Redemption of the Dark kind
Chapter 21: Hidden Secrets and Cataclysm.
12th April 2900.
Teranthos Nebula, Emancipator, KI fleet.
Sighting another guard body ahead in the hallway, Xale rushed through the engineering evacuation corridor. He ran past the body, commanding the three troopers to keep pace with him as they pursued.
One then gave a choke, and as the other two sounded as if they were spinning around, three crunching snaps were heard. Reacting instinctively, Xale spun to face the noise, not bothering to engage his helmet.
In his vision, he saw the three bodies still falling, their helmeted heads twisted 180 degrees, the blue Kro'nogri blood seeping out from under the torn seams. Before the bodies hit the steel flooring, the air shimmered slightly in front of Xale.
Within a second of spinning to the noise, Xale was smashed in the side of the face, hard.
The impact smashed Xale's helmet with a sickening crack, and sent him hurtling into the corridor walls, his helmet back shattering from the joint fist and wall impact, destroying with it Xale's comms channel.
Clutching his head, and likely to now have a mild concussion, Xale tried to retaliate, summoning a fistful of dark matter. Then, a piercing pain impacted his abdomen and genitals, and with a cry of pain, Xale crumpled to the floor, painfully subdued.
Before he could register what happened, he felt himself dragged over the bodies of his guards quickly, and the sound of an opening hatch.
Alex reappeared, and unceremoniously threw Xale into the escape pod. As Xale flickered his eyes open, he tried to stagger up, but his mind was damaged by the head injury, so he could not use dark matter as a weapon for now.
Alex smashed the launch button, and flipped Xale a pair of middle fingers as the pod doors slammed shut, and the mass accelerators launched the pod into space. Inside, Xale uttered a croaking gurgle of indignation, which would have been a scream of frustration if not for the pain.
Alex clenched a fist, and smiled this success. He opened his encrypted comms channel to the Liberator.
"Xale has been trapped in the escape pod, and is ejecting to coordinates 23-46-75, engage Liberator's drives for an intercept, follow it and only capture when a safe distance from the fleet, to allow time for capture and escape to FTL"
"Confirmed, Raxler out."
Ignoring the shrinking speck of light, Alex ran down the halls, making a beeline for the reactor core, using shortcuts he had learnt during his time spent living aboard by studying ship schematics. He would download any useful data from the mainframe and transmit it to the Liberator just before it and its fleet escaped, and then he would proceed to the reactor core to sabotage it, and if possible, find a way out.
In the case of the latter, Alex was escaping one way or another.
By the time the Emancipator registered the unauthorized escape pod launch, it had already travelled 6 kilometres from the dreadnought. Aboard, the navigation, comms and thruster controls had been hacked and blocked by everyone but Alex or Raxler.
As the escape pod travelled out further, the stolen cloaked KI ships fired thrusters for a pursuit ad intercept trajectory. By the time the pod was aboard the Liberator, they would be 500 kilometres away from the fleet, and the cloaking could be maintained even while taking aboard the pod using the mass effect capture fields.
Aboard the bridge, Raxler and Lexa studied the onboard camera images of Xale in the pod. Lexa was shocked that her twin had been treated this way, and asked: "Why was he so rough on him?"
Raxler turned to the cloaking systems display, stating: "A logical retort for you, do you think he would comply merely on negotiation terms from one such as Alex?" Silenced by common sense, Lexa muttered aloud: "At least he's alive and we can capture him. I know I can convince him."
She turned to see the Emancipator, the dreadnought and its accompanying fleet becoming gradually more distant as Raxler's cloaked fleet fired thrusters to pursue the pod. She said aloud: "I guess we've done out part, the rest is up to Alex now. He knows this is a suicide mission, and it amazed me he'll take it on so willingly. I guess after he was near killed, death didn't mean as much to him."
Raxler would have smirked if he were human. Alex had commanded he not disclose subject A76 until the appropriate time came. Even so, if Alex died, this conflict was far from finished.
Hopefully, Alex would gather useful data before escaping, one way or another.
As soon as the alarms for the escape pod launch sounded, Norstith was enraged. He thought that Alex had gone and escaped on the pod.
How could I have been so foolish? What other reason could he be down here?
