Authors: Greg Fish
As this beautiful, almost cinematic scene of destruction was over and the slow motion of continent sized rocks melted from the impact began to settle down, all that was left of this rare, habitable world were molten, smoldering rocks and white dust.
In orbit around the Earth, Dot, Ace and the humans watched this terrifying event on a video module on the destroyer’s holographic window with horror. Tiny spy probes used for deep space surveillance by the Nation had a perfect view of this apocalyptic scene from just about every angle.
“Ah shit...” cursed Ace.
“What happened?” asked Christine.
“That was Epsilon Omega 6XP.”
“Until ten seconds ago,” corrected Dot.
“But isn’t that planet 22,000 light years away and this happened about 22,000 years ago?”
“Yes, it’s 22,000 light years from Earth, but it happened now.”
“But how...?”
“We use a phenomenon in quantum physics to send information instantly across almost any distance. The probes send us an encoded signal with photons. The photons are linked together via a simple quantum entanglement. The signal we get is when these photons’ states are being changed and we read the actual sequence of changes.”
“So we’re watching what’s happening half way across the galaxy in honest to goodness real time?”
“Yes. And because we know how and why these photons are linked together, this method of communication works...” Ace paused to look at what remained of Epsilon Omega 6XP. “And I can’t believe those bastards just blew up a planet on the protected list.”
He turned to Dot with a ferocious expression.
“If I ever find out who was on the job when this happened, heads are going to roll. I swear...”
“You can swear later,” interrupted Dot. “We’ve got company.”
“It’s about time. Size and ETA?”
“Probe reports 350,000 BFUs in three hours.”
“Excellent. Let’s power up and load weapons.”
“BFUs?” asked Christine.
“Base fleet units, the number of what seem to be the typical ships for an alien fleet,” explained Ace.
“Oh and there’s something else,” said Dot looking at the screen. “The Rexx are dragging something in their formation... It looks like a... UDCP object...”
“UDCP?” asked Steve.
Ace and Dot turned to him with the same stone cold expression.
“That’s highly classified,” they barked in unison and went back to their instruments.
“Let me get a visual,” said Ace.
He pressed a few buttons on the armrest of his chair and a small holographic screen appeared above the keypad. It showed a massive cube of blue gel which encased a horrifying creature, a barrel-chested alien skeleton as big as a two story house. It was armed with huge claws and had a pair of short, but very sturdy legs with menacing talons. The eye sockets in its blocky head looked empty. Hanging off of its numerous ribs were rotting bits of grayed flesh. Finishing its unsettling look were a pair of horns facing forwards.
This monster was towed by a small fleet of ships that could only be described as flying ribcages with sleek, fanged skulls. These odd contraptions were shrouded by a cloud of Rexx pods. Tonight would be a very long, restless night for the Nation’s fleet. The alien insects were ready for a siege and assembled their attack fleet with the Earth’s new defenders in mind.
“0673UD,” chuckled Ace. “They dragged 0673UD all the way out here...”
“What are you going to do about him?” asked Dot.
“I’ll kick his bony ass, what else?” shrugged Ace.
He turned to the humans.
“Ok, you want to give this a try?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” said Christine as Steve cracked his knuckles.
[ chapter _ 007 ]
The Rexx armada was about to make contact with the Nation’s fleet, approaching ominously, like a Biblical locust swarm ready to devour anything in its way. This time they wouldn’t stop. They intended to plow right though the destroyers. Ace and Dot knew it. Yet, none of the destroyers made an effort to engage the incoming Rexx. They sat there in space, their weapons bays closed.
On the bridge of Ace’s destroyer, the holographic screen showed the Rexx armada in all its might. Translucent lines tracked its motion and Ace, sitting on the very edge of his chair waited until the bulk of the Rexx ships would cross a red curve superimposed on the destroyer’s outside view. Even though the Rexx traveled at relativistic speeds, they seemed to be crawling, inching to that magical line. As they got closer and closer, bridge computers started to make quiet pings every few seconds that became faster and faster as the Rexx got closer and closer.
