Twenty-One
Castle Grayskull
Eternia
23 September 2017
The Sorceress' idea was that same she had suggested over a week ago when all six Guardians began having nightmares concerning an unseen enemy. Now they had a face to go with the nightmares that now seemed to have been more a premonition. Her idea was to form a kind of séance using the inherited memories from their predecessors as a vehicle to try to garner further information about this new, or rather, old enemy.
This was a members-only meeting for the six Guardians. General Hammond arrived with a relief group of soldiers to inspect the robot carcasses for himself. Any excuse to get away from his desk. The Sorceress promised to allow him to observe the proceedings if it took place. She also reluctantly allowed Colonel Markson to tag along as long as he behaved himself. It was no secret he did not understand the magic mumbo-jumbo and scarcely placed any credit in powers of the mind, despite what he had seen the Sorceress do in the past.
Although the man was at least trying to open his mind to new possibilities.
Sorceress led the way through the passage leading from the eastern tower to the western tower, to the eyes and nose of the skull face. From there, she opened to secret door revealing a spiral staircase going up to the dome above the skull. The group entered the lower room containing the Library of Forbidden Knowledge.
The library was not as impressive as the main one behind the giant magic screen down in the main chamber, but the knowledge contained in the small half-circle of shelves could shatter worlds, solar systems, even reshape the face of the universe in the wrong hands.
Or end it.
Another spiral staircase led up to the main chamber in the top of the dome. This was the Ancient Observatory and Main Library. Where the main library started, anyway, before necessity required expansion into the larger chamber several of the companions had visited. The energy anvil and spherical astrolabe had been temporarily relocated to accommodate a round table and six chairs. A mystic crystal ball rested in the table's center on a mount. If what the Sorceress had in mind succeeded, the crystal would project what they saw in the air above the tabletop.
Sorceress asked General Hammond and Colonel Markson to stand by the carved stone desk and ornate armchair facing the bookshelves adorning three-quarters of the south wall.
The Sorceress took the chair with her back to the guests. Adrian sat to her left, with Brad, Jeromy, Jake, and Sonya rounding out the setting clockwise. Once settled, she instructed everyone to hold hands.
"The way this will work is we will concentrate on the memories and experiences downloaded into our minds from the battlesuits. While the information we seek will not be contained in those memories, they will provide a vehicle for us to travel to a point in space and time that will," Sorceress explained.
"Like a sort of remote viewing?" Brad asked.
"Not exactly," Sorceress frowned, "but I suppose that analogy will do. If the Val-kyrie are correct about the nature of the machine we fought, the point in time I aim for us to view should confirm their theory."
"And that would be?" Jake asked.
"The battle on the sanctuary moon when the battlesuits were interred behind the magical stasis barrier to evolve into what they have become," Sorceress answered.
"Of course. According to Val-kyrie records, it was an intense battle lasting half the day," Adrian said.
"As I recall, all six of our predecessors died in that battle buying time for the Val-kyrie to complete the task using replica suits," Jeromy added.
Sorceress nodded. "They did. Because of the connection the six of us have to them with the transferred memories, linking our minds together telepathically should create a conduit that takes us right to the battle."
"How?" Brad asked.
"Certain of your science fiction is actually correct with regards to space and time, at least in one respect. While time is fluid, there are events that become fixed points that cannot be altered in any way," Sorceress explained. She glanced sideways at Adrian. "Yes, your favorite television show got that part right. Along with the trans-dimensional theory." She returned her attention to the group. "The battle above, and on, the sanctuary moon is one such point. There should not be any difficulty in reaching it."
"You don't sound certain of that," Jeromy pointed out.
"There is always an element of risk in what we are about to attempt. For this purpose, we shall remain together. If you become separated, you may lose your way back," Sorceress explained.
"Like an out-of-body experience," Brad commented.
Sorceress nodded. "I have done this several times, so I will have the path back to our physical selves. Now, everyone close your eyes and think about the memories and skills we inherited. Do not try to recall a specific memory, just think about them in general."
All six concentrated as instructed. Sorceress gently created a telepathic connection between them and the conduit to the past, using the stimulated memories from their six minds while casting another part of her mind out into space/time toward the sanctuary moon.
