Chapter Nine
The next day.
As planned we detected the trajectory of some close grouped asteroids drifting into the scene apparently at random. My fear though however was that the actions of the asteroids would become too suspicious and provoke an investigation, which was why I had ordered us forward away from the bulwarked safety of the star batteries below and toward the gathered horde above. This final battle would be fought in space.
As agreed upon there was no communication between our group and Lathartha’s asteroid group. Seeing that the asteroids remained unchallenged did in part confirm that we had managed to successfully hold on to our surprise advantage in the battle to come.
Speaking of surprises I could only imagine Lathartha’s reaction at the discovery of the crown jewel of our little fleet. For show I had the entire fleet gathered around me. Not just the cruisers, which were serving as extra defensive batteries for the Deep Truth, but all the old transporters of my old squadron as well.
The old squadron ships however were all for bluff as there was no one within them as all were being run on a programmed autopilot function that Randelon had set up. They had one last duty to fulfill for our people before they could drift peacefully about as blown apart space debris with nothing more required of them.
I’d never experienced it in my lifetime, but I knew from stories of the past when we’d had the ship capability to fight back at times against our enemy that when any open confrontation with the enemy reptilian’s would occur that they would tend to hold off on their fire until we had drawn perilously close and then let off everything in one massively drawn out salvo. It had been a long time since there had been an open conflict between us, but I was betting that there tactics had varied little over the years for why should they?
They had after all overwhelmed most of the created worlds with the tactics they favored. Today however I had a surprise for them.
I was going to win the opening contest of firepower exchange despite their exaggerated numbers. Against the wishes of many of my officers, which mercifully went unexpressed I kept the Deep Truth’s long-range weapons silent instead of picking off their lead ships at a distance.
My actions to the enemy must seem the height of arrogance. If one had a superior weapon as we did then why not use it to full advantage?
No doubt they were even now clacking their jaws of teeth together at the perceived presumptuous insult on our part of not even needing to even pick them off at long-range, because we were of no doubt in being able to finish the job off up close and personal. At least that’s what I hoped was going on within their fallen consciousness’s.
Time would tell. Time unfortunately would also reveal what it was that they’d been busy at work at over the past 24 hours.
“Detecting a buildup of heat radiation Sir! They’re readying their batteries to fire at us.”
“Have the transporters from the old squadron fan out to the sides of us and back our speed off a couple of pegs.”
The order was carried through swiftly and I watched my old fleet still tacking on under their old propulsion systems begin to outpace us slightly in their advance upon the enemy column. My actions might seem strange to the enemy, but I wasn’t going to let them think about it too much.
“Have all the transporters of the old fleet commence firing now and bring our speed down several more pegs. I want some distance between us.”
The old vanguards of the fleet that had carried us through the Far Quarter for time seemingly without end had their last moment of glory as they were finally allowed to stand and fight. The amount of fire they were able to put out however was almost beyond pathetic to behold though, but it did do the job of provoking the enemy.
I saw the radar screen flash brightly as a perfectly timed salvo from perhaps 4000 ships of varying class sizes cut loose with everything they had at once. Shields were already at maximum with the weaker shielded close flying cruisers piggybacked beneath the protection of our own shield.
“Turn the old squadron broadways now! Reverse our speed at hard full!”
Ponderously the still firing old squadron of dented space debris turned broadways and as planned the biggest of the transporters swung over to fill the gap in the line where we had been formerly in position. Even now the Deep Truth sped backward at a high rate of propulsion followed closely by the cruisers who were in lockstep with our every movement.
“Randelon are you ready?” I called out.
“Waiting on you Captain. Say the word and it’s done.”
“Stop all engines and brace for impact.”
The Deep Truth slid to a stop as I fixatedly watched on the radar screen the progress of the salvo of death fast descending upon the ranks of my old fleet. The enemy in truth had never stopped firing, but were letting off everything they had in an endless barrage. Let them fire. All sorts of technical difficulties arose from excessive firing of a ship’s weapon platforms.
“Now!” I cried out and Randelon performed his latest trick of ingenuity. He’d come to me last night and put forth the idea and as always I took it for the golden nugget of inspiration it usually was and had flown with it.
Each of the transporter ships had a working shield array. Not particularly very good ones, but they had them just the same.
Randelon had managed to engineer the shields of the transporters to differentially split power distribution when given the command. On the side facing the enemy the ship’s shields disappeared from, while the power taken from that side was used to strengthen the shield still remaining that faced our way.
