Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond - Chapter 7

Skylance-X opens fire with her forward energy cannon, but the beams slice through empty space. Try as he might, Misol is unable to rectify the current problems with the ship's weapons targeting systems, and the time during which those weapons will help the situation is rapidly running out. If technology and instrumentation will not serve us as they should, when we need them most, then a different approach is called for. A telepathic approach...

"Ignore the sensors", I tell Misol. "Allow me to guide you."

It's a risky course of action, this close to the entity, but where machines fail, the mind can provide an unerring connection between living beings, and if I can reach one of the Giparrac, even if only for a moment, our weapons can reach their ship.

There. A flicker of conscious thought in the midst of the panic overwhelming the Giparrac crew - a cry for help from a living being whose life I am about to have extinguished... a living being whose whole body is erupting with swelling cancer-like growths, the awful sensation of which I experience for a fraction of a second. Misol feels it too, through my telepathic link with him, and he flinches before pressing the firing control for Skylance-X's enhanced fusion torpedoes - a pause with perhaps monumental consequence...

The torpedo we fire strikes the side of the alien vessel, not the rear, with its vulnerable and explosive reactor modules, and whilst it ruptures the hull, causing the engines to stall, destruction isn't achieved. The Seeks-The-Answer starts to tumble, deprived of power, but its course remains essentially unchanged - unless we destroy it, the Giparrac ship will hit The Watcher's prison.

The entity knows this, and I can feel its influence expanding, intensifying. Soon, its unnatural aura could start affecting Skylance-X, as it did two Giparrac ships, just as we're approaching the point where Sygarem and I were going to attempt our telepathic strike, but the plan was for the creature to be in a far less agitated condition. Damn it - is there anything we can possibly salvage from this...?

"Prepare a close formation of torpedoes, set to detonate as soon as they come within range of an artificial object", orders Symmarae. "If we can't hit them, we'll burn the sky they're flying in."

It sounds like the only option left to us... but is it? "This may sound like testing the boundaries of sanity to breaking point", I say to the Commander, "but what if we were to allow the Giparrac ship to hit the planet? The explosion could do some of the work for us, wounding the creature, perhaps making it vulnerable..."

"You're right, it does sound insane", Symmarae replies. "I'd rather not give that... whatever it is any chance to escape, but you know more about such things than we do."

Experiencing more, and knowing more are completely different things. I've encountered beings such as The Ancient Ones, the Jaar-Alai, Bekalth, but my actual knowledge is still limited - Symmarae may have "glimpsed the cover of the book", but in comparison, I've only skimmed the first few pages, whilst Talona has studied several chapters in some depth. I'm basing this idea on the assumption that The Watcher has been imprisoned, like the demonic ancestors of the Faenri, "starved" during its captivity, and will have limited energy reserves that it will employ to protect and heal itself before it does anything else. "I'll assume full responsibility", I inform her. "This may be our best chance to defeat this enemy."

"I'm the voice of authority for Yafornis out here", says Symmarae, "and I'm prepared to take you at your word. You haven't let our world down so far - and I hope you're not about to start. Misol, bring our weapons to stand-by mode - these aliens are doomed already, but maybe they can still help us..."

The Commander turns to her crew. "Hold fire, Misol", she orders. "We're going to let them go - but be ready to fire everything we have."

I gesture to Sygarem to come with me, and together we leave the command centre just as Korthem reports that the Giparrac ship has now slipped from our grasp. "They're caught by the planet's field of mass-attraction", he tells his crew-mates, as the doors close. "They're falling towards the planet, accelerating..."

"You're not sure this will work", says my Yafornian companion as we step inside the elevator that runs the full span of Skylance-X's vertical "wings"., and make our way down to the lower observation deck, midway between the ship's underside and the wing-tip engines pod. "I don't have to have mind-powers to see that."

