The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 18

The fleet was ready. Na-Graf, Warlord of the fleet, had waited for days as his scattered scouting detachments returned to the flagship. One of them had found something on some jungle world far beyond the borders of the Empire in the Outer Rim. The jungle world was an obvious target for the scouts. The enemy liked to hide in worlds full of life. Knowing that the scouts had descended to do a thorough search. They found a world of marshes and bogs. The Infinite Empire would never have a use for such a world, Na-Graf thought, unless it attracted the interest of the scheming Zhed-Hai. As a Warlord who was not on the Council, Na-Graf held a fair amount of bitterness in his heart towards those he thought had presented obstacles to his advancement. The two primary targets of his bitterness were of course the scientists who had been on the Council so long that between them they dominated the decision making on new members. He had no more hatred for Zhed-Hai than for Soaf-Rushk, but Soaf-Rushk would have had no interest in the world below him. Life was not the concern of the Eldest of the Elders, only machines.

Na-Graf was not exactly a fan of the rest of the members of the Council of course. Most had their position on the council purely because of their subservience to one of the two researchers on the council. For administrators this was, to Na-Graf's way of thinking, perhaps appropriate. He could never decide which activity he held in greater contempt, the paper shuffling of the bureaucrat or the aimless speculation of the scientist. The administrator was at least someone who used power, who kept subject people's down. The scientist simply tinkered with machines or cut open dead animals all day. Actually when Na-Graf thought about it he had no idea what those in the research corps did with their time. But he had to admit that when it came to Soaf-Rushk and Zhed-Hai they had produced things of great value to the empire. The ship he sat in was produced in Soaf-Rushk's great factory in space, and the food he ate was grown and harvested by the slave species Zhed-Hai had created.

Of course Na-Graf might have gotten onto the Council without the help of the two great scientists. Others had, such as Drisk-Koan. But the number of seats that were truly non-aligned and up for merit were few, and they had been occupied by the same Elders for years. So it was Na-Graf's lot to watch others who did less set above him. He had commanded one of the great fleets for decades, unlike that little climber Kru-Garth. And here he was, with one of the enemy, the true enemy, on a planet beneath him. Drisk-Koan hadn't found one in for years, despite having the largest fleet, despite him sucking up all the resources from Lehon as he subjugated world after world of powerless wretches. He was on the Council for his exploits of almost a century before, but now was Na-Graf's chance to do as he had done; to gain the title of God-killer.

It was the true purpose of all they did, the Great Hunt. When the war had begun, over a thousand years before, the goal had been simply to eject the tyrants from their world, and then from their star system. But when they had tried to return, and been repelled, the decision was made. The gods would not leave them in peace, they would insist on ruling, and so the gods must die. The Great Hunt had been a mad venture then. One planet attacking the rulers of all the galaxy, beings who could destroy or move whole star systems. But in those early years, when the generation of the revolution were still alive, all seemed possible. Whatever power the enemy had they were not warriors, and they were few. Against that few the many, if they were united, could triumph. And so the Great Hunt began, so long ago only Soaf-Rushk, last member of the generation born after the revolution, the first generation to be free, remembered it. Every aspect of Rakatan society was devoted to the pursuit of the enemy. Every rule, every law, every institution, all of them with one purpose; to rid the galaxy of its gods. And here was Na-Graf, with one almost in his grasp.

He looked at the holographic representation of the system before him, his fleet appearing as 24 clusters of red lights, the planet that was their target a larger but still small green sphere around which they were arrayed. In the early days of the war this kind of careful preparation was not necessary, back when the enemy did not run after they were discovered. In those days, so Na-Graf had read, the enemy had worlds they would not surrender, species they would not abandon to Rakatan mercy. Then the great fleets would fight several of them at once, and did not have to trap them. The key was to keep them on the planet while the warriors attacked them. The ships' weapons could not kill such beings, only the use of the Gift could do that. So the attack had to be by warriors on the ground. The role of the ships was to push the enemy back down when it tried to escape. Directed energy weapons could not hurt them, but they could move them, slow them down. That meant the ships had to be in place when the attack began. Na-Graf had spent the last few hours ferrying warriors to the surface. Put them down too close to the enemy and it would flee. Without sufficient warriors on the surface it would be able to eventually break through the barrage from the fleet. But move the ships too close, while the warriors were not ready to strike, and the enemy would flee anyway. The ground and space attacks had to be coordinated exactly. It was what every warrior in the advanced tactical classes at the Academy trained to do. Na-Graf had only seen it done for real once before, as a junior officer, but he knew the plan to trap the enemy by heart. All officers did.

