Phoenix, p.23
Phoenix, page 23
part #1 of Queen's Avatar Series
Next to Peter, Liz unhooked her straps and reached for the medical kit.
“Liz, what are you doing?”
“You’ve heard him. Eleanor is in critical condition in the cockpit.”
“But Nolan clearly said that nobody unstraps.”
“This is a medical emergency and Nolan has no say about it. It’s my responsibility and my job to be there.”
Peter knew he could not stop her. He also knew that she was right. He did not want Liz in harm’s way, but as a medic it was her duty to help the wounded in the cockpit.
Liz pounded the hatch couple of times until Nolan opened and silently let her in.
“At least they should bring Eleanor in the back”, said Patel quietly.
“There is no point, devushka”, responded Commander Borodin. “We can’t unstrap from our seats to help her, pressure seems stable in both compartments, rear and cockpit are equally safe.”
Peter looked to the camera feeds. The inferno around UNSS Endeavour did not seem reduced in intensity. The shield continued to cast an umbrella of light above them. He wondered how long the defence would hold. How long could they survive?
Suddenly the shuttle shuddered violently and corkscrewed to the right. Peter felt sick, somebody vomited further down the aisle. The shuttle seemed to float aimlessly for a few moments, then steadied again and continued to descend evenly.
“That was close!” exclaimed Mertens. “What’s happening in the cockpit? Is Nolan now the one flying the ship?”
“Can’t be, Nolan doesn’t have a brevet. I’ll check what happened”, volunteered Borodin.
The commander unstrapped and squeezed to the cockpit hatch. He touched the lock, withdrew the hand with a curse, then turned, face completely blank.
“We no longer have the forward compartment. There is nothing beyond the hatch.”
For the moment Peter did not register anything. One more insanity, when the day was already insane.
“What do you mean no longer have the forward compartment?” asked Mertens. “What’s happening in the cockpit?”
“There is no cockpit, the cockpit is gone. The shuttle ends immediately after the hatch.”
Pandemonium broke in, everybody trying to stand and talk at the same time.
“Impossible, the shuttle will never fly cut in half like this!”
“We need to do something to control the fall!”
“I need to see what happened with Liz!”
“Keep your seats and strap in”, shouted Borodin, his voice booming in the narrow compartment. “The shuttle seems stable, don’t ask me how. I don’t know. There is nothing any of us can do and the descent continues normally.”
Nothing was continuing normally. There was no normality anymore, just pain.
“Peter, they are gone. All of them. Liz, Eleanor, Derek. The last blast vaporised the entire front of the shuttle. They stood no chance, but at least they didn’t feel a thing.”
Above them, a monstrous column of shifting light, almost solid in appearance, erupted from Endeavour and smashed into the enemy spheres. But Peter did not see anything, could not see anything. He couldn’t even care anymore.
CHAPTER 30
The shuttles have already left the human ship and started their long climb down to Aldeea.
I’m alone in the cold metallic cylinder, hearing no sounds but the nearly imperceptible hum of the electric generators. It’s already a ghost ship, prepared for the final act of its short existence. An unfortunate end for a vessel that should remain forever a part of human Lore. Endeavour, a fitting name for more reasons than one.
I come to the bridge and take the front seat, the one that used to belong to the tall human with golden skin and a ready laugh. Their pilot. Though the meaning of “pilot” looks to be different for humans and Haillar.
I touch the metallic surface and try to feel the ship. Unlike our ships, it’s cold and unresponsive. Nothing can be done about this. I’m well aware of its thin walls, built to insulate the beings inside from the unforgiving void and not intended to withstand any extent of enemy fire. A peaceful explorer, same as the exploring ships of the Haillar, the daug, the kaverra and of twenty other Dominion races. Withstanding enemy fire and returning it back tenfold is for the Sen’Haillar, the Sword and Shield of the Dominion. As it had been since the dawn of our coalition millennia ago.
