The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

It was a defense worthy of legends. It had played out first over days, then weeks, then months, and the defenders only seemed to get more ornery and more indefatigable as the conflict continued.

The three secondary fortresses and their rings of defenses fell, one by one. Taking each of them required billions of Zoner lives, and tens of thousands of ruined starships of all sizes burning across the world’s surfaces.

It was no lie to say that almost no starship that landed on the planet ever took off again, for the wrath of the Goddess came down and took care of them forever. Orbital space was so thickly packed with tumbled, burning starships that there was no longer a day, yet the sky was alive and always lit with lightning flying between millions of hulks incessantly, daring those to approach the Crimson Tower of Khan and claim the victory.

But the end was coming. Our fleets had been pushed away from D’bari, and the Zoner firepower assaulted the shields of the world-powered Tower with a blinding, vengeful savagery. If sunflares exploded through their formations and reaped yet more lives, the deaths were ignored, the ships were replaced by reserves, and the fusillade never let up for even a moment.

---

The walls had fallen, one by one, the defenses destroyed, the defenders overcome in combat by means both honorable and not, and death and blood rode the planet in a haze of grim hate and vengeance on both sides.

The Zoners were inside the Tower now. It would not be long now, Khan knew, as he raised his fusion blaster and poured fire down at the armored forms pressing up the rampway to this, his bastion and redoubt.

The numbers were falling. His million-plus host of soldiers, once set to conquer a helpless alternate Earth, had perished by the ones and twos, here and there, occasionally by the tens or hundreds, and now, the final thousands were here with him, fighting grimly to the last, the numbers counting down, down, down inevitably and inexorably as the traps, the ambushes, the final defenses, and brutal infighting ground down towards its ending.

The air was filled with the savage cries of the invaders as they felt the final victory nearing, even as they pushed the last of D’bari’s unbroken defenders up the great Tower that had loomed over them for so long, and was now about to fall.

There was a hush, and a trembling across the world entire.

“We are done,” the Goddess Cleo whispered to them, and a breeze stole across them, sweeping across the final bloody combats and pitched fighting... and all those defenders still alive on D’bari were suddenly gone.

With a groan and a moan and a crackling of a mountain of crystal fracturing, the Crimson Tower of Khan came down, and the final attackers could only scream as a hundred miles of floors above them came down on them to ensure that they would never live to see their victory.

---

From outside, the fleets let up their firepower upon seeing the hated red edifice finally topple and the shields about the planet snap away, while the great storm seething about the world and through the entire inner sphere of the system began to dissipate rapidly.

Reports came in from all over that all the defending elements were pulling back in good order and withdrawing through hyperspace. The system was theirs!

Congratulations and boasts soon filled the com systems as they waited for the storms to break up and clear for them. The world below awaited them, and if it had been torn apart by the conflicts, still it was a prize, if they could but uncover what the planet’s defenders had fought so valiantly for.

The storms faded to clear skies, no whiteness, no fires to block the views from above.

It... was all gone?

Everything... was gone?

Confused calls rose from the world below, as the millions of troops seething about the place called up in near-panic, wondering where they were, what had happened as the mists and dusts cleared, and they found themselves... somewhere else?

No, it was the same world, but before it had been turned into a warzone and hellhole that would become legend across many, many galaxies.

The great scars of war, the glassed plains, the mountains of corpses, the endless hulks of dead starships, the armaments of war, the killing grounds, the stoic rings of defenses, and most maddeningly of all, the shattered and fallen corpse of the Scarlet Tower... they were all gone!

Around them rose a world pristine and green, sparkling with life and vitality, not so much as a shell-hole or las-scar visible on anything. Birds flew, insects buzzed, trees and foliage waved in a soft wind, and gentle rains began to fall here and there, as if to cool the raging and confused spirits of those soldiers who had been fighting there.

There was naturally no sign of the defenders at all. There was only... an unmarked, pristine, virgin world, a jewel of space, sitting before the forces of six different Zoner races, a perfect new home for any of them, and all of them.

