Chapter 430 (2/2)
What exited the wormhole was energy not normally seen outside of a big bang, or possibly a hypernova.
The leading particle wave hit the Atrekna ships, which were pinned in place by the temporal warfare countermeasures of the Terran fleet. The ships had been built to enter the no-space of the dead universe, to search out remaining suns and particles. They were capable of riding a wormhole through dimensions, designed to handle the sheering forces of temporal movement.
What hit them wasn't exactly energy, nor was it matter. It 'predated' both, in a cosmic way.
The only thing that saved them was their low energy states, as they were still 'acclimating' to the higher energy state of the younger universe. As luck would have it, half of the massive Quorum capital ships had roughly the same energy state as the leading particle wave.
As the energy washed over them, they found that the temporal stabilizers were no longer effecting them.
Half were stunned from the sudden backlash of the death of the remainder of their species, from the final, unrewindable death of their home universe.
The other half panicked. It didn't matter where they went, as long as they went somewhere that the ravening energy washing over the hulls wasn't.
It was at that second that the gas giants, from the largest supermassive to the smallest moon, suffered a sudden energy and graviton spike, increasing their density as they shrunk down.
And ignited.
The system went from a trinary system to literally dozens of miniature suns, the gravity rippled around them, all of space-time thrummed as the gas giants ignited and joined the three stellar masses in burning away.
The huge shipyards down where pressure turned liquid to metal and crystal burned away in nuclear fire. The vast dweller spawning seas boiled and ignited. Tens of thousands of dwellerspawn still 'swimming' toward the surface of the gas giants were turned into fuel for the nuclear reactions as the gas giants first increased gravitational pressure and then ignited.
With gravity and heat and energy, even the most inert matter could burn in the nuclear furnaces of the cosmos.
That was enough to disrupt the temporal stabilization just enough for the still conscious full Quorums to shift the massive Quorum ships, back to the First System.
Half of them escaped.
The rest didn't.
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Admiral Smith watched as the white haze covered the Atrekna ships, then the rolling white energy billowing out of the wormhole like an out of control blowtorch rolled over the ships. The wave of non-euclidean/Einsteinian energy had slammed into her ships, even the Lanaktallan ships, before they started making their translations to hyperspace and jumpspace.
”SHIELDS UP! COME TO THREE ONE NINER! ENGINES FULL!” Admiral Smith barked. ”ALL POWER TO FORWARD SHIELDS!”
The massive ships of the Terran fleet turned, facing the oncoming blast. The bigger ones were still cycling their hyperdrive engines. The ships groaned and creaked, crackling and shuddering, as energy that couldn't be seen or measured raked them like spectral talons.
”TRANSLATE WHEN ABLE!” Smith yelled out, trying to be heard over the screams of inanimate agony from her ship.
Come on, hold together, hold together, she thought.
She saw, on one of the scanners, one of the burning gas giants suddenly contract slight, then explode.
Admiral Smith watched as Courage in Despair jumped. Not completely out, but into the boiling mass of particles, energy, plasma, and even more exotic matter states, reappearing in the middle of the Atrekna fleet, which was reeling in the face of the onslaught of energy from the wormhole.
Which finally collapsed with a loud crash that could be heard by ear even though there should have been no sound traveling through space.
Courage in Despair, the teenage Vuknaraan's name burning in quasi-liquid chromium warsteel on the prow, fired everything it had at the Atrekna ship. C+ cannons going to rapid fire, both phased wave plasma motion guns hammering out fire, regardless of the chance of the piston seizing up, missile launchers firing before the rails cooled down.
She was point blank in a knife fight, armed with chainsaws.
The remaining Atrekna ships were pinned by the massive super-dreadnought.
The rest of Courage in Despair's division mates micro-jumped next to their youngest sister.
The Atrekna, unable to escape thanks to the temporal stabilizers aboard the super-dreadnought division, lashed out at the Terran ships, pounding on their shields. Phasic munitions splattered ineffectively against shields infused with rage and desperation.
The Atrekna didn't understand it. Didn't understand the suicidal actions of the twenty super-dreadnoughts.