If asked, Sorceress would have been at a loss for words to describe what it was like to search through space/time to view events in history in this manner. Normally, she would use one of the magic mirrors to view places and times; this was more direct. Passing through space/time could best be described as what one saw outside a starship traveling in hyperspace. The main difference was that historic events caused ripples in the fabric of space/time like what happens when one throws a stone into a lake. The more powerful the event, the greater the ripples, and therefore the easier it was to locate the desired event.
All at once, the conduit to the desired point in time sprang into being. Sorceress gathered the others and took off through the continuum toward the moon and the intense battle fought so long ago.
The other Guardians were just getting used to the kaleidoscope of color passing through the conduit when they were suddenly dropped out into the middle of a giant space battle.
Local space lit up with plasma energy beams, flak rounds, railgun slugs, capital missiles, torpedoes arching through the void. Within sight were hundreds of Horde warships painted a two-tone gray – dark on the upper half and light gray on the bottom – and adorned with the trademark symbol of the Horde, sprouting batwings from the sides of the head. Warships from frigates up to cruisers had the image painted on the bow; battlecruisers and battleships had molded and painted pieces of armor welded in place instead.
The Horde squared off against a little over one hundred battlestars of the Val-kyrie fleet. Normally, the warrior women did not send so many warships into battle against a numerically superior fleet, but this operation was critical and could not be allowed to fail.
Two dozen battlestars had their backs against the moon. A bad position to be in, trapped against a planet's gravity well by the enemy fleet. This detachment's mission was support for the ground operation to store the Guardian battlesuits behind a stasis field for the future. The Horde tried repeatedly to break the blockade, but the remaining battlestar squadrons flanked any run and blew it out of the sky.
Adrian could not identify the specific model of battlestar, however, the aggressor warships plaguing the present time appeared to be Mark Vs from the Great War, so these might be a similar model. The overall shape of the warship had not changed much over the centuries: The armors bridge module sat lower on the sloped bow section, which was thicker and less angular to accommodate the missile tubes and ammunition magazines for the railguns and flak batteries scattered over the hull. The lack of primary energy cannons mounted on the ships did not in any way decrease the amount of fight the warships had in them. He had to remember that the technology he was seeing in use was obsolete by present day's standards.
Warships pounded each other from maximum effective range. Shield systems were battered down. Vulnerable hull armor did not last long against the withering hail of fire from dozens of battlestars. The Val-kyrie did not take a toll on the Horde without taking damage themselves, however.
A squadron of Horde battlecruisers backed up by six battleships lashed out at the formation of six battlestars trying to flank the main force of Horde warships. Fighters zipped and darted about in a deadly dance aided by powerful engines and maneuvering thrusters. Bright flares in the night marked explosions from torpedoes, missiles, and the deaths of countless fighters on both sides. Bat Meks and Bladewings engaged each other relentlessly, while their motherships engaged in the same battles on capital ship scale.
A bomber wing of Bladewings tore into the oncoming formation of battlecruisers. Murderous defensive fire blew apart a dozen bombers before the formation got within range. Almost two dozen capital missiles mounted to the bellies of the fighters broke away as powerful engines ignited and pushed the ship-killing weapons to speeds that were impossible to achieve in an atmosphere. Several lucky strikes detonated a handful more missiles, but the rest made it through to slam into hull armor. Valkyrie warheads were designed with two explosive charges: The first exploded on impact to punch through the thick armor, creating a hole for the engine to shove the weapon into the target warship. That was when the primary charge went off.
Only three to four hits on a battlecruiser would vaporize it. Ten were more than enough to kill a battleship. Less were needed if the weapons could be slammed into the hull near the engineering section at the rear.
Four battlecruisers erupted in eye-tearing balls of fire and shrapnel. Nearby ships took damage to shields and hull armor but kept on fighting. Three more battlecruisers died, but the formation managed to close the distance to the killing range of the Vak-lyrie ships. The Horde lashed back with capital missiles and bomber planes with fighter escorts of their own.
One battlestar took hideous amounts of damage from six Horde battlecruisers and two battleships. Its power systems failing, weapons systems falling offline, the commander did the only thing left to her. Before the control systems failed, the main drives were throttled up to maximum and the course was locked on the nearest battleship.