"There was never a guarantee we'd succeed", I admit to him. "Even under perfect circumstances - but the Giparrac may just give us an edge. Now get ready; the precise moment I tell you, unleash everything you have. Don't worry about how you express that energy, or you accurately you direct it - that's my job..."

The elevator door opens onto the observation deck, with its armoured window built into the leading edge of the wing. A computer display sandwiched between the layers of glass enhances the view , revealing the planet as a dim, grey disk, where normally it would swamped in starless black by the dark matter cloud...

Also revealed to us by the "smart-window" is the location and altitude of the Giparrac ship, the latter measured in standard Shadow City units - one "boundary" being the distance around the original outer wall of the city. 25.5 boundaries... 25.0... 24.4... 23.7..."

A discordant warning siren moans at us, and crimson lights race along the wall at what is to me around waist-height. "Symmarae to all decks, all stations", says the Commander over the ship's internal comm-net, "prepare for combat operations. The alien ship is about to hit the planet. Be ready for... anything."

A faint, flickering light appears against the cratered and cracked surface of the planet - the final trace of the Seeks-The-Answer as it enters the tenuous atmosphere of The Watcher's prison. "Don't look at it", I warn Sygarem. "You won't need to see it to affect it. Some things - it's not healthy for mortals to see."

"Lady Talona trusts you", says my pupil. "I trust you. Just tell me what to do..."

...10.5 ...7.9... 4.9... 1.4 - IMPACT.

The rugged surface of the planetoid lights up clear as day as the Giparrac reactors breach, unleashing the energy of small sun in less than a second. Solid rock melts, vaporises, billowing into starless space as a fiery cloud of superheated dust, fusing into strands of glowing glass - it would be beautiful, but for the horror it heralds; a dark, almost liquid form, stretching out into the blackness...

"Free...!", gasps Sygarem. "I - I can hear it! It... sings of freedom...!"

It would be so easy to be hypnotised by the entity, to try and see some structure to the unnatural, to peer deeper in search of recognisable features only to have the unrecognisable peer back at you, and bring forth madness - but I refuse to falter. This is the moment, our best possible chance.

***Now***, I tell Sygarem, and almost immediately, another soul-swallowing force threatens to consume me - the unleashed totality of my companion's power. He is so strong; stronger than me, stronger than Darkhawk before she attained her "goddesshood" - maybe even stronger than that. His fear for his world, his dedication to its protection, gives this expression of power some focus, sufficient for me to do the rest, turning his wild psionic storm into a scalpel, a precise surgical instrument to plunge into the entity's... heart -

"Tissue" parts before our "blade", but whenever it seems like we've cut into something critical, the "life-force" just shifts out of our path. There doesn't seem to be a "centre" to its being, just scattered fragments of something approaching recognisable intelligence, loosely connected to form what we would call a "mind" - just as I'd feared. It's like an octopus, a Gralon, or a mythical creature like the hydra; sever one arm, one head, and the rest just keeps on going, regenerating the lost parts...

Sygarem sees what I see, knows what I know - and he realises we've failed in our first attack. He's not prepared to accept defeat, and breaks free of my control; the worst possible thing he could have done. Without my guidance, he lashes around indiscriminately, touching more than one "organ" of intellect at once, and thus comes into contact with more of the creature than it is safe for any mortal to be exposed to.

I withdraw immediately, the plan in tatters, dragging Sygarem’s mental essence with me. If I've acted quickly enough, I may have saved his mind...

"Re-emerging" into the "real" world, I find my companion on the observation deck floor, eyes wide open, unblinking, in a combination of disbelief and sheer terror. He's alive, but his mind has retreated from reality, and it will take a concerted effort to reawaken it - I should get started right away, if we're going to stand the slightest chance of making a second attempt.

