Authors: Greg Fish
The SERVs released the ground units tucked away in the bellies of some of their ships. The destroyers shot out jet black domes which zoomed towards their targets on the planet’s surface like guided missiles, twisting and turning in space, trying to home in. The destroyers covered them with heavy fire, tearing any Rexx ship that dared to get near them to shreds.
As the domes entered the atmosphere, they clumped together in a set of large clusters. Flames from the heat of reentry enveloped them, setting their electromagnetic shields ablaze. The dome clusters slowed down to just one percent of their original speed, but they still hit the ground like comets, throwing columns of dust, ash and rock high into the air. As the rocks and dust fell, shockwaves traveled for miles in every direction.
From the shallow craters created by the impact, the robots rose from their protective domes, arming their powerful weapons, surging with red energy. The domes that delivered them broke apart, forming shallow pools of nanobots on the ground.
The ground units lit up and went to work, setting their sights on a Rexx city reminiscent of a termite mound made from granite and cut into a mountain. In moments, the plateau in front of the city turned into a battlefield with the Nation’s robots unleashing a torrent of red lasers and particle cannon fire against the blue lasers of the Rexx. Above them, the Nation’s ships turned the sky red with their terrifying weapons, blasting away at incoming Rexx reinforcements.
The destroyers sent their IGFs to hunt down the squads of Rexx flagships that were able to withstand the initial onslaught. The smart, guided IGFs dodged and weaved Rexx fire to get to their targets. As they exploded, the skies of the planet below them erupted with a red, blinding light and ripples of ionized gas when the atmosphere was perturbed by blast waves too close to its upper layers.
The Nation’s ground forces strained the Rexx’s city shields and mowed down the city’s defenders. Siege Machines stepped on scared Rexx with their enormous feet, crushing them with a sickening crack of shattering bones. The fast, nimble rovers buzzed through the Rexx army, unleashing a volley of rapid fire laser sweeps, separating the Rexx into small pockets in which they were quickly surrounded and slaughtered by roving bands of OctoBots.
As the shields around the Rexx city fell, Siege Machines opened fire from their powerful cannons, shattering the city walls and letting the OctoBots rush into the city, slicing through anything in sight with their lasers. The Rexx fought back with their shearing claws and particle busts, killing plenty of invading robots but not nearly enough to stem the tide. When the OctoBots got stuck in swarms of Rexx soldiers and their mobile laser cannons (odd hybrids of walking robots and rovers) a helpful bomb or two from a passing bomber would quickly turn the tide back to the Nation’s machines.
But the overkill wasn’t finished yet. The silent planet killer came to life and aligned itself towards the planet. Its artificial star began to rotate faster and faster around its own axis, trembling as it was compressed, its corona getting ever brighter. The fusion inside its core was reaching critical mass needed by the planet killer to fire. The craft’s engines drew away from the miniature sun and slid backwards to counter the intense recoil of the upcoming burst. Extending forward, the curved spikes lit up with an aurora traveling along the magnetic field that would focus and direct the immense energy pulse.
On Xi 13Jb, the Nation’s machines looked up at the sky and ran back to their domes, blasting off for space. The confused Rexx didn’t know what to make of it. All they noticed was that something in the sky very much like sunlight kept getting brighter and brighter. Shimmering protuberances of plasma became faintly visible.
The artificial star of the planet killer trembled violently, emitting a shockwave of faintly lit, electrically charged particles cast off during a powerful star-quake. A horrific pulse of plasma and gamma rays followed, loosed into the magnetic tunnel of the planet killer’s spikes. Inside the magnetic fields, the trapped plasma and radioactive rays were bent, condensed into a beam and unleashed at the planet below with devastating results.
Within seconds, the planet’s magnetosphere collapsed and much of its atmosphere boiled off. The sheer magnetic vortex generated by the weapon tore apart any living organism on a continent sized area hit with the blast. Colliding shockwaves all over the planet merged and bounced around the thin crust, cracking the rocks and creating new fault lines. Across the surface, giant fissures snaked their way across the continental shelves, erupting with noxious gas and flows of superheated lava.