All that remained was word that the warriors were in place. They had spent hours marching through the thick jungle and bogs to get close enough to strike. They would all charge at once as the concentrated barrage, which would keep the Celestial pinned down, began. They would close on it and attack with lightning, and if their discipline and courage held, the god would fall.

Na-Graf watched the board as the last of the battle-leaders signaled their readiness. He thought of all the rivals back at school, those who had tried to shame him with their greater Gifts, and smiled at the thought that those who still lived, who were few, would hear of his victory. All Rakatans would. He thought too of all the other Warlords who looked down on him, some from the Council table, while they were stumbling around looking for their opportunity to do as he was about to and yelled, "Forward!"

Moving immediately to top speed shook his ship and caused the engines, which were hundreds of yards away, to make themselves heard on the bridge. The red lights in the projection streaked towards the green sphere, which grew swiftly larger in the display. Speed was essential. The duration of time between the enemy realizing they were there and the attack beginning would determine the outcome of the battle. At that moment, on the surface, tens of thousands of warriors were making their own headlong rush towards the center of the perimeter they had created. They would not know precisely where the enemy was until it emerged from whatever hiding place it had selected. No one could pinpoint a Celestial's location precisely. They constantly released tremendous amounts of power into the environment, and unless they took special measures to stop it any Rakatan could feel their presence within hundreds of miles. But that also meant that to identify the precise center was like trying to determine where precisely an explosion happened as the flames consumed you. The warriors had an approximate location, a circle a few dozen miles wide in which the enemy was to be found. That, imprecise as it was, was enough that the bulk of the fleet could concentrate above the appropriate hemisphere, though some ships were spread more lightly across the whole of the planet, in case the enemy slipped the noose.

It took only a few seconds for the plan to be disrupted. One of the battle-leaders reported enemy contact well before expectations, almost at the edge of the perimeter they had created. They were forced to engage without sufficient firepower to do much of anything. Within seconds the hundreds of warriors in that group were wiped out and a hole was created in the line which was supposed to envelop the enemy. There were second and third lines behind them of course, but the Celestial would be on them too quickly for the rest of the warriors to cross the miles between them.

Na-Graf ordered the troop carriers, which were over a hundred miles back from the battleground so as to not be detected by the Celestial, into the air. Now that the enemy knew of their presence there was no point to keeping them ground, and Na-Graf knew he had to bring the now far too distant warriors opposite the hole in the line forward faster than their legs could take them. He also ordered an attack on the Celestial from the ships in low orbit. Now that it had emerged and was actively using its power the enemy was easy to detect. You didn't even have to find the Celestial anymore; you could look for the evidence of its passing. Hundreds of dead Rakatans was hard to miss. Na-Graf knew the orbital attack would kill many of his own warriors in the area, but they were as good as dead already, for they were too few to withstand a Celestial. It was an order that would send thousands of Rakatans to their death, but it would slow the Celestial enough that many thousands more would be able to get in position to bring it down.

On the ground the Rakatan warriors rushing towards the center of the battle watched from their transports as fire rained down on the jungle. It took only a few seconds for the area to be cleared, leaving behind it a huge mud ball filled with shattered trees. The Celestial, a swirling vortex of light at the center of the chaos moved through the air, dodging most of the strikes, but not all. Each time it started rising into the air it would weave its way, at blinding speed, around the streaks of red energy until it finally moved too slowly or in the wrong direction and was struck and thrown back down. After this happened several times it did a peculiar thing. It struck back. To the astonishment of the oncoming Rakatans a beam of light, too bright for any to look at, shot from the Celestial towards space.

Na-Graf did not have time to plan for this strange, for a Celestial, tactic before the ship next to his exploded. Celestials usually tried to run. When they had managed to escape it was usually because the ground forces were all wiped out and it was able to concentrate on finding its way through the blockade. It didn't usually attack ships directly if it was planet bound. When great fleets had been destroyed it had usually been when they had gotten too close to the surface, or when they had the bad luck to encounter a Celestial in space. Na-Graf immediately saw the problem in his deployment. If the Celestial was going to attack this way, his ships were too close together. The blast from the destruction of the ship next to his had been felt on the bridge, and that meant that it had placed strain on the shields. He did not need to ask for their status to know there was a potential problem. He ordered the ships to spread out as he watched a second ship being obliterated.

On the surface several shiploads of Rakatans had been deposited within view of the Celestial. They were lining up in the suddenly open ground of the planet which had been, only minutes ago, thick, lush jungle.

"How can we run in this?" one warrior asked to his battle-leader, pointing at the mud.

"As best you can! Three more transports and we will have enough to advance!" the battle-leader yelled. "We have to take the pressure off the fleet."