Adrian realized he was seeing something that had rarely occurred since the war ended.
Ramming attack. The last resort when death was certain.
Live fast. Fight hard. Go out in a blaze of glory. That was the fighting motto of the warrior women.
While not a tactician, Adrian identified the mistake the Horde battleship commander made right away. Instead of meeting the attack head-on and using the momentum and maneuvering thrusters to veer away just enough to pass the onrushing battlestar, the commander tried to veer away entirely. This only presented the starboard side to the enemy vessel, spewing fire and leaking atmosphere from hundreds of rents in the armored hull. Whether or not there was anyone still alive in there made little difference. The end result was the same.
Millions of tons of battlestar slammed into the side of the Horde battleship. Armor plates crumpled like tissue paper under the immense forces at work. The bow penetrated halfway through the thickness of the Horde hull before the string of explosive charges went off. The resulting chain reaction blew apart both vessels in a massive round of explosions that vaporized both warships.
At the moment of impact, explosive changes in the arms and connecting cross tunnels detonated, blowing the landing bays away from the dying battlestar. Because the targeted battleship had tried to swing away at an angle, the tumbling bays caused great damage to the surrounding warships. The port landing bay broadsided another battleship, the impact lighting off secondary explosions in the fuel and ammunition magazines stored in the bay for fighters and other ancillary craft. The battleship tumbled away, critically wounded.
The starboard landing bay crashed through a formation of Horde battlecruisers, where it erupted in another spectacular cloud of fire, smoke, and debris. When everything flammable was exhausted and the fires snuffed out by vacuum, another five battlecruisers had disappeared, with four more hopelessly damaged.
In one action, eleven Horde capital ships had been either vaporized or turned into crippled junk.
Adrian observed actions like that taking place all over the vast battlefield. Sometimes even a Horde ship command initiated a ramming attack in a final defiant gesture. This was warfare at its most basic level: Brutal. Ugly. No quarter given or taken. No one evacuated a stricken warship. It was kill or be killed, with the stakes nothing less than the future of the galaxy. History's records of this battle had been distilled down to the basic events, statements of losses by both sides, and the outcome of the battle that lasted for a reported three days.
"My God," Adrian hissed, awed by the ferocity of the battle.
"According to Val-kyrie records, and those stored in the battlesuit memories, this is nothing compared to another battle that took place the prior year," Sonya informed him.
"Now you see why this is fixed in history," Sorceress said. "The outcome cannot be altered in any way. Not that it would stop someone from trying."
"Has that ever happened?" Brad asked.
"Not to my knowledge."
The moment was over. Keeping a fix on the return to their present, and their bodies, Sorceress gathered the group, reminded them to stick together, and dove toward the moon. If the battle in space was at once impressive, and terrifying, to behold, the battle in the surface and in the skies of the moon were even more so. Sound did not travel in a vacuum, though space was far from silent. Watching warships explode soundlessly from a distance was detached, antiseptic. Warfare in an atmosphere provided those sounds to the point of sensory overload.
Explosions blossomed in the jungle, ripping apart great swaths of trees and underbrush. Shockwaves radiated out from the detonations like ripples from multiple stones thrown into a pond. Fighters swooped, dived, weaved, and rolled in expert displays of aerobatics. Flaming debris rained down on the jungle, sometimes starting fires.
Sorceress passed the engagements between the Val-kyrie forces and the machine army of the Horde. Following a memory lead, she brought them to the site where Hawk lay in wait for the enemy force marching on the pyramid where the battlesuits were being placed in stasis. Although the suit looked like the one Sonya now operated, it was only a powerful reproduction. Its armor was not Etherium, and it did not possess a lot of the systems installed in the real suits. This one, and the five others, were designed to stall the enemy for as long as possible. Nothing more.
Enemy units followed the well-worn path through the jungle toward the pyramid. The jungle aided Neeva in using the suits' melee abilities. Hawk was one of the three suits designed primarily for close combat. Of those three, Hawk was the weakest in weaponry because it had been designed for infiltration missions where stealth was essential. It was also very well equipped with programs for breaking into virtually any computer system. On this occasion, Neeva had been given energy rifles to compliment the beam lance.
