The Tomb World Ch4 (Patreon)

Fezzan scaled the inner tower wall with little effort on his part. When he first became a Watcher his greatest daily challenge had always been getting up the two-hundred and ninety-four tail tall tower. As a youngling Fezzan had always been the best climber of his age group, but a nearly three hundred tail climb was a lot, even for him. It wasn’t that his arms weren’t strong enough to haul himself it was the fact that he got winded only a third of the way up and had to rest often.

Fezzen had asked his uncle, the tower commander, why they hadn’t just installed a pulley ladder to save time. He had seen plenty of pully ladders installed throughout Moulvus city in much shorter buildings, he never used them himself but he saw plenty of older people using them to go up and down. His uncle just chuckled to himself and told Fezzen to keep climbing the tower.

Now Fezzen had been working as a Watcher for nearly a whole shadow cycle, and he learned why they never added a pulley ladder. His twice daily climb had taken Fezzen’s physique and slimmed it down and nearly quadrupled his stamina. The climb toned the muscles in his arms, strengthened his grip strength, and helped him train his endurance. That extra endurance made him a solid pick for Boral teams since he could last the whole game without getting winded. It even made scouting shifts easier to handle.

Now he could scale the tower with ease and reach his station without panting like a Goral in heat. In fact he had trained his endurance so well that he outlasted the senior Watchers.

Fezzen emerged from the hatch ahead of everyone else in his shift rotation, which earned him an approving click from his uncle. Fezzen returned the click and knuckled his way over to his station and began his shift.

Being a Watcher wasn’t the most glamorous job in their defense against the swarm. Many people preferred to join the ground core, or the pilot’s division. But all those combat-oriented branches relied on the Watchers to monitor the Hive. They were the people who spent a lifetime reading the regular commands of the Hive and were able to predict the movements and positions of the Swarm to within a tail’s length. Plus they were one of the very few branches stationed above the rubble. Occasionally pilots and soldiers would break above the ruined surface to fight on the Planet-City’s surface, but they mostly fought in the wide-open roads and airways under the Planet-City’s top layer. This meant that Fezzen got to stare at the beautiful storms raging on Forak, the gas giant they were orbiting.

As relaxed as tower duty was it had its dangers. Watchers had to be above the thick layer of ruined buildings and reinforced tunnels of the Planet-City to pick up the signals from the Hive. It put them at the greatest risk since they were stationed high above the top layer with little to no defenses, but if it weren’t for them then the soldiers and pilots wouldn’t know when the Swarm was attacking.

Fezzen began tapping through his console screens as he fell into his normal rhythm, all four of his arms working on different screens. But soon after he began he noticed that something was different. The Hive was giving out a lot of commands in the form of barely noticeable fluctuations in its constant transmission, and a large portion of the Swarm had deviated from their normal paths. Instead of making regular excursions into the upper atmosphere of the nearby gas giant they were all slowly flying off into the open space above Forak’s northern region. They seemed to be clumped around a seemingly empty patch of space, stalking something their satellites couldn’t see.

“Commander!” Fezzen croaked as he began to grow concerned.

His uncle, Tower Commander Foric, swung from the pipes and girders of the towers ceiling before dropping next to Fezzen. “What have you found Watcher Fezzen?” his uncle asked, not doubting Fezzen’s urgency.

“The Swarm is on the move, look here” he said bringing up his lower left arm up. “They’re following this empty patch of space here. As it moves, they move. What could it be?”

Foric watched the screen before pulling back his lips and hissing at the screen. “All arms at the ready!” he roared to the rest of the room. “Unknown ships have entered our space, and the swarm is hunting them. Inform the ground and pilot divisions that we’re going to need immediate air support and should prepare for an incursion!”

The Watch tower flew into a frenzy of movement as everyone rushed to fulfill his orders. Fezzen just stood there and contemplated his uncles orders “You really think aliens have entered Corvalis?”

“It’s the most likely explanation. We have received signals from other alien civilizations in the past, before the Swarm snuffed them out. It only makes sense that one might visit us one day. Prepare our satellites, we’re going to transmit the Swarms current location to the aliens, I just hope they figure out what it means before it’s too late.”

Fezzen saluted his uncle and began to fly through the different screens of his console, opening the Swarm tracking data and preparing to transmit it into open space through the satellites they had secretly launched over many shadow cycles. To make triple sure that the aliens got the message he copied the data to every possible frequency he could. “Ready Commander!” he reported.