Finally, the death ray was exhausted and the planet killer’s light faded. The world known as Xi 13Jb was now a burnt, scarred wasteland covered by red and orange lava pools and clouds of noxious gas. Its reconstituting atmosphere, drawn back by the planet’s gravity, was alight with random green and blue auroras. Over a million miles away, the Rexx probes recording this event scattered. Their commander on the Rexx home world decided he had seen enough.
Oh a holographic cube in a dark room of the space city orbiting a white gas giant with gray storm swirls on the edge of Rexx territory, Ace, Dot, Steve and the rest of his crew watched the incident unfold. The chamber itself was a typical control room with a 360 degree holographic wall and black marble floors and ceilings. Sleek, curvy chairs were placed around a brushed metal table attached to the floor by an elegant metallic stem. The holographic cube was projected from the table’s center.
“And that is why we call it a planet killer,” said Nelson to Steve and Christine who looked in awe at the blast the powerful craft created.
“So wait a second,” started Steve. “That thing has enough power to create a miniature hypernova?”
“Well, it’s not a hypernova,” clarified Ace. “It’s more like a gamma ray burst at point blank range.”
He waved his hand and the holographic cube changed to a close up view of the territory in which the Rexx lived. A set of black, translucent spheres that enveloped stars started appearing one by one. Each sphere was a system that was now under the Nation’s control.
“You’re moving pretty quickly...” noted Christine.
“These are just outlying systems,” said Dot. “Buffers that let them know if an invasion is coming. The actual, well defended outposts will come later.”
“So what’s your strategy?”
“We’re going to split up and tackle individual missions which in this case will be to get the Rexx away from a swath of systems. Attack, scatter as many as you can, kill the rest, plant a probe and move on. We’ll move in a spiral pattern around their borders and try to squeeze them in as much as we can.”
“Do we need to actually secure the planets?” asked Steve.
“No,” replied Ace. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just keep on moving. The probes will alert a roaming squadron and they’ll take care of it. Try and raise as much hell as you can, keep in touch and don’t be a hero. No sense getting killed by some alien insect just to finish a raid.”
“Yes sir,” nodded Steve and Christine, slipping back into their military modes.
“All right then,” Ace rose and glanced at everyone in the room. “Tactical ops will run some numbers, give us the right trajectories and we can get to work. Meanwhile, let’s get ready to go. Good luck and may the Architects help you.”
After a few hours of preparation, groups of destroyers began to break off from the main armada floating around the space city and warp off into the starry, cloudy space beyond a small, icy moon in the distance.
Three months seemed to fly by in an instant. In those months, the million strong allotment of the Nation continued its overkill. Even though the Nation’s commanders knew that the Rexx were just slaves of an alien spawn of some sort, a servant of the Dark Gods who had no problem sacrificing hundreds of thousands of these hapless creatures, they tried to appeal to the Rexx’s primal instincts. With every slaughter they saw, the Rexx recoiled in fear and became more and more unruly. With every new battle it became more and more obvious that the Rexx no longer wanted to fight.
Battles became shorter and shorter, and ever more Rexx retreated instead of fighting with wild abandon as they did before. The Rexx who escaped were never followed to make sure that the enslaved Rexx queens saw a way out of this mess: to refuse to fight and turn on the alien controlling them. Unfortunately for the Rexx, the control chips implanted deep within the queens’ brains clouded their judgment, interfering with their decision making process and forcing them to obey the alien’s whims regardless of what would happen to their numerous offspring. And so, millions of Rexx kept dying as the Nation kept boxing them into an ever smaller area in the search for their home world.
In interstellar warfare, the home world was a prime target for an invading armada. Typically, space faring creatures expanded to other worlds only after the infrastructure on their home planet was fully established and that infrastructure was crucial for expansion and maintenance. Once a home world was captured, outlying colonies quickly starved of vital resources to continue a war, unable to adequately supply themselves without enormous industrial complexes usually found on or very close to their home worlds. An industrialized space faring species that lost its home world in a war generally surrendered to the captor soon after the loss.