Continuing down the corridor, Norstith opened his comms channel:
"Xale. I need a status report."
No response.
"XALE, REPORT!"
Silence. This was impossible. If Xale was being blocked, there would at least be static. The only conclusion was that the comms receiver in his helmet had been destroyed, which usually occurred with the destruction of the headwear.
Norstith slumped, the sadness of Xale's likely death gripping his every bone and feather. The double betrayal of Alex, the disappearance of Lexa, and now the death of Xale, mounted atop the much earlier deaths of his sister and his niece, was almost too much for the middle aged Leg'hrul to bear.
He had trained Alex, raised him in the second body and raised Xale and Lexa also, all to cause the plans of his superiors to come to fruition. Once Alex fled, those plans were heavily altered, with only Xale and Lexa acting as the keys to the goals.
But now, every plan he had had helped with, every achievement, promised award, was meaningless. He had failed his superiors, the KI would likely shatter without the significant funding the support of the Emancipator and the projects to resurrect Alex and create Xale and Lexa received alone.
"Warning! Unauthorized lockdown of main reactor and systems ward!"
At the alarm, Norstith stepped up, realizing that the escape pod was a ploy, and that Alex had all along been heading for the main reactor and mainframe centre. There, Alex could inflict all sorts of damage to the KI. Steal data, disable the vessel, upload a virus, or even worse, sabotage this vessel.
Wasting no time, the blue and grey Leg'hrul sped off, eager to have a little 'reunion' with his greatest apprentice, and greatest betrayal and failure.
"Begin data search."
After he engaged the download, Alex pointed his gun towards the bulkhead door 50 metres away. He was downloading data to transmit to the Liberator, concerning battle plans, vehicle/weapon blueprints, KI leadership and any espionage info the KI had on the Alliance or the UIP.
The bulkhead door had been sealed from the inside, and the console smashed. Now the only way through was to cut through. On the other side, the guards fired away uselessly, venting frustration as they awaited special laser cutting equipment.
Inside, after 10 minutes, the data transfer was complete. Having gone directly into the mainframe, little firewall programs were encountered in the automatic hack. Alex comm'd the Liberator in encrypted code once more:
"Sending critical KI data to Liberator's mainframe. Analyse once back at base."
"Affirmative. Escape pod captured, I am currently on route with Lexa to ventral hanger to begin debriefing and interrogating him, under the attempt to convince him to change affiliations."
"Excellent. Note, destruction of reactor core shall annihilate the entire store of antimatter, and also give way to runaway fusion reaction. Scans show estimated blast power at 5.7 gigatons equivalent. Likely to consume rest of surrounding fleet in fireball, giving way to many smaller detonations."
"Acknowledged. Fleet shall jump into warp immediately following data transfer, excluding the stealth destroyer Relentless, which shall remain behind until final data transfer of non-KI data complete."
"Transfer data to A76 as soon as possible. Good luck. Over and out."
Turning off the comms channel, Alex faced the data console, seeing that the data was one minute from completion of transfer. He then looked back at the door, and using his dark left arm, transported several detonation charges with dark tendrils to the doorway, placing them on the floor.
Just as the data finished transferring, Alex yanked the transfer device off the console, in time to see the doors being sliced through with the heavy laser equipment. He armed the proximity charges, and ran deeper into the bowels of the Emancipator.
As Alex stopped briefly at a corridor intersection, he thought to himself:
I should have got a map first.
A rapid series of explosions two decks above got him moving quickly to the main reactor room.
The moment the data transfer stopped, the fleet minus the Relentless charged their FTL drives for the jump to warp. A jump to a star within the cluster their base was located in, 20 light years from Solaris, and then a second jump, would bring them back to the base.
Aboard, just as the Liberator made the leap to supralight velocity, a dazed and injured Xale looked up to see the escape pod door opening, and in his darkening vision, he saw a face that made him smile in relief. As Lexa pulled him out, he fell into unconsciousness.
She's alive. That's good.
Emancipator, lower hull.
The moment the troopers had cut open the bulkhead doors they had charged in, weapons drawn and armed. They failed to see the proximity charges around the doorframe and floor.