Before I begin, there's the ship to worry about. ***Back off***, I telepathically instruct Symmarae. ***Keep a constant distance between us and the entity. Our first attempt to disable it has been unsuccessful - it's up to you to give us the time to prepare for another.***

***Understood***, replies the Skylance-X commander. ***The creature is moving, extracting itself from what appears to be an artificial chamber deep within the planet...***

***I don't need to know any of that***, I begin...

***...that's not the half of it***, interrupts the Commander. ***The zone of darkness is contracting, at the rate of about thirty boundaries a second. The creature appears to be absorbing it, and parts of the planetoid, and the entity's energy signature is growing in strength.***

Not good... The damn thing is feeding, building up its strength - we have to get it away from here, into the relative wastelands of open space. ***Open fire on it, all weapons***, I order Symmarae, ***and keep firing until it comes after us. Get us out of this dark matter nebula as fast as possible!***

There's a rumble from one of the decks above us as the torpedo launch mechanism swings into action, and the deck under my boots vibrates as the energy cannon installed in the wing, below the observation level, power up, then we're shaken as both weapons systems open fire, hurling energy beams and fusion-based projectiles at the enemy. A few moments later, the darkening rift in the planetoid's surface is briefly illuminated by torpedo explosions, providing an incidental and unsettling glimpse of the creature within as it wraps dark matter around itself - tentacles, ragged wings a hybrid of bat-wing and fish fin, and numerous blank orbs, ghastly pink in hue, that could be eyes, or sensory organs beyond scientific understanding - and as the weapons strike home, space itself resonates with an awful, impossible sound; a frightful wail like an arctic wind, hollow, soulless, but carrying with it the screams and sorrowful cries of every intelligent being ever stricken with madness...

***It's reacting***, reports Symmarae. ***It... it's coming out, and moving away from the planetoid. It doesn't seem to be coming after us, however - early course projections put it on a vector for... for Yafornis.***

This really isn't a surprise. The entity has had its attention fixed on Yafornis for some time, the seeds of ambition it planted thriving in fertile ground - why waste time and energy on us when such a rich prize lies almost within its grasp? ***Don't let it get away from us***, I tell Symmarae. ***Keep firing - make it waste energy defending itself, healing. And contact Skylance Defender; let them know trouble is coming, and we'll need all the help we can get...***

***We're already tied in with Skylance Defender***, the Commander assures me. ***They're on their way.***

That's about the only good news there's been since we arrived, and we better make the most of it. The entity is now free from its prison, moving into open space, sucking the last of the heat from the shattered and melted fragments of planetoid, and gathering a growing shroud of dark matter around itself, thankfully obscuring its wholly alien form from our gaze at the same time. I find myself thinking of The Ancient One, the "coalesced avatar" of the space-dwelling J'Nak-Mero-Baxi, that member of The Pandemonicum that attempted to attack Sentinel Station recently - and how it took all we had just to drive that entity off... and Yafornis doesn't have Over/Strike.

Talona be damned. Yafornis has every right to stand on her own, self-reliant, self-dependent, but I will not let the planet and its people be sacrificed because of her precious ego. If it comes to it, I'll call Dominion's forces into action, and I'll just have to weather the storm of Talona's indignation, a small price to pay for the sake of Yafornis, and who knows how many other worlds this monster might feed on after that.

Skylance-X moves out of its guarding position, matching the entity's course, but staying clear of the creature's flesh-warping aura. That effect seems to extend to "Dark matter", as I feel sure I can see shapes in the alien's shroud of darkness, forms rising to the surface before being drawn back down, into the depths - I'm chillingly certain I saw the Giparrac commander, U'Ramt, his features a portrait of insane horror, pressing against a membrane of shadow before once more being absorbed...

I - I can't allow myself to dwell on that. I have to heal Sygarem, or at least tap into his power - conscious or otherwise, sane or otherwise, he's our one remaining hope for salvation...

...to be continued...

Posted at 00:15 on 05.07.2009


~ o O o ~


Previously...
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 3 - 21.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 2 - 19.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 1 - 16.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond - Epilogue - 10.07.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond - Chapter 8 - 07.07.2009