No sooner was that change of shield power accomplished than every last one of the transporters stacked too high in a solid wall between us and the enemy went off like a star being born in perfect synchronization of explosion. The deadly wall of the enemy’s first fired salvo that might’ve crippled us was caught up and vaporized by the power of the outlying blast radius of the old fleet going up into pieces.
While on our side of the explosion the explosion itself was less severe because of the temporary deafening impacts of the enforced shields, which helped to deflect most of the mass explosion blast radius towards the enemy fleet and away from us. Wave after wave of the enemy’s missiles and particle generated lasers were eaten up by the rolling explosion of the old squadron’s last hurrah that reached out to bathe over the forward lines of the enemy horde with devastating impact to their smaller class vessels.
“Let them have it!!!”
The Deep Truth surging forward at full speed bucked hard under the power of all her massive ordinance going off at once. The vessel kept bucking powerfully as focused beam after beam pillared through the departing flame clouds of the old fleet’s destruction to perforate into the enemy line.
The enemy line was no longer in solid order as the blast zone focused their way had blown the smaller ships against others and now they could add the carnage of a Battle Slonager’s bite to the mix of general mayhem and death. Completely unscathed the Deep Truth surged toward the enemy line that its far-reaching beams were already lighting up in a fantasy vision of every Melungeon’s best cherished dream of revenge come true.
The cruisers true to order held their fire and focused instead on incoming shots and the disruption of them from connecting with our shield. The closer we got the worse our effect became upon the enemy as our bolts of power shot through the stacked up column of the enemy and took out sometimes a half dozen or more ships at a time.
The carnage was glorious and yet terrible. Such a ship as this should be destroyed, because of what would happen should it ever fall into the wrong hands.
Today however it was in the right hands and being used to glorious effect. A 100 ships were in flames and over 200 had already exploded and yet thousands of the enemy remained.
“Carve over into the enemy line there! We need to get in and mess with them so their return fire helps take out more of their own number and so we can bring both sides of the ship into action and not just our forward batteries.”
The Deep Truth heeled over to crash through the burning debris of reptilian carriers and cruisers alike. We were taking hits, but it was ineffectual at the moment. Soon however it would not be.
Reptilian fighters buzzed in from all quarters of space as they jack jumped off hive carrier vessels until they formed a swarm of angry red radar signatures that caused the radar screen to turn completely red. Each fighter was loaded with fuel and to a one they went crashing full on into us in a constant barrage of suicide runs.
They weren’t the only ones sacrificing it all for their continued survival and dominance of the galaxy. A large reptilian Hunter on flames was being shoved into our port flank even as a 1000 enemy fire hits registered against our shield every three seconds.
Shield strength was still at three times more than was normal thanks to Randelon. All in all this was the beginning of a knockdown no holds barred fight. I made a decision then.
I wasn’t going to play this cute. The Deep Truth had been built as a brute and a brute would be how we would act.
“Turn us up the line of conflict! From now on steer for where their shipping is the densest and ram your way through! Alpha one do your best to concentrate fire forward to make a hole for us to bust through.”
People were looking at me a bit strange, but nobody questioned me. What I was about to do was insane.
The enemy had made it clear that they were suicidal in there urge to end us so I was showing them I didn’t care how committed they were to our destruction by ramming through them where they were. War is a battle of the mind as much as a battle rooted in the physical and at this moment I was showing them just how committed I was.
We were fighting on our terms and our effort wasn’t one of survival, but of the utter disregard for the capabilities of the enemy because we felt grounded in our reality of being superior in force and will of mind. It was a psychological trick I well knew because they’d used it against us all my life.
Every battle that had been engaged in the past they’d attack with unending ferocity until we were vanquished not caring how many they lost of their number in the assault. Today was a payback of their own medicine of shock treatment.
I got out of my chair to stride the deck of the Deep Truth, which shook and lurched as it busted a way through the length of the enemy line. One advantage to my tactic was that they weren’t saturating us with mines because too have done so would have taken out ships still useful to them in the fight.
As my pacing took me about I watched the theater of battle develop all around. Enemy ships were falling into either side of our advance down the former battle line. In addition to the explosive let off discharges of ships we smashed through, we were suffering shield hits to the tune of several thousand every second now.
Gutsy or not this tactic couldn’t last too much longer. I was losing cruisers, which I hated to see.
I hated the loss of every one of my people that was occurring as I wanted everyone to have a chance to experience the new life to be had on the planet below us, but such is the way of survival. The strongest didn’t always survive, but they did often get to choose who would.
“Looks like you could use some help big boy.”