I disconnect the coupling controlling the centrifuge, killing ships’ gravity. I slowly project my consciousness outside Endeavour. The range is so much greater when doing this in space, where the eka field of the planet below barely registers. I expand eka waves all around me, like circles from a pebble thrown into the sea.
I feel the human shuttles first, tiny specks slowly descending towards Aldeea. I feel the human minds, electrical fields flickering like candle flames. The massive defence stations fed with eka from the world below register like bonfires, each shining amid a multicoloured network of light. I pull my consciousness exponentially faster. Further ahead, I feel the Scourge base stations, soulless beasts spitting a string of needles each. Swarms of drone piloted flyers, thrown like so much gravel against Citadel’s defences.
I detach a tiny bunch of tendrils and thread them around each of the three human shuttles, and further down toward the word below. These eka strings are too fragile to shield the vessels, I rely on the ground defence for this. The filaments are guiding beacons, intended to keep the shuttles on track no matter what and ensure a soft landing. I would have loved to be with my human friends, Liz, Peter and Christine, to protect them. But my role today is different.
I turn towards the Scourge and mentally map the field. The mobile bases have dispersed in an arc. They know we can hit them, but they also know that each eka blast needs to be precisely focussed. The spheres would not stand a chance against several Sen’Haillar swarms in space, but they were well-aware we had no fleets around Aldeea. By now the Scourge should know our ground defences were boosted. They can see the platforms charging with eka. I also suspect they knew of my presence for cycles. Their marauding minions would have made sure of this.
The platforms don’t have the range and power to hurt the massive Scourge ships. Their role is to swat away the flyers, to prevent them attacking the ground encampments. No adept, not even a Queen, can completely obliterate a Scourge ship from the planetary surface. The enemy knows it. They keep distance and feel relatively safe. Oh, there will be hits, but survivable hits.
But I’m not on Aldeea. I’m in space, away from the planetary eka field. Away from the platforms’ eka as well, for that matter. I’m a focal point, isolated in orbit, on an alien metallic structure devoid of any shred of eka. And they are well within my range.
The Scourge start unloading more fliers, entire squadrons of drone-piloted one-seater ships, fast and nimble. Soon they open fire, the flyers first, the mobile stations soon after. Energy beams of various colours and sizes criss-cross the space between invaders and Aldeea. Most of them splash across platform shields, some miss and hit the atmosphere, igniting the air like jets of flames raining from heavens. Ground defences are flashing below protecting the Haillar settlements. Other blasts hit the wilderness incinerating in moments entire forests.
The platforms respond with invisible eka lances targeting the fliers. Some wings are obliterated, others take their place. The amount of fire increases and pieces of our defensive stations start falling apart, hitting the planet below as fiery meteors.
A few more moments is all I need.
I build a mass of Chaos, an invisible cloud of nothingness around me. At the beginning it’s easy, even pleasant, it flows naturally from me. But it’s not enough, not for a long-range blow against a massive structure. I dig into my soul and pull more Chaos, a lot more. I can see my Core shining, the fire of Ka Loren, “the Fountain of Life”, our Sun. I’m about to pervert Its gift of life once again, to use it to bring death and destruction in defence of my people. In defence of my friends.
The eka cloud around me become so thick it is almost physical. The electrical circuits on the ship fizzle and die. I’m alone in the darkness, but my mind is already outside, surrounded by the star panorama.
I take the first Haillar offensive shot against the mobile station in the middle. A pillar of chaos accelerates at crazy speeds and slams the top side of the sphere. Whatever shield they have flickers and dies, then the structure caves in like a punched eggshell.
For a moment everything stays still. I can see the mobile base is wounded, but still functional. The shield had softened the blow as part of the chaos eka was spent to overcome it. I don’t think the ship lost more than one tenth of its solid matter, but it looks the entire upper front quarter is destroyed. The lower decks continue to spit flyers at an even faster rate while the emitters are blasting search beams. The other two spheres follow suit and saturate the space with searchers.
