Petroleum Effect

Chapter Thirteen - Death and Destruction

City of Ulee, Thessia, Parnitha System, Athena Nebula, 6 July 2183

Parts of the Asari city were still burning, but the central city square was firmly under the control of the Temple of the Golden Star. Protected by barricades guarded by armed, cold-eyed Asari in combat fatigues, the square had been cleared and in the centre was a raised platform with a lovingly rendered metal icon of the Golden Star behind it. Curtains had been raised behind it of a deep, purplish blue, covered in colourful rainbows, smiling Eviloids, stars and hearts. One of the larger buildings next to the square had been commandeered for the Temple. A newly made metal icon hung above the door whilst large vertical banners identified it as the Temple of the Golden Star. To one side of the square was a cage containing filthy, terrified, Asari children. Some missing limbs, some visibly malnourished, all miserable.

Around the platform hybrids lounged in the sun. The Daughters of the Golden star reclined in provocative positions soaking up the sun, whilst a couple of them gnawed bones. As ever, they wore nothing but their fur. One of the Daughters reached through the cage bars to grab the arm of an incautious child that had wandered too close to the edge of the enclosure. Catching them by the upper arm, the hybrid raised her other hand. The elegant nails extended into talons and the creature easily ripped off the child's forearm as the little Asari screamed. The Daughter then licked the stump at the elbow, something in the hybrid's saliva causing the wound to coagulate quickly and stop the child bleeding out. The hybrid sashayed off, hips swaying and talons retracting as she took deep bites of raw flesh from the forearm she had extracted. The Asari child retreated into the cage, clutching her stump, moaning in horror and trauma.

A group of Asari approached the square. At the fore was a matron wearing heavy white robes and a temple medallion, with the sign of the Golden Star carefully drawn on her forehead. The matron was accompanied by an Asari child in white robes, also wearing a medallion and drawn sign. The matron and the child both carried boxes wrapped in colourful paper. Behind them was a group of ten white robed escorts, all wearing Temple symbols and carrying more heavy wrapped boxes. The guards at the square barricades were clearly expecting them.

"I'm here to be granted the gift of a Care Bear's Daughters," announced the woman. "As a humble token of sacrifice, I come to bring my former daughter into the Temple's service, for I will exchange that which is flawed for that which is perfect. We also bring offerings to the Temple."

The guards waved the group through the barrier and they approached the Temple building. One of the guards called ahead through a communicator. The doors to the building opened and a greeting party of several Asari temple functionaries walked through wearing robes, accompanied by a light green Care Bear. As the group approached the Temple building, one of the hybrids sniffed the air and lazily stalked towards them. Other Daughters turned, focusing eerily on the approaching group.

The matron ignored the hybrids and walked forward at a brisk pace, matched by the child and her escorts. She reached the greeting party and bowed her head, "I greet you in the name of Gold Star -" began the matron. She was cut off by a Daughter of the Golden Star walking right up to her, sniffing her. The hybrid rubbed its face roughly against the matron's, grasping her with shapely fingers whose nails were rapidly extending into talons. The greeting party, sensing something wrong, began to step back. Other hybrids had stood and were approaching.

"Death to the Temple!" screamed the woman suddenly, a hand firmly pressing something. Then the woman, the child and her ten escorts exploded - the heavy suicide vests they had been wearing under their robes filling the air with deadly shrapnel. The suicide bombers and the nearby hybrids were reduced to a fine red mist whilst other nearby hybrids were seriously injured by the storm of razor sharp metal fragments.

A moment later, the boxes the party had been carrying also exploded. Half the boxes contained high explosives. The other half contained a modern napalm equivalent - a Dominion invention sometimes called Napalm Plus. Windows shattered and some walls crumbled. The area around the square was showered in sticky, burning, incendiary liquid blazing with a white heat. The greeting party, including the Eviloid, were killed to the last.

Across the square, some of the guards had been hit by shrapnel and droplets of Napalm Plus. As they turned to the scene of the carnage and gazed at the blazing incendiary liquid, some screaming in pain, they saw five armoured figures with heavy, bulky weapons burst from a nearby street and open fire with high calibre projectiles. Two grenades arced up and into the barricades from these new assailants, whose leader was wearing a heavy gauntlet. Where he pointed, flames, explosion and death followed.