Foric nodded and turned to another Watcher “Are the pilots ready?”

Jema, a cerulean skinned female, pulled the head set away from her head. “Weavers are spooling up as we speak, and ground command has gone to code black.”

“Good, inform the gate guards that we’re going to try and guide the alien ships into Hanger core seven. I’m not sure how big those ships are, but they’re going to need somewhere to land.” Foric ordered.

Jema nodded and began to babble into her headset once more.

Foric turned back to Fezzen “On my command send out the signal, then try and guide them to hanger seven, be as clear as you can.”

“Understood” Fezzen said as calmly as he could, barely restraining his excitement at his peoples first contact with living aliens other than the Swarm who had destroyed their homeworld.

“NOW!” his uncle roared as the swarm began to close around the empty patch of space

~~~*~~~

Daniels had been focused solely on the strange organic looking anomaly; his whole attention focused on one screen. His heart nearly leapt out of his chest when several different alarms went off at once. “What is that?” he asked as his heart began to pound.

Nelsons eyebrows scrunched up, “We’re receiving a very loud signal from the Ecumenopolis. Its coming at us on all frequencies.”

Daniels frowned “Bring it up to the main screen.” He ordered.

Nelson tapped away at his keyboard, and the screen changed to a very strange interface. It looked like an old fashioned 8 bit video game screen, in one corner of the was a big circle, with several other smaller circles scattered around the screen. There were also hundreds of little moving blips, closing around a circle of black empty space. Daniels stared in confusion for a second before something clicked. “Condition Four, we’re under attack. Ready for warp!” he ordered, panic creeping into his voice. Those circles were the Gas giant and its major moons, and the empty space in the middle of those little blips was where the stealthy explorer ships were. Somehow something had found them and was closing in.

Their active scanners, which had been folded up to reduce their profile, opened and began to actively scan the space around them. Soon Lory’s own tactical displays were filled with hundreds of smaller contacts roughly the same as what was being transmitted to them. Soo and Sheila saw the Staff of Lore light up like a beacon and assumed something had gone wrong. They opened a communication network with the Staff of Lore and their on-board computers began to share info. A hatch on Soo’s starboard hull opened and a powerful flood light emerged and focused and beam of light on one of the sensor contacts. There wasn’t any intervening air or dust to show them the width of the beam, but they did see an object roughly four meters long come into full view as the light hit it.

It had dark grey skin that absorbed a lot of the light shone on it, it had six sets of fins and pseudopods evenly spaced along the length of its body. The fins were hook shaped, and the long trailing pseudopods were covered in large dull white barbs. At what Daniels assumed to be its head he saw three immense eyes dilate as the light hit them, its pointed beak split open into three sections revealing a maw of razor like teeth.

“Space Sharks” Nelson said in surprise as they got a good look at what had surrounded them.

The creature looked nothing like a shark, but now the name of Space Shark was forever imbedded in Daniels mind. Claxons began to ring throughout the ship as they went to condition two. Nelson kicked on the ships maneuvering thrusters and began to swing Lory’s bow around to a single patch of open space to escape through. He pushed the lever forward and the ship attempted to warp away at max speed, there was a quick flicker as they went into warp for just a second before an anti-warp field dropped them back into sub-light speeds.

“Grav-spike, were stuck Sir!” Nelson shouted as a low painful groan went through the Staff of Lore.

“What’s the source?” Daniels asked. He suspected that the ‘space sharks’ were generating it, but that would mean that they were capable of artificially generating gravity on their own. It was already shocking that anything organic could survive the cold vacuum of space, let alone generate artificial gravity.

“The space sharks Sir, they’re all generating a low field of distorted gravity.”

“Fuck” Daniels cursed. “Engines to full, we need to escape range of their gravity field”

Eliza turned to Daniels “You don’t want to stand and fight?”

Daniels turned an incredulous look on her “There’s at least a thousand of those things out there and we only have four rail guns between us. Not even sure if we can do any damage.”

As if on cue the two-tail guns on Soo and Sheila turned on the nearest space shark and opened fire. Bullets peppered the hides of the creature to little affect; one stray bullet did hit one of the large eyes and it burst open like a squished grape, but otherwise the creatures were unharmed. Daniels felt the fear and apprehension of his two fellow captains as Soo and Sheila kicked on their large rear ion thrusters and followed the Staff of Lore’s retreat.