They haven’t seen the eka blast but could guess its direction from the damage pattern. They are most likely looking for a single hidden Sen’Haillar vessel. We have used stealth attacks many times in the past. The Scourge learned this and learned to look for cloaked fleets before committing. For sure they searched when they entered this system. Now, surprised by the blast, they are searching again, not necessarily for a large fleet but for a single vessel.
I can’t afford to miss the wounded ship. I’m gathering chaos again, slower this time. I’ve used my immediate reserves, now I need to dig deep into my soul for pure chaos. My vision shifts, like a form of dizziness. It’s the first hint of imbalance. I would need Reith, my Sen’Dorien sister of Order to balance my eka. Her adepts on the planet below are too far away and reaching for them would weaken me.
I form a second battering ram of chaos, not as strong as the first one but purer. It needs not to be strong, the middle Scourge vessel is now wide open. I push the eka beam almost delicately and it starts moving ahead in slow motion. It gathers speed though and moments later slams in the damaged portion of the Scourge ship.
There is nothing to stop the chaos this time as my blast eats into the structure unhindered. The core of the sphere disintegrates, matter bonds eaten away. It’s not an explosion, rather chaos embraces the released energy and converts it into more chaos. As the core is gutted, massive sections of the ship spin away slowly with majestic finality. Like a falling tree or the start of an avalanche. Chaos continues to erode the detached sections and slowly converts them into nothingness. Finally, with no matter left to devour, the energy gathered is released in a titanic blast, wiping out the flyer swarms disgorged earlier on from the defunct ship.
I’m feeling sick.
It’s not only the loss of life that sickens me. The mobile stations are operated mainly by drones, and drones have lost everything that made them sentient long time ago. It’s the unrestrained use of chaos as a force of destruction. I feel my eka core is moving into a dangerous zone, a zone of madness.
And yet I can’t stop as long as the Scourge assault continues.
My last attack was powerful enough to be detected by the surviving Scourge stations. The storm of plasma bolts peppering the Aldeean defence stations shifts focus. The drone piloted fliers join in.
I raise an eka shield around the mercifully small human ship. Blast after blast slams into the shield. I can’t see it with my eyes, only with my mind, but it must be quite a light-show out there. The closest Haillar defence stations take advantage of the unexpected break and double up on fliers. Entire squadrons are obliterated in moments. Tiny Endeavour has become the centre of the battlefield.
I’m now spread between maintaining the shield and building up eka for the next blast. I don’t know how long I can last, almost certainly not until the end of the fight. I need to pour chaos into the shield to deflect the rain of plasma bolts coming from the two Scourge spheres. I also need to pour chaos into another blast, aiming to destroy the very same spheres. Unbalanced eka use makes me increasingly sick.
I’m dying, at least this Avatar is dying. It was a foregone conclusion from the moment I needed two chaos blasts to take out the first sphere. No physical embodiment can take such an amount of chaos for so long.
I’m not afraid to die. I’ve done it thousands of times. For us, the Sen’Haillar Queens, death is a temporary condition. I’m afraid of madness. For all practitioners using large amounts of eka for destruction, madness is the end of the road. It happened time and time again during the Annihilation Wars. We cheated our fate when we discovered that balancing two opposing Affinities cancels to a large extent their negative effects. We discovered how to convert eka into matter and extend our life spans for millennia. We thought ourselves immortal. But as long as we continue to harvest eka for destruction, we will ultimately pay the price.
Time is almost up. I probably can afford an extra blast. I need to find a way to make it as damaging as possible.
A tiny tendril of eka is pulling at the back of my mind. One of the human shuttles was hit. It’s still in one piece so it must have been a flier shot. A plasma blast would have obliterated it instantly.
I can feel the fear and grief of the minds trapped there. My two best human friends are there. The shuttle is still under controlled descent, my tether does its job. I’m still diverting more eka to make sure it’s safe. I don’t have much eka left.