"Attack!" ordered Grey Lord Zaeed Massani over the comm-link as his squad advanced. Massani was a typically ruthless Grey Lord, and his squad had been operating covertly on Thessia since shortly after the Temple incident on the Citadel in late June. Massani, despite his name, was a white man, with a heavy build and a coarse face. It was a rare anomaly. Zaeed's ancestors had a mixed background and their pale appearance had been enough to survive the Cleansing of 2045. The name, now highly unusual, had remained in the family.

Massani's mission was to assassinate Eviloids, hybrids and compromised Asari to prevent the Asari Republics falling to the Temple. Initial attacks had been simple affairs, cloaking his squad and attacking with surprise. However, the Temple were too intelligent to fall for the same tactics repeatedly and Massani knew it. As a result, he had been varying his approaches. One of the more effective stunts the human covert operatives had used was psionic subversion. As a partial Transcendent, he was adept at mind control and turning Temple adherents into suicide bombers. The Temple's disturbing habit of eating Asari children was a gift as far as Massani was concerned. If the Temple wanted something then Massani would give it to them with a smile ... wrapped in explosives.

As a good Dominion citizen and a Grey Lord, Zaeed Massani hated aliens. There was nothing personal about it. He simply had orders to eliminate a threat and if that meant using some Asari as suicide bombers, adults or not, he would do it. They were all equally disposable, it was just that the Temple were by far the greater threat and the current strategic target. On a visceral level however, he felt a slight distaste for the Temple.

The barricade was shattered by the grenades, melted and burned by the laser. Zaeed jumped easily over the mess using the flight functions of his armour. As he arced into the air, he was accelerating his reflexes, movement and perceptions using his bodily augmentations and psionic powers. He quickly and precisely swept his 50,000 kilowatt laser gauntlet across the square, ending any hybrids that were not already dead. In a brief moment of mercy, Zaeed paused for a few seconds to slowly sweep the beam over the cages, turning the metal to molten slag and turning imprisoned Asari children to burning, charred corpses. It was a quicker, cleaner, death by far than what the Temple had intended.

His squad close behind him, Zaeed advanced into the Temple building. It had been just over a minute since the explosions. There were a couple of guards inside who had gotten behind cover, but they only had mass effect rifles and their bullets barely grazed his armour barriers. He put them both down with quick gauntlet bursts and surveyed the inside of the temple. It was a typical Asari building. A composite, concrete-analogue building material, light and very strong, augmented with stone, metal and glass to form a delicate, curved spire. The entry hall was spacious and airy. There was a reception desk with two Asari cowering behind it.

Zaeed looked at his gauntlet. He had been using long bursts and sweeps instead of short blasts and the heat indicator had risen markedly. He decided to let it cool before it locked due to overheating and drew his power sword, a reinforced, razor sharp, composite blade. As Massani thumbed the activator, the blade was reinforced by an invisible Petroleum Effect force field. He leapt over the desk and ended the two receptionists, carving them both in half in seconds and scattering blue Asari blood and entrails across the floor.

Now, the priority target was the Eviloids. This Temple had been chosen as a major nest. Temple indoctrinated Asari personnel were also valid targets, but way down the list of priorities. Intelligence was that there were as many as ten of the so-called Care Bears in the building. In the background, Zaeed noted his squad had caught up with him, rushing through the door and fanning out.

"Guard the ground floor!" ordered Massani. "Make sure nothing escapes. I'll advance upwards." He turned to the lift and shoved his power sword through the control panel. There were sparks and cracks and both lift panels suddenly switched to the Asari words for, "Out of Order". The only way up or out now was by the stairs.

This attack had been planned for a couple of days. Several groups of loyal and trusted Temple adherents had been subverted by Zaeed's psionics. One had been used for the suicide bomb attack. Others were advancing, their cover still not discarded, ostensibly to 'protect' the Temple but would fire on any Eviloids they saw, chanting the praises of the Archlord, the Hunger and the Wyrm at the top of their voices as they fought and died for humanity.

The Grey Lord swept outwards with his sensors and his psionics. He quickly identified the main stairwell and burst through. It was a simple utilitarian arrangement, flights of steps around a central, square pillar with slightly rounded corners. He sensed Eviloids a few floors above, just beginning to react to the attack. He cloaked and began to climb, holding the sword in front of him. The good news was that he sensed a lot of Eviloids, more than ten - perhaps as many as twenty. The bad news was that his sensors were picking up heavily armed and armoured Asari - commandos - rushing down the stairs. Their indoctrination would be heavy, he knew. It was something he could deal with if they were alone and he had time - but right now mind control would do him no good - undoing the control and applying his own would take too long. He would have to fight.