Servators rounded the bend and entered the straightaway at the end of which Hawk waited. The moment the machines appeared Neeva opened fire. A dozen machines were cut down before they could deploy the blaster cannons stored in their forearms and returned fire. The Guardian wasn't worried about the smaller robots; even without Etherium, the duplicate suit's armor was more than a match for the Servators. They were designed specifically to engage soldiers. It was the big black Shadowdemons that worried her.
The spectral group got their first real look at the dreaded Shadowdemon from the past. Ten feet tall, talon fingered, a round head packed with all manner of sensing gear, and two plasma cannons. One covered the front arc from its place in the right side of the chest. Another in the left side of the back covered the rear arc.
Clearing the wreckage, trampling destroyed machines into the dirt, the machines spotted the Guardian partially concealed in the jungle at the far end of the hundred-meter straightaway and charged with incredible speed. The lead machines opened up with their cannons, plasma bolts chopping away at the undergrowth. Hawk punched bolts of her own through the vulnerable spots in the tough chest armor, dropping several immediately.
However, she waited too long to begin her running retreat toward the pyramid. Backing into the curve of the path, Neeva took out several more demons before turning and running. Unfortunately, the woman concentrated so much on the enemy in front of her that she failed to keep an eye on the battle space around her. The suit's AI was too primitive to properly identify the enemy units plowing their way through the jungle and emerging at her back.
The attack was so swift and sudden that Neeva never had a chance of activating the self-detonation device. When the Shadowdemons and Servators reformed to continue the march, they left behind a broken wreck of a battlesuit with an equally wrecked operator still inside.
Sorceress did not waste any more time. After a few minutes of searching, she brought the group to the point where Blitzkrieg, Claw and Gatling Arm all engaged the enemy advance. All three were fighting the enemy with everything they had. In the end it was a hopeless battle, but unlike Neeva, Marteen, Torin and Atrios – the operators of Blitz, Claw and Gatling Arm – all planned their fights accordingly and were able to take quite a few Shadowdemons with them when they set of their self-detonation devices.
That left Kragor and Cirandar as the sole survivors.
Sorceress zeroed in on the pyramid where the stasis field was being set up and guided the group to it. As was his habit from deployments to other countries on Earth, Adrian checked out the surroundings. The jungle looked different now than it did before and after the battle to recover the battlesuits. No downed Horde frigates or destroyers littered the landscape. He had no idea of compass directions, but off to the left of their line of approach to the pyramid, Adrian spotted something on the horizon.
"Is that…" Adrian trailed off. It shimmering image appeared to be that of another pyramid, but because of the smoke and haze, the structure was indistinct.
"What?" Sorceress prompted.
"It's nothing. Just seeing things."
"Remember: we can see and hear what is happening around us, but we cannot interact with any events. Also, they cannot see us," Sorceress reminded her companions.
Colonel Markson and General Hammond watched the group intently. Markson quickly grew bored when nothing happened right away. The only thing he had the patience for was sitting in a lawn chair on the shore of a lake casting a hook and bob into the water. Whether or not he caught anything was immaterial. It was his way of relaxing. Waiting around for something to happen on the job, well, he had learned a certain amount of patience waiting for an enemy to make a move, but this grated on his nerves. Jon wouldn't admit to it but finding out that magic – real magic – did exist went against everything he believed about illusionists who performed acts of magic.
Hammond, however, had no such reservations about real magic. He had always been openminded about such things. It shored up his belief that there were still wonders in the universe yet to be explored. While the Sorceress had explained from time to time how real magic worked, he had a hard time wrapping his brain around it. She even offered to teach him how to perform a simple little spell just to give him a clearer idea. Something even a person without an affinity for magic could perform. After all, not all magic users were born with an affinity to use the forces of the universe. Maybe if she described it as an alternate form of energy it would help.
Jon had stifled several earlier yawns. This time he let it rip. "I swear, general, if they start singing kumbaya, I'm putting in for retirement."
Hammond chuckled. "Now you should know better than to make a statement like that in this company."
