Interzeit: A Space Opera (16 page)

The laser phalanx hit 100% of
acquired
targets on the acceleration down to strafing speeds.
Twenty drones from the forward lasers evaporated. The hive reacted, scrambling and breaking off from the attack on Gibril.

They
focused onto the new threat, and then the real battle began.

The laser beams fired in all directions around them. A schizophrenic light show, the deadly spotlights burned, searched, and danced in the erratic chaos of the battle. The drones flew with precision their processes and predictions trying to match and out match the Nazer. Her guns, though operated by humans,
also
relied on this layer of processes and predictions, and so the two sides clashed testing for the superior metamind at work.

As the swarm tried to enclose on them, more exploded, their hulls ripping apart violently on first breach of the hull. They fired back, sending high energy bolts into the Nazer. The ship rocked with the subtle vibrations of a far off Earthquake. Each blast brought the anxiety of a larger tremor, of a tipping point being reached, and the call of their final aftershock.

Despite the damage they were taking, the drones were already under half of their predicted total. Septis felt a wave of hesitant relieve beginning to wash over him.
They headed closer to the colony, taking priority to remove the harassers still assaulting it.

As they drifted close, the lasers burned the metal ships open surgically, removing them like an inorganic parasite.

Septis’s relief was short lived however. A new swarm of drones launched at them, revealing themselves from behind the colony. Their representation on the map was a confusing blur of red. The scanners tallied and totaled them, it was a rising number as more and more poured into the fray. To fourty, to fifty, and higher and higher, it continued rising, only ebbing i
n
small bursts from the
Nazer
’
s
laser bite.

“Launch all ships,” Septis ordered, “Re
call
Usar
to the Nazer. We’re a sitting
duck,
have them run interference while the cannons do their work.

“Sir!”
Xuna answered, she worked quickly on her controls.

The thick crystalline hull of the Nazer shook with the new barrage of drones. Their blasts and missiles fractured and cracked the smooth surface. Walking over to the systems engineering, Septis watched the hull integrity lower evenly, in a slow, but worrying manner.

The hangars arranged around the Nazer’s chaotic shape began opening, ships launching out in quick succession.

The fighter ship
s
on board were
designed primarily as escort int
erceptor ships. Fast and deadly,
the tip of the ship was a sharp dynamic point, rolling outwards into a w
ingless pyramidal
rocket. The
whole ship was like a single piece, the only guns were two laser bays notched into the nose of the ship.

They danced into the vacuum, zipping violently and elegant. They picked off the careless strafers first, pouncing on them from behind as they were wreaking their havoc.

Septis
watched them sail through the chaos in this way, hunting the hunters. Soon however, the hunters become the hunted, the roles reversing and muddling as the dogfighting ensues. They lose their first manned ship, Septis watches their beacon go dark, and th
e computer read out the death
.

It hits him with a sharp pang in his chest, like someone driving a nail through seeking to break through, and pin him against something. He lets out a dreadful sigh, trying to keep his mind clear and focused on the tactical board
.

The read
out of the
enemy’s
numbers finally stopped growing around seventy-two. Once again they began a steady crawl, pulling the number down and down. The laser cannons, given cover by the skirmishing crafts, help cover them in return, sniping down pursuing ships first.

The maelstrom of math, targeting algorithms, trajectory, and luck stirs, another bad omen, several drones and another pilot go down. A cannon misfires, another pilot goes down. The
drones
numbers continue to fall steadily, pacing out their own rate of damage easily.

Once they pull the number down under sixty ships their whole tactic changes. Suddenly twelve ships come up from under them. They break through the unsuspecting laser phalanx, and beginning crashing directly into the hull. Warnings go over in quick successions, as the hull is breached.

“Waste processing has been hit Captain!” A technician yells, “Power routing to sector fourteen and fifteen are unstable, system shut down of reactor three is imminent.”

“Evasive maneuvers!” Xuna yells, “rotate those sectors away from the kamikaze drones.”

The Nazer lurches backwards, its form shifting and turning. Septis notices the attack break off.

He yells
in panic
, “Main cannons on Gibril now!”

The remaining drones pull a similar sho
w. The cloud being peppered by the Naze
r
’s
own ships, it pulls away and descends upon the colony.

The drones
fire viciously into the hull of the space stations, the ships themselves continue through crashing and exploding into the side. Almost
too
quick to catch, their fleet numbers tumble down and down racing at breakneck to zero.

Before they hit zero a fir
e
Gibril
explodes, one side of the colony sheers off in a fireball breaking apart into tiny pieces in space. The interior is messy as it flips and reveals itself to the Nazer, channels, corridors, open spaces, different colors parts, and people all exposed to the vacuum rip away from each other violently.