The divisions started to manifest immediately as the ground forces and fleets urgently began to separate. The wiser and weaker forces quickly set to evacuate their forces and withdraw from the area of conflict, while the three stronger forces began to pose and boast and negotiate for the right to claim this jewel of a world for themselves.

That situation lasted a whole twelve hours before the shooting in space started, and war erupted once more in the D’bari system.

------

“My Khan!”

Supported by two members of his Harem, almost all of whom had somehow survived the final fight, Khan was helped to a medical litter. He had lost an arm in the final battle, but the sacrifices of his most loyal guards had ensured that he had survived to the end and had, as promised, been returned home with all those who had survived.

“Which Tower?” he asked, wincing as his armor was stripped from him, and the medics began to work on his injuries.

“299-4-E, My Khan!” the anxious Horlugi commander of the Tower replied instantly, staring at the remnants of his Khan’s army as thousands of medics and corpsmen strove to attend to them. Just the condition of their armor, and the smell rising off them, told him of efforts of battle beyond anything he could imagine. Of course, the Towers had all been kept informed of the fate and progress of their Khan’s efforts in defending that world in the middle of nowhere in some other dimension, a place with no strategic value, simply defended to defend, and to make the enemy pay a dire price to take it from them.

Kili, Khan’s lovely blue-skinned Harem Coordinator, had naturally not been idle, even exhausted and wounded as she was. She spoke up now, interrupting what was certainly going to be a request for orders, “My Khan, the moon...”

Khan looked up as the display rose above everyone, and everywhere across this entire Earth he had conquered over a decade ago, people turned and watched the display silently scroll across countless viewscreens.

There it was, the fallen Tower, meant to conquer a world, crashed and broken and strewn across the silent white sands of this Earth’s moon. It was a gut-wrenching sight for just a moment, and then the view split and drew back here, while zooming in there.

Assembled the length of that entire Tower were cracked and shattered arms and armor, no bodies within them, laying perfectly in state, helms to the sky, arms crossed if they had them, broken weapons in hand, shattered vehicles at their feet if appropriate, and headstones with names upon them engraved above each and every single one.

They marched the whole length of the broken tower and back, ringing it in their final wall, their last defense of honor.

Khan thrust away the medics treating him, rising to his feet for only a moment, before going down to one knee and lowering his head at what he was seeing.

Like a wave, his people sank down to one knee behind him, watching the remnants of the Tower’s defenders scroll by, the Last Line... and who had also returned home, at the last.

Around them, the remains of their enemies were stacked into mountains.

Carapaces, armor, bones, and weaponry were piled up end on end on end. The hills seemed only to rise higher and higher as they undulated up and down, spreading away from the fallen Tower, building across miles and then leagues. Engines of war became hills of ruin, vehicles shattered became junkpiles for the ages, and there, at the final ring, the ruins of uncounted starships of all sizes, makes, and models, shattered and broken forever, encircled the tower itself and all those dead in submission and homage to those who had faced them down.

The heaped dead and ruins of war covered an area the size of a continent. The number of slain was unguessable.

Before the broken main doors to the Crimson Tower rose two plinths, each of them over a mile high. Inscribed upon them was a list of names and serial numbers, and no one who saw them doubted that upon them were the names of every single soldier who had died upon that distant world.

Khan clenched his remaining fist so hard he drew blood.

A tribute, a harrowing monument to anyone who might think to assault a Crimson Tower in the future. If a Crimson Tower rose upon a world, and those who would assail it knew of this monument, would they even dare to raise a hand against it?

At the same time, it was a tale of pure and utter willpower, an enemy so devoted to bring the Tower down that the horrible price paid to do so was worth it.

It was also the sign of a defense to last through the ages, not a conquest to carry his banner forth. They had lost, but they had lost so magnificently, who would dare to test their defenses again?

They had taken from him his grand army, but they had left behind a legend that would empower his entire empire. If perhaps his days of pure conquest were done, his time as a defender was only going to rise higher in the future!

------

The Negative Zoners watched the roll of those hills and mountains of dead, and counted the cost against the bloody stretch of fallen crystal. Perhaps they nodded at the tribute to the dead and slain, honoring the fallen warriors now surrounded by the foes they had vanquished.