Jon studied the group closely. They were all deep in whatever group trance the Sorceress had formed to encompass them all. No way any of them could hear him. He hoped. "They wouldn't," Jon muttered. When the general refused to answer, he concluded," They would."
The globe resting on the center of the table suddenly flared to life. Images flashed in the sphere too fast for the naked eye to view. After a full minute, the images settled down to one scene. The globe flared again, projecting the scene into the air above the table. The giant sphere was packed with imagery of a battle fought long ago. General and colonel were instantly enthralled.
"My, God," Jon hissed, taking in the ferocious fireball in space. Aerial battles during World War II did not come close to what the pair witnessed. They had read some of the history files loaned to them by Commander Harana, but that was a far cry from seeing the real thing. Books about historic events, like major battles, could only paint pictures of those events within the limits of the written language and imagination, no matter how well written. Imagination is based on experience, after all.
The battle playing out in the holographic field was unlike anything either man could have imagined. Battles in three dimensions in a planetary atmosphere were one thing. Space battles were on a level of brutality orders of magnitude above anything ever fought on Earth. Combatants on both sides flung themselves into the fray fulling intent upon killing the enemy. And they did. Over and over again.
The view suddenly shifted, diving down toward the moon. Hammond and Markson watched the final stand of the original Guardians unfold before their eyes. Moving from one location to the next, they bore witness to the heroic stand each member made to buy enough time to enshrine the six battlesuits behind an energy field constructed using a blend of magic and technology.
Battles took place all around the lone Guardians. While the total number of the big black machines destroyed in this battle would never be known, it was clear the forces fighting the Horde could win battles. They just had no idea how to win the war.
Then it came down to one surviving Guardian.
Kragor left the pyramid after the barrier was erected. The six suits were safely stored in stasis behind it. Using a transport pad, he and an unknown woman with a mane of black hair falling past her shoulders stepped on the disks and were instantly transported to the rally point. After a brief conversation they parted, albeit reluctantly.
Being the leader of the team, Kragor had become the greatest of the six. The most notorious. The most unpredictable. Although he operated "only" a powerful reproduction of the winged suit, it, like the others, was quite capable of engaging the enemy. It would not be enough. All of the Guardians knew that going in. Kragor was that last one standing. And he would not go down without a fight.
Shadowdemons marched to within a kilometer of the pyramid when the winged suit soared up over the ancient stone structure, landing in a crouch. Rising to its full thirteen-foot height, Kragor raised the left arm, targeting the assault carrier full of Servators. Three small rockets rippled from the suit's shield launcher, ignited their drives and ripped across the open ground. The first struck the vehicle's right front wheel but failed to detonate, getting lodged in the structure. The second rocket struck the armored flank near the dud and exploded, setting off the first warhead. The combined explosive force ripped the hull open for the third.
Sensing the danger, the Shadowdemon standing atop the carrier leapt from the vehicle just as the third rocket detonated inside. Secondary explosions caused rips in the armored hull as it barely contained the conflagration.
Kragor switched targets, locked up the leaping enemy machine and fired on it with his plasma rifle the instant it grounded several hundred meters away. Instead of trying to leap again, impossibly, the machine flung itself to the left out of the line of fire. Almost. The heat blast blistered its surface armor but did no real damage. Follow-up blasts exploded into the tree line just behind the running demon.
Frustrated, Kragor stopped firing, engaged thrusters mounted on the back and in the trailing edges of the outer wings, and jumped away to the right. He maintained distance while his adversary continued to circle. He had been warned the targeting system would not be as quick as the real battlesuit; seeing how slow it was, Kragor feared this fight wouldn't last as long as he hoped.
Watching from the sidelines, Adrian recognized some of the moves his predecessor made; he'd used a few of those himself in previous battle, some with modifications of his own despite not being a tactician. Such were the benefits of the memories and data transferred into his brain from the suit's AI.
However, the Shadowdemon the man fought sent a shiver through Adrian. There was something just not right about it. It was not behaving like the other machines fighting. Programmed machines simply followed those directives to the letter. There were reports in the Val-kyrie archives suggesting Shadowdemons had been equipped with a learning intelligence. The more battles they survived, the more they learned. Even if a unit was destroyed, the positronic brain could be transferred into a new body, but only if it was intact.