Before Norstith could come in after them, a rapid succession of explosions went off in the doorway, burning and damaging the swarming guards with burning shrapnel. No one survived, except for one guard, who lay on the ground, blood pouring out of a neck wound in buckets. He had no chance of medical rescue.
Norstith stabbed the suffering guard, putting him out of his misery. He hated seeing things suffer, and would do whatever it took to end suffering, even if it meant ending that thing's existence.
Running into the mainframe room, Norstith saw that the main terminal had been hacked, and a download tool had been discarded, and smashed to pieces, and left nearby. With horror, he realized that Alex probably already transmitted the data if he had destroyed the data storage device.
First betraying him personally, then a second time, but now the entire KI organization by exposing secrets. Now Alex had gone too far.
Using his avian sense of smell, and a link to onboard motion sensors, Norstith saw where Alex's ultimate goal was. The main reactor.
The horror of what Alex could be about to do finally sunk in, and Norstith sprinted in pursuit. He knew Alex would do anything if it suited his moral desires, but perhaps committing mass murder, destruction and suicide in one go? Now Norstith thought that perhaps Alex betrayed him due to insanity.
After navigating the labyrinth of corridors, Alex stood on the service balcony, looking on at the massive reactor. The structure itself was a kilometre in diameter, and the main service room Alex was in was 100 metres long, and 500 metres wide. Between him and the balconies adjacent to the reactor core was a two track monorail of a single moving platform each, with both tracks circumnavigating the massive core in a tunnel which encircled the superstructure.
Alex activated the console, calling the platform to take him to the 4 different fuel feeders. He would place devices on them and trigger a mass overload, creating a runaway thermonuclear reaction.
One track's moving platform pulled up, and Alex stepped on, but froze as he heard a sound of banging footsteps from the corridor he had just come from. Panicking, he smashed the console, driving the platform out of view and towards the first of four consoles.
Norstith ran onto the balcony, his feathers ruffled from the running and stress. He had heard one of the mobile rail platforms drive off, and Norstith would be unable to catch Alex in that direction. He hailed the second monorail platform, and crossed over the track's level crossing, boarded the platform, and set off in the opposite direction to Alex. As the platform accelerated, Norstith summoned dark matter from his own stores, and drew his broadsword and built in plasma shotgun.
On the opposite side, Alex raced off on the platform, having placed the second charge on the second platform. The charges were on a trigger switch, programmed to detonate when Alex's heartbeat stopped, at his death, or when Alex purposefully pressed the button. The overload would take only 2 minutes, at which point the magnetic barriers of the reactor would no longer hold the excess energy of the overpowered fusion reaction.
As the platform slowed for the third platform, Alex grabbed the third charge, and prepared to place it. The platform stopped, and Alex stepped forwards, placing the device inconspicuously underneath the console, and then turning to the platform once more.
As he turned, he heard a guttural, avian shriek, and saw a massive broadsword heading for his head, glowing with dark matter.
Yelling in shock, Alex leapt to the side, Norstith's broadsword stabbing into the welded titanium of the reactor casing. Norstith fired a wave of dark matter at Alex, while simultaneously pulling his blade free. The dark tsunami threw Alex onto the same platform he had used. Firing a few shots from the salvaged rifle, Alex hit the console, driving off around the track once more, headed for the final console.
To his horror, Norstith was hot on his heels, giving chase on the other monorail platform, the inner platform. As such, Norstith drew close enough to Alex to strike. A corkscrewing beam of dark matter tendrils fired at Alex, who diverted them to the side, forming a shield with them as he did. Seeing that Alex needed to be dealt with more fiercely, Norstith unleashed wave after wave of dark tendrils, each wave more powerful as he drew closer on the agonizingly slowly moving platforms.
Again and again Alex diverted and absorbed the dark matter into the shield, each time harder than the last. The dark matter tendrils began to cut and slash at his bionic arms as Norstith tried to take control of Alex's formed shield, the full force withheld by Alex fighting for the dark matter's control at the same time.
Within range, Norstith pulled out his shotgun, and opened fire. The blasts acted on top of the Leg'hrul's dark matter strikes, shattering the Dark Hunter's defensive shield. Before he could fire a finishing blast, Norstith saw Alex thrust dark matter left arm forwards, the dark replacement limb wrenching the Leg'hrul's weapon from his grasp. Before the human could make use of it, Norstith had crushed the barrel with a dark vicegrip, and had also once more readied his broadsword.