And then the images sent to them faded, and three more Crimson Towers rose from isolated worlds and up into the void.

On Restmish-2, in Andromeda. On Oivigial-2, on the border of Spartax and Kree space in the Magellanic Cloud. And on Vomwin, at the edge of the Shi’ar Galaxy, just before the galactic edge, at the very end of the Shi’ar Empire.

The Crimson Towers were waiting for the rest of the Negative Zone races to try their luck. The rings and walls of the fortresses and emplacements, of mountains become fortifications and continents turned into firebases, yawned up into the night skies, awaiting them.

On the tops of the Towers, lightning crackled, and bolts thundered and split the skies around the world, hungry and anticipating the fight to come.

---------

Blaagh.

Just, blaagh.

One day. We got just one day, as fighting seemed to draw silent the length and breadth of the Annihilation Wave. Sersi, Callie, Mimi, Kismet, Carol, Jean, Lorna, Bella, Cleo, and I just vegged, just for now.

The boys were off doing their own things, which mostly involved getting drunk and going to sleep in exhaustion.

Those Crimson Towers weren’t just rising in OUR areas of interest. Defenders in other galaxies, kept appraised of what we were doing and how we were doing it, had taken that lesson to heart after seeing that magnificent defense, and were eager to try one of their own, to see if they could equal the raging hearts and endless courage of those who had defended D’bari.

We closed our eyes as a day of peace born in fear murmured across the galaxy, soaking in a bubble bath for the ages, so many of our thoughtstreams going quiet and just relaxing for once, letting our thoughts just go quiet and still.

Tomorrow we would be back to the fight. Today, it was fragrances and scents and bubbles and blissful idylls.

---

The Keg was Enchanted, and it would never run empty. It wasn’t her best booze, but Dealer’s Second Best was totally goddamn fine if it never ran out.

The Mountain didn’t say anything. Mugs came up, and he dipped them and handed them back. Beer spilled, the heady odor mixing with many kinds of sweat and other chemicals, the heat of large bodies, the deep grunts of big soldiers, and the creaking weight of heavy footsteps and shifting of seats.

Dealer’s Second Best could be drunk by any of them and all of them, and enjoyed. Alchemy was wonderful that way.

They had armor to repair, weapons to see to and replace, and a Meal so good it made them cry going down their gullets as they drank and spoke in low voices.

They might not be fighting tomorrow, but then again, they might.

The fallen, if they could be recovered, had been returned to their many homeworlds. Everyone had seen the Tower Tribute, the million-plus graves of Khan’s army, and then the rings of mountains and hills of the fallen around that fallen Tower. Many of the Brutes and Vanir, those not heavily wounded and removed from the planet early, had fought in the final defense there. They gazed upon the shattered base of the Tower and pictured the dead that had been heaped up on the grounds and stairs below it.

Those rings of slain foes hadn’t been killed by the Khan’s men. Most of the starships had been brought down by the Goddess Cleo on her seat atop the tower, either shattered in orbit or blown apart after tumbling to the ground. Still, there they sat, along with the innumerable remnants of the Zoner armies and dead, heaped up on a cold and lonely moon in some other dimension.

They had the record of it, and where to visit it if they wanted to. It was their tribute, too, as so many of the enemy’s forces had been heaped up by them, too.

Ursula and Dealer and the Healers poured and cooked for them, and the other heroes of the D’Bari Defense/Debacle/Descent ate and drank as champions of man and gods should, for they had wrought a legend that would pass across galaxies and much of the universe, and last for ages even in the minds of cosmic powers.

And when the night wore down and large warriors sprawled on tables and chairs and floors uncaring, snoring in tones to shake the floorboards that disturbed nobody and nothing, for tonight they were safe and protected and nothing would wake them, Thundra poured The Mountain a glimmering ruby wine sifted from actual liquified Earthfire Rubies, the whole bottle worth something like ten million rubles.

Mr. Hill sat there and drank it from a glass while strong hands worked his muscles in agonizing pleasure, sighing at every pop and crack and crinkle. And when the wine was gone and the massage stopped, he scooped up the woman and took her back to his room for a night that was worth far more in his eyes than the wine.