A measure of peace calmed through the hot fire and chaos of war for a moment as the sound of Lathartha’s voice crackled out over the COM. I turned to glance at the outward vector screen cameras that showed the outside conflict in vivid relief as this was something I had to see.
The asteroids were grouped to either side of us. Two to the left and two to the right and one overhead, which would be Lathartha, while the smaller ones were in consort with the big ones. With the relish of generations seeking to see this day I watched the heavy masses of shielded rock dart forward like heavy leaded juggernauts into the ranks of the enemy.
From one ship to another the asteroids spun in a continuous churning mass of awe inspiring force. Within minutes over a thousand of the enemy were gone and those who remained were suddenly at a loss as to what target to pick on the most.
I stopped behind the shoulders of one of my primary gunners. The Deep Truth had 14 Primary Beam drive plasma cannons and each one was belching forth with savagery salvo after salvo.
I walked down the length of the gunners and on to where the secondary weapon gunners were stationed. Everyone was giving their all in one mass cohesion of effort to destroy. The age ranges of the gunners I passed varied from boys of 14 up to women approaching my mother’s age and everyone in between.
Our shield was no longer several times its power, but it was holding and glancing to where Randelon was stationed I could well imagine how the repeated repowering spikes to the energy grid were occurring. Sweat was rolling off everyone as they put forth maximum effort and yet the numbers of the enemy remained high.
Reaching out my hand over the room at broad I prayed aloud, “Creator help us for we destroy that which is fallen and though we were once fallen we have risen in the redemptive hope of Your Son even so I pray that you would aid our cause and help us be free of this plague which has darkened the galaxies of Your creation for far too long.”
Shield strength abruptly shot up once again to full power and in startled shock Randelon glanced over at me as he lifted his hands away from the keyboard before him and said, “What do you need me for if all we really need is more prayer like that?”
Everyone seemed to fully realize that at the same moment. There was something much greater at play right now than just a battle of the physical and everyone sensed it.
“All of you start praying! This battle is on two fronts! The physical and the spiritual and we have to win both!” I called out loudly even as my finger depressed the COM button relaying my words to the entire fleet.
The sound of called out prayers to God broke forth throughout the room and over the COM, and even echoed up from the far-reaching corridors of the Deep Truth. A shockwave seemed to course out from the heart of the ship and ripple outward through space leaving nothing untouched.
Reaching the forward windows I stopped to listen to something I heard intermixed within the loud prayers of all those around me. What was it?
Groaning. I heard loud repetitive groaning.
Then before my eyes I began to see the spiritual manifest over into the physical. Reptilian ships that were the closest to us were starting to flee!
Everyone noticed it and for a moment the sound of called out prayers dimmed fleetwide. In alarm I turned back to the room as deep realization after realization coursed through me, “Don’t stop! Keep praying! Keep showing the enemy what our strength is rooted in! It’s not this ship! It’s the Maker of the stars! Those demons have fed on our fear for years, but that time is over! We have not been given the spirit of fear, but of power and of a sound mind! Call out to your Creator! To survive is one thing we know well, but to conqueror requires faith! Pray! Pray that your faith is strengthened! Pray because they can’t bear the sound of your earnest heartfelt pleas to God for mercy and victory! Sing praises to God everyone! Sing as we fight! Cry out to your God for He is a God that hears and is faithful to save those who call upon His name!!!”
And so everyone did on and on in an endless prayer song unique to every individual. I had thought freedom was the feel of grass under my feet with the breath of fresh air filling my nostrils, but I had been wrong. Freedom was right now!
Freedom from all fear, as fear increasingly vanished away from all thought with the closer and closer I felt myself drawn near to my Maker. You’d have thought the concentration of everyone would have dimmed with the advent of their ceaseless praying and singing, but the opposite was occurring.
Senses went beyond normal ability and skirted into perfection. Strength to go longer, fight even harder welled up from within.
Laughing I yelled out, “Remember this day! Remember that this is the day the Lord our God has made and He alone is mighty and worthy of honor and glory! The battle is not to the strong, but rather to those who are humbly mindful of who their God is. Our God is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last!”
The Deep Truth blossomed forth with flaming beams and tracer ordinance that unerringly ripped through the hulls of enemy shipping whether they be engaged or were seeking to flee the conflict. As a whole the Deep Truth seemed to pulse with a righteous fury beyond any perimeter of physical majesty.
Nothing was as it should be, but yet everything was as anyone could ever have hoped for it to be all because of faith. Faith truly could move mountains.
The enemy was disappearing off all our screens in greater and greater numbers. With the help of God’s Holy Spirit we had driven the voracious will of these monsters to fight to the death into an action of flight.
