Spacetrail Chapter 1

 

Chapter 1

Serth sat atop his god throne. One hand upon his scepter, he had a full view of the naval engagement spread out between Ulius IV and VI. Thousands of capital-class ships hacked it out against each other, catching orbits and flying at significant portions of the speed of light. The panorama was much like watching a piece of radioactive material boiling off in a cloud chamber.

Serth’s chief strategist, Morion, turned to him.

Morio bowed. “My lord. The field is ready for your Geiss.”

Serth stood up. His god-power, granted to him by the chief deity of the human pantheon, was a powerful fate-altering weapon that could change the speed of light in a localized bubble about the size of a solar system. If the change happened fast enough, relative speeds would change and confuse anyone doing spatial calculations without prior knowledge of the Geiss’s effect. This would cause a serious advantage for the side of humanity.

Serth swept his hand in front of his chest. “Those triptifilexians will meet my wrath.” He closed his eyes and altered reality.

Light speed distortions that normally only occurred during warp travel sprung into being everywhere throughout the battlefield. A good portion of the triptifilexians’ ships were immediately disabled. The human forces combed through the remainders and began mopping up.

At once every third human in the command room fell to the ground in agonizing pain. Serth was not affected—being of god flesh—but Morion was.

Morion clutched his neck. “Master,” he babbled. “It hurts.”

Serth knew exactly who had done this. The triptifilexians had a god on their side as well. Someone from the pantheon of pain. Serth prepared for a showdown in metaspace. He flicked his fingers and entered the warp realm. This realm was, first and foremost, the playground of the gods. He saw, on the other end of the distorted space, a monstrous being that had to be the triptifilexians’ deity. Serth addressed the monstrous creature in god-speech.

“You.” Serth flew towards the being. He could tell nothing from looking at the thing. It was a mix between a beetle and a lizard. No distinguishing characteristics at all that a human could understand.

The beast-god spoke with a tongue that clicked and clacked with menacing undertones. However, due to god-speech, Serth understood him.

“My friend.” The trip’ clacked its mandibles together. “Do you not wish to spread your religion?”

“I am a god, so of course I do.” Serth flew closer to the enemy god. He began circling the trip’.

The trip’ opened an orifice and a blue gas escaped. “Then why do you begrudge me my religion?” It clacked its foot claws against the warp space.

“All you do is cause pain.” Serth landed on the platform the trip’ was standing on. “Your species are a menace. You torture your prisoners—our civilians—with methods that would cause our worst serial killer to vomit at the sight.”

“And so what of it?” The trip’ watched Serth with all of its eyes. “Your species is soft, like the underbelly of a groxian.”

“Your slaves?”

“We would not call them such.”

Serth sat down in lotus position. The rule of god to god interaction was ironclad, even between species that were diametrically opposed. Serth would not be hurt. “You co-evolved with them. And yet you treat them horribly.”

“They are a species that needs hardening.” The trip’ sat down across from Serth. “Our species, who you call triptifilexians, are a species who grew up with six sentient co-evolved competitors. Do you know why we ended up on top? When a dianod has carbon fiber armor and a crax has claws with ten tons of force? What did we, the triptifilexians have? We had pain. Pain is to us a loving mother. It takes care of its children and we are its evangelists.”

“But we don’t like pain,” said Serth. “We have tried to tell you that over and over.”

“Did you know that, as we have found, the triptifilexian nervous system is ten times more sensitive than that of a human’s?”

Serth blanched. He knew what kind of tortures the trips’ inflicted on every sentient being they encountered.

“We have tried to negotiate.” The trip shifted its weight. “We have tried to be peaceful.”

Serth stood up. “And your peace is our hell.” He turned away. “In any case, the UN space force seems to have won this battle.”

“Farewell.” The trip’ left first.

Serth stared at an empty warp zone. He sighed, and then returned to his ship’s bride. Less than a second had passed for the people down there—relativity did that kind of thing.

“Are your pnumann okay?” Serth stood up from his god throne.

Next to his throne was another seat, reserved for the ambassador of the pnumann race. It was, for lack of a better descriptor, a very well decorated fish tank. The pnumann were a species about the size of a sea monkey but with full sentient-level intelligence. Their brains were hydraulic instead of organic. They also worked really well together with humans, whose blood vessels were a cozy crawl space for these little tykes. They formed a perfect symbiotic relationship with humans and most other humanoid races allied with the UN, though humans were their favorite because their blood ph was closest to the pnumann homeland. It helped having a trained doctor plus EMT crew inside every important human officer, ready to act at a moment’s notice. A typical human could host over ten thousand pnumann without suffering ill effects.

The pnumann ambassador spoke through his amplification device.

“I’m okay. It looks like the psychic wave only affected you terrans.”

Serth knelt beside Morion. “Do you think your people can handle it?”

The pnumann ambassador was silent. “We do not do well with the human nervous system. It appears that the attack made against us has disrupted that on a fundamental level.”

“Are your people okay?”