Another transport landed behind their line as he said this, hundreds of Rakatans dropping out of it, falling around three times their own height down to the surface. What would have been for many other species a bone jarring landing was for the Gifted Rakatans easy as skipping. On each wing of the battle line that was developing two more transports disgorged their occupants, who took their places in the second line of each wing. Seeing this the battle-leader ordered his unit to advance, relying on the other battle-leaders to follow his lead now that the battle plan had broken down. In the distance, perhaps a mile off, they could see that the Celestial had changed its approach. It was no longer beams of energy it was sending towards the fleet, but colossal boulders ripped from the ground, ground newly revealed in the aftermath of the blasts from the ships above. Watching a boulder with several hundred tons of mass fly into the sky at speeds sufficient to have it leave the gravity of the planet was a sight the few survivors of this battle would never forget. When the boulders struck their targets in space, the number of survivors lessened significantly.

As the Rakatan battle line set off to attack, Na-Graf was giving the order to pull back the fleet. A large boulder had made contact with one of his ships, pushing through the shield designed to repel energy blasts with ease. The ship had come apart like it was made of children's blocks. He had lost six ships, a quarter of his overall fleet and a third of the ships he had concentrated above the Celestial's location. He was dangerously close to losing containment. He had to hold out long enough for the warriors he had moved into place to pull the Celestial's attention away from fleeing, though perhaps this strangely aggressive Celestial had no intention of fleeing. He could just barely maintain a sufficient rate of fire if he pulled the ships back, a move which necessarily spaced them out more and changed their angles of fire. He was planning a deployment of the frigate support ships into the upper atmosphere to compensate for this problem when one last energy blast came from the planet and hit his flagship, ending his dreams of sitting on the Council.

But it was too late for the Celestial. The warriors on the surface were hurtling towards it in waves. Thousands of bolts of the strange electricity the Gift placed under their control erupted from the spears of the Rakatan warriors. The Celestial, experiencing real pain and injury for the first time in the battle pushed itself into the air, trying desperately to get away, but the assembled Rakatans all pulled back at it as one. They had been trained for this, to act as a unit, to respond to the battle with the assumption that all their brothers and sisters on the field would respond the same way. The Celestial rose several hundred feet into the air before it was pulled back down. As it fell it lashed out, taking thousands of Rakatan lives with each one of the waves of energy it produced. But there were too many. As each Rakatan fell another from behind ran over him, spear raised, hatred for the enemy channeled through it in the form of purple lightning. Tens of thousands closed on the spot where it had come crashing back to the planet's surface and upon reaching it sent wave of wave of their own energy towards it. As they did so the swirling light began to slow, revealing what appeared to be a sphere of pure energy. It had been moving so quickly before it had appeared to have no definite shape, but now the ball of light move slower and slower, its light beginning to flicker as the purple lightning tore into it. Eventually the light went out.

In the aftermath of the battle, when a new commander for the fleet was chosen, the enemy was investigated. The Celestials had no body to examine, but in death it had left its own telltale marks. The power keeping the energy together had failed; a little bit with each second it was under sustained attack, and then all at once. As it lost coherence, the energy that it was composed of was released. This could be measured and analyzed, primarily in its effect on the material around it. It's fall and then explosive death created a crater which served as the burial ground for all the Rakatans who had been in the front line of the assault. The soil and stone on the interior of the crater were burned, all the moisture pulled from the soil, all the color burned out of the rock.

When the report reached the new Warlord as he attempted to reorganize the shattered fleet it held for him a surprise. 40,000 of his warriors on the surface had died in the assault, a number that was not actually that bad, relatively speaking. But losing half the capitol ships in the fleet, and more importantly their highly trained crews, would be a shocking bit of new for the Council when they received it. It would be made worse when they read that the Celestial they had attacked had been, for that species, a juvenile. Of course that meant it had been alive longer than any Rakatan. It had probably been alive since before the Celestials and their Kwa servants had first appeared on Lehon thousands of years before, bringing with them gifts and subjugation. But there was no mistaking the energy signatures and magnitude, the scientists aboard said. They had killed what amounted to a child, one that had lived alone on this world far away from the heart of the galaxy. No doubt left there by others of its kind who went to rejoin the war at some point in the past. All told there were almost 100,000 dead Rakatans, and one dead Godling. The new Warlord would do his best to pass off the blame for the elements of the battle which were clear failures to the late Na-Graf, while also trying to maintain his new field command, and take the credit for the first Celestial killed in years for himself. After all, he now had hopes for advancement that had been absent when he woke that morning, commander of a single ship in the fleet. He had no way of knowing the Celestial whose death he was trying to take credit for would be the last Celestial ever killed by a Rakatan. No one would know for some time that it was on that great jungle world that the Great Hunt had come to an end.