Lathartha called out, “Are you seeing this?”
“Vividly my love! Keep smashing!”
“Aye aye Captain!”
Shields still at full power we cruised through patches of open space as enemy ships now sought to flee from us as if we were in possession of a plague they feared more than death itself, but death dealing force we gave them in ever abundant supply.
It was truly incredible to realize that we had destroyed over several thousand enemy craft within the space of an hour and those left were doing their best to escape the battle that they had instigated with far superior numbers.
I doubted a chance like this to thin the enemies’ herd would ever be presented again to us in such a fashion and so I continued to loudly encourage the destruction of every enemy ship no matter how far out from us it had fled.
An hour later saw the guns of the Deep Truth fall silent as there was simply nothing else left to shoot at. The asteroids had drawn close and with a flash of color I watched Lathartha appear before me.
She jumped through the air at me and laughing I caught her as she exclaimed over and over, “Oh we did it! No, God did it! Anyway it’s done! We’re free!”
Laughing I continued to hold her as she shook at my head in jubilation.
“Captain?”
The tone of my first officer’s voice had me wheeling around to face him to the extent that I almost dropped Lathartha.
His face was deeply etched with worry, “It’s not over.”
“What? Do you mean they’re coming back for more?” I exclaimed.
“No, they’ve all fled, but I think their resistance was meant to only be a distraction. They’ve opened a space time rip in the fabric of our galaxy. At least I think that’s what they’ve done.”
“What!!!” I exclaimed further.
He gestured to his screens which were then broadcasted up to the primary heads-up display.
“See over there. They have occupied us over here with the battle, while a few cloaked cruisers set up some kind of device that seems to be distorting time.”
Blankly I said, “What exactly am I dealing with?”
“I’m trying to hack in now to their encryption database, but so far it looks like the purpose of this device is to serve as a reset in time for at least this area of space! I’m not sure how far ranging it is. I’m in! Oh God the date is set for the day before the cataclysm that happened over two centuries ago!”
I felt everything seize into a cold tight ball within me at his words.
Lathartha seized my shoulder and shook hard, “What does this mean?”
“It means that there setting a redial function of time by which the reversing of to that particular date points to their intention of destroying the planet in its entirety instead of just rocketing it about with epic cataclysms of nature. It means that with the passage of time that there will be no Soluranami for Taran to discover and bring back to life. There will be no Edgar to contact us in the Far Quarter, if indeed we even manage to get that far in terms of surviving a second time down memories lane. There will be no Deep Truth Battle Slonager to rule this day in the future, but worst of all there will be nothing to have any hope left for, if they can just change it up like this whenever they want to!”
Wheeling to Randelon I yelled, “How do we stop this thing?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think something like this was even possible. The time dilation field hasn’t been activated yet, but soon it will be. If we hadn’t driven the enemy off so quickly we would never have known. They sacrificed their entire existence and their series of conquest for the past 200 years just so they could go back in time in order to ensure we don’t show up in the future! I don’t know how we fight this! I didn’t think one could manipulate time like this to do one’s own bidding. How does God allow something like this to occur?” Randelon screamed out at the last almost hysterical as his great mind failed to come up with a solution to the problem.
I had no answers for him. I glanced to Lathartha, but the same hopeless look as to what could be conceivably done was reflected in her eye.
“Can’t we blow it up before it activates?” My first officer asked hesitantly.
“Goodness no! One rip is bad enough! How they’ve managed to rip it to a specified distance of years is beyond me! They’ve had to have had outside help. There’s no other explanation. They received help from someone who’s existed outside of time and yet experienced time as how else would someone know how to meld the two and subtract or add to them?” Lathartha exclaimed.
“You think this is the work of a fallen angel?” I asked.
“It has to be! Who else would have any inclination as to how the creation of time we perceive and that governs our lives was first created and put in place by God.” Randolen blurted out.
“If the end result, if it’s left to come to full fruition is what it is, then why is it such a bad alternative to just try to blow it up?” I asked him in repetition of my first officer’s question.
In frustration Randelon gestured at his screens, “Because the hijack of our dimension is being done from somewhere seemingly outside of our own reality. If we shoot we shoot at nothing as the manipulation is beyond our dimension and yet our dimension will bear the effects of it. They’re rewriting history! How are they allowed to do this?” Randelon repeated again in hopeless anxiety over the moment at hand.
The COM crackled, “They aren’t. But when people lose track of the authority given to them over the management of our era of humanity within our finite universe such incursions by supernatural forces will be attempted. The key is to appeal to the One who exists outside of time and yet created it in the first place.”
