Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (30 page)

“I’d like Liori to come to our room and conduct the initiation in person.”

“Initiation?”

“That’s what I told the children. That we were going to initiate them as astronauts.”

“Very well.”

“Let’s do it now. Before the attack starts.”

“Liori, did you hear that? Can you do it? Or do you want me to go?”

“Zander, you’d better stay on the bridge. I’ll do it.”

You have an incoming call from Darg.

Roakhmar’s avatar appeared in my mental view. Never before had I seen the Disciples’ leader looking so lost.

“Speak up,” I said.

“Zander, we’re suffering incredible losses. Our space defenses are useless against thousands of small ships,” he blurted out, afraid of a break in communications. The hissing and tweeting sounds of his speech merged into rapid trills. My semantic processor’s auto translate struggled to keep up. “I know I wasn’t too forthcoming! I know I tried to sabotage the negotiations! But they’re annihilating us! Help us, please!”

“I can’t turn the Relic round at the moment. Think you can last twenty-four hours?”

“If we retreat to our clan’s citadel, we’ll last longer! Will you help us?”

“Yes,” I had to think on my feet. The situation unfolded too fast to allow me the luxury of pondering. “We’ll try to battle through to you and evacuate the survivors.”

“Word of a Human?”

“Word of a Human.”
 

…

Quest update alert: The Chasm!

A representative of a third civilization nearing extinction has sought your help.

You need to evacuate Dargian survivors.

Your Colonizer skill has been confirmed. You’ve received 50 Action Points.

“Jurgen, report!”

I hadn’t had time to find out what those “action points” were and how I could spend them while saving civilizations.

“The crew‘s numbers have dropped by fifty-four men,” he reported.

“How many mnemotechs have we lost?”

“None.”

“Excellent. I’m going to switch to the common channel now. Be prepared. The command staff will set an example to the crew by using their navigator modules first.”

“Zander, I still need to issue navigators to the ten corvette survivors!”

“Do it now but be quick! Time’s an issue!”

Liori returned to the bridge and walked over to me.

“And?” my heart froze, awaiting her answer.

“The boys liked it. The girls were a bit frightened. Arbido helped them by joining in their transformation. Frieda is fine. She asked me to tell you that someone’s trying to listen in to our mnemonic frequencies.”

“Who’s that?”

“She thinks it’s Avatroid. Still, her empathic skills aren’t enough for a definite answer.”

“Nothing concrete, then?”

“Nothing. She thought she saw a mental image of someone. It could be just stress.”

“But what makes her think it’s Avatroid?”

“‘
We won’t attack the Colonizer’
,” Liori quoted. “Did you tell Frieda about the quest you’d received back on Earth?”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone apart from you. Actually, the quest has just been updated,” I told her about my conversation with Roakhmar.

Liori didn’t look impressed with my decision. “Let’s see how the AIs react to it. Evacuating the Dargians isn’t going to be easy. I don’t think they’ll let us through,” she pointed at the screens dotted with thousands of specks streaking toward the planet.

The situation grew more complicated by the minute. After the Reapers had scorched Oasis, they were now attempting to recycle Argus — but were met by the barrage of our drones and traps: all the practice objects that our mnemotechs had built in the two months of rushed leveling.

* * *

Space in the Relic’s path glowed and sparkled with every color of the rainbow. Where Oasis had been, a cloud of incandescent gas now floated. Avatroid’s fleet was busy fighting. His cruisers and frigates looked invincible, their shields repelling blows with remarkable ease. Their return fire and frequent flashes of Disintegrations burned holes in the enemy ranks.

The Reapers were definitely losing. Their main forces had already departed for Darg, leaving less than a couple of thousand craft behind — a mere trifle for Avatroid’s AIs.

Away from the seething battle, the ancient cemetery of combat craft drifted through space against a backdrop of the gas giant Wearong. Now it had begun flashing with new signatures.

I focused on them but couldn’t yet work out what was going on in the thick of all the clustered debris.

We kept accelerating toward Eurasia. The vicinity of the station too was awash with flashes of light, but at least the Reapers attacked it selectively, trying to spare the station’s vital systems. Which was another proof of their intentions.

“Boost the engines!”

Jurgen had just reported that the crew’s transformation was complete. We were now a hundred and sixty. Ten of the Manticore members had chosen to log out. Their in-modes had switched to stasis mode.

Avatroid’s ships had passed within one light second from us but none of them had opened fire. His cruisers turned around and headed back into the thick of battle. Their shields had lost a lot of power. The ships’ hulls glowed crimson from numerous direct hits.

“Eurasia’s in the killing zone!”

A silent plume of incandescent gas and dust spewed out in front of Wearong. Considering the distance, its tail had to be millions of miles long! The drifting debris, including the entire hulks of large ships, were being sucked into the vortex of disintegration. The Reapers must have used some incredibly powerful artificial gravity source. They didn’t waste time harvesting and recycling the cargonite; I could already see the first flashes of Object Replication.

These unexpected reinforcements plunged into battle head-on. My Synaps kept counting new targets. Nine hundred Raptors! The heavy assault ships quickly fell into formation and fired a simultaneous volley, targeting Avatroid’s nearest cruiser.

Its shields flared up and expired, exposing the behemoth ship’s hull to a barrage of fire which pierced the cargonite like butter, creating the already familiar signature deformations.