This unit acted all wrong even for that. Adrian thought it behaved more like a battlesuit AI. Technology of the day was capable of memory engram transfer, as evidenced by those of the original operators being placed in the computers of the battlesuits to eventually develop into sentience. Adrian realized it was possible the Horde used the engrams from a Horde general.
After trading ineffectual ranged shots at each other, the combatants abandoned energy weapons and moved into melee range where battlesuit and Shadowdemon pummeled each other mercilessly. The fight lasted another full minute before Kragor took his shot at destroying the unusual demon. Setting off the self-detonation device, he blasted a crater in the ground a hundred yards in diameter and twenty meters deep.
Six apparitions watched in stunned silence at the commitment Kragor displayed in trying to take the enemy unit out by whatever means.
He failed.
Slowly, agonizingly, the demon crawled out of the smoking crater, damaged, but still functioning. How it survived was anyone's guess. And that only increased the unease all six Guardians felt watching the Shadowdemon claw its way up to the rim and forcing itself back to its feet.
Sensing there was nothing more to see here, the Sorceress pulled herself and her companions back to their bodies back inside the Castle Grayskull of the present.
"Damn," Colonel Markson hissed. "I dunno if I could have done that."
"Desperate times and all that," General Hammond said as the holographic globe faded away. The globe on the table returned to the mottled pearl gray tone it displayed when not in use.
The six people stirred moments later.
Each was lost in their own thoughts, trying to process what they had just witnessed. The new enemy resembled nothing like what they had just seen. There were similarities in the shape of the head and hand, but the internal weapons had been replaced by the cannon pod mounted in place of the left forearm.
Brad finally broke the silence. "That was the enemy? It has only a passing resemblance to the machine you showed us."
"Outward appearances may deceive," Sorceress said. "We needed to familiarize ourselves with what our predecessors faced."
"Those Shadowdemons were destroyed by the dozens. How could they not have won the war?" Jeromy asked.
Jake replied, "According to Val-kyrie records, the original Guardians, and the Guardian Force, could win virtually every battle they engaged in with the Horde. Horde Prime's production facilities could replace the losses in robots, vehicles and warships faster than they could be destroyed."
"War of attrition," Adrian commented. He sometimes thought Earth's World War II had been such a war. The Axis Powers had finite resources while the Allies had a great deal more, particularly the United States. Curious how similarities are repeated out among the stars.
"Yes," Jake agreed. "Although I think historians refer to World War I in that regard."
"If they couldn't beat Horde Prime back then, what chance do we have?" Brad asked.
"We get off track," Sonya pointed out.
"She's right. We have to concentrate on the present problem," Adrian said. "Gabe and the Val-kyrie techs will get answers out of those robots. Now that we know what the enemy was like in the last war, we can make judgements about what we face today."
"At least we have weapons that can hurt them," Colonel Markson pointed out. "That's a plus."
"Until they make adjustments to nullify the advantage of using ballistic weaponry," Jake countered.
"You can be such a buzzkill, sometimes," Jon accused him.
"He does make a valid point," the general replied.
"True. I still think the attack was just a probe of current defenses," Jon persisted. He wasn't alone in that thinking.
The attacks on Eternia hinted at more than just a systematic approach a computer would take. There was a guiding intelligence behind the tactics, how the machines arrived on the planet, where to attack, how long to stay and when to withdraw. While every one of the attackers had been eliminated, valuable information had definitely been gathered and transmitted back to base. No one had been able to identify a transmission or the ship that brought the assault force in the first place. Whoever launched the attack planned for every contingency.
Watching that machine from a thousand years ago left the group with an uneasy feeling. It didn't completely behave like the other Shadowdemons it led in the battle. Something was off about it that defied explanation.
Whatever it was could wait for later. The Sorceress was fatigued by the recent task. Casting herself out into space and time to observe events usually did not take much out of her, but guiding herself with five others in tow while keeping a connection to the way home put a strain on even her not inconsiderable mental powers.
With a better idea of what they faced, General Hammond suggested they wait for the tech crew to deliver their report, which could come at any moment. Until then, they would wait, plan and prepare for the next engagement.
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