Nova Wars

For the want of a nail, a Kingdom was lost - Terran saying, Age of Chivalry

At 1.33 meters, Hetmwit was a Pagrik of unremarkable size, with brown colored fur that blended in with others of his kind in an unremarkable way. His eyes were wide and brown, showing neither advanced intelligence or abject stupidity. His ears, at the back of his head and lifted slightly, were neither too droopy nor too stiff. His legs and arms were neither too muscular nor too slender. Up until recently, he was unremarkable in word or deed.

That was then.

He was still of unremarkable size and coloring, but his wide brown eyes had a grim purpose shining from them. His jaw was firm and clenched. His body language was of someone expecting violence to erupt at every second.

His appearance sometimes made his mother cry quietly in her room after he left, even though he did not understand why.

Now he sat in a crash cradle on the bridge of the CSFNV Little Nell Columbia, a Confederate frigate, watching the robots do their work. He had programmed them himself from common use libraries, but something about the last week had changed them.

They no longer had the T-shaped head that Olipnat Concordiant robots universally possessed, but rather they all looked like Terran skulls. Shipboard crew had a brushstroke of white paint across the eyes and from the top of the skull down across the nose that ended at the bottom jaw. Their teeth were white, set in black warsteel. The Marines had red stripes. They also answered to names and had their own slight personalities that were slowly emerging and becoming more complex.

Normally, Hetmwit would have taken the robots in for maintenance, maybe even wiped their memory cores and reloaded the OEM software packages.

After the last few months, the last few weeks, the fact the robots had changed felt right.

"Reentering realspace under stealth," Mister Smiley, the robot at the navigation station called out.

"Civilian passengers secured, Captain," Mister Donald stated from his station. The robot had an odd scratching/static audio defect in his voice synthesizer that Hetmwit hadn't bothered tracking down.

"All hands, prepare for realspace entry," Captain Decker ordered from the Captain's chair.

The numbers appeared, rapidly dropping.

The entry into realspace was smooth, almost unnoticeable.

"Data coming in," Mister Goofy, another robot, stated from the console. The robot looked up. "System is under heavy attack."

"Put the data onscreen," Captain Decker said.

Hetmwit hit the release catch and stood up, moving to the holotank.

There were two planets in the Terran Green Zone, two in the amber, two in the Red Zone, and four gas giants.

The gas giants were already burning.

The ships orbiting the two Green Zone planets were raining fire on the surface.

The star was an odd fiery reddish-yellow color.

"Hellspace energies detected from the stellar mass," Mister Goofy stated, he looked up from his board again. "System stellar mass has already been hellspiked. There will be a Hellspace corona ignition event within the next seventy-two hours."

"We're too late," Hetmwit said.

Captain Decken nodded, stepping up next to Hetmwit.

"Do we know the population of the system prior to our arrival?" Decken asked. He gripped the endosteel faux-chrome railing and squeezed.

you failed them you failed us you failed us all whispered from behind him, audible only to him.

Mister Willy looked up from his console. "Putting data up now."

The windows bloomed next to the burning planets.

POPULATION: ZERO

Decken frowned. "These are marked as Terran worlds."

"Reclassified as 'Terran Tomb Worlds' thirty eight thousand years ago," Mister Willy said. "They are marked as both inhabited and uninhabited as well as off limits."

Decken frowned. "That's... weird."

Hetmwit stared at it as the overlapping plasma waves rippled outward, slowly touching one another.

"Enemy ships are withdrawing," Mister Goofy stated. "Planets are at full glassing. Atmosphere has either burnt away or has become toxic."

Decken paced back and forth for a moment before stopping. "Do we have data on which systems are occupied by Terrans nearby?"

Mister Willy consulted his screen. "By cartography and astrography, the nearest stellar system is three point two light years away. However, by population metrics," he paused for a moment before looking back up. "No planets or stellar systems found."

Decken looked at Hetmwit. "Suggestions, Number One?"

Hetmwit looked at the holotank, moving the status of the system into a small box and bringing up the starmap. He colored the Terran Tomb Worlds one color, the Confederate systems another, his own Olipnat Concordiant another color, then the known un-allied multi-stellar nations in other colors.

Finally, he filled in the known attacks.