Those modified Raptors were using the ammo developed by the Earth's military space forces. What a leap in the Reapers' evolution! In just two months, they’d managed to restore the interstellar communications channel initially created for the hybrid, learned to build primitive battleships and equipped them with nanite-effective weapons!

“Eurasia’s under fire! Enemy’s targeting her reactor units!”

Another cruiser had lost its shields and was torn apart by the chain reaction of decompression explosions within.

“Eurasia’s reactors hit! The station is self-destructing!”

“Turn the Relic round and set a course to Wearong!”

“Zander, what the hell are you-”

“Just do it! Jurgen, report to your station! Everyone, follow your orders!”

About a hundred Raptors turned toward us and regrouped, taking up a combat course.

Instinctively Arbido squeezed his eyes shut. Charon and Danezerath stared calmly at the approaching death. Liori touched my mind with a warm vibration, then turned her attention back to the controls.

“Attention all mnemotechs on combat decks! Distribute the targets and report!”

The Relic’s shields were rapidly going down under the barrage of fire.

“Nanite groups released!” a voice rang out. “Wave one!”

The mnemotechs’ hits reached their targets, exploding like hundreds of blinding suns in the thick of the enemy formation, bringing down shields and disabling enemy sensors.

“Wave two! Target Disintegration!”

The Relic was now moving through a sea of fire. Our force fields were dead, our emitters in overload, our accumulators busy recharging. An Active Shield unfolded around the ship, protecting the Relic’s hull from the flow of radiation.

“Group target at ten degrees starboard!”

Two hundred and eighteen Raptors! They were coming from the direction of Wearong, almost head-on, slightly above the ecliptic. Their shields were barely glowing: they must have second-guessed our tactics and were going easy on power in order to be able to restore their defenses ASAP.

“Resonance frequency established! Now transmitting extermination codes!”

Hundreds of enemy craft lost control in a chaos of exploding collisions. The Reapers left Avatroid’s battered fleet alone and converged on us from every direction. The ships’ cemetery they were using to replenish their resources was slowly growing straight ahead of us.

“The Active Shield maxed out! Not enough nanites!”

“Electromagnetic batteries, rapid fire! Maintain course!”

The incandescent cloud was drawing close. Our coil guns spat incessantly.

Flashes of Object Replication released more and more Raptors. Our hull was finally being breached but we didn’t suffer any decompression. We’d learned from our past experience and had decompressed all the primary hull modules.

Almost there.

My mind reached out into the cloud of Molecular Mist created by the Reapers.

I released my nanites into it, then used the skill only available to those in possession of the Colonizer ability.

Self-Replication!

About a hundred Raptors and Condors burned away before they had the chance to complete their materialization. Continuing to self-replicate, billions of nanites rushed back toward the Relic, recycling everything in their path.

Until I aborted the process, nothing could stop it. The Reapers weren’t going to get a single nanite. The entire giant Molecular Mist they’d created was now working for us!

We’d done our homework preparing to fight for this star system. Now the nanites were falling into dense groups which spread through space, ready to self-destruct in Plasma Blasts the moment their targets entered the killing zones.

This wasn’t victory yet. Three of Avatroid’s fleets had been reduced to clouds of debris swirling through space. By using the mass attack technique, the Reapers had suffered considerable damage but the bulk of their force was out storming Darg. It would soon be back to finish us off.

Oasis had burned out. Eurasia was no more.

I had no idea how long we’d last. Our enemies were bound to change their tactics, assaulting us in small groups to gradually tire us out and exhaust our ship’s resources.

Incoming call. Source: Avatroid’s flagship

Body of the message:

Human, we need to talk. Come round. This isn’t a trap.

Barely twenty minutes had elapsed since the Relic had left the docks.

In those twenty minutes, two space stations had been destroyed, three AI-controlled fleets defeated and thousands of Reapers' ships burned out.

Under such conditions, you had to think on your feet.

“Check the ship and report all damage. Mechanics, commence repairs. Defense group, activate Steel Mist. Navigators, calculate a course to Avatroid’s flagship!”

* * *

Avatroid — this materialized avatar of an ancient AI — was fused with a bulkhead. He could still move some of his servodrives but was unable to wrestle himself free or move without help.

“Zander?” he watched me painfully, aware that I might have accepted his invitation with the sole intention of finishing him off.

Considering the scope of death and destruction he’d brought upon this star system, his assumption wasn’t exactly ungrounded.

“Why did you call me up? That’s not a state to entertain guests in! Don’t you have a backup copy?”

“No,” he screeched.

“Sorry, I don’t believe you.”

His mechanical arm twitched a few times, then began jerking toward the casing that covered his central systems.

A fire-damaged piece of cargonite clanged to the floor. “Look.”

Droplets of red liquid hovered in mid-air. Avatroid’s spinal slots housed a great many neurochips, connected to the rest of his body by some pale threads encased in watertight transparent tubes. In place of a human chest he had a multitude of armor-plated cylinders.

“Open one,” Avatroid said.

Dozens of sensors lit up on his body’s mysterious components. Such a degree of trust in me meant he was utterly desperate.

What was wrong with him?

I touched one of the cylinders. With a click of magnetic locks, its front part swung aside and began to slide away.

Below it sat a transparent test jar filled with yellowish liquid. Inside it bobbed a wrinkled mass of gray matter.

An organic neuronet module?

“Why?” I asked, flabbergasted. “What prompted you to create a weak link in your impregnable system?”