As the cargo reached the destroyer and the crew pulled it into the cargo bay, an explosion more powerful than anything Gill could have imagined ripped through the enemy fleet. Some of the ships closest to the blast began losing air and liquids into space, spinning out of control. Antimatter! realized the stunned god of the bracelet. A deliberate blow to give them an advance!
The red cargo was under wraps in the destroyer’s belly when the first wave of enemies arrived nearby and opened fire. Most of the fleet followed closely, except for about twenty, too damaged to take part.
Soon, it became obvious that their ship didn’t care much about hits that would have torn apart other vessels. Their outer hull was covered in a layer of golden crystal stripes designed to deflect energy attacks. When the lasers hit the hull, the surrounding area became shiny and scattered the beam in all directions.
Seeing the uselessness of their efforts, the attackers stopped firing and began pounding them with nuclear charges. On the ship’s bridge, the Sigians were prepared for this. The walls, floor, ceiling, and even the battle cockpits where the fighters nested became transparent. Their defensive rays lit up the skies, hunting down wave after wave of bombs. Each of the soldiers defended a patch of space using a strange rod, which they pointed at the charges directly through the invisible walls.
With more and more grays reaching them, the space turned into a mad whirlpool. When the cargo was finally anchored in the ship’s bay, the commander gave an order. A tall Sigian pushed his arms inside a translucent sphere through the openings on its sides. The slug woke up and clung hungrily on his elbows. Thousands of lights started to shine within it, animated by a life of their own, while the ball slowly pulsed under the Sigian’s will. The soldier twisted the jelly, and the stars, the enemy ships, and pretty much everything else became a storm of lines and colors. The Sigians didn’t seem bothered by the distortion madness, still hitting their targets with ease, always at the slightly thickened head of the stripe. Everyone knew all too well what would have happened if they missed one. But with every passing moment, more and more charges were launched at them.
At Kirk’an’s orders, the Sigian made a series of jumps in one direction, till the enemies slid to their right. With the destroyer out of the range of their nukes, they stopped jumping and sped up.
And then came the ugly surprise: they were unable to outrun the grays after they assembled in a distortion front!
Once the destroyer was again in their range, the jelly handler twisted the space while the metal monster broke formation and attacked them from all sides. After they detached, the grays lost the advantage of their speed. Once again, the Sigians slipped from their grip and sped away, just like the first time.
Their enemies tried the same attack a couple more times until they finally got the idea. They had to contend with chasing them at close range.
“What shall we do now?” the god-Gill asked Kirk’an.
“We run like this until we meet a planetoid.”
“They’ll blow us to pieces in one hit,” he said, nodding.
The god of the bracelet had spoken for the first time, and from their common lips, the weird words came out with ease. It felt strange to hear himself uttering such unnatural sounds so naturally.
Deko popped up again on the wall screen, more worried than before. The wrinkles on his face now looked like the canyons of the Red Scarp.
“We’re in trouble, Deko!”
“So I’ve seen! From now on, you’ll talk with the fleet command. I can’t help you anymore,” he whispered.
“What are you going to do?” asked Kirk’an, knowing all too well the answer.
“My time has come,” he murmured, resigned to his fate. “We don’t have defense on the base; we moved it to the asteroids to slow them down. Good luck, Kirk’an!”
“Good-bye, Deko. I promise you won’t be forgotten,” said Kirk’an, saluting him by pressing his fist to his mouth and blowing, producing a guttural noise that sounded like choeee. Then he touched his chest.
With all the cities crashed down in flames, the gray fleet finally approached the volcano. They couldn’t possibly miss the largest cave. The bracelet bearer clenched his fists in despair. He would have done anything for a chance to fight the enemies, to rip their ships into pieces and watch the debris drifting aimlessly.
Following a brief search, the grays stopped around the southern wall of the volcano. They had found the tachyon detector and most likely were trying to understand what it was supposed to be.
After they reached a conclusion, they opened fire on the ice ceiling, collapsing it into the hole underneath. The hit revealed an artificial cave sheltering the huge tachyon device. It was a sphere suspended in a gravity field and bathed in bluish light, sending out sparkling, playful irisations in the depths of the glacier. From place to place, orange detectors pulled their heads out of the ice walls.
At the same time, hundreds of hologuided nukes plunged into the volcano. Some fell in the canyons while others steered along the ice caverns.
Deko was still with them on the wall screen.
“Remember, you’re the last h—”
The transmission ended abruptly when the bombs exploded all at once. Huge fire mushrooms rose everywhere, the ice melted by the blasts turning into boiling rivers, which quickly flooded the canyons. Water, steam, and burning hydrocarbons gushed out of cracks. When the oxygen released into the atmosphere reached the volcano, huge pillars of fire climbed through the hydrocarbon eruption to join the orbital fire streaks of the burning cities. Inside the ship, everyone was speechless. Ariga’s hydrocarbon harvesters and fleet printers became history… for the bracelet’s bearer and for the whole Sigian civilization.
CHAPTER 6.
Tarjis, the children of Zhan. “The righteous ones,” in the sacred language. When the temples asked for all children to be handed to them, they ignited a civil war that robbed them of their power. But not all opposed them. Plenty of Antyrans, afraid of Zhan’s wrath, gave up their sons and daughters. These children educated by the temples came back in the world as tarjis, Antyrans following the Inrumiral book’s commands above all earthly laws.
Most tarjis became farmers. Growing acajaa kept them closer to Zhan and protected them from the corruptible technologies lurking in the cities. They were not greedy and never worked large parcels that would have taken too much of their precious time. They fed on Baila’s promises and never chased more than the bare necessities of life. That was why, in time, the farmers became the power base of the temples.
Of course, not all tarjis were farmers. The most cunning were trained to conceal their education and infiltrate the Shindam’s bureaucracy, to become Baila’s eyes inside the worldly leadership.
And then there were the coria dwellers, from where the prophet recruited his assassins.
The majority of the believers lived on Antyra II.28 And it was precisely this reason why Baila XXI was cursing his wretched misfortune; he had a whole planet packed with tarjis at his disposal, and it had to be the Sigarion’s jure—a servant of the Shindam—to stumble upon the artifacts, instead of one of his pilgrims!
At least now he’d finally put the tarjis to good use, to help him get his hands on the artifacts, wipe out the Shindam’s corruption, and take back the reins of power.