Anyone who understood humans, even Lanaktallans, could understand what Courage In Despair and her sister ships were doing as they hammered at the Atrekna ships, keeping them from jumping out, getting outrageously close.
Close enough that the Marine boarding parties were launched.
Close enough that the sheer rage and hatred pouring off the ships caused the Atrekna neural computing arrays to explode inside their crystal globes, splashing the interior with biological slurry.
”Order them to jump!” Admiral Smith barked, pointing at the icons for the super-dreadnought division.
But they'd made their decision, a decision that the Atrekna couldn't understand.
You can always take one with you.
”BRACE FOR IMPACT” the captain of the vessel, Captain James Kallak, called out over the interlinks, the intercoms, and through the emergency suit channels.
The leading wave of energy hit the few ships left, the few ships remaining to keep the Atrekna as pinned down as possible.
The entire system vanished in one big explosion.
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The great armada of the Lanaktallan Unified Council, every ship from Corporate, Executor, Planetary Defense, and Military fleets that had been stripped from nearly every system, arrived in the system in dribs and drabs.
The neutron star was happy, in the way stars can be, to have some company for a little while.
They came in by the dozens, the scores, the hundreds.
Dribs and drabs for millions of ships.
Some were damaged. A few were dead sticks. Some were piloted by the dead.
Some weren't the ships that had arrived, the crews slightly confused by the minute differences between what had been and what now was.
Cu'udchu'ar watched as his ship made the exit from jumpspace onto the resonance zone, which was not far from the neutron star, a reason that star had been picked.
He felt battered, bruised, even though he had not been tossed around or suffered any blunt trauma.
Cricket looked up and smiled. ”There's my babies.”
She slumped again.
”Signal the fleet. I want accountability. Let's find out how many of us remain,” Cu'udchu'ar ordered.
His Executor looked at him. ”Did that just happen?” the Grand Most High Executor, who was the Grand Most High of the Executor Council, asked quietly.
”Yes, otherwise we have been driven mad,” Cu'udchu'ar said. He shook his head. ”I saw myself, over and over and over, where major decisions had changed my life. Decisions made by me, by others, by the stars themselves.”
The Executor turned to Cricket, who had her eyes closed, leaned forward slightly, breathing slowly. ”Are you all right, Lieutenant Colonel?” he asked.
Cricket raised her head. She had 'bruises' under her eyes, sparkling lines of code emulated bloodshot veins in her eyes. She had slick code running down from her nose. She coughed out smoke.
”I will be. It got close.”
”You are welcome aboard this ship, as are your fellow digital sentiences,” the Executor said. He stepped forward and let his fingers graze the edge of the holotank as if he was touching a glass shield around Cricket. ”You and your compatriots saved millions of my men. Millions of faithful Lanaktallan. I can never thank you enough.”
Cricket reached out and put her fingertips against the edge of the holofield as if she was touching the Executor's fingertips.
”Don't waste their lives, Executor,” she said.
”No. Too many lives have been wasted already,” the Executor said. ”Will you accompany us to the Unified Council core worlds?”
Cricket frowned, then coughed, then looked up frowning again. ”Why?”
Cu'udchu'ar trotted up, looking at the wounded Terran Digital Sentience.
”To convince the Unified Council to unconditionally surrender to the Confederacy.”
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The universe was finally, completely, beyond dead.
No longer was it weighted down by entropy, for even entropy had died as the last of the energy had been pulled through a wormhole that had pulled its tail after it.
It rose/slid sideways/inverted.
A dancing, whirling, giggling mote of everything that ever could or would be raced to embrace it.
When they met, something happened.
An explosion that contained everything that would be.
Normally, it was clinical, just a law of physics, however they might be in the new reality.
But things had changed.
The emptiness and the everything remembered.
It remembered what had been done to it.
Remembered how it had been freed.
For a split second as massive stellar masses made up of only hydrogen and helium burned brightly for a split second before exploding, adding their own birth spasms to the explosion, it was written in the very particles of the universe.