Zaeed ducked behind the pillar in the stairwell and waited. The enemy would be unlikely to suspect an invisible human assassin was already on the stairs. It was barely two minutes into the attack. He paused, calmly, relaxing as heavy footsteps drew closer and his gauntlet continued to cool.

A muscular Asari rounded the corner and died as he cut her in two. He burst forward at a run, cutting down another as he ran up the stairs. The three commandos behind opened fire. They could not see exactly what was happening but their comrades had come apart and there was an attacker in the stairwell. The bullets were stopped cold by Zaeed's armour barrier, but it was automatic fire at point blank range and his shield dropped rapidly. His invisible form was limned in pale white light as his shields dissipated the energy and he dropped his cloak.

Massani shoved his left hand forward, palm open and then pulled back. A psionic effect yanked the commandos towards him. Off balance and falling, their fire went wide of the mark and he cut down another two. The third managed to catch themself and fired again, draining his barriers further before he took their head off with his blade.

Zaeed's HUD showed more Asari coming. There were five more behind the first - they had stopped running and proceeded to advance cautiously. Two grenades bounced down the stairwell and exploded, one at nearly point blank range. His barriers dropped to almost nothing and he was knocked back, slamming into the wall at the bottom of the current flight of steps. He raised his gauntlet and activated the extra shield, which sprung into being as a literal round shield of force like he was a medieval knight.

Zaeed stood and moved swiftly sideways down the stairs. As he recovered his breath he used his augmetics to accelerate and then switched to flight, deactivating his gauntlet shield. A moment later he cloaked, his endless training and practice enabling him to carry out the psionic procedure swiftly even after taking heavy fire. A few seconds later he flew invisibly into the atrium and out of the front door, dropping behind the cover of some solid looking wreckage from a barricade.

"Asari Commandos coming down the stairs," he barked into the comm-link. "I took out five. Dropped back to restore barriers."

Massani's men were elite human special forces. They were limited to element-zero armour and weapons, but it was top of the line, as were they. None were Transcendent but they could all use simple psionics of various types, including mind shields. Zaeed heard them getting into a firefight with the commandos. He switched off and sheathed his power sword. The gauntlet cooling system was efficient and he had not fired for a few minutes now - it had not even been maxed out when he had drawn his sword.

The square was still empty, as far as Massani could see, but he kept his cloaks on. Drones and Temple forces would be arriving soon. His barrier regenerated slowly but Massani waited patiently. The Asari commandos were stalemated by his men and were getting into a drawn out shooting match. After another minute, Massani walked calmly and quietly, invisibly, back into the Temple entry hall. Using his psionic senses, Massani could perceive a mob of commandos about to burst through the door at the bottom of the stairwell, wrapped in biotics.

"Cease fire," ordered Massani over the comm. The humans stopped firing and the Asari commandos rushed down, wrapped in biotics, which did nothing to stop Zaeed's sustained laser burst. Several of them burst into flames and died too quickly to even scream. They fell to the ground, burning as more advanced. There was something different about the next group. They seemed tightly packed together, they did not go down. Then, Zaeed realised something was wrong. They were not melting, they were rippling. The packed mob of Asari commandos was an illusion - one that had deceived not only his vision, but his psionic senses. As the deception collapsed, Zaeed saw a repugnant ball of fleshy appendages rolling towards him, looking like a much smaller version of the so-called Gold Star creature from the Lusia video. The Grey Lord realised that behind the genuine Asari commandos the Temple had sent something special and far more dangerous.

A desperate thought-click activated Zaeed's suit engines, backed by his augmentic impellers - he hurtled sideways and just avoided getting clipped by the horrifying abomination. He dropped his cloak as the leprous yellow horror let out an unearthly shriek. He faced it and realised he was still firing on instinct. His weapon was doing damage, scoring and withering appendages, but it was slow going. A normal creature would be ash by now. He backed away, still firing, as the creature turned. The monster writhed as he fired and he kept the beam on it. Seconds passed, then the laser beam went out. An indicator in his HUD showed that the laser had overheated - he had been firing at the beast continuously for over a minute.

The horror began to move, dragging itself with terrifying rapidity towards its foe, bullet fire from the elites Zaeed had brought with him simply bouncing off its hide. The beast ignored the grunts and went straight for the leader.