A paltry number of crafts launch away from the remnants of Gibril, racing for their survival.

“We need to pull those people out!” Septis exasperates,

“Sir,”
A tactical officer protests,
“
There i
s nothing we can do Sir. Sensors predict imminent reactor meltdown in five minutes.”

“Damn it!” Septis slams his fists down.

“He’s correct sir,”
Xuna says monotonously
in shock, “We need to pull back now.”

Septis stares
into his terminal angrily, “Do it, get us out of here.”

Everyone sets to
work,
the Nazer pulls away from the colony.

“All ships return to base. Pull back, repeat,
pull
back.” Xuna hums into the ship comm. channel.

She drops into her seat squeezing her forehead, rubbing her eyes.

Gibril ends in an apocalyptic glowing blast. The small point grows and claws outwards with blindingly brilliant white light. The blast washes over them, shaking and
blinding
. Impact vibrations from the hull resonate through the encapsulated air inside.

“The debris” tick tacks across the ship in scraping lurches and sudden loud pounding bangs.
Everyone on the command deck waits silently for the final judgment to pass. The violent storm’s last big statement rattled, demanding their r
everent observation.

Hours later the
command
bridge is still in a frenetic motion. Compiling the information, the post mortem,
it was
a necessary and sullen review, they settle the day, it
s dreary business rolling over
into the next one.

Four pilots dead, half of the drone fleet
was
destroyed during the battle as well, some taken out,
and others
sacrificed to save lives. The hull breach was
sealed;
the waste recycling system
virtually offline as a result.

Further, the
transmission lines running through the area were destroyed. All of the engineering crew
was
at work re-routing the lines to the damaged sectors. The project required systemic outages while the generators were ramped down for safety
,
a
lternating the outage to different sectors every few hours.

Septis worked with Xuna to coordinate the rescue of the surviving colonists. Many ships had escaped, but lacked the equipment and fuel to make it very far. They took them in,
but there were far
too many ships for their hangars,
so
they took in the ships in good states,
and abandoned
the others to the deep.

Rescue ships patrolled the wreckage, picking up the odd stragglers and freak survivors. The decimated pieces of the colony drifted away pulling into a thin stream of metal. Falling thinner and thinner they were trapped in the halo around the gravity corridor.

The total population of Gibril was estimated at approximately 230,000. They had recovered 421 and were already stringently rationing out spaces for them to stay, cramped
into equipment bays,
making their normal operations impossible.
Reports of dangerous radiation circulated around the refugees, making more testing, and further rationing necessary.

Finally Xuna broke after they had all been on the bridge for thirty hours. She ordered
everyone cease the relentless grinding
.

A skeleton crew, along with the ship’s computer systems would continue efforts, allowing for them to work in shifts, and rest. Everyone in command snapped out of the moment like a trance. Drained empty by the day, the
y shuffled to rest quarters which now seemed
insultingly opulent, and isolated from the suffering at large.

Septis struggled to sleep, his translucent face grappled with predictions and contingencies for new unseen enemies.
His failure was their failure. In all areas, but that of their own survival they had failed. Even that was not in complete purity.

Those
Kuipterra
n’s had given their life to help a people they we
re of no direct loyalty to, even
their sacrifice had been tainted in Septis’s weakness.

Kales finally re-emerged from the endless malaise. A series of fever dreams, one to the next, seemingly without starting or stopping. In this place his brain thought things, terrible things. Things he now knows to be foolish, deluded fears and fantasies.

It went from whirring machine blades, to a room, some thick liquid dripping and dripping. The drops slowed down, becoming louder and deeper with every following plop. Then more blades, with more moments of hazy dripping, a rare moment of lucidity, fear and horr
or at his form, it was an alien’s
form now.

The one true Martian, something different, these mad awakenings (or were they dreams?) were quickly corrected externally, his will dashes into the gentle winds of the red son, with it he
too
returns
from
whence he came.

He though
t endlessly that
this was the new eternity, some glitched infinite looping of these soundscapes and thoughts, overlaying, replaying, and tormenting him in perpetuity. That idea of infinity hit a wall, an interim of darkness,
then
grew, stretching
out longer and longer.

Finally one day his mind was forced to recognize that it was not an interim, but the new normal. A room of complete darkness, visited by a white ghost in regularity became the new eternity, his new purgatory.

His senses were dulled by the intent of the outside world.
Them, the “They” of Mars.
He had no name for them. Raesh was not one of
them,
he was a true human, and thus a
n
imposter as a Martian. Only the true Martians could see one another, and they would have no greater purpose for Raesh. He was only good as their extension, as their hand, and where their hand wished to be, his influence followed.

