Chapter 15
Tranquil, isn't it? he thought.
We listen to the song of the bound ones, the bolero of the suns, the Requiem of the Infinite Void, the haunting call of hyperspace, all beckoning and wailing in a concerto of order...a chillingly beautiful sound. Only one of your Bound-ones has ever heard it...Karan S'jet, of the Kushans.
The world is more then what you can see, taste, smell, or touch. It is more then your politics, your Taiidan or Kushan, or Hiigarans.
It is about the state of nature...it is why we shed our political natures, our planets, our former interstellar empires, to wander free from place to place, to experience the thrill of waking up to a new day or randomness and spontaneity.
The Destroyer does not care of the songs, the calls...it merely seeks these to augment itself. It is why we fear it. We fear it, because it is different, and cannot understand. Yet it tears at us, clawing frantically to us, should any of us be Bound to it we would find an eternity of suffering.
The bound have but a tiny flicker-song, those of the Unbound, our own songs are loud and clear, our thoughts and minds are powerful, the things we hear and create are wondrous and of awesome power and glory.
The Destroyer knows of this. It is why we run. It is why we are here...it is why we will make our last stand, so the rest of our kind may flee.
He blinks, stopping to stretch his arms, this...mind-thing, previously unsettling, was beginning to seem normal.
And then he listened to the call of the stars...it was a eerie song, echoed by each star, echoed and sung in concert by millions of distant spheres, wordless and indescripable. Indeed he found it mystifying, yet wierd...the Bentusi was right.
And then he heard the songs of war, the call of the Destroyer, flickering and ebbing, a eerie scream of death echoing, the soul of one of the Progenitors, bound in flesh and mind to this element of awesome power.
And then the klaxons blared, the room bathed in a deep red, the call to arms echoing across the corridors of the carrier, the PA crackling with static.
"Repair crews report repairs complete! Enemy units detected inbound, mines in Grid 14 have begun detonations. Possible strike force on approach from grid 14. Going to battle stations. Task Force strength numbers at 77%. All hands to battle stations. Hyper drive charged. Marine complements readied." He got up and changed into his pilots jumpsuit, hearing the incessant chattering of Tiamat Templars, as giant Crabships flew by the carrier, along with a single Star-craft.
Running down the corridors, Taiidan Marines thumped down the corridors, Engineers yelling about structural integrity fields.
Running into the flight bay he ascended the stairs to the top catwalks, he could see people running to and fro, his bird-eyes view giving him a perfect view of the flight bay.
Suddenly the floor trembled and shook, the entire ship suddenly turning hard on its axis, he gripped both hands and braced his legs, the carrier turning completely around, its pitch altering radically, unbraced items begin falling, the craft quickly righting itself again, a sudden acceleration throwing people to the ground as the giant carrier accelerated, the rest of the Taiidan fleet following.
From the catwalk a bruised hand reached up and grabbed the guide-rail, pulling the rest of himself up Qu'jet looked out the flight bay.
The dark colored ships began approach, only visible as the sun and nearby stellar phomena reflected light off of its surfaces. The shapes of Skaal-Tel destroyers and Qwaar-jet Heavy Cruisers.
Looking out to the right he could see the fleets of the Unbound. Suddenly a ion beam lashed out, A Elite Guard destroyer firing at a Bentusi Ringship.
All other vessels stopped, the vastly huge Battlesphere moved through, plowing through anything in its path, the Skaal-Tels were crushed against its hull plate, or immolated by ion beams and plasma torpedos.
Like a reaper the sphere cut a swathe through the black vessels, many reduced to nothing.
The strike craft began launching, PA blaring.
"Squadron-1-2 launch!"
He looked down. 40 Seejurs sat on launch sleds, and suddenly were catapulted out, the Seejurs moving incredibly fast before slowing down, the third belly guns on each craft extracting from their storage bins, the Defenders moving off to battle.
The rest of the Elite Guard fleet retreated and was gone.
Suddenly another set of hyperdrive signatures appeared near the Dyson sphere, the hordes of the beast pouring in.
Bound one, we must go...you are safe. Do what you must. We will do what we must...we must hold them back, buy time for us all.
With that the Unbound vessels turned around and scrammed back to the Dyson sphere, Beast Heavy Cruisers blown away by decloaking orbital structures, which fired exceedingly rapidly, each shot gouging at a ship of the seemingly endless swarm, hundreds of ships of different makes, Frerrn Aggregates, Taiidan, Kushan, and much to the dismay of the Unbound, Progenitor Doom-Stars and Titans, of which had never been seen by any Taiidan or Kushan for millenia. The Doom-Stars fired their black torpedos, absorbing nearby light as they hit the orbital stations, releasing anti-photons and gravitons, collasping the giant orbital platforms, which exploded in flame, sending giant shockwaves through the fleets, no Unbound screamed; nearly everything seemed to be unmanned. So the Bentusi were elsewhere.
He watched the battle..., which seemed to be going for the worst, new ships poured in for all sides, of different makes, each more exotic then the last, employing weapons of radical power, overloading sensors with hundreds of thousands of different readings.
The Flytrap then left, a quantum induction detected by all, and then a flash, and nothing more.