Zaeed realised he could not kill the creature with his laser. The thing was clearly intended to be able to handle fighters in the Grey Lord weight class. Moving at speed, Zaeed flew out of the door and up to the second floor. Drawing his sword and thumbing it back on, Massani sliced the window to form an entrance and slipped into the building. He was in an office, full of Asari style chairs and desks. With his gauntleted hand, he drew out a small marble sized device from a slot on his belt. He only had three. It was a Petroleum Effect bomb.

The matter to energy conversion ratio on a Petroleum Effect bomb was over 100%. It was more efficient than anti-matter / matter annihilation. The bomb in his hand only contained a tiny amount of petroleum - it was a centimetre in diameter but the petroleum well was much less than a millimetre. It would all be converted. He activated the bead and set it to sixty seconds, then rolled it into a crack under a desk. Zaeed ran for the other side of the room and cut through the window. Glancing behind him, he saw an appendage slithering in through the first entrance he had made. The beast had climbed or flown up the wall and followed him. Zaeed jumped out of the new exit he had cut and activated all his impellers - suit and augmetic, straight up. He forgot everything else and quickly cloaked.

Even without armour, Grey Lords could fly through space for some time using their augmetics. The pressurised armour made it far more comfortable and more sustainable. Invisible, Zaeed headed straight up. Defence sensors would mostly not detect him. He was not emitting much heat - just a minor atmospheric disturbance like a flock of birds. He looked down, nothing followed.

Grey Lord Zaeed Massani closed his eyes as he flew. He still saw a stab of blinding light, even through his eyelids and helmet visor. The bomb had gone off. It was effectively a micro-nuke. The entire building would have been destroyed along with the adjacent ones. Any Eviloids would be dead, along with their followers. More damage than he would have liked, and he had lost another squad of grunts, but he was alive and the enemy were dead. He headed for space. A cloaked Dominion vessel would pick him up sooner rather than later, then he could rearm, recover, reinforce and head back for more.

CIC, Terran Dominion Frigate Lying Ghost, Care-a-Lot Orbit, Delos System, Athena Nebula, 7 July 2183

Grey Lord Jack Harper was in place already when his orders came through. Ambassador Crown had secured the Citadel Council's agreement. He was ready to go.

The 'Lying Ghost' was a unique Terran Dominion warship. It had been built as a standard frigate, which unlike the Normandy had come off the production line without any stealth features whatsoever. The Lying Ghost had no heat sinks and no cloak. What it did have, was a special feature all of its own. Since it was built, the frigate had been extensively modified by Harper. He had spent months in Sol connected to a First Transcendence suite whilst experimenting and designing his own simple psionics effects, as well as modifying his ship's hull. The work had paid off.

The Lying Ghost could distort light and electromagnetic radiation to completely change its appearance - a hologram that worked with almost all forms of scanners. That was only half of its power, however. The Lying Ghost's appearance came with a subtle, contagious and extremely powerful psionic effect. Anyone seeing the Lying Ghost, whether with their own eyes through a window, on a screen, on a scanner, in a mirror or as a dot on a radar would accept it as what it presented itself to be. This worked to the extent that if the Lying Ghost provided an unrecognised IFF, the recipients might whitelist it, accepting that their failure to recognise the ship was an error on their part. The effect was even better if the ship had somehow obtained valid credentials. The Lying Ghost was NOT SUSPICIOUS to anyone seeing it. Harper, with his usual thoroughness (that some of his peers termed, 'paranoia') had even tested it against marines and others using simple psionic shields. The Grey Lord had tested and changed and modified until the effect could normally circumvent mind-shields.

The highly experimental effect came with some significant drawbacks. Firstly, the Lying Ghost had a lot of significant hull work done. The channels and crystals and golden wiring had weakened hull integrity. Second, the effect required Harper personally to be on the bridge, holding the effect up in the back of his mind at all times and having to devote his full attention to recasting it every 60 minutes. In high visibility situations where the ship had many viewers, he had to recast every 15 minutes. Only one marine, who was not a partial Transcendent, had mastered the simple psionic effects Harper had designed. At full visibility, the marine could only hold the effect for 120 minutes at most before serious exhaustion. Harper, being a partial Transcendent, could hold the effect up indefinitely until he had to rest.