“They are intact, yes.” The pnumann ambassador stepped out of his fishtank and into his mech suit, about the size of a Guinea pig. The mech strutted over to where Serth was kneeling beside Morion.

Morion groaned. “My lord,” he said.

Serth pulled out his best healing magic. “It appears that their psychic wave attack only affected a quarter of our men.”

Morion coughed. “My lord, save your magic for someone else.

The pnumann ambassador walked up to Morion’s shoulder. “You are the lynchpin of the chain of command.”

“Right, Sir Bloop.” Morion looked at Serth. “If you have to heal me, do it now.”

Serth healed Morion with god magic. “And you have a lot of work to do. The battle still rages.”

The healing aura surrounded Morion and every other person on the bridge. The light exploded with intensity and, when it was gone, the effects of the psychic blast were nullified.

“I’m getting feedback from the other vessels,” said Maki, the helmsman, who had not been affected by the blast. “We’re making a pursuit. Soon we’ll be able to begin land based operations.”

“Even with orbital superiority it’s going to be difficult,” said Morion, climbing back up and returning to his post.

Serth returned to his god throne. “That’s it. We have them now and are on the path to victory.”

The cleanup lasted two local hours, though it was vastly different for those on the clipper vessels that routinely traveled close to light speed.

Serth called his counsel together to prepare to make the next step.

“The arch-god Demonis has scheduled a visit with our fleet,” said Morion, holding a tablet device. “While we conduct cleanup operations we will need to prepare for his arrival.”

“Wills, take care of that.”

Wills saluted and left the room.

Serth put his chin into his hand. “We need something special for this land operation. The planet is mostly jungle and it’s going to be difficult going. Do you think we should bring in the Ionians?”

“You’re our god,” said Morion. “You make the decisions.”

Serth thought for a minute. “We’ll call them in,” he said.

“It will take two medium cycles for them to arrive,” said Morion, checking his tablet.

“Then we have time,” said Serth. “I want to have a foothold on the planet before they arrive. We need to make our best welcome.”

“And Demonis?” said Morion.

“Give him the full treatment,” said Serth. “I’m a minor god, after all. He outranks me by several levels, and even then I wonder why he’s bothering to come and inspect a small fleet like ours.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Morion. “We’ve been having pretty good results so far.”

“And that’s just because of luck. We are lucky we keep getting paired with trip’ gods that are not specialized for combat. I have a feeling that our fleet is very low on the trips’ priority list.” Serth took a tablet from a slot on his chair.

“Is that a problem?” Morion began pacing back and forth.

“No, no.”

A man entered the bridge. “It looks like they’re routed.” He saluted.

Serth pursed his lips. “As we expected. But there’s one problem. Why was it so easy?”

Morion clasped his hands behind his back. “Perhaps because this planet is not of much strategic import.”

“Is that it?” Serth rested his chin on his fist. “I think there’s something else going on here. Something I don’t know about. They must be giving us this planet for a reason.”

“They lost.” Morion did an about face. “That’s all we have to worry about, yes?”

Serth leaned to the side. “It makes sense.” He looked out the window at the blackness beyond. “And yet it doesn’t. Our track record is clean. Too clean, if you ask me.”

“Then we keep it that way.” Morion stopped in his tracks. “Let’s interrogate a prisoner or two.”

“We don’t play by their rules.” Serth frowned. “We do not torture prisoners.”

“I was not suggesting that.” Morion lifted his chin. “Those trips’ are notoriously hard to torture anyways. They always act like they enjoy it, and never spill the beans.”

“In any case, no.” Serth stood up. “I’ll begin the inspection.”

He walked up to the bridge’s communications table. “I want a report.”

Admiral Kong replied. “Your magic really did the trick, my lord,” he said. “They were so confused by the miscalculations that they practically exploded their own ships.”

“We don’t be able to use that trick again.” Serth leaned closer to the mic. “Those trips’ are nightmarishly adaptable.” He paused. “By the way, do you know anything about the triptifilexians co-evolving with six other sentient species?”

“Well, didn’t we also do that? Neandertals and all that?”

“No, I’m talking about a predator-prey relationship. I got the feeling from talking with their god leader that they are so tough because they fought sentient hunters that were constantly after their flesh.”

“And why are you discussing this with me?”

“I need input.”

The comm clicked off. Another god, Brim, teleported into the bridge, freezing time as he did. He made the symbol of the gods. “Serth. Heaven has requested you return immediately. There are things we need to discuss.”

Serth surveyed the frozen interior of the spaceship. Only high level gods could freeze time like so.

“I’ll come with you.” Serth surrendered himself, ready to be restrained. Except, he wasn’t.

“There are many things you need to know.” Brim turned away. “Come.”

The portal opened with a rip and Brim stepped through. Serth hesitated for a moment and then followed suit. He was teleported back to beautiful terra heaven, the home of the human pantheon. The place was teeming with life, both deity and not. Shops selling all manner of goods lined the streets of the welcome entrance.

Brim ignored everything and brough Serth to the hall of the angels, the home of heaven’s bureaucracy.

Brim stepped in. “Wait here.”

Serth waited. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he waited.