From the corner of his eye, Alex saw the fourth console appearing. He drew a salvaged plasma knife, extending it to its maximum length of two feet. He formed his dark left arm into a shield, and used it to block Norstith's vicious overhead strike with the large sword. Unexpectedly, Alex needed to use his remaining arm to brace the dark shield against Norstith's pressing attack. The avian master bore a look of hurt and intense anger at him, and said:
"You are not the only one with mechanical enhancements. My concealed mechanical exoskeleton can easily match anything your mechanical limbs can throw." He pushed down even harder onto the dark shield, causing Alex to bend onto his knees slightly. Alex and Norstith bore steel gazes into each other, and the Leg'hrul continued:
"I should have expected your betrayal the moment you began to question your motives and my orders. I brought you back from the dead, I made you more powerful than you could have ever become in a normal life! And how do you repay me? By attempting to destroy the organization I spent the last 9 years establishing!"
"And why were you establishing it anyway? Don't say it was for 'the greater good', I've seen through that lie now thanks to a discussion with your apprentice, Xale! This organization is not a vigilante group, we are terrorists, perhaps even a third faction in this bloody war! Ever since we joined, things have gotten worse non-stop! I'm here to ensure this core fleet never fulfils its ultimate objective for the KI!"
"You seriously think this is all for the Knight Initiative! This war will end the way we want, but also the way my superiors want also! For one so smart, you may have noticed a tendency for your missions, and any other KI missions, to focus on the UIP, rather than the Alliance!"
A stunned silence overcame both combatants, even as the platform finally stopped adjacent to the final fuel feeder platform. Alex asked: "You've been deceiving me all this time. I've been serving one side still?"
"Correct! All that time you were mainly fulfilling missions set by my superiors within the Alliance defence and intelligence councils! The missions attacking the Alliance were a way to rid the Alliance of secretly uncovered 'undesirable' elements. The UIP victims were still guilty of their crimes, but my superiors wished them gone to lose tactical expertise in the UIP forces and government, in preparation for the next stage of this war!"
"You deceived me into serving the Alliance? I betrayed the UIP, thinking I was helping them, when what I was doing was accelerating their downfall? How could you do such a thing? I placed my trust in you! You admitted you viewed me as a son!"
"And I did! You, Xale and Lexa I viewed as my children, my pupils. I should have told you of the latter twos' existence, and this whole situation could have been avoided!"
"That still doesn't change the fact that you used all three of us! Why did you create us, bring me back?
"Because my superiors told me to do so! They told me to create three ideal warriors, with you to lead two near duplicates as an elite team!"
"Why would you follow them? Didn't your sister and your nephew die in an attack by an Alliance member, the Krono'gri!"
"Because if I did not, they would kill my other sister and her family, husband and two children! I HAD NO CHOICE IF THEY WERE TO SURVIVE!"
Again, a stunned silence. Alex spoke: "A hostage threat is what makes you do these things?"
"I had two sisters. One is already dead, along with her husband and child. I can't bear the loss of my other sibling and her family, and I will do anything to ensure that the Alliance doesn't kill them."
The Leg'hrul eased up the strength slightly, allowing Alex to stand upright again. The middle aged master seemed much older now, less ominous, more desperate now. Alex shook his head, and said: "You have your drive to succeed, and I have my own. Regardless of this news, I cannot let you go through with this plan!"
Alex swung his dark matter arm around, slamming it into Norstith's side like a sledgehammer. The force nearly shattered one of the avian's hollow ribs, and sent him nearly falling down the deep pit which the monorail track ran above. The master had grabbed the track, stopping his fall, and a feral snarl crossed his face as he saw the human rush for the last console. Roaring with ferocity he had not known he'd had, Norstith launched himself at Alex, engulfed in a blazing dark meteor envelope.
Adrenaline seeping through his every organic fibre, Alex managed to slap the small device underneath the console, right before he felt something cold, yet powerful, smash into his torso, breaking one of his ribs. Wind driven from him, and crying out as one of his ribs snapped, Alex grappled desperately as the avian master drove both of them off the platform edge. Reacting quickly, Alex saw the original entrance platform nearby, and started his turbofan pack.