He stepped back, looking at it, then slowly walked around it.

"We only know of two attacks, three counting this one," he said. "Not enough to gain a full pattern, but it has suggestions."

"What?" Decken asked. "We need more data."

Decken turned to the robots. "Stay in maximum stealth. Passive sensors only. Let's see what happens after the stellar coronal eruption."

-----

Hetmwit sat in his crash couch, which had converted to a chair, watching the holotank. The time estimates were winding down.

He knew his mother, sisters, and the littles were all as comfortable as he could make them. He had been startled to find out that the staterooms they were in were armored, capable of their own life support with SAR beacons.

If the ship broke up, they acted as small life-pods.

Still, he was worried as he watched the counter move down.

"Stellar coronal eruption occurring... now," Mister Goofy stated.

The star went dark fiery red, swirling with black and purple. It seemed to contract slightly, then a bright flash filled the screen. The ship shook, the sounds of timber creaking and sails flapping on the edge of his hearing.

"Blast wave is consistent with a hellcore detonation. Detonation particle wave and hellspace energies is moving at twelve-hundred times the speed of light in realspace," Mister Goofy stated. "Grav lensing detected."

Hetmwit leaned forward.

"Grav lensing is stable," Mister Goofy said. "Sensor clearing."

Hetmwit undid the harness and got up, moving to the maps hanging in the holotank.

"Running angles on grav lensing," Mister Goofy stated. "Lens origin is approximately twenty million kilometers from stellar mass photosphere. Computing angles."

The star had twelve lenses around it.

"Central creation mass is confirmed to be generating hellspace energies. Stellar mass is core contaminated," Mister Goofy stated.

"It will take nearly a 100,000 years for that energy to reach the photosphere," Captain Decken said, stepping up next to Hetmwit. "Odd thing to do."

"Incoming hellspace energies," Mister Goofy called out. "Hellspace energies are connecting to grav lenses two, seven, nine, eleven. Computing origin points."

All of the grav-lenses were now marked as actively moving energy.

"They must be coming from a stellar mass modified like this one," Decken mused.

"Angles computed," Mister Goofy said. "Relaying data."

Two incoming and three outgoing were connected to worlds in the Olipnat Concordiant, including the system that Hetmwit had first seen Hellspiked.

"Put visible lines between the connected systems," Hetmwit said.

The lines appeared.

"Hyperspace and jumpspace distortions detected," Mister Goofy stated.

"Effects of the distortion?" Captain Decken asked.

"Gravity shadow emitted into jumpspace and hyperspace. No effect on realspace. Effect is detected within five hundred thousand kilometers of the lens," Mister Goofy said.

Hetmwit slowly walked around the tank and back to next to Captain Decken.

He knew what it was.

"Mister Goofy, is this distortion consistent along the energy lines?" he asked.

"Affirmative, sir," Mister Goofy said.

"Estimate distance of the distortion along the lines and highlight the volume of space effected," Hetmwit stated.

"Complying," Mister Goofy said.

"What do you see, Number One?" Captain Decken asked.

The highlight expanded from the lines.

"Current is placed. Estimated distortion distance after one hundred twenty hours is in lower opacity," Mister Goofy stated.

The lines connected, jumping from stellar system to stellar system, each system connected to the nearest stellar masses.

The highlighting slowly filled in the gaps between the lines.

Hetmwit looked up. "It's a barrier."

He touched it.

"Cutting the Galactic Arm Spur in half."

-----

"We can get out," Captain Decken said, sitting across from Hetmwit at the table in the mess. "Probes show that the distortion fades away enough in the upper bands that the Nell can reach."

"The bands everyone knows are impossible to travel without dissolving into particles," Hetmwit stated.

Decken nodded.

"Where do you plan on going?" Hetmwit asked.

"Estimating the direction and thickness of the 'fence' as you labeled it, it will use approximately twenty of the Olipnat Concordiant stellar systems," Captain Decken said. "Your people were attacked just because they were in the way."

Hetmwit still felt sick to his stomach, remembering the carnage, but he nodded anyway.

"The 'fence' will be two hundred light years thick, and they'll need to ignite about fifty thousand stars to do it," Decken said. "We cannot assume it is impossible. We must assume the enemy has prepared for this moment and possesses the ability to strike at all of the systems the fence would require."

