Dahlia's Deception (The Annihilation Series) (22 page)

Pare said, “You are going to have to verify the nemite and camouflage coatings are functional against the invader’s scanners.”

Ping nodded and looked at Dahlia, “We’ll teleport out close to one of the portals and see if we get a reaction from them. If they detect us, I’ll call this off.” She reluctantly nodded. “If they don’t see us, I want you to get the Mites over to assist the Rageon.”

“Why?”

“He’s no longer an enemy and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If nothing else, we need to delay those invaders from overwhelming the forces here.” Dahlia nodded and hugged Ping tightly. “I do not want to die, Dahlia. I want to see my daughter.” Dahlia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Ping turned to Sprigly, “Contact Dean and have him bring the Searcher to the surface.” Ping turned back to Dahlia, “I’ve had a sense of something for a long time but couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was troubling me.” Ping nodded at the ceiling, “It was them.”

“What does this say about the plan we’ve been thinking we’re a part of?”

Ping smiled, “There are no accidents. This is part of it.”

• • •

The Rageon Fleet Admiral saw more than a hundred thousand of the invader’s small ships forming up to attack his formation at the portal. If he ordered the ships in the formation to turn and face the ships attacking from outside his ranks, more than half a million of the enemy vessels would go through the portal unchallenged. There was no way to meet the challenge and he decided he would die killing the invaders at the portal. He sat in his command chair and decided he had lived a full life and wouldn’t change much. He wished he had told his oldest daughter how much he loved her. She didn’t like him very much at the moment. Matter of fact, she hadn’t liked him for years. “Here they come!” The Admiral looked at the invader ships start accelerating toward his fleet. Just before they moved into firing range, the entire front of the enemy ships disappeared in a massive explosion. Only a thousand enemy ships came through the blast and they exploded a moment later.

“I hope you don’t mind if we crash this party.”

The Admiral smiled, “You are a pleasant addition to the festivities.”

“You are having issues at other portals. We have to go.”

“I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

“That would be good, Sir.”

The Admiral never saw the ships that saved him. He contacted the Ruler and told him what had happened. The Ruler was shocked but then started shaking his head, “Somehow…this seems right.” The Admiral nodded and turned back to the battle at the portal. It was a long way from being decided.

• • •

The Beast watched and saw the Blue Ships were going to break through. Too many of them were forming up to attack his fleets holding formation at the portals. He shook his head and lifted his communicator, “Break formation and attack them wherever they go.” The millions of ships broke away from the portals and the magnitude of the ensuing space battle was unimaginable. The Rageon were the only one of the Five that were holding on. Soon the ships coming through in the Rageon Domain slowed and then stopped. The Admiral knew the other Four had failed to contain the portals in their territories and he issued orders to his fleets. Nuclear missiles were launched into the hundreds of thousands of portals and the blasts ripped through the portal. The portals were still hanging in space when the Admiral said, “Launch them again.” The blasts were gigantic and after the third one exploded further into the portal, they all disappeared.

The Fleet Admiral started issuing orders. His fleets left the former portals’ locations and flashed out to help the other four against the ships still pouring into their universe. The Blue Ships stayed out of the Rageon Domain, they would save that particular problem to be handled last.

• • •

“Sir, it looks like the portals here have been closed.”

“I see that.”

“Do we go with the Rageon to the other Domains?”

“No, we were ordered to assist them here. We’ll go after any Blue Ships that come this way but other than that, we wait for further orders.”

“There are several thousand of them loose in the Rageon Major Galaxy.”

“Take four squadrons and handle them.” Two thousand Mites teleported away and in less than two hours, there were no surviving Blue Ships in Rageon Space. The ones leading the invasion wondered what they had missed in Rageon territory and they ordered all their ships to stay away until the other four were defeated. With the millions of Rageon Ships joining the other four, the battles shifted into a higher gear and ships were dying in the millions.

