The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 100: Battle - 3
Petra established a communication link between the Wau and Andreï. The images were striking, for the Wau transmitted what he was seeing even as he spoke: he had just smashed through the upper hull of the Sedna, carving himself a straight path through the cruiser by breaking down walls, passing sailors with terrified expressions, guards unable even to react given his speed. With every impact, the image flickered, and a loud noise could be heard.
- “Are other Waus going to come?” asked Andreï. - “No.” - “You have a plan?” - “At most a vague objective: saving your skin.” - “Are you the Wau I know?” - “Yes.” - “I thought ... you had been killed on Camerone.” - “Indeed. Hence my delay.”
The Wau had reached the main generator of the Endymion - a large spherical room, usually hermetically sealed by welds to prevent accidents or sabotage. At the center of the sphere lay the secret heart of the immense cruisers of the fleet: another sphere of metal, of an absolute black, where antimatter, nanogram by nanogram, fell into a magnetic hourglass to meet matter and produce an energy unlike any other.
The Wau wrapped both his arms around the sphere - he was four times smaller than it - and pulled. Terrifying screeches echoed, and the image became covered in artifacts, then whitened. The intense radiation of the reactor was beginning to interfere with communications.
Andreï looked at his hands. Were they burning? No. They hurt. But it was only a bit of stress. The cancer would come later. Except for the poor sailors aboard the Sedna.
The Sedna, moreover, faded out, becoming a dark grey shape in the obscurity of space - now just a drifting block of metal without purpose. There it was: like a murmuration of birds, a hundred escape pods deployed laterally and shot into space. The image returned, and the Wau struck a lateral bulkhead to reach the exterior. With a carefully calculated push, he gathered tremendous momentum and leapt toward the next Endymion, the Eos, which had already understood the problem and had just disengaged its grappling system.
By pushing the Sedna, the Wau had induced a very slight rotation in its immense hull, a rotation that would align, in about twenty minutes, directly in front of the Alké - with the Perun and the Amaterasu, it was now shielded on three sides.
- “You took eight minutes to disable the Sedna,” said Andreï. “Even if the whole fleet returns here, in half a day, it’s over.”
- “I won’t hold indefinitely, and certainly not an hour at this pace, Andreï. I’m going to have to slow down. Negotiate a surrender.”
Andreï requested another communication with Gulmira, who accepted immediately. The gaze of the Admiral of the Stellar Fleet was not fixed on the comm-screen.
- “I propose a cease-fire,” declared Andreï, to the officers’ astonishment. “All I require is to land a ship on Caliban safely.”
- “You think your little metal soldier is going to change the course of the battle? You know perfectly well that if I place all my Endymions at equal distance around the Alké and send them all at once, he might disable one or two before we crush you. We are conducting the positioning maneuvers right now, and the Eos has been evacuated.”
An aide-de-camp approached Gulmira and murmured something to her; she nodded, then cast a weary glance toward the communication feed.
- “Give me your surrender, I beg you.”
- “More Waus are coming, Gulmira.”
This time it was Pallas who came to whisper in Andreï’s ear. She spoke too quietly to be heard, but conveyed the information psychically:
“My Admiral, security has found eight intact fusion bombs aboard the Perun.”
Andreï nodded, and Gulmira continued:
- “Other ships are coming, Andreï, but not Waus. Call me back when you are ready to surrender. In the meantime, I am counting carefully the number of deaths caused by your stubbornness.”
She cut the communication. Andreï requested a radar map of the system. Yes - there was a swarm of ships emerging from Drift at the Jerimadeth waypoint, meaning from the far side of the Caliban system. At first, Andreï thought it was a missile deployment or an error from the LE control systems, but the dots grew, and there were hundreds ... more than that, even...
- “Approximately two thousand seven hundred ships,” declared Milovan over the comm. “But what fleet is this?”
- “They’re small ... Tygers?” asked Pallas.
- “No,” answered Andreï. “Ozys, of course. The Brotherhood.”
The Wau had pushed the Eos as he had the Sedna toward the Alké. He now stood, outside, on the hull of the Endymion, one knee on the metal, as if catching his breath.
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