Chapter 913: Edge of Twilight

Chapter 913: Edge of Twilight

War makes monsters of us all and forces us to embrace our own monstrous nature in order to carry out something monstrous we claim to be valorous, ValesAwk, Rigellian Philosopher, 1228 PG

The Hellspace portal clanged open with the sound of great iron doors forced open by a battering ram. Flames reached out into space in defiance of physics, as if space itself had not only caught on fire but contained the necessary gasses to burn.

From within the portal emerged a massive black starship. The primary hull was a black disc, lights burning sullenly on the black metal that shone with twisted and eye-watering runes. It was connected by a short, thick swoop of hull to the lower hull, three cylinders jammed together and wrapped with heavy spiked chain. From there, two more pylons reached out, thick at the base, narrow where they connected to heavy engines. The engines were rapped with black chain and wire, all of it burning with crimson runes.

Chains tried to hold the craft back even as hands, no longer wispy but now charcoal colored with red cracks in it, reached out to try to hold onto the craft or perhaps pleading with the craft to be taken with them. The chains shattered, the sound crashing across the stellar system despite the lack of atmosphere.

The entire craft was jet black, as black as space, lit here and there by Hellspace fires burning on the hull that quickly guttered and went out.

The Hellspace portal collapsed with the sound of iron doors clanging shut.

The Dakota had arrived.

"Red alert! Shields up! Evasive maneuvers!" Pikark called out, his voice tight with urgency. "Nice job, Mister Chekov, she's right where you said she'd be!"

"Thank you, Captain," the Terran playing the part of a thousands of years old character said, feeling the very real flush of victory flow through him.

The viewscreen cleared to show a massive ship, nearly the size of the Eurasian continent on Old Earth and a thousand miles thick. A ragged edged rough oval, an egg with the narrow end chopped free to provide the anchor for hundreds of engines.

"Phasic shielding is engaged and holding at 14.75%, Captain," the Worf said from his combat command position.Follow the latest novels at novelhall.com

In the old vids, the old series, the Worf would have been standing. Hell, in the Trekkie LARP ships only a few years back, and on most ships still in service, Worf and Yar Class personnel still stood behind a podium during starship battles.

The Dakota was different. A Murica Class warship, originally in-spec heavy cruiser, was now a class all of its own and so far out of canon that the crew knew they'd never be able to return to the LARP that had taken over decades, even centuries, of their lives.

But that was before.

And this was now.

"Scans show it's her. She's dropping troops on the planet," the Margelle called out from her station at the sensor systems. "Long range sensors show the planet is heavily industrialized and is not able to put up much of a fight."

"We'll change that," Pikark growled. "Tell The Elephant that we're prepping him for launch."

"Aye, sir," the Uhura said, her hand on the side of her vac-suit helmet.

It was only a few years ago that the bridge crew would have been in duty uniforms, unarmed, unarmored. The bridge would have been pressurized and kept at a comfortable temperature.

Now, they all wore adapted Confederate Navy vac-suits, carried sidearms, and worked in a bridge that was totally in vacuum, the atmosphere pumped away.

"The Elephant reports ready for launch," Uhura stated.

"She's seen us," the Margelle stated. Her character was from the Dominion Wars Saga, a difficult class to spec into, only the best sensor techs and close quarters combat specialists could qualify. She had nearly two hundred years in the class and had been in the Top Ten of ladder ranked.

In the last year she had been pushed the limit by the Dakota's mission.

"Time to range?" Pikark asked. He grabbed the 'oh-shit' bars on either side of his command cradle and pressed his feet against the 'oh-shit' plate to bleed off his tension.

"Two minutes until we're in range of all weapons. In range for torpedoes, missile pods, and the Pike Shot Cannon," the Worf stated from where he was strapped into his chair and watching his command consoles. "Five minutes until we're in boarding party range."

"Tell the Yars to get their men onto the mat-trans pads," Pikark ordered. "This is all or nothing. We won't be recalling them if the Omniqueen jumps again. It's her or us this time."

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the muted beeping of the consoles.

"The Yars acknowledge. Reply message is as follows: The Digital Omnimessiah protects," the Worf said.

Pikark just nodded, focusing on the screens around his command cradle. They burned crimson and amber, the full color spectrum displays tossed out the airlock after the Phasic Shade Assault, but had all the data he needed.

The stellar system was simple. One stellar mass in the yellow-green life-cycle, two planets, then a green zone planet, then another planet, an asteroid belt, and four gas giants with the usual assortment of moons.

Which meant there were no tricks, no sudden surprises, that the Omniqueen could spring on him.

"Hellcore energy transferred to phaser arrays," the Worf called out. "Hellcore discharged. Warp engines on standby."

"Moving at three-quarters impulse, approaching point six-two light speed," the Sulu called out, his words slightly lisped from the scar down the side of his face.

"She's maneuvering," the Worf said right as Pikark spotted it. "Breaking orbit, looks like she's heading for us."

"Looks like she knows this is it. There's no escape this time," Pikark said. He smiled, a cold and ugly thing.

The Dakota jumped forward, the massive engines at the core of the lower trio of cylinders lit with a cold blue light around a reddish core. The shields were thick enough to blur and distort the Dakota's lines to any viewers.