• • •

Pare teleported the Searcher a hundred miles from the battle being fought in front of a Beast portal. Ping and Sprigly watched the display and no ship moved toward them. “Take us in closer, Pare.” The Searcher jumped in ten miles from the portal and an escaping Blue Ship flashed by it as two Beast Cruisers pursued it. None of them gave any indication they saw the Searcher. Ping moved the ship close to a gathering of Blue Ships as they formed up and accelerated toward an incoming wing of Beast Battleships.

Ping lifted his communicator, “Deception, Deception.”

“Message received.”

The Planters could use the Mites now that he had verified the nemite coatings and camouflage hulls were operative. Ping heard Sprigly mutter, “There’s no way we can get through there.”

“If you watch the pattern being used by the Blue Ships to go through the portal, you’ll see that they’re avoiding the two sides.”

“Well duh! That’s where the Beasts have their ships formed up.”

“We could come at the portal from behind and slip in around the right edge. They won’t see us coming from the front.” Sprigly stared at the massive battle taking place at the portal’s opening and watched the area Ping had pointed out, “It could work.”

“Pare, move us around to the back of the portal’s location.” The Searcher moved around the space battle and Ping watched the huge blue hole in space where thousands of ships were emerging every minute. As they moved past the edge of the portal, it disappeared and they could only see the battle being fought and a stream of Blue Ships appearing out of nothingness.

Sprigly leaned left then right, “Even if we were visible, those ships couldn’t see us through the portal. The dimensional science involved in opening a portal into another dimension never ceases to amaze me.”

“Pare, how are we doing?”

“Ping, I’ll be coming around the edge in ten seconds. I’ll accelerate through the portal and turn hard left away from the opening.”

“You need to lock in the coordinates. I don’t want to get lost in that other universe.”

“I will, of course, do just that.”

“Can’t you just look through it?”

Ping closed his eyes and looked at Sprigly, “I didn’t think to try. However, the view would be greatly diminished. I really need to see the big picture.”

Ping watched the massive battle and suddenly saw the giant portal appear as Pare made a hundred and eighty degree turn around the portal’s edge. Beams were firing out at the Blue Ships flashing through the portal but none were being fired at the edge of the portal closest to the giant Beast Fleet holding formation there. The Searcher made the turn and went through the portal. Pare made a hard right turn as thousands of small Blue Warships came rushing at high velocity toward them. They accelerated away from the portal and Ping looked off in the distance and saw a giant blue cloud. He looked closer and slowly sat down in his command chair. Sprigly saw his expression, “What?”

“I know why the portal is so large.” Sprigly leaned slightly back and to the left showing his confusion. “Pare, put what I’m seeing on the wall display.”

Sprigly looked up and saw a huge blue cloud off in the distance. He paused and thought, “Wait a minute; there aren’t clouds in space.” Suddenly the view changed and moved in closer to the cloud. Sprigly saw millions of large Blue Ships hanging in space. “Ping, I don’t have a good perspective of how big those ships are.”

The view moved in close to one of the ships and Sprigly saw three of the Blue Warships that were currently flashing into the other universe next to the bow of the ship. Sprigly’s mind did the computations without thought. The Blue Warships were three hundred yards long. The three warships next to the large ship looked like the size of period at the end of a sentence next to a Rover. The large Blue Ships were thirty miles long and two miles in diameter. “Ping, back the view out so I can take a reading on it.”

“Sprigly, I don’t want to run any electronic scans here.”

“I’m not. I just want to take a visual measure of that cloud’s dimensions and use the information I’ve just uncovered to make an estimate of how many ships there are.”

The view changed and Ping said, “Tell me when.”

Sprigly waited and after a moment said, “Now.” Sprigly held up his hand unit and moved the controls on it until the entire width of the cloud was inside the display.

“Pare, can you take us above that cloud so I can get a reading on its thickness.”

The view changed again and Sprigly took another reading. Sprigly’s leaves turned light brown as he said, “There are more than a billion ships in that cloud!” Ping stared at him and Sprigly said, “What?”