As the three explorer ships began to retreat the space sharks went into a frenzy, blue lights appeared at the tip of their hook shaped fins and the previously inert creatures began to chase them. The combat AI ported over from the main fleet began to analyze the unknown propulsion used by the creatures, in seconds it calculated their rate of acceleration, their maneuverability, and the patterns in their movements. Lory might not have been a warship like the rest of the Hellworlder fleet, but her solo computing capabilities were equal to any of the Archdevil cruisers. Soon Lory’s computing core discovered that what the creatures used for propulsion lit them up like fireworks when seen in the ultraviolet spectrum. The small blue lights at the tip of their fins was just where the energy was the most intense and dipped into the visible spectrum.

Daniels heart fell when he saw that the creatures were faster than Lory or the other explorer ships. He felt like he was being chased by some unfathomable predator, slowly gaining on them.

“We’re getting another signal from the planet” Nelson reported.

“What is it?” Daniels asked, it felt like hours had passed since they got that first message, when in reality it had only been minutes.

Nelsons eyebrows scrunched up, “It, it looks like directions. They want us to come back to the Ecumenopolis, but they’re having us take a strange route.”

Nelson brought it up on the main screen and Daniels saw what he meant. The path had them weaving and ducking past asteroids, sometimes it even had them double back. Daniels felt apprehensive about who ever was sending them these strange messages, it would be all to easy for them to lead them into a trap. But that first message had likely saved their lives, buying them enough time to respond. If their mysterious benefactors had wanted to kill them, then they would have just let the space sharks get them.

“Nelson, we’re going to trust them, follow those directions as precisely as you can. Pass that on to Soo and Sheila.”

“Is that wise?” Eliza questioned. “We don’t know anything about them.”

“We don’t have many options. We either trust them, or we stand and fight.” Daniels said it all with complete confidence to try and inspire them, but on the inside he was already second guessing his choice. He laid a hand on the sword at his hip and remembered something he heard Astarte once say, “sometimes all your options are bad, and all you can do is make the best of bad situation. It’s a Captains job to pick one and live with the consequences, assuming you live at all.”

The trio of explorer ships made a wide arcing turn and put on speed as they made a mad dash towards the metal planet. He had hoped that the creatures would be confused by their change in direction, but they didn’t even pause in their chase. Daniels began to suspect that the space sharks may be more akin to starlings or bees, acting in one unified swarm rather than a collection of individuals.

There was a long straight away before they hit any of the strange turns laid out before them. It was during this long dash that some of the smaller grey skinned creatures caught up to Soo who had been in the rear of the formation. Soo’s stern rail gun fired at any that drew too close, but it was overwhelmed by the frenzied creatures. Two reached Soo’s hull and latched on with their barbed tentacles, the barbs pierced the hull and pulled its split maw up the ship’s surface. Daniels watched in horror as it tore through the tough metal alloy and squeezed through a hole smaller than its body’s width.

Daniels saw a report from Captain Jefferson that they were repelling boarders. Some of Soo’screw were former marines like Daniels, so he knew that they weren’t completely defenseless. But those things had tanked the 50mm bullets like they were nothing, he wasn’t sure that the .22 caliber assault rifles would do anything.

Atmosphere temporarily escaped the hull breach until Soo’s atmosphere retention fields kicked in to plug the hole, keeping the air in and the crew safe from hard atmosphere. Three others tried to latch on, but this time Soo used her own hull as a battering ram, hitting the space sharks like a runaway freight train and actually killing one of them. The creature closest to Sooburst it many little chunks and spread out in a cone of gore, the pursuing space sharks temporarily forgot about their prey and leaped at the spreading flesh, quickly cannibalizing their fallen.

Daniels felt his stomach roil, but turned his attention to combat reports from the Sword of Order. The first wave of engagements was a mad retreat as they attempted to slow it down with little effect. Then after a long pause things changed, one panicked scientist had decided to hack at one with a fire axe, and to everyone’s surprise it worked. Minutes after being boarded Captain Jefferson reported that the enemy was dead and instructed the other ships to use melee weapons instead of projectiles.

Daniels let out a sigh of relief as the Staff of Lorepassed the first bend in their strange route. As they flew past an asteroid their scanners picked up a small metal object drilled into the space rock’s surface. The trio of ships passed by without incident, then as the swarm past it the object exploded, flinging hundreds of foot long metal rods into the space sharks, killing ten or twelve of them.