Finally, the Rexx crossed the line and the quiet pings which were being produced several times a second now, became a solid tone. The destroyers had a lock on the Rexx fleet. Ace punched a button on his armrest. A translucent holographic screen with complex graphs shot out of the chair and froze on Ace’s right hand side.
“All ships fire at will, fire at will” he commanded.
“We’re locked on target, firing now,” came anonymous replies.
In an instant, the destroyers opened all of their weapon bays and fired a barrage of red lasers, shifting energy pulses which resembled tiny stars and powerful missiles which left corkscrew trails of red hot plasma in their wake. Several IGFs shot by in wild curves, locked on to the massive Rexx flagships.
As the first volley hit the Rexx fleet, their blue shields lit up and almost instantly failed. From above, it looked like the forward units of the Rexx hit a wall and the rest of the fleet was plowing into what was left of the first wave in slow motion. Sudden bursts of multicolored light that erased hundreds of ships from existence confirmed that the IGFs found their targets and went off.
On the bridge of his ship, Ace looked at this scene without a hint of emotion. As the first volley did its job of halting the Rexx’s advance, he’d have to act quickly to maintain his advantage. The aliens might’ve had a much bigger fleet but he had much faster, more nimble, and more powerful ships.
“Release fighters, fire, and disperse,” he ordered.
The destroyers did exactly as he commanded, unleashing a small swarm of fighters which added to the second devastating volley with their powerful laser bursts. While the destroyers and fighters were still just out of the Rexx’s range, the Nation had to impart maximum damage. Even a few hits from the heavily armed fighters might play a crucial role in destroying an enemy ship when the fight was really under way.
As the second volley smashed Rexx ships to bits, the destroyers and the fighters dispersed, assuming a loose crescent formation. Like an anaconda, the Nation’s fleet would now wrap itself around Rexx’s thinned out pods and slowly, methodically tear through every one of them with any weapon they could.
By Dot’s command, the destroyers launched their bombers; sleek and elongated ships that had triangular wings with a downward curve, designed to bend and flex in atmospheric flight. About three times as large as the fighters, they were armed with powerful guided missiles which split into countless explosive shards, damaging virtually every ship in the vicinity of the target. Each direct hit produced a cloud of lethal shrapnel that stressed Rexx shields and pierced exposed enemy hulls. The tight clusters of Rexx fighters and gun ships were reeling from the horrific splash damage the bombers imparted in the blink of an eye, darting from target to target.
The Rexx fought back just as viciously, sending out a shower of blue lasers which lit up the shields of almost every destroyer, fighter and bomber the Nation threw at them. In just a few minutes, some of the shields began to fail. The Rexx started destroying fighters that in a final act of spite and defiance rammed themselves at full speed into Rexx flagships, paralyzing them and even destroying those which already took heavy damage from bombers and destroyers.
Bombers were also succumbing to the Rexx lasers. In their death throes, they detonated into innumerable pieces of shrapnel that were almost as potent at their powerful bombs. Several destroyers started splintering, their shields gone, their nanobots unable to cope with the Rexx barrage. In their final seconds, the SERV robots which controlled the thousands of robotic destroyers ejected themselves as they set the destroyers’ reactors to overheat and explode with a yield comparable with a top tier IGF, taking out nearby enemy craft and sending out EMPs that knocked out Rexx shields.
After an hour, the tense battle was coming to an end. With a better range, more powerful weapons, and stronger shields and hulls, the Nation’s fleet stood strong and was cleaning up what was left of the mighty Rexx armada. Some ships escaped, but most were trapped in an orbiting ball of destroyers, bombers and fighters which kept on constricting the remnants of the Rexx fleet.
On his bridge, Ace made a sound similar to a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair. His holographic screen showed that he lost well over a thousand destroyers and tens of thousands of fighters. None of them had a cyborg on board. Only AI chips.