Hetmwit looked down at his half-eaten meal. "Is there any hope?"

Decken nodded, smiling. "We're alive. Where there is life, there is still hope."

"How?" Hetmwit asked.

"First of all, we need to ask questions that we haven't asked before," Decken said. He activated the holoemitter and brought up a scratch-pad box.

"Here's what we do and don't know," he said.

"Known: They attack systems, kill every living thing, then glass the planet before hellspiking the star.

"Known: If resistance is too fierce, they go with a hellspike novabomb.

"Known: They use hellspace and hellspace portals to move around

"Known: Living things killed by them crumble to ash

"Unknown: Identity

"Unknown: Are what we have seen just weapons, constructions, artificial or conscripted troops, or the actual beings behind it.

"Known: They are building a grav-shadow fence across the galactic arm spur.

"Known: They are doing it by hellspiking the star and using grav lensing to have hellspace infused stellar coronal ejection mass to superluminal speeds in order to create the grav-shadows.

"Unknown, and this is an important one: What are they trying to keep in or keep out?"

Captain Decken leaned back. "Right now we can go around the fence or through the holes, so we need to decide: spinward territory of the Confederacy or anti-spinward? New Confederacy Territories or the Old Systems?"

Hetmwit stared at the two boxes, known and unknown.

"Which systems are in charge of the military?" he asked.

Decken shrugged. "I don't know. It used to be controlled out of Terra. Now? With Terra gone?" he thought for a moment. "I'm going to guess: Smokey Cone. If anyone has the martial ability to keep it together, it'll be the T-Bugs. They're kind of silly, but absolute beasts on the battlefield."

Hetmwit nodded. He didn't know who the T-Bugs were, but if the Captain believed they could help...

"Will they listen to anything we say?" Hetmwit asked.

The Captain smiled. "It doesn't matter that over thirty thousand years have passed since my people vanished, and it doesn't matter than over forty thousand years have passed since this holopic was taken..."

He tapped the holoemitter and a picture appeared.

Captain Decken was shaking hands with a massive insect.

"This picture alone will guarentee that the T-Bugs will listen to me," Decken said. "If not, this one definitely will."

It was of Captain Decken in a full uniform, black cloth, lots of gold braid, standing next to a massive insect wearing star bangles on their antenna, clad in a wrap that glimmered and shone. The insect was in the moment of writing on a large piece of parchment. The insect from the previous picture was next to Captain Decken, wearing a strange hat and carrying pistols in two pistol belts.

"Trust me, Number One, that picture alone will have the T-Bugs all sitting up and listening to anything I say, even if I start rambling on about pink golf balls," Captain Decken smiled.

He looked up. "What is it?"

Decken smiled wider.

"Just the signing of a little document," Captain Decken said. He stood up. "Let's get moving. It's at least two weeks to Treana'ad space."

-----

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

GUYS! GUYS!

HOLY SHIT, YOU HAVE TO HEAR WHO JUST SHOWED UP!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

What?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

SQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

---NOTHING SQUEEEEE---

RIGEL

What?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

HE! THEY! SIGNED!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!

---NSQUEEEEEEEEEWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

What?

Use your words!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

P'Thok!

Matron Mi'Luki!

SIGN!

JUST ARRIVED!

SQUEEEEE!

---NOTHINGSQUEEEE FOLLOWSQUEEEEE---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

WE can't understand you. Speak slower.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Is he having a stroke?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN GRAZING FIELD OF THOUGHT

He usually only acts like this during BobCo sales.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

OK... so...

He's here! He's really here!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

That's an old holo.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

Isn't that Matron Mi'Luki and P'Thok signing the treaty to end the Human-Treana'ad War?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Yeah.

It's ancient history.

Tee, what's got you so excited?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

CAPTAIN DECKEN JUST ARRIVED!

HE'S RETURNED!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

---SQUEEEEEE---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Captain Decken?

>peers at holo

He's right there. He's the Captain of the ship the treaty was signed on.

Here? He's actually here?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

ON SMOKEY CONE!

SQUEEEEEEE!

I'M SO EXCITED!

---NOTSQUEEEEEOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

You don't say?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---