Alex swooped upwards, heading for the entry platform, glancing back to see his former master fall to his death in the 200 metre drop of the reactor chamber. However, Norstith twisted in mid air, and the panels on the back of his armour opened and unfurled, revealing not only a small turbofan pack, but also a feature that all Leg'hrul are naturally born with.
From his back, Norstith flexed the large wings, beating the air fiercely beneath them as he stopped himself falling, and as he rose, he fired his own turbofan pack, giving him a speed boost. He brought out a hidden plasma handgun, and as he found Alex in his sights, he pulled the trigger.
Just 3 metres from the entry platform, Alex felt a shock as the plasma bolt ripped into his back turbofan circuitry. The flight equipment shut down, the safety parameters taking effect, at the worst possible time.
Yelling in fear, Alex reached out with his dark matter left arm, extending it into a tendril to latch onto the platform, pulling himself the extra metre that he would have not made in freefall. With his remaining right hand, the Dark Hunter grasped the platform edge, and began pulling himself up.
A shadow flew over Alex's head, and he then felt a set of talons dig into his mechanical right hand. A cry of shock ran through Alex's vocal chords, as he saw Norstith standing on his remaining support from a falling death.
Digging harder, Norstith hissed into his former apprentice's face: "My duty is not finished! I swore I would help the Alliance, and the KI was the perfect cover to do so under! Now I shall eliminate one part of their plan that will only bring about their end! AAAH!"
A tendril of dark matter had smashed into the Leg'hrul's face, driving him back into the entry corridor. Alex used his dark left arm and his right mechanical arm to hoist himself up. Standing upright, Alex held the device out for Norstith to see, relishing the fear in his eyes.
He pressed the button.
Behind him, the fuel feeders for the massive fusion reactor began to massively increase their fuel pumping. The temperature in the reactor began to rapidly climb, and the humming of the reactor grew louder and louder.
In the corridor, Norstith grabbed Alex by the throat, and slammed him back into the corridor walls, exclaiming: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Norstith punched Alex in the gut, sending him sprawling onto the corridor floor, beginning to cough up blood. Alex wheezed out: "The right thing."
A pair of clawed hands yanked Alex off the floor, and slammed him once more onto the floor, this time on the very edge of the reactor entry balcony, so Alex's head hung slightly over the balcony edge. Norstith pined the human beneath his foot, yelling with slight tears of rage and sadness in his eyes: "EVERYTHING I DID, ALL TO PROTECT MY REMAINING FAMILY! NOW THEY WILL BE KILLED, BECAUSE I FAILED!"
"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THEY WILL? WITH YOU DEAD, THEIR HOSTAGE THREAT WILL HAVE NO MORE SWAY OVER ANYONE! THEY COULD RELEASE THEM!" Yelled Alex, ignoring the blood flying from his mouth. Behind them, the reactor noise grew steadily louder. Ignorant of this stated fact, Norstith lost all patience:
"YOU DESTROYED EVERYTHING I WORKED FOR!"
"YOU TAUGHT ME TO DO ALL THAT IS NECESSARY FOR THE RIGHT THING! I CANNOT LET THIS FLEET FULFILL ITS INTENDED ROLE!"
As Alex yelled this, over the growing reactor noise, two things were occurring to him. One, he had a countdown timer installed in his ear, to tell when the reactor would detonate. And two, he decided to reveal to Norstith why he so willingly chose to die today.
Alex finished the argument, as the reactor would blow in a few seconds: "I WILL NOT LET THE ALLIANCE OR THE KI BRANCH COMMIT ATROCITIES ANY LONGER! AND I MADE SURE TO LEAVE A WAY FOR ME TO SEE THAT SUCH ATROCITIES NEVER HAPPEN MYSELF!"
Alex raised his right wrist, opening a small panel to reveal a red button. Norstith studied it, and within a second, he realized that Alex had played him for a fool, and that he had been ready all along. He had never come to sabotage and escape, for he had found an easier way.
A one way trip, which he could still return from.