Oh no, the shuttle is hit again. A plasma blast, this time, disintegrates completely the front third. I can feel human minds dying. I can feel Elizabeth dying. I can see with my mind her soul, innocent and pure. So different compared to mine. I can see her concern for her human crewmates, her last conscious thought. I can see her love for Peter, her regret of nothing having come to pass. I can even feel a tiny part of her soul caring for us, for the Haillar.
My eka melds with the ghost of her soul. I literally keep her fading soul in my hands. We are fated to die together in a few moments, nothing can be done. But I can choose to honour her sacrifice the way her race honours their heroes. By making sure her name survives.
With my last bits of power I shape an enormous amount of Chaos in a final blast. Pure chaos, from my very core. I push it forward, siphoning eka from Endeavours’ shield to give it a sweep motion. I don’t need the shield anymore.
I can see the battering ram of pure chaos hitting the left sphere from the side, obliterating it instantly, despite their shields. The beam continues its motion, partly dissipating into the void and hits the second sphere with enough force to carve a long diagonal scar.
I know I won’t have time to see what happened with the last sphere. In the next instant, my depleted shield is overcome in a fury of plasma fire and Endeavour disintegrates. My body immolates instantly. I don’t have time to feel anything. In any case I couldn’t feel anything. I’m too far gone.
✽✽✽
I’m floating on a sea of light, almost unconscious. I feel no connection to the physical universe, only a dark abyss where my soul used to be. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know why I’m here.
Above and below, the light flickers in colourful shades. Blue, red, green, gold, or shifting rainbow combinations. I feel they mean something but I don’t remember what. I remember the rainbow sign as some symbol.
My body is the faded ghost of a multihued serpent. Melded with something else, something shiny and pure. Without conscious thought I gather a small amount of… something, some sort of energy, and infuse it into my ghost body. I gather some more and compress it into a tiny piece of soul. I add the shiny tendril and bind my body and soul.
I start feeling pain, unbearable pain. It’s as if I’m on fire, or maybe I’m made of fire. Each heartbeat sends flames into my body. Waves of molten lava are flowing through my surreal veins. Furnace blasts are exploding from my eyes. I’m drowning in a blazing inferno. My lungs try to draw long painful breaths, but there is nothing to breathe.
I have gained back consciousness. I remember now who I am:
“I’m Elizabeth Ashar Sen’Dorien, the Queen of Chaos.”
CHAPTER 31
UNSS Endeavour was no more.
Moments after the last titanic blow, the shield around the human ship was overcome and the vessel instantly disintegrated. It was not a huge explosion, the way the Scourge sphere went out seconds before. It was a rather subdued flare, almost unnoticeable if not for the vanishing shield preceding it.
Peter did not see the human ship dying. He did not even register the cries of the surrounding people. He was lost to the world, fixed on his last image of Liz standing up scared but defiant, going into the cockpit. Going to her death…
He was violently pulled back to reality a fraction of a second later when the shuttle started to spin madly towards the ground. It was a three-dimensional tumble, an infernal carousel that could only end one way, with them hitting the planet surface at terminal velocity. Peter sealed his helmet, a useless gesture aimed solely to cut out the cacophony of terrified cries. He closed the eyes waiting for the end.
The spinning stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the shuttle seemed to float immobile for a second. Moments later it continued her downward descent, at the same sedate pace as before.
“What the hell was that?” exclaimed Mertens.
“Whatever was managing our descent suddenly stopped when Endeavour was destroyed, and it started again a few moments later”, explained Borodin. “Looks like now they are back in control.”
“You mean Ellandra and whatever crew she managed to bring to Endeavour were controlling our flight.”
“It’s the only explanation. This thing clearly can’t fly by itself, as you noticed a moment ago. They use some kind of tractor beam to bring us down.”
This sounded as crazy as everything else today. Portals, energy weapons, now tractor beams. They were caught in a fiction drama, one that had devolved into a horror show.
“Do you think Ellandra survived?” The question came again from Mertens and was directly addressed to Peter as the only remaining Haillar expert in the shuttle. But Peter was in shock. He couldn’t find any energy to think of Endeavour’s destruction and what else it might bring.
