The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 101: Battle - 4
The Wau considered jumping from the Eos to reach the bombs, but what for? He would never have the speed, and the Halcyon was too far away. All right...
He contacts Dorian.
- “King Dorian, I inform you that the Alké has just sent eight projectiles in your direction, do you see them?”
- “The Wau Order serves the dissidents, if I remember correctly,” replied the King with bitterness.
- “We can discuss politics later, look at your radars.”
- “I remember a Wau who came before Huan and bowed to him...”
He finally looked at the radar.
- “I see them.”
- “They are nuclear fusion bombs. It costs you nothing to destroy them.”
- “It may be a trap.”
- “King Dorian, I beg you. I am not lying to you. The Wau Order does not take sides. It tries to save lives. And I am sorry for Huan. He deserved to die, but I do not kill in cold blood. Or even no-no man deserves to die, even an abominable tyrant. And I did not kill him because in that sort of system, killing a tyrant is the same as making room for his likeness. I had no replacement ready. But it was in my plans.”
- “Your words touch me. I may be naïve, but I want to believe you. Thank you, Wau.”
The bombs were already halfway to their target. The Wau did not quite know whether he should continue supporting Andreï, who now seemed unrecognizable in his actions.
To make good measure and reduce the risks, fifty Ozys from the front line launched their missiles at the bombs. Almost all the projectiles hit their targets; the three or four that remained spiraled off toward Caliban’s star.
The bombs burst in an apocalypse of silence: eight luminous explosions, each ten times more powerful than the nearby star, in under two seconds. A hyper-powerful electromagnetic flux shoots in all directions at the speed of light-it crashes against the magnetosphere of planet Caliban-1, cloaking it in a titanic aurora.
The Armor holds, but the Wau sees all the Endymions go dark. In the distance, the Nations no longer respond either.
The Wau descends near the command bay of the Alké, from the outside. The officers are there, and operational. The explosion has not blinded them. Because their eyes were closed. Because they knew the bombs would be triggered beforehand.
Andreï approached the bay, facing the Wau from the other side. The Wau signed in Stellar Tongue, since communications no longer worked.
- ME NOT LOVE PROJECT YOU
- ME AND FRIEND SEVERAL IN SHIP, WIN LITTLE TIME, Andreï replied.
- PROJECT YOU PRESENT, QUESTION
- ENDURANCE, STRUGGLE (he paused, then continued): YOU GO PLANET. GATES EMPYREAN
- ME WITH YOU AND FRIEND SEVERAL. GATES EMPYREAN, FUTURE
- ME LOVE YOU, GREAT THING
The Wau did not sign back. He was disappointed not to have been told about the plan, and to have been used. For a moment he thought he could answer with a word of love, for he might die ... but never mind. He stepped away from the window and rose far above, onto the Eos which spun gently.
The Endymions of the fleet had positioned themselves all around, but several thousand kilometers out, encircling the fortress of wreckage surrounding the Alké. As though for a celebration, the Wau saw them re-ignite one by one, and beneath him, the Eos transmitted the vibrations of the Alké’s machines.
Apparently, the Ozys were no longer responding for now. As much as the Endymions were over-protected cruisers capable of operating around neutron stars or Kugelblitzes, the Ozymandias ships were merchant vessels. For all he knew, they could be out for several days. Well played, Andreï, well played. Hoping they would manage to recycle their oxygen nonetheless.
And now? The black silhouette, almost invisible, of the Harpocrates, an infiltration cruiser, stood in the front line above. The Wau could have joined it, exhausted himself trying to shut it down, and then what? Eight others would pass, not to mention those already aboard, and from all sides...
He will defend the Alké. And the Alké will fall. Andreï, if the Wau followed his most intimate conviction, would surrender to save his crew. Just before that, the Wau would dive toward Caliban-1 with the Halcyon. Why endure, Andreï? You are not a proud man!
One hundred kilometers more, one minute of grappling hook, and the fortress of wrecks will be within missile range.
All sensors of all ships go wild.
Space, in a remote corner of the system, becomes luminous.
A hallucinated parade suddenly bursts from Drift, ship after ship, each more phantasmagorical than the last.
Colossal stellar amoebas containing in themselves clouds of nebulae and moons. Stone ships, modified asteroids plated with metal like cyborgs, but also ships carved into perfect solids: cubes, tetrahedrons, icosahedrons, star-shaped volumes, gigantic sea urchins in rainbow colors. Ships of the HS, old tinkered invictus, affixed to the flanks of stellar whales as large as continents. Giant spikes, like huge nails, to which cling, directly in open space, Xenos armed with spears who by the thousands prepare to leap. Ships belonging to the secret race of whisperers, who live inside gas giants, themselves hidden within great billows that burst from Drift like the smoke of a colossal invisible hookah.
Bursting from a wormhole-using a technology considered impossible by the HS-appear the legendary Zero, Xenos absolutely black, possessing ships that absorb light and are impossible to observe. The Zeros are said to be unsurpassable in combat, and a single one can decide the fate of entire planets, though they are also said to be wise and conscious of their own power.
Now comes a cohort of creatures existing in dimensions above or below the three dimensions: vast polygons of light that seem to slice and reform according to invisible waves, armies of flat, iridescent ovals aligned like dominoes. In the realm of the invisible, wave-creatures, vibrating in the texture of spacetime, moving at light-speed, rebounding from one hydrogen molecule to the next in the vacuum to carve a path toward the system’s planet; but also monstrous agglomerates of molecule-creatures hiding their intelligence in distant places linked through biological Entangled Gates-and finally, creatures of light whose ships are nothing more than mirrors arranged to contain their troops inside.
At the end of the procession, devastating for every side, entire miniature suns-likely burning gas giants emerging from Drift, sheltering within them civilizations of hyper-fluid beings traveling from star to star with these natural vessels: their arrival alters the gravitational field of the entire system in a tsunami moving at the speed of light-like an elephant shaking the ground, all ships tremble in the vacuum; every sailor feels in their own body the colossal scale of the tidal forces.
And leading this insane cohort stands an Adventura marked with a sun, broadcasting over radio:
- “Uh, Salman reporting ... I see lots of Endymions here, are you still there Captain Andreï?”
The Wau hears their communication and rejoices. Good Lord, Salman, in just a few weeks, has achieved this Xeno union that seemed impossible to all. He too wants to know, when Andreï, after giving his coordinates, asks:
- “All these Xenos ... they’re your allies, Salman? Really?”
- “They’re here for Caliban, my Captain. And yes, they’re our allies.”
- “Admiral. But how did you gather them?”
- “Uh ... the Abandoned helped me a lot...”
- “Yes sir!” gargles the octopus in the background...
- “And the Xenos, when they’re decided on something, they’re efficient. They contact each other, they organize. They have the equivalent of a super HS if I understand ... Actually ... it’s not the moment but ... we should really study all these civilizations. Excuse me now, we’ll tell them the targets.”
- “Salman-not a massacre, alright?”
- “That’s not the Xeno philosophy, my Admiral.”
Astonished, the deck officers of the Alké and the Amaterasu bend over the radars and the observation bays. The cruisers of the HS scatter to disperse the Xeno fleet, in perceptible panic.
- “Go fire missiles at a sun!” shouted a captain toward Gulmira.
In many ways, this fight was as uneven as that of the HS against-alternately-the fleet of the resistance, and the sailors felt heartbreak seeing humans, even enemies, hunted by unknowns.
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