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Chapter 10: The High Queen of Venus takes control
From my point of view on the bridge of my mothership The Imperial High Cruiser Alpha Two, it looked like the Hey Sunny exploded and the solar system was covered in a spherical shield.
“Your imperial majesty. We’re reading countless jump points outside the shield. It’s already starting to fail,” helmsman Jones said.
I was still trying to decide who I trusted after the attempted coup but everyone on the ship had been vetted by Hal, and him I always trusted.
“Gwin, my dear. I’m sorry,” Raphael the King Consort, my husband, said. “I know you cared for him.”
“So did you. We were all friends once,” I snapped. It was an old argument, one that I knew hadn’t gotten any easier over the past decade. My husband was the man I was always meant to marry, and I love him, but my first love was Hal, that awkward gangly boy I found stowed away in my father’s ship.
A wave of soothing light erupted as the shield collapsed and I felt calm, something I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced. It felt like warmth and love. I dearly held on to that feeling but it was quickly destroyed by the ships that crashed through the shield.
They were black and oily, the surface seeming to constantly shift as if it was a river or tar. They didn’t fire torpedoes; they crashed directly into the closest ship.
“Open hailing frequencies to the Sun fleet,” I ordered leaning forward in my command chair.
“Open,” the comms officer said.
“Sun fleet. We may have our differences but it seems we have a mutual problem. Are you amenable to a truce?”
The answer came from a lot of their ships at the same time, “Yes. Oh Sol, what have we done?”
Jones tapped at his console and said, “The fleet is in disarray; they’re arguing about who’s in charge. The Black Sun command ship is only replying with sobbing. I think something happened.”
With a smile, I said, “Hal. That bastard converted them to Sol. That warm glowing feeling was his way of freeing the enemy fleet. Send a wide data packet to them with all our information on the void beasts and the virus they hold.” Hal had managed to fight the beasts once before and if they didn’t rip someone apart, the virus they held killed them horrifically.
I watched as the million-strong Myrddin fleet was torn to shreds. They fought valiantly but for every ten ships they destroyed, another hundred appeared. The void beast ships didn’t fire weapons; they crashed into their opponents and then swarmed them, leaving dead husks behind.
Gesturing to comms, I ordered our fleet, “Okay people. Hal would say that this is the moment we were all born for. Let’s show these abominations what the sol system and its allies can do. And don’t die.”
The sol fleet did its best to hold off the ships but they were fast and determined to crash into us. I was about to order a retreat when the Sun fleet joined the fight.
“This is Sun Speaker Gerald first converted to Sol from the Sun Fleet. We’re here to help,” The voice was confident and we started to coordinate. The three fleets started working together and I led the charge. The fight seemed hopeless and the enemy endless but soon they started to thin out.
I was thinking we were in the clear. More than half the Sun fleet was destroyed, the Myrddin counted less than a dozen, and the Sol fleet had lost a third of our people.
Then a planetship appeared past FarFarOut, the furthest human outpost in the Sol system. We’d managed to evacuate them back to Pluto. Thankfully, because the planetship devoured it.
The writhing oiliness of the ships was mimicked in this one, and after the fight, we knew it to be the void beasts that created the effect.
Raphael gagged at the sight and in a whimper he asked, “What can we do against that?”
Before Hal had gone and done something foolishly selfless, he’d sent me a message that said, “Gwin, I loved you from the moment we met and I don’t blame you for what happened. Sometimes we need to move planets for those we love.” With the message was a schematic for the wormhole generator from The Revenge.
“We need to create a wormhole right in front of that thing and send it straight to Sol.”
“We’d have to be right next to them!” exclaimed Jones. He looked pensive and finally said, “If we used the microsun drive to get out right after we opened the gate, the planetship would get sucked in and we might survive. But it’ll take a few minutes to open the gate.”
“Make it happen!” I ordered. Softer, I said, “We need to do this for our families, our friends, our worlds, and our god.” The crew cheered and I felt sick to my stomach.
As we raced to the planetship, we were almost surprised by a void beast ship that was hiding in its shadow. Powerful weapons blasted it out of our way followed by a voice saying, “Imperial High Cruiser Alpha Two, this is The Revenge and The Warship Ennill, we’ll cover you.”
We fought our way to the planet and opened the gate. The gravity of Sol reached through the gate and pulled the planetship into the sun. We and the other two ships jumped out in time to avoid a fiery death.
I breathed a sigh of relief. There were still some void beast ships but the Sun fleet was making quick work of them. I started to relax when a void beast ship headed toward us.
Just as I was about to order weapons at full power, I heard Hal’s voice in my head, Help us! Please. I then recognized the shape of the ship.
Under the writhing mass of beasts was the Hey Sunny.
“Target the Beasts on the ship. Prepare a boarding party. I want to rescue any survivors.”
Read Chapter 11
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