“Armiger, I have two more…make that three more enemy battleships jumping out of hyperspace. We are cloaked but not for much longer. What are your orders, sir?” Lieutenant Clemons had an open line to the fleet, ready to act.
“Fire everything, including all X-13’s.”
“Did you hear that? Destroy everything we can and use all special weapons!” Clemons yelled.
Outside the Helcarion, the agile Valian fleet attacked the massive space world of Razerus. Orange spikes injured the goliath but couldn’t bring it down. Their fighters buzzed around the great ship but only looked to pester it. Action filled the screens, but the Ruverans barely noticed their presence.
Fox looked out the viewing port. Since parting ways with Nathan and his crew, his fleet had jumped nearly into the anomaly itself. From then, they’d been trying to outrun it. Wherever they had tried to move and regroup, there it was coming from another corner of the universe. Until the screamer had been activated, they’d had few places left to go. The dark tidal cloud had them all surrounded, including those on board Razerus.
“What of the anomaly?” Fox asked, refusing to call it what it appeared to be.
“It has completely surrounded this galaxy cluster. There will be no escape, sir,” Clemons responded.
They were going to find out what happened when the real fox finally caught the rabbit.
The late Armiger, rest his soul, would call everyone back to be with their families in their last moments. But his father had also wanted them to fight this last fight even if they didn’t survive it, and that was what they were going to do. Either from Ruvera or from the anomaly, it was all going to end here.
For some reason, Fox remembered something Nathan had told him once during the war. “If you knew you were going to die, why not take as many enemies with you? Your fate has already been decided, so you have nothing to lose.” Then he’d added, “C’mon, Fox, wouldn’t you rather die on the battlefield than as an old man in bed?”
Now what should his last orders be?
Fox looked far through space and saw the darkness speeding toward them. He went to his intercom and opened a channel to the fleet. Another Valian ship had been hit with a rift cannon and was lost. Nearby Valians opened up on the Breaker that had done it.
“Attention Fleet, this is your Armiger. I want to commend you on your service. It was a pleasure serving with you these last several years. Trying to overcome our enemy is never a loss. My orders are to take out as many enemies as you can before the anomaly robs you of that joy. I’ll see you on the other side, Ladies and gentlemen. That is all.”
He put his com unit down. His forces fought with a stronger vigor. An injured Valian ship used itself to batter into the Razerus. When it hit, the thunderous explosion took out an entire wing of the station.
Fox turned from the battle and watched the darkness come. He thought it funny they were all suddenly relying on the Void Star. He just hoped that it was everything they thought it was.
-o-
“There we go,” Velkas said as his screens came back online.
A fleet of his fighters were engaged in battle as the mass of black appeared. The thing, if that was even what it could be called, reached out and consumed a nearby planet. In a second, its mouth reached around, and it was gone. His fighters reached the spreading mass and had two moments to fire on it before they just…disappeared.
Uncloaking, Velkas saw the Elysian command ship was between Razerus and the mass. The blackness came at it in waves and hugged it, eating at it, and then it was torn apart. The Elysians were no more.
He balked at it. Everything was going just like it had told him it would. His thoughts turned to his own self-preservation. So maybe he had tried to double-cross the darkness back there when he tried to open the star and not destroy it, but hey, if it knew him so well, it would’ve known he’d do that. There wasn’t any way to know for sure where his current standings were. He just hoped the thing known as Abel went easy on him.
Something clanged behind him. When he turned, he saw the last thing he’d expected. It was then that he suddenly remembered he had sent his guards away so he could watch the apocalypse alone. And where was his useless daughter when he needed her?
“Captain Sutherland? Really?”
Nathan pulled out the gun he’d picked off the guards. He didn’t utter another word before he pulled the trigger and discharged the full capacity of the weapon into Velkas. Velkas took the hit and went flying across the room, slamming into the opposite wall. Nathan tossed the weapon aside and ran to his adversary’s side.
Velkas was a broken mess, already bleeding all over his nice rug.
“Didn’t even…say a word…before…” Velkas looked up; blood was running down his face, pooling behind his head.
“I didn’t want to waste time bantering with you.” Nathan pulled himself back up. “This isn’t the final scene in a story.”
Outside, the massive dark force reached the Razerus XIII. The defenses didn’t even react. Technically, there wasn’t anything there to react to, it being the absence of existence. It hit the station. Nathan saw it tearing through as each camera screen blinked off.
It was ripping through the station like a starving lion.
Nathan could hear laughter below him. He looked down to watch Velkas coughing up blood. Between bouts of bloody spit, he giggled in raspy tones. “You have no idea who you’re up against.”
“You know what it is?” Nathan crouched over him.
Velkas gasped for air. “A force of unspeakable evil. An unstoppable entity. That which cannot be overcome.”
The lights were going out in Velkas’s eyes. Blood continued to flow from his open mouth, but his stare went blank.
Nathan had done it. Even at the premature end of his life, he had killed the ruler of the Ruveran Empire.
After the last fight outside Earth, he’d been inches from taking out Velkas’s ship but allowed him get away. The shock of watching his planet torn apart had sent him into a mad daze. He’d ordered the retreat. He had pushed his ship to its limit and crashed outside Bastion where everyone was gathering. He had gotten more of his men killed and lost his leg in the crash landing. Then he’d gone on the run with his nephew. Until this moment.
There lay Velkas at last. Dead by his hands. Was it revenge or redemption? Did it even matter? It felt too good to not be revenge.
Something odd caught his eye in that moment. Nathan leaned down and picked up a simple piece of dirt Velkas had been holding. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was a piece of Earth. There was no way to be sure, but it somehow felt like it was. He tossed it aside. There was no need to lament his home anymore when so many had been lost.
Suddenly, the walls disappeared, and he was surrounded by the dark mass. It was swirling like a vortex around both him and Velkas’s dead body, as if they were the last two objects in the universe.
Out of the darkness came a lone figure in dark robes. He ignored Nathan as he knelt by Velkas and put a hand on his chest.
“You’re not going to die yet. You have just begun serving me.” The figure told the dead body.
The blackness entered into Velkas, and he became something…else. He screamed as he returned to life, enveloped in shadow.
“It’s time to go home.” Kaida appeared again by his side.
“I failed.”
“It’ll all work out.” She grabbed onto him and held on. He could smell her and feel her against him. He kissed her cheek and clutched her tight.
Then the darkness swallowed them all.
-o-
Boost stood on the other side of the walkway and waited for Dosh to activate the door.
“There’s just not enough power. We used the last of it to bring the temple up out of hiding!” Dosh cried.
Boost visually broke down the opponent coming at them. She was armed with an old-style diamond blade. She had ditched all other weapons. She walked forward as though nothing could stop her.
“We have to give
him as much time as possible,” Boost told him. He went over everything his master Nathan had taught him about fighting. His focus rested on the woman’s helmet. Besides hiding her disfigurement, there were life-support components to it. It would do.
Dosh came out from behind the door with crude-looking weapons. “We have these.”
“That will work,” Boost said, arming himself.
“Strange. This is where my vision ends,” Dosh admitted.
Boost had no idea what the Salarian was talking about, but he had learned enough about social behavior to answer the creature’s statement. “We’re good.”
Dosh gave him a confused look so Boost shrugged. He had tried.
Boost looked up fast enough to see the sun of this galaxy get swallowed by the darkness. They had a handful of moments before they were swallowed up into the mass too. This could be the last bastion in the universe.
Dosh and Boost zeroed in on the oncoming enemy. Boost picked the spot Nathan would have told him to go for and attacked.
Chapter 28