Right now, the Lying Ghost was disguised as the atmosphere capable bulk freighter, 'The Sugar Daddy', complete with valid credentials obtained by one of the Dominion's front corporations used in the element zero trade. The official manifest for The Sugar Daddy stated it was delivering building tools, building manuals, ingots of element zero and other boring items in demand at the growing temple settlements. In turn it would pick up various sweets and confectionary based on the planet's native cotton candy trees and other produce. The official manifest was lies. What the ship actually carried was an esoteric device from the depths of the Temple Ship's vaults. Something the Archlord and the High Lords had developed but never used. Something awful.

The planet Care-a-Lot had very limited infrastructure, only a few scattered religious settlements. However, it was guarded by a large fleet of Temple adherents including many Asari military ships and several Asari dreadnaughts. The vessels had defected during the conflict between the Citadel Council and the Temple.

When word came through that his mission was authorised, Grey Lord Jack Harper was already in the Athena Nebula. He had the Lying Ghost approach the Delos System and shifted it immediately into the form of The Sugar Daddy. Disguised as a simple freighter, the human military frigate flew easily past the defence fleet, its registration codes and broadcasts accepted without question.

The fake freighter slid smoothly into the atmosphere of Care-a-Lot, heading for a smaller settlement, which did not so much have a spaceport as a large, cleared, field. Not far from landing, the Lying Ghost diverted, broadcasting a message that it had a minor systems fault and they were landing away from the settlement in case of leakage of toxins from their systems. The settlement accepted this without question, broadcasting a message apologising for not having more sophisticated facilities to be able to help.

Harper maintained his concentration as the ship landed gently on a grassy plain. As soon as the landing pads touched down, the engines dropped to standby and then offline. A drive core discharge rod was lowered to the ground, dumping the electrical charge. The Grey Lord gathered his will and recast his special cloaking effect with a new shape. Where there had been a ship was now a low grassy hillock with steep sides. Onlookers would likely assume it had always been there and the ship (if they were looking for one) had landed elsewhere.

"Okay Mason, you're up!" barked Harper.

Marine Bernard Mason, an N5 operative, joined him and prepared to take over. Mason had reached N5 grade special operations ranking, but failed to reach the coveted N6 and N7 rankings. Even an N5 was a very prestigious ranking, but Mason also had a significant facility with complex psionics. Right now, he was the only person aboard who could hold up the cloak aside from his boss. Mason concentrated and with difficulty, but great accuracy, forced his mind through the mnemonics for the effect. The hillock shifted slightly, almost imperceptibly, then Mason was maintaining the illusion and Harper was free. Not being a partial Transcendent, Mason could only hold the shield for two hours at most in high observation situations. For now though, scrutiny of the illusion was limited, which should buy them more time.

"Right, let's get moving!" called out Harper. He sprinted for the cargo bay. Every second counted and he was already in his armour. In the cargo bay, two marines, Max Hudson and Georgina Cantrell, awaited him in an M35 Mako, already loaded with the awful thing he had brought. The ramp dropped and the Mako moved forward. Any observer would see it emerge from a cave in the hillock, a cave they would only notice for that moment.

Care-a-Lot, Delos System, Athena Nebula, 7 July 2183

Resting on the floor between the seats in the Mako was the payload. A heavy black ring with a hole sized for a human finger rested on a flat stone. The ring was made of a glossy black substance, like obsidian, and marked with ominous silver and gold symbols. In reality it was a sophisticated device - inside were circuits and exotic materials. Just having the device in the Mako was uncomfortable, even for the hard-bitten marines - even for Jack Harper. The ring felt, 'wrong' as though there were an observer in the vehicle with them, watching.

The dark ring was a product of the High Lords' technology but some of the techniques used were a gift of the Wyrm. In fact, the High Lords had not been sure that the ring would function without the direct invocation and blessing of the creature. To be on the safe side, Harper had decided to make a literal sacrifice before activation. The ring was a precious weapon - the Dominion only had a handful, and until there were new High Lords there would be no replacements.

Harper needed an Eviloid to sacrifice. As the Mako began to move forward, smashing down candy floss trees, Harper remembered to raise a mind-shield. It was a serious slip that he had not raised it before leaving the ship - a sign of how tiring operating the cloak was and how on edge the dark ring made him.

"Shields," said Harper, reminding his subordinates - but they had theirs already raised.