The Omniqueen stared at her monitors that surrounded her, deep inside the hull, in a newly crafted chamber that was nearly dead center of her great ship. Miles of battlesteel armor surrounded her, shock absorbers that would cushion a collision with a supernova blast wave cradled her, and she had her last three Overqueens around her.

The rest, and most of the Queens, had been killed in the previous months of dueling with the hated ship that once again had found her.

It had harried her, chased her, hounded her heels no matter where she went.

It galled her to admit it.

She feared that ship.

No longer did it shine with polished metal, or gleam with brushed steel coloration.

It was black, with burning red runes, and used the burning hyperatomic plane to chase her, despite the fact that the Lanaktallan had ensured that no living creature could use the hyperatomic plane and live.

Yet the hated ship still headed for her.

Still sought to destroy her.

She knew better than to reach out with her powerful psychic abilities. Knew better than to try to shut down the brains of those on that hated ship.

The ship was made of hatred and crewed by insane creatures who knew only hate.

"There is no sign of that terrible weapon being readied, oh Great Omniqueen," she heard one of the Overqueens state, her voice full of confidence.

The two ships kept closing.

Now the Omniqueen was getting reports of heavily armed and armored boarders, some with armored vehicles they were driving inside the hull of the Omniqueen's vessels. Platoons, companies, battalions of those blasted insane lemurs.

She could feel them, feel their rage moving through the hull.

Reports were flooding in of the lemurs heading for the massive engineering spaces, heading for gunnery control, seeking out Omnispeaker Chambers.

And slaughtering anything that tried to put up a fight.

Computers started throwing errors across the network and the Omniqueen knew her ship had been boarded by the lemur's terrible phasic digital hybrid attack programs that tore her through security systems like tissue paper.

The ships slid closer.

"My Queen, hyperspace interdiction fields are failing!" was wailed over the link.

She knew they would. She had felt the bright snap of the crew manning the interdiction field generator die only moments before as a lemur boarding team just drove their vehicle through the wall and fired on everything in sight.

It didn't matter.

She would prevail.

Boarding shuttles launched from the Omniqueen's ship, heading for the Dakota.

The Elephant reached the planet, grav-spikes slowing it and angling it for atmospheric entry.

Pikark watched it all, trusting in his crew, as the battle grew more intense.

The Dakota optimum range for its heavy guns.

"FIRE MAIN GUNS!" Pikark called out.

The entire Dakota shuddered, jolted, and Pikark felt like the ship was running over a rocky road.

The tri-barrel C++ cannon, labeled "Georgiou Battery" emptied its magazine in a rapid fire burst, the struts and recoil compensation system howling and twisting.

The Scotty watched it carefully and was relieved that it was only stressed. No cracks.

The Lorca Cannon fired. A single shot. The struts howled and crewmembers were knocked down two levels up and down as the shockwave shook the entire ship.

The Pike Shot fired, the shattering mirror effect lancing out from the front of the ship.

The Scotty ordered his men to replace cracked parts, shore up the main compression buffer spring housing on both weapons, and ordered the pistons wound with heavy warsteel wire.

The Mantid missiles got close and detonated, guiding lances of pure energy mixed with phasic energy into the Dakota's shields, which rippled and flared.

But held.

Pikark was grinding his teeth into the plastic mouthguard he'd popped into his mouth only minutes before as his ship rocked and shuddered from the massive impacts across the primary shields. For a few seconds the Dakota was completely engulfed and hidden in a flare of enemy firepower.

When it faded, the Dakota was unmarred.

The Omniqueen started to scream in rage.

The C++ Cannon shells, barely skimming back into realspace inside the Mantid ship, emerging more as a particle wave than mass, exploded. Tens of cubic miles of mass just vanished, converted into hellish boiling particles.

"Decoy Chamber Two is just... gone..." one of the younger Overqueens gasped, her 'voice' muted with shock.

The Lorca Cannon shot hit.

The massive plasma wave phased motion gun hit and blew a crater in the Mantid ship sixty miles deep and nearly four hundred miles across, the remaining hull white hot for nearly ten miles around the crater.

"Decoy Chamber Five, Six, Seven, Nine, are all... gone," another Overqueen whispered.

The Pike Shot hit, the munition enhanced, improved.

It blew clear through the mantid ship, detonating inside the hull and the explosion lancing clear through the ship to blow cubic miles of armor out the other side.

The blast knocked three of the Overqueen's down and made the lights in the Omniqueen's chamber flicker.

The Overqueens stared at the Omniqueen as they realized something that the Omniqueen had realized but kept hidden.

They could lose!

-----

The Elephant hit off the coast, a huge fountain of water gouting up for nearly a mile. The waves were seventy feet high when they hit the coast.

Seismic sensors detected something massive, weighing tens of thousands of tons, approaching the coast.

When it breached the water, the Mantids that had rushed to the beach to defend against whatever the Hated Ship had launched had only a chance to gawk before the massive construct lunged forward.

It was a massive construct of black warsteel with a cupola on top. Guns pointed everywhere.

Guns that went to rapid fire with computer controlled accuracy.

From the huge vehicle a single sound erupted across both the audio and the phasic spectrum.

NYAH!

I have made landfall. My Kentai Commander rejoices as our guns tear apart the Mantid before they could even react. We plot a route to intercept the largest force of Mantid troops my sensors spotted during my landing phase.

I am Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL.

The Mantid are the Enemy.

And the Enemy only exists to be destroyed.