Ping backed the view out and turned around. Sprigly watched the display and saw all of the space around them was completely enclosed in massive blue clouds. Sprigly’s leaves turned dark brown. Ping said, “This isn’t all of them. Pare, I’m taking the controls.” Ping stared out at the front of the Searcher and pressed the teleport button. They arrived above a planet that had one of the giant Blue Ships in orbit.

Sprigly said, “Pare, don’t do an electronic scan but take a look with your optical scanners at what’s going on, on that planet’s surface.” Ping and Sprigly looked up at the wall display and saw a giant dust storm blowing on the surface. Sprigly stared at it and leaned back, “That storm is not a natural phenomenon.” The view moved in closer and suddenly the winds blew the dust apart and they saw giant machines moving across the land in a long row. Ahead of the moving dust cloud was a vast green plain. Behind it was nothing but bare soil. Ping started shaking his head. Even large trees disappeared after the dust storm passed. “Pare, how much of this planet has been cleared by these creatures?”

“More than sixty percent.”

“How are they moving what they’re clearing to the ship?”

The ship lands on the planet’s surface and everything is moved into a storage facility where it is processed.”

Ping stared at the fast moving line of harvesters, “How do you know that, Pare?”

The display changed and they saw a series of huge indentations in the planet’s surface; they were regularly spaced for thirty miles. “There are eight sites on the planet where those indentations are located. That is where the ship landed.”

Ping stared at the deep indentations, “The ship is over thirty miles long.”

“It is and I suspect they still have to use gravity suppressors to land it. Its mass is incredible.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Sprigly, I’ve just taken a quick look around this side of the planet and the numbers of aliens harvesting that planet numbers in the millions. They and all their machines arrived here on that ship.”

“Pare, can you see any of the aliens?”

The view changed and the display showed ten creatures standing around a broken harvester. The view moved closer and all of them had something in their hands they were eating. They looked almost comical. They were uniform grey in color and were hairless. They were short, only standing about four feet tall. Their bodies were thin as well as their arms and legs. The largest part of their anatomy was their heads. Their brain case was huge compared to their bodies and their two eyes were large and unblinking. They had a slit for a mouth and they were constantly eating. Their ears were nothing more than holes in the side of their heads and their nostrils were two slits just above their mouth. Ping said, “They’re predators.”

Sprigly nodded, “Their eyes are on the front of their head and not on the sides.” Ping nodded. Sprigly stared at the small creatures and shook his head, “They must have the metabolism of birds.”

Ping tilted his head, “It does appear they possess a voracious appetite.”

Sprigly stared at the display and after a moment Ping said, “What’s going on, Sprigly?”

“I’ve seen this being somewhere. I just can’t pull up out of my memory where it was.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Sprigly continued to stare and finally leaned back, “No…not really. It’s just a feeling I have…I don’t know. I’m probably wrong. One thing I can tell you.”

“What is that?”

“They are what my species used to be before the Realm ran into us. We would lay waste to a planet to feed ourselves and we killed most of the planets in our galaxy.”

“Do you think they can be made to change their eating habits?”

“Ping, my species was suffering from a virus that prevented our children from achieving their full development. Once the Realm gave us a cure, we gladly stopped our destructive behaviors. I don’t think these creatures are suffering from a virus.”

“How can you tell?”

“They’re all the same form. I think these beings are natural born killers.” Sprigly turned to Ping, “You notice there is no animal life on the planet.” Ping nodded, “They were the first to go.”

Ping looked back at the display and the ten creatures continued to take bites from what they were holding. One of them went over to the broken down harvester. It pulled something out of the front of the vest it was wearing and pointed it at the huge machine. A beam lanced out and the harvester was gone. A small ship came roaring down from high atmosphere and the ten boarded. It lifted and went to the giant Blue Ship in orbit.

Pare said, “They obviously have many more of those machines in storage.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Sprigly, that harvester was huge. It should have been repaired. That tells me they have manufacturing facilities on those giant ships.”

Sprigly sighed, “What they’re doing is blasphemy.”