Daniels then understood why they were taking such a strange route, the people on the metal planet had seeded the asteroids with remote claymores. Each one that went off distracted the swarm with the flesh of their dead comrades and bought them an extra second. The ships swerved and weaved through the gas giants ring system, leading the swarm into many claymore traps. Each trap earned them a little bit of breathing room, until they reached the open space around Ecumenopolis. There were no more traps around the world and the descent into the planet’s atmosphere gave the space sharks enough time to close the distance.

Great cones of fire formed around theirs bows as they made a dangerously steep descent into the worlds earth-like atmosphere. The strong magnetic field blinded their sensors, so all they could rely on was their dumber instruments and visuals. Hundreds of space sharks followed them down as well, but as they hit the strong magnetic fields they began to act strange. Their movements were much less coordinated, and some even attacked their fellow space sharks.

The cones of fire faded away and the cherry red hulls began to cool. Daniels felt his stomach do a little flip as the planets gravity took over, and he found himself being suddenly pulled forward before Nelson leveled out their descent. There was a layer of white clouds beneath them and the signal was leading to a point below. Lory flew into the puffy clouds and their view was completely obscured until they suddenly broke through and got a good look at the planet sized city below them.

Many of the buildings were broken and crumbling, and Daniels got the impression from their size that they would have been much, much taller. Many of the remaining buildings Daniel did see weren’t like the square shaped skyscraper he was used to, instead they were a myriad of different shapes. Octagons, hexagons, some large quarter circular arcs, and one appeared to be an intricate double helix.

Daniels might have spent more time marveling at the wonders of an ancient Coreworlder city, but the space shark swarm was right on their tails. Some had bitten each other, but the majority of them were still focused on the trio of spaceships. The creatures seemed to be completely unaffected by the atmosphere or gravity, zipping around just like they had before. On the other hand Lory and her sister ships now had downward gravity to fight, and an atmosphere to push through. Their speeds dropped off dramatically as the ships were only designed to move through atmosphere when docking or landing, not fleeing from space sharks.

Daniels had Nelson drop closer to the surface level and use the airways in between the massive buildings to constrain the space sharks, he hoped that the tighter confines would be enough to make them turn on each other. But he had greatly misjudged the gap between the broken buildings. The three ships flew side by side and still had a ton of space left to maneuver.

The creatures had just about caught up with them again when a hail of metal rods shot into the flank of the swarm. Roaring out of a side street a tight formation of black metal shuttles engaged the swarm head on. The shuttles were like car sized quadcopters, but instead of rotors they had blue glowing rings that kept them aloft. The rings would tilt and rotate like gyroscope, pointing the long barrel of the shuttles dart shooter into the space sharks.

The swarm reeled back from the sudden attack, and so did the explorer ships. The tight shuttle formation split around Lory and her sister ships to engage the swarm head on. Two shuttles then fell on either side of each ship and began to guide their way forward.

Daniels was stunned by the sudden development, as was everyone else. Nelson turned back to Captain Daniels seeking confirmation of their course. Daniels couldn’t see any alternative, and their unknown benifactors had been trustworthy so far. Daniels gave his helmsmen a nod and Nelson turned back to his console and followed the shuttles as they led Lory to a cavernous tunnel.

The tunnel was not a natural construction, nor was it a part of the city’s intentional design. It had been formed when a several hundred-kilometer-long section of the planets now broken orbital ring fell into the city, crushing hundreds of mountain sized towers. The collapse of one tower falling onto another had created a triangular tunnel into the dark reaches of the city’s covered interior.

Daniels judged that if these people had to live with regular attacks from the space sharks then the only real safe space would be deep under hundreds of meters of rubble. Lights on the quad-shuttles flicked on to illuminate some of the surroundings, and Soo and Sheila popped out their flood lights to help. They flew to a huge hole that seemed to be at least 3 kilometers wide, when they flew over the hole Daniels saw that the hole was the entrance to very deep shaft. It went so deep that Daniels had to squint to make out the bottom.

Eliza’s face went very pale as she saw the drop and she grabbed a control panel to anchor herself. Daniels didn’t point out how meaningless that gesture was and just marveled and the scope of the megalithic tunnel.

The quad drones began to descend and the trio of explorer ships did the same. They slowly sank for ten minutes until they reached a circular aperture that then promptly slid open to reveal another long side tunnel. They flew in after the quad drones, flicking off their flood lights as the interior was well lit. They only flew for a short time before finding themselves in the confines of a cavernous hanger bay. One so large it put the hanger core of Femeri to shame.