Its forces would either be too scattered to continue and its outposts would be too small and vulnerable to serve as a centralized base of operations and with their enemies now in control of superior infrastructure and the vast majority (if not all) of their military secrets and technology now accessible to their foes, the odds would be stacked too heavily against them. Hence, the home world consistently remained the most important planet for any space faring species and played host to most of the biggest and bloodiest battles in all of recorded cosmic history.
As the Nation continued its steady march for this traditional grand prize, Ace wondered about the quickest way to get there. It should’ve been somewhere at the center of the Rexx territory but there were a lot of stars in that region of space and without any idea what it might look like, they could end up wasting another month or two chasing after some spawn. It was too expensive and resource intensive to justify letting this war drag on any longer. The Nation needed more certainty in their search. They needed someone, or rather, something to ask for directions...
[ chapter _ 013 ]
Dot’s destroyer floated in an orbit around a world much like Venus, covered by a thick veil of toxic, noxious gasses. Its parent star was a turbulent, orange sun with a gas giant in close orbit. Just like any star with a gas giant nearby, it erupted with surging waves of plasma that shot out millions of miles into space.
As the destroyer entered the planet’s day side, flying past a gray, rocky moon, the bright light of the star displayed on the holographic wall in Dot’s bedroom shone on the sleeping girl’s face. She flinched from the bright light and sat up. The projection dimmed as the screen adjusted to the starlight.
“Morning commander,” said a computer.
“Morning,” muttered Dot, rubbing her eyes. “Anything out there or is it just dead as usual?”
“No contact. We’re still scanning for an approach.”
“Did we take a look at the planet below?”
“Yes ma’am.”
A small holographic screen with a panorama of the planet’s vast, burned valleys and mountain chains appeared in front of Dot. Almost every mountain was a volcano, spewing out vast clouds of gray dust and ash. Some of these clouds collapsed and fell, scorching the rocks below as pyroclastic flows which moved at supersonic speeds. Some valley floors cracked, spewing lava that boiled under the surface in a series of great, gushing fountains.
“Looks like it’s at least a thousand degrees on the surface,” said Dot.
“Current reading shows 1,315 degrees,” corrected the computer.
“All right, three more hours and then we plant a probe and leave for the next planet.”
Dot jumped out of the bed and stretched. She always slept naked. Why have clothes on when you’re sleeping, she reasoned. Her body felt dusty and she decided to take a shower. The streams of hot water washed away all the dust and radioactive matter, massaging the thick carbon polymers that functioned as her muscles. Refreshed and clean after, Dot scanned herself for radiation which was well within the normal range for a cyborg.
She put on her uniform and went to the bridge where a breakfast and a stack of reports waited for her. Dot spent the next few hours in total silence. The only sound on the ship was the crinkle of plastic as she sorted the reports after reading them. Being on a search mission required almost infinite patience since until you find what you were sent to find, you had to quietly wait and watch. Until last week, she was raiding dozens of Rexx worlds at a chaotic pace. Warping from one system to another into swarms of Rexx ships, guns blazing was fun, but ultimately exhausting in her opinion. This mission was a nice change of pace.
Just as Dot was about to give the order to leave this world and go on to the next, the computer pinged. She looked at the holographic screen on which a small cluster of red crosshairs tracked a squadron of Rexx ships.
“Here we go,” she smirked. “ETA to system?”
“One minute.”
“In range?”
“Tracking at 1 minute 39 seconds. No indication they detected our ships. Reinforcements will arrive in two minutes.”
“Good. When they warp in, send out everyone. Set the trap.”
The unsuspecting Rexx squadron settled into an orbit around the volcanic world and as soon as it slowed down enough to be taken in by the planet’s gravity, a churning vortex of fighters came at them. It was an attack for which the Rexx were completely unprepared. They turned to outflank the fighters when the vortex split, revealing Dot’s destroyer with ten robotic companions, their main cannons ready to fire, surging with energy.