Regardless, Norstith had simultaneously duped Alex in this case. Despite Alex's planning, Norstith had ensured he would survive, no matter what happened to him. This conflict between them was far from over.
Ignoring the apparent smirk on Norstith's face, Alex hit the button. The familiar blackout hit Alex, and in his last moment of vision, he saw Norstith above him, beginning to sway and faint, to Alex obviously realizing he had lost.
Both warriors fell to the floor.
3 seconds later, the reactor detonated.
From hundreds of kilometres away aboard the former KI destroyer Relentless, the explosion of the KI fleet was truly a magnificent sight.
Against the backdrop of the Teranthos Nebula, a new star was born instantly. The Emancipator's rear section ripped apart in a large explosion, and was obliterated in a few milliseconds as the antimatter fuel and warheads fell from suspension. The dreadnought was almost instantaneously transformed into a glowing white fireball, consuming the surrounding fleet of dozens of ships, including battleships, cruisers, destroyers and corvettes.
Like dominoes, the rest of the fleet was incinerated, and then detonated milliseconds afterwards. The Teranthos Nebula was illuminated by the glare of 285 kilograms of antimatter annihilating within seconds of each detonation. The force of the explosion sent the tiny cosmic dust particles of the nebula that surrounded where the fleet had been colliding with one another.
As fate would have it, the destruction of the Emancipator fleet had created an artificial equivalent of the beginnings of star formation. The force of a blast, normally a supernova, caused slight increases of mass in the nebula, which eventually pulled more material in, until eventually becoming dense enough to undergo fusion. In tens to hundreds of million of years, new stars would be born in the Teranthos nebula, brought about by the destruction of the KI fleet.
To the artificial intelligence network of troopers and programs that ran the Relentless, this interesting development was irrelevant. The critical goal at the moment was to ensure that the data had uploaded onto the quantum storage files correctly.
"Data transmission verified. All required data present."
"Anomaly. Unknown data present with download. Protocol: do not delete any data, otherwise will risk compromising compatibility of A76 with required data."
"Security bypass recognized. 212% data recovered."
"Engaging FTL drives."
With its final role complete, the Relentless vanished in a streak of light, disappearing from view, even though anyone nearby had been completely vaporized. The required data had been recovered, and behind it, the briefly created star began to fade, and a few minutes later, there was no trace of the KI fleet's existence. Only distress messages issued would be received.
System E-67G, 400 light years from Sol.
13th April 2900
The Relentless had rejoined the Liberator fleet in an uncharted star system. For now, the fleet had to gather supplies, deploying mining drones to gather deuterium and helium-3 from the rings of a massive gas giant, a 'hot Jupiter' planet. Sheltering behind the planet's dark side, the fleet was protected as the drones skimmed the rings, gathering the fuel for the fusion reactors.
Within two hours, the fleet would make the jump back to Solaris. Due to the massive distance travelled by the fleet, the fuel consuming change in course upon hearing of Alex and Xale's escape, the fleet had to stop on route to the base.
Aboard the Liberator, the quantum data pod was delivered safely, perfectly intact and functional, its precious load safe and secure. Raxler studied it, its processor attempting to form a consensus as to why the data load was so extremely greater than anticipated. Finding no viable conclusion, it walked off to the bridge, ready to command the fleet to jump.
In the medical bay, Xale lay down on one of the medical beds, the medical gel and surgical robots fixing the damage done to his body, internal and external. The medi-gel contained a cloud of tiny nanodoctors, which worked rapidly to seal wounds, help more accelerate muscle and growth repair, and also could ease pain, to name a few things.
Lexa sat on the neighbouring bed, as she expected that Xale would remain calm if he awoke with her nearby. Her brother was always distrustful of everyone but herself. Quite frankly, due to the anaesthetic the medical robots gave Xale, and orders by Raxler, which Lexa agreed with, Xale would be kept under until they had unloaded at the Solaris planetary base, an island by what Raxler had told her. It was not a personal matter, but more for safety, as Xale my freak out and damage himself and other people or equipment. It was best until they were planetside, where they could more easily explain things.
Indeed, two hours later, the KI fleet had vanished, and within another day, would reach Solaris, ready to begin the next stage of their rapidly formulated battle plans.