It spun out to him, the finger of them, they needed him, but not now, for now he was stored in light death. It was a small price to pay for his life, although he had never
paid so unwillingly
. His thoughts fell apart as they formed, splintering and falling away to infantile images, emotions, and unstable memories.

The Red One provided
protection to his favored chosen. No, the war god hated humanity, doing all he could to destroy them time and time again. This hatred was his gift, like fire, it was stolen from him.

They unplugged him out of nowhere one
eternity
. It slid out of the back of his head, until that point he had not noticed it at all
, but the plug had certainly noticed him
. Thin strips of skin tore away as the plug it had adhered to was suddenly removed.

This snapped him awake, his vision still blurred, and thoughts unlinked. He looked around
calmly,
he tried touched the wound in his head, but his arms were not yet connected to his mind.
He felt a warmth travel up his arm. It coursed around, hitting his chest and heart. From the central hub it spread to all of the remaining biological parts of his body.

His pupils
tighten, and he returns to the living
at last, his mind races up, his old visions fading away, retreating into his subconscious no longer useful as a salve against his existential insanity.

“Raesh?”
He shouts, looking around the room.

There is only a
machine. It
has no communication interface despite being vaguely humanoid. Its digital eyes stared at nothing in particular, if that’s what they even were. Kales leaned up further, swinging his legs around to the edge of the bed. He feels the strain of several plugs and IVs pull back against him painfully.

“Agh,” he slurs in pain.

The machine blindly notices this, and moves around him. Steadily the pressure is relieved as it removes each shackle one by one. Finally Kales removes the IV from his arm with a wet sliding squish, throwing the still dripping fluids
to
the ground.

He stands, it feels rather natural. Looking now, he blinks several times. His legs seem human, appear human, real, biological. He touches his own facing expecting the upgrade
to be
so
me kind of tortuous prison, an
angular
mask caging him in. Its rough, pocked from lack of sunlight. His hands flow down his body, coursing down his chest and
hips,
he touches his knees and legs. They too have a natural spongy smoothness to them.

It’s
only as he slides around to
his
heels, that he notices something is amiss. Coursing down his back side in a steady procession there are gaps. Circled in metal, large ports run up his legs. His back is smooth again from what he is able to tell, but his neck and skull…

Several small electronic
ports run up it, culiminating in and
partially strangled by his long wild hair.

It’s a long trip, with many emotions.
Too many at once to be balanced, they bleed into each other, averaging into a thin anxiety.
With a hint of melancholy, he searches the dark room for an exit. Finally a panel slides away.

Kales walks into the sun, his eyes quickly adjust despite his long sleep. The plants and vines grow everywhere, his domicile the only structure in this valley peninsula. It’s beautiful here, and even warm, the soft grass and dirt cushion his feet as he walks, as he somehow feels. The sun runs through his body, and he realizes his nudity. It hits him with slight embarrassment, and he doubles back to the shack, in search of coverings.

He finds no clothes, so he tears the dirty sheet from the bed. It smells, dry blood mark
s
it with regular frequency
, he dons it anyway. It folds well enough into a rough toga.
Kales holds
the knot tight with one hand, and begins walking. Not knowing where too, but there is only one way he can go. The valley curves up to tall canyon walls in all directions but one.

He follows the greenery through to the natural path. It leads him out the outcropping into a narrow pass, darkened by the occasional merging of the two canyon walls on his left and right, kissing and forming a man made arch.

Soon Kales realizes where he’s headed. Not due to any memory recall, or experience, but it sinks into him li
ke so much of what he knows now
. The part-time tunnel is dark, broken only by the occasional sky light, the sun struggling through the thick clouds hanging above them.

He would no longer see Raesh, he knew this. Something had happened, nothing good, he had been let go, and severed from the fold, from them. A hand amputated could only mean two things. The fingers of the hand would be thrown aside as well, or that the fingers become the new hand, but for what purpose?

The tunnel
grew more permanent in nature
. Kales passes by a metal door, he thinks nothing of it at first, but his mind freezes a few steps past it.

He shakes himself, trying to regain clarity. Returning to the door, he touches his hand to a piece of outcropped rock. This secret reveals
itself,
a small biometric tentacle slithers out from the ceiling, scanning him carefully.

The serpent likes what it sees, and lets him pass through, he feels it saying something to him, yet it knows no language. What was it then?
A feeling, a logical intuition?

The chamber within holds a carriage on a track, it leads into a deep lightless tunnel. Irrationally knowing he must, he enters and lets it take him to his predetermined destination.