“Mother?” I whispered out in complete astonishment as I wheeled around to face the COM speaker.
“Yes my son. I know you’re not happy about this, but well I’m a grown girl and I can make my own decisions and I make this one gladly.”
“Where? How? What are you doing?” I exclaimed out in a lack for what was going on as my eyes frantically searched around for answers.
“Has faith taken you so far in victory today son that you do not recognize the need for it now? You will never outpace the need for faith whether in time of peace or war.”
“She’s taken a fighter from the hangar bay and she’s closing in on the expanding time dilation field!” Randelon whispered in a deeply shocked tone.
“Mother you need to get back here now!”
“No, I need you to pray for me now. Don’t worry, I know how to operate this ship. Don’t forget that your father found me on the flight deck as a fighter pilot many years ago. Admittedly it’s been a few years, but I was a pretty good pilot in my day.”
Kneeling down before the COM I begged, “Please come back. I…… we’ll find another way.”
“No son. Not this time. Enjoy the future as I know that I even now enjoy the future that lies open before me. Please pray. I’m not above admitting this is a little scary even for an old prayer warrior like me.”
“Mom…… I…… I love you!”
“I love you to mom!” Briandy whispered out brokenly as she suddenly appeared on her knees beside me.
“I love you both my dears and really I love you all so much that this is rather easy. Now pray and then enjoy the lives your Creator has restored to you and all the freedoms that go with it and never forget He is your Maker and your Redeemer.”
The COM clicked statically and with the loss of signal Briandy collapsed crying against me as all the rest of us could do was wait in grim silence. Husky voiced I called out softly, “Please pray.”
Immediately people dropped to their knees and did so even as Lathartha hugged me from behind and began praying into my ear. For me it was hard to pray, as all I could see was my mother out there within the reach of a fallen angel.
Thinking about it though I had to grudgingly admit that if someone had to be sent off on such a mission then mother was a great candidate for it. Knowing the truth of that made it easier to pray.
*****
Ralinda Collins sighed as she felt that she’d come to the end of her journey through space. All around her was empty space, while off in the background drifted the carnage of war and those who had survived through it.
Glancing up at the canopy of the fighter she closed her eyes for a moment and basked in the warm feeling generated within her as the prayers of thousands interceded on behalf of her.
Opening her eyes she said, “Well I guess I shouldn’t be wasting any more time seeing that it’s a precious commodity these days.”
That said she engaged the hatch release. The hatch blew off into space.
She should have been instantly compressed and frozen solid by the vacuum of space but she wasn’t. Calmly she undid her harness and then a bit arthritically she managed to stand up in her seat and climb out of her motionless craft.
Then with faith firmly in hand she walked across the intervening space in the direction that she felt led to go. Time and space all seemed to disappear as she stepped through dimensions to come face-to-face with an entity one day reserved for everlasting hell.
The fallen entity looked her over cunningly and yet dismissively. Far from feeling intimidated at all Ralinda instead felt herself fired from within with an intense anger bordering on wrath that this castoff of heaven thought so highly of his plans to intervene in the sought out future of her family to enjoy the peace that they had won by right.
“They send me an old woman? Go and die and be no more old woman for if you draw closer I will see to your torment forever.”
“Shut up you disrespectful cast off! Old woman I may be, but the Spirit of the living God even now is aflame within me. God is greater than you or any of your fallen kind that has sought to plague the race of mankind with your many deceptions! I rebuke what you do now through the authority of the redeeming Son of God and I remand you into the custody that befits your breach into what only God as the Creator of time can purpose to do with time. One day time will truly end, but it will not be by your hand and God will not be made a mockery of as you with your foolish intervention in the aid of your demonic children this day have sought to do. You speak of tormenting me and yet I tell you that you have no authority over me and yet one day this old woman will be a judge over your kind for all will be as it is written by the living words of my Savior and by His authority I cast you down never to rise against my people again!”
The bottom fell out beneath the creature before her and with a soul rending scream it disappeared dimensionally through time and space. The sound had been beyond horrendous to hear and Ralinda patted at her chest to calm the beating of her heart.
Tiredness overwhelmed her then, but something made her glance up. When she did all tiredness was forgotten in the face of seeing what was opening up before her eyes.
“Come to me Ralinda and enter into your rest for all of eternity to come my good and faithful trusted servant. Fear not anymore for the lives you have contended for today. All has been set right and now comes your reward daughter of the Most High.”
Without hesitation, but rather with great joy, Ralinda stepped into glory and left all vestiges of time behind.