The Mako headed for the settlement. From orbital reconnaissance it had looked idyllic. A beautifully manicured lawn surrounded a gorgeous settlement with a white marble temple at the centre. There were now several such settlements on the planet. The human squad did not want to get too close to this one. They just needed a victim from the outskirts. Fortunately, they were in luck. Scanners showed two life forms ahead. Two Eviloids walking amongst the candy floss trees. The vehicle stopped - Harper and Hudson leapt out whilst Georgina controlled the turret, should it be needed.

"Hello friends," said a nauseatingly sweet, childlike voice.

"Hello friend!" shouted Jack Harper in a friendly voice, running towards the Eviloid. "We need help!" He could see there were two Eviloids, a yellow one and a pink one. Without hesitation, Harper shot the yellow one and then he smoothly stowed his rifle. The pink bear did not try to run, instead blasting him with sparkling light from its rainbow tummy symbol - fortunately, his mental shield held. Harper reached out and grabbed the bear. It was surprisingly strong and struggled fiercely. Claws and teeth made shallow grooves even in his composite armour. He pinned its arms tightly and forced its head away from him. They swiftly ran back to the Mako, the Care Bear screaming all the while.

"Help, heretics! Enemies of Gold Star," screamed the Eviloid. Jack could almost feel it screaming for help psionically. They would have to move quickly, but he could not kill the thing and did not dare knock it unconscious - he needed it alive. They were soon back in the Mako heading for the landing site.

The screaming bear continued to struggle. As they approached the landing site, Harper spoke into the communicator. "Nearly back! Bring the engines online - we're going to need to leave quickly!" A few moments later they lurched to a stop. "Hudson, bring the device!" yelled Harper. Jack dragged the Eviloid outside. Hudson followed, bringing the ring and the stone. It was a perfectly ordinary stone - they had just picked it up to use as a convenient base for the ring. Hudson placed it carefully down.

Wrapping one arm tightly around the Eviloid to pin it, Harper pulled a combat knife from his belt and called out a prayer.

"I make this sacrifice to the Wyrm in the hope of favour and blessings! May the blood and essence of this Eviloid awaken the hunger of the dark star! May the coils of time wrap us up in safety! May the gate be opened and may this world fall into the maw of the void!"

Grey Lord Jack Harper slit the throat of the Care Bear. Pinkish fluids ran free, but it did not stop struggling and screaming - he realised Eviloid anatomy must differ somewhat from humans and he had not cut any arteries. Another slip. Harper continued to cut until he hit something vital - the flow became a spray he directed all over the ring and the stone. To make sure it was dead he continued to slice until the Eviloid's head came free. Then, Harper picked up the blood splattered stone and the ring and slipped them under some undergrowth. He used his implants to fire a complex data sequence - a key - to the device, whilst at the same time casting a specific simple psionic effect on it repeatedly. At first, nothing happened, but then he received an acknowledgement. A soft grey glow began to appear in a ring around the device.

Harper screamed, "It's active! Get in the ship!"

The Mako screeched forward up the ramp as Georgina Cantrell put her foot down, Jack Harper and Max Hudson running in right behind her. Harper mashed the button to seal the ramp. "Get us off the planet!" ordered Harper over the comm-link. The engines were already back online thanks to his forewarning. The ship lifted only a few moments after the order.

As the ship lifted, the squad did not stop. Decontamination was a haphazard affair in a moving vehicle but they did it anyway. They sprayed each other with a flame gun to purge the outside of their armour, then as the ship cycled the bay atmosphere through purification filters, they removed their armour and burned it. Harper as a partial Transcendent already had nanites in his blood. The two marines self-injected with temporary medical nanites to detect and eliminate any contamination. Harper watched them do it. He was taking no chances whatsoever. Then, Harper sprinted for CIC.

CIC, Terran Dominion Frigate Lying Ghost, Care-a-Lot Orbit, Delos System, Athena Nebula, 7 July 2183

The ship lifted as fast as it could. There was no reason, other than proximity, for any defenders to associate it with the attack on the Eviloid and the creature itself had hopefully only seen a hillock before it was beheaded. Mason simply shifted the ship back to the look of The Sugar Daddy. The vessel bolted for the void, warning those around it that it had a critical malfunction and was lifting off as a precaution in case of a reactor meltdown.

Whatever alert was happening on the planet, the defence ships were mostly crewed by Asari. There was no purpose to having Eviloids on crew stations. "Just a freighter," said sensor officers reassuringly to their commanding officers, influenced by the far-reaching contagion of the Lying Ghost's psionic effect. The scrutiny of multiple vessels was rapidly draining Marine Bernard Mason's stamina. The planet-side team had been gone over an hour and it had taken them a further twenty minutes to decontaminate and for Harper to reach CIC.