The AI chips were the core of the powerful military built by the Shadow Nation because each of them carried the skills and strategies of countless human and alien pilots. This way, gifted pilots and highly skilled aliens were replicated thousands of times. Each AI chip was a tactical genius in one to one space combat, able to blend the best of human and alien battle tactics. They were embedded in a highly specialized robot known as a SERV which acted as a pilot and a safeguard. If a short-circuited chip decided to go on a rampage and attack friendly ships, the SERV would quickly immobilize its rogue destroyer and kill the malfunctioning chip. A backup would be loaded in seconds and the destroyer was able to fight again. This highly efficient and advanced technology is what allowed the tiny population of the Nation to maintain an immense, highly trained, savage army.
“All right, so where’s 0673UD?” asked Ace.
“I’m looking for him now,” replied Dot.
Steve and Christine relaxed at their stations and turned to Ace.
“The Rexx fleet is neutralized,” reported Christine.
“Looks like you got them,” said Steve.
“Not yet,” replied Ace.
“How is that?” Steve scratched his head.
“This was just the first part,” said Ace. “Part two is on Earth with whoever was in those surviving ships. Did you notice that all the Rexx flagships threw themselves in front of our lasers to defend whatever or whoever was in those flying ribcages?”
“Not really,” admitted Steve. “We don’t know what to watch just yet. There are so many different ships and so many we haven’t really seen in detail before that it’s hard to know who’s who, much less who matters and who’s defending what.”
“That’s true,” said Ace.
“Got him!” chimed in Dot.
“Where is the bastard?”
“They slipped past us using the fleet as a cover. They’re headed to Earth and I have a few destroyers boxing him in so he lands close to the Himalayas in Nepal.”
“Nepal?” asked Christine.
“Used to be a country which had the Himalayas in its territory. It was officially dissolved in 2987,” replied Steve.
“All right,” nodded Ace. “So it’s off to Nepal we go. Break off and peruse.”
And so, Ace’s destroyer joined the small contingent which eased a few massive Rexx pods and the small fleet of ribcage-like craft into a valley in Nepal. Each ship used its electromagnetic shield to slow down and defend itself from air compression as they got closer and closer to the mesosphere. Reaching their minimum altitude, the huge warships leveled out and screamed past Tibet.
The destroyers locked on to the enemy ships and opened fire. As the lasers sent each enemy vessel into a tailspin, the destroyers shot back up into space with amazing agility for their immense size. But a sole destroyer circled around the crash-landing ships. Before it returned to space, it had something to drop off...
As the small army of Rexx emerged into the valley and surrounded a thirty foot cube holding the massive alien skeleton which Ace and Dot called 0673UD, a squadron of bizarre robots aimed their barrels and laser panels at them. One set of robots was spherical, with six chrome tentacles which flexed, shortened and elongated with amazing ease. Behind them were huge walkers with rounded, sleek bodies that bent at a 90 degree angle, producing impressive cannons from their undersides. Flanking them were small rovers that rolled on six spherical wheels with independent suspensions, armed with a canopy shaped, jet black laser panel able to fire a death beam in almost any direction.
Every machine in the Nation’s ground forces had jet black armor sparsely decorated by glowing, red tribals, save for the odd sphere, better known as a OctoBot, with flexible chrome tentacles and a large, complex eye that glowed red in the twilight.
In front of this army stood Ace. He wore a full combat uniform with the seal of the Nation on his chest and a visor showing the position of friendly cyborgs and machines around him. Tied to his waist was the sword he used to take down his enemies for the last thirteen centuries. Its dark, translucent blade rested in an obsidian sheath decorated with alien runes.
He calmly walked towards the Rexx until he was within striking range. The Rexx were on high alert, ready to attack, but for now, they held their positions, trying to figure out what was going to happen to them next. Cyborg soldiers scattered throughout the squad on the ground preemptively gripped the triggers of their machine guns a little tighter and refocused the digital crosshairs in their visors.
In one fluid motion, Ace took his sword and drove it through a Rexx who was just a few feet in front of him while it was still in its sheath. With a sickening sound, the katana tore through the alien bug’s insides and as the mortally wounded alien fell to the ground, Ace drew his sword out of the sheath lodged deep in the dying creature, turned around and sliced through a Rexx that jumped behind him, ready to counterattack.