reply and then strike while he, Rathulfr, was attempting to communicate in return. Instead, he fell upon Dmitri, cracking space apart with the energy of his swings and thrusts, and when Dmitri dodged through the trickiest of trajectories, Rathulfr simply followed, implacable and focused.

Hairline fractures webbed Dmitri's right arm.

—Wait, my—

Rathulfr knew that in an epic duel against the Trickster, in which the momentum of violence swept back and forth, that devious bastard would eventually win. Among Rathulfr's resurrected forces, his Einherjar, were humans who had needed to be stripped of culturally induced fantasies regarding fair fights; but his élite carls had no such illusions, and neither did he.

Dmitri's torso crunched, white and opaque like sugar, hammered glass that has not yet given way, and he screamed without sound.

Of course he had his own final trick, as a myriad diamond death-lizards swarmed out of hyperdimensional folds in space, Rathulfr's own strategy turned against him. But the wolf did not care about a thousand cuts when the blood-enemy was there before him with defences that could not last much longer.

Now.

Vacuum bled sapphire light as Rathulfr cut it open.

And the Trickster's living-crystal body exploded.

Thórr's blood, at last!

It was done.

Laughing, Rathulfr spun around in space, ready to bring slaughter upon the death-lizard horde – who squirmed back into their hyperdimensional folds, keening with fear. The wolf was no stranger to others fleeing before him, and he bared his crystal teeth at the sight.

And turned back towards the greater battle, making ready to swoop.

In the absence of victory, it was time to fall in glory.

Kenna, too, fighting amid the blaze of a billion suns, was hand-to-hand against dark forces, chopping with and firing incandescence born of zero-point energy, destroying the enemy that fell on her piece by piece. But all the time the enemy's momentum overwhelmed her, and it could not be long before she made a slip and that would be it: everything over.

Roger and Freya at the vanguard; Magni and Gavriela; Rathulfr in the aftermath of killing Dmitri, now up against the main dark forces crawling along the jet; Harij lost; and only Sharp hanging back from the final battle: none of them could stop it, the enemy.

Sharp's forces suddenly moved, diving towards the greatest mass of darkness travelling along the galactic jet, and Kenna wailed as she fought because it was too soon, far too soon, there was no point of vulnerability. But of course Sharp knew this, and had determined the inevitable: neither Kenna nor the others could give him the best chance, so his warriors were going to do what they could before the end.

—I'm sorry, my friends.

Sorrow howled inside her as she slew the darkness but the flood kept coming and this was it: the final defeat.

—I'm so very . . .

Golden light exploded everywhere, surrounding the galactic jet, all fifty thousand lightyears in length, with a great cylinder of brilliance, from which complex, living shapes emerged.

Such strange, beautiful, wonderful beings, or perhaps divinities.

At the same time, with a strange outpouring of energy that caused the innards of every crystal warrior to shake, a scarlet blaze enveloped the Shadow Gate, and lanced along the darkness beyond the galactic edge and the dark-matter halo that imprisoned it.

Gold from one direction, red from another.

Two new forces upon the stage.

=We are here, humanity.=

From golden mu-space they came: huge entities that once had been Labyrinths and ships and Pilots, long transcendent, long combined, long become something greater.

<>

Emerging out of scarlet fire around Shadow Gate and the black bridge beyond, newly returned from whatever unknown universe they called home, came a second force. These were glowing lattice-beings, vast and wonderful and powerful: the distant descendants of Zajinets.

Gold, the lightning that gleamed like mu-space.

Red, the fires that shone like blood.

Both forces of newcomers fell upon the darkness, attacking together.

And the darkness split apart beneath their joint attack.

—
Now, my warriors!

Kenna's yell reverberated inside three billion crystal bodies: all that survived of her armies. Blue was the glow illuminating space as they and the surviving war leaders brought the zero-point energy to bear.

All of them, getting ready to fire together.

—NOW.

Cataclysm engulfed the darkness.

The galactic jet burned as the black bridge beyond exploded, spinning off into the depths of intergalactic space, shrivelling and dying. Countless parts tumbling, crumbling, becoming dust. The darkness shattered, it tore, it dissipated; and perhaps in ways that no one left alive could hear – not with the Trickster gone – it screamed.

Dead and sundered, its connection to the bridge-head useless.

Beyond Shadow Gate, the darkness split away from the galaxy's dark halo, unravelling, perhaps all the way back to its beginning, to its origin beyond the cosmic void. Its route was destroyed, and perhaps the darkness itself was dead or dying; but either way, it could no longer reach the galaxy.

Baryonic-matter life was safe.

The darkness was defeated.