The ship was already well outside the atmosphere as the Grey Lord arrived. Unlike the Normandy and Normandy II, the Lying Ghost did not have a separate captain. It was Harper's ship and he would brook no rivals. "Take us into FTL," he ordered, "just to the asteroid belt. We need to see this, even with a few hours lag."

Mason breathed a sigh of relief. As the ship moved into FTL he dropped the cloaking effect.

Care-a-Lot, Delos System, Athena Nebula, 7 July 2183

On a grassy plain on the planet Care-a-Lot, a hillock rippled and shifted into a freighter, which lifted into the sky. A few minutes later, a pack of Daughters of the Golden Star sprinted towards the beheaded body of a Care Bear. They could feel that there was a blasphemous psionic residue around the body. It felt unclean to them, tainted. The two nearest bared their teeth. A low, rare, growling came from one. Another elegantly lifted her shapely leg and urinated on the body to show her disdain, her tail lifted high and writhing sensuously.

Under a bush nearby, the ring continued through its activation sequence. After a slight delay, Petroleum Effect circuitry, augmented by psionically charged components, had initiated something like a portal.

The theory behind the device was simple. Dropping a black hole on a planet was impractical because micro black holes evaporated and good sized ones had stellar masses. Ordinary Dominion portals did not and could not not transmit the gravity well from either terminus to the other end. Instead both ends of the portal opened into a local inertial frame and the energy needed to alter the intrinsic velocity of an object from one frame to the other was (most of) the work needed to traverse the portal.

The dark ring device had no such limitations. The artefact was created with the inspiration of the Wyrm and had been hand-crafted by a High Lord of the Terran Dominion, a Transcendent being - a singularity unto themselves with significant psionic powers as well as scientific knowledge. The device somehow linked to the nearest large black hole and opened a portal at interstellar ranges, well inside the event horizon. The strange and esoteric technology could extend at least some of the gravity well at the other terminus. A dark, cold void formed inside the ring and suddenly, everything near it was falling towards it. The ring itself was now wrapped in an odd, black light and the symbols which had been written in gold and silver now blazed with deep blue and violet light before the substance of the ring seemed to vanish with a ripple as if it had been submerged underwater. What was left was a disc of pure darkness with a lensing effect at the edge. The disc folded, oddly, and became a tiny, growing, sphere.

The gravitational force was far from uniform and the hybrids, at first simply dragged towards the ring, were crushed and torn apart by tidal forces. Well-established conventional physics records that matter releases energy just before it falls into even an ordinary black hole. Up to 40% of an object's rest mass is converted to energy by frictional / compressive forces. In contrast, the nuclear bomb that fell on Hiroshima harnessed the energy of just 0.7 grammes of mass. That was enough to destroy a city and end a world war. The amount of mass falling into the maw of the device on Care-a-Lot was measured in kilogrammes. Nearly four-tenths was being converted into energy. The resulting blaze of light, heat and radiation melted everything for miles, blazing devastating radiation out across the surface and into space. That was only the beginning. The sphere sank into the ground, hungrily consuming the planet's substance and releasing energy of an order seldom seen outside stars.

The hungry void - the darkness of the ring - was no simple event horizon. The Wyrm was a being formed of knotted, coiled and distorted space and time, the strange unknown forms matter could take within a singularity, quantum effects and perhaps other unknown exotic phenomena. The entity had a vast psionic presence. Whilst it was a minor local power compared to some of the Outer Gods, it was utterly alien to humans and the Citadel races.

Whatever lurked on the other side of the dark void was far more dangerous than a mere black hole. The interface was as much maw as it was gravitational phenomena. For a few moments, the energy that was released from the consumed mass became modulated, a signal stating in a myriad languages, "I SHALL TEAR THE SEED FROM THE DARK MOTHER AND DEVOUR IT BEFORE IT BEARS FRUIT."

As the sphere dropped into the surface of the planet it consumed thousands of tonnes of matter. Even in the outer crust it consumed approximate 10 cubic metres of rock a second, approximately 25 tonnes. 40% of that was directly converted to energy by the accretion process - approximately 10 tonnes a second. In contrast, the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb tested on Earth during the 20th Century, created a 50 megatonne yield from converting 2.3KG. The dark sphere did more than 400 times that, every second. The heat was so great that rock was boiling into vapour and evaporating. In the first minute the process released more than twenty-six thousand times the energy of Tsar Bomba. In the first hour, it released more than one-and-a-half million times the energy of Tsar Bomba. The effect went on for around eleven hours before the portal collapsed, converting ever denser material as it sank into the planet's core.