The darkness sits with him for some time, his mind fades out like before, syncing with the environment around him, almost shutting down. Eventually this is treated with a small emergence of light. It
’
s at the end of the tunnel so to speak, quickly growing
,
he sees something more interesting.

Deimos
,
surrounded by scaffolds and plugs
,
stares back at him. Something i
nside him and it both resonate
at this reunion. It resonates inside of him as he peers into the crooked smiling face of the automaton.

The carriage comes to a stop halfway through this storage chamber, beckoning his exit. Kales complies silently walking up to his Mech. No one else seems to be present, he’s alone with it. His feeling, the intuition to come here, is pointing towards Deimos, almost emanating from it. What kind of machine could do such
a thing? It must be “Them”. T
hey could and would orchestrate such a thing, but why?

Why would this be his first waking moments?

Kales climbs
the narrow staircase on Deimos’s scaffold. Despite all of the “bed rest” Kales had of late, the climb is effortless. The stairs flatten out to the main platform, level with the cockpit entry in the war mech’s red chest.

His hand reaches out for it on its own. It extends reaching for the biokeysig pad hidden under its plates. At the last m
oment his hand passes over it, clamping down firmly on one of the metal plates instead.

Kales understands
, his other arm latches on, and he climbs up its chest. Slowly, he conquers the red behemoth, scaling it slowly until reaching the top. He sits on top of its “skull”, though one of the narrower parts of the Mech, it is still large enough to sit down on comfortably.

He leans backwards on his hands letting his feet dangle lightly over its brow. He scans around from this high point, trying to confirm his suspicion. Where is his watcher, his handler? Where are the commanders, and plutocrats?
The engineers to shame his abuse of the hardware?
They are no where to be found however hard he looks.

When that fact finally sinks in he relaxes, drifiting off to a peaceful day dream, staring dead eyed into the far wall of the chamber.
It’s
partially tiled over cavernous appearance looked back at him with the same amount of emotion.

Something inside him thinks he is talking with Deimos. It has no voice, but it speaks, he has no way to comprehend the speech, yet he understands it anyways. It’s
coalescence
,
a unification
. It knows him
already,
it knows its dead sibling as well. Phobos the martyr, it died fighting for Mars, killing the pilot Kales Marek as well.

But Kales isn’t dead, he’s here, dangling above Deimos. It disagrees softly, only Deimos dangles above Deimos. He laughs at the tautological play at work, when suddenly he feels a tug at his leg.

He looks down. The red machine
’
s maw is wide, and smiling, its mouth filled with razor red teeth, hungry and bloody. It snags his feet in its teeth, and flicks its head up, casting Kales lightly into the air.

Its hungry maw opens wider and wider, Kales claws at the bloody teeth trying to catch
himself
. The jaw opens just out of his reach cutting him, as he falls into its throat screaming.
He snaps awake panting heavily. It felt real, was real. His
face,
and other vestigial parts drench in a cold sweat. Kale slowly comes back to his senses, when he realizes a yelling directed towards him.

Two small dots of engineers march towards the scaffold angrily.

“Hey!” One yells, “You can’t be up there you idiot! No touching the hardware after hours!”

“Fucking wrench jockeys,” The other spits, “This is why we have to run calibrations so much I swear, these idiots come in here after hours and…”

Kales tunes out of th
e
ranting.

They draw nearer to him, “What the hell is he wearing?” one asks.

As they reach the scaffold, they demand he climb down, threatening violence, demotions, pay docking, and all manner of sticks and carrots.
Kales obliges
them, jumping the moderate distance down to the platform.

He lands with a hard thud, his cybernetic legs absorbing the impact without
so
much as a bend of the knee.

The temporary
glamour
of this act fades, and they begin to chew into him with slurs and vulgarity. He fans his arms outstretching in response, then he closes them inwards towards his solar plexus, as though he is cradling a delicate invisible orb between them.

Deimos responds, its arms too form a cradle, only instead of an imaginary
orb,
the thing in its grasp is the scaffold.

“It’ll kill us all,” Kales mocked, as the giant hands cusped around them.

The workers fled in a panicked disbelief, cursing him as they went. Kales smiled, and they both felt a streak of sadistic pleasure.
Their arms returned to their sides slowly, laughing at them. So much had changed since he had first started down this path.

Kales had been an engineer himself once. Mars was filled with talent
, the rough life one lived on the red planet was a filter in that way. Even the lowest labor jobs, or service roles required a certain sense for machines, and hidden meaning, those who lacked this were often found dead in comical and helpless ways.