The mass consumed was a tiny, insignificant, fraction of the substance of the planet, but the energy release was apocalyptic. The entire planet was rocked by shockwaves that merged and intensified until the entire world was shaking in an ongoing earthquake above Richter-scale 10. Volcanic eruptions and magma releases occurred across the planet, venting poisonous gas and ash into the atmosphere. The temperature rose, and kept rising.

Captain's Office, Terran Dominion Frigate Lying Ghost, Delos System, Athena Nebula, 7 July 2183

The Lying Ghost had left the vicinity of Care-a-Lot at speed, before arriving in the asteroid belt. Quietly, the ship had slipped behind a large rock and monitored transmissions for around twelve hours. Listening from that distance meant a light-speed lag of around forty minutes. Jack Harper relaxed, smoking a cigarette and sipping a brandy as he listened to the world die and the panicked chatter of the cultist defence fleet.

At one point, a text signal was received. There was no sender, or at least no sender tag that made sense. The message was a single sentence, repeated again and again a few times before stopping, "I SHALL TEAR THE SEED FROM THE DARK MOTHER AND DEVOUR IT BEFORE IT BEARS FRUIT.".

Harper and the crew would take a day to recover, clean up, fabricate new equipment and repair some of the old. Then, on to Lusia to make use of the other device he had been given.

A Dark Place, Time Coordinates Not Contiguous

A Tenderheart Bear woke up. He remembered screaming, a strange light in the sky, horrified panic being shared psionically. The day had begun calmly. Then, with no warning or alert, there was a strange, bright light in the sky and a warm breeze that became a hot wind. Then came the tremor, mild at first but growing and growing and just not stopping.

The ground shook and just kept shaking more and more. Tenderheart Bear had fled into a temple - a sturdy marble building - but it began to crack and then something hit him just as he was getting uncomfortably hot.

He looked about. It did not feel like normal looking. He felt cold. The bear was standing on a smooth, icy, surface. It was pitch black but for some reason he could see himself. He could see nothing else. He was standing in an absolute void, like a lightless cave. Tenderheart Bear tried to use his powers to make a heart light. Nothing happened. He felt a sense of emptiness and loss. Looking down, his fur was bare - he had a bare white circle where his tummy symbol of a heart had been. Then, he realised another loss - he had no pouch. He felt nothing at all - just smooth fur between his legs. No concealed organs to make cubs with female bears, nor share the blessings of the Golden Star and the Mother with other species.

Tenderheart Bear felt a sudden sense of dread, weak at first, but rising. "Hello," he called out, trying to be cheerful and friendly but his voice was consumed by the emptiness. There was not even an echo.

"Is anyone there? Gold Star, can you help me?" When he said 'Gold Star', again, the bear felt a worse sense of loss and emptiness, of abandonment.

A hissing voice, compound, like a discordant choir of snakes, replied to him. "There are no stars here. Even your Dark Mother has no presence here. She does not taint this place with her foulness. They cannot see you, they cannot save you. The One-above-all that some of the clever humans worship could save you, but you are an unclean thing."

Dread was merging with fear into existential terror. "Who are you? Where am I?"

"I opened my gate on your world, just a little. The humans brought me there. Your world shook and broke, so did your containers. You tried to leave but my mouth was open and you were all drawn into this part of labyrinth of time. All of you are here with me, but you cannot see the others. You are scattered and you are all so small and delicious."

"My container? You mean the temple building?"

"The one made of meat. It did not survive. You still wear its likeness."

Tenderheart Bear felt a sense of awful realisation. He had died, but he was not in the presence of Gold Star as he had been promised. This was no land of glorious blue sky and rainbows. The Mother was not here, nor her garden. There was silence for a time. He had not thought his terror could increase, but somehow it did. He curled up, feeling himself fade, feeling only dread and terror.

After a while, the hissing voice spoke one last time to the bear, "I love the humans. I do not eat them. I do not love you. You are food."

Tenderheart Bear felt a sense of something vast, coils surrounding him, invisible in the dark. Then, for an instant he felt a spike of terror as something huge lunged at him. Then there was nothing at all. The Tenderheart Bear was gone.