They Answered The Call

K2-332 System

GFS Glory of Dalk’nir, Protector-Class Battleship

402 light years from Earth, year 123,005 B.C.

Dil-Son Reth’vir targeted another Balrikan heavy cruiser, aiming six starboard secondary particle beam turrets directly into the center of the large hull breach on the port side of the enemy cruiser.

It heard the turrets whining over the din of the bridge as the selected weapons unleashed fury and penetrated deeply into the bowels of the stricken ship, cracking it in half.

As the aft section disappeared in a blaze of nuclear fury from the core overload, it heard the Wan’sho elder commanding the battleship howl in happiness at the sight of the aft section taking the bow portion with it.

Ignoring the chills the howling of the Elder was sending down its spine, Reth’vir scanned for another target within range of the battleship’s weapons. There were none, and it turned to face the elder to tell him.

“Elder, there are no enemy ships within range of our weapons.”

The elder turned his canid head and bored his wild eyes into the back of the navigator’s skull.

“Pad’Lon Flath’dir, find us another ship to destroy and bring us to it!” He growled loudly, causing the navigator to flinch before it hurriedly entered a series of commands on the panel in front of it.

The battleship surged forward, heading for a mass of Balrikan ships trying to gang up on two Magnati heavy cruisers 145,000 likals away.

The elder raised his voice to be heard by the bridge crew. “You will seek out and destroy any enemy ships still functioning. Do not let me catch any of you failing to perform your duties again.”

As the elder finished growling, Reth’vir turned back around to face the panel, seeing that the rest of the bridge crew had suddenly found their own panels utterly fascinating.

It smiled to itself at the sight of the recent academy apprentices responding appropriately to the anger of the Wan’sho elder.

This was their first time engaging in battle, and it knew the elder was taking it easy on them because of their inexperience.

The Wan’sho were famous for their bloodlust when engaging in battle, and they were well known for not tolerating any failures or reluctance from warriors under their command.

As the battleship continued to charge at the mass of Balrikan ships, Reth’vir readied the primary bow turret and waited for the enemy ships to come into range.

A few moments later, the AI assistant confirmed a target lock, and Reth’vir fired the bow turret.

It looked at the scanning results. Though the range was long, three of the four particle beams hit the target directly amidships, the armored hull boiling as the invisible beams caused the molecular structure of the plating to enter a state of flux.

Reth’vir targeted the same location and fired again as soon as the particle beams had finished recharging. This time, all four beams hit as the battleship finally entered the optimal range.

The four particle beams pierced through the now-slagged armor and drilled through the interior of the ship before punching through the other side and striking the armor of one of the Magnati ships.

The advanced composite armor of the Magnati heavy cruiser was barely damaged by the attenuated friendly fire, and Reth’vir tensed, expecting the Wan’sho elder to scold it for the accidental strike.

As the targeted Balrikan lost power and started drifting, the elder howled again with glee and growled loudly in approval. “Dil-Son Reth’vir, we’ll make a Wan’sho out of you yet. Keep sending these larishats to hell!”

Reth’vir answered, keeping its eyes on the panel as it selected another target. “Thank you, honored elder.” Pride surged within it from the unexpected praise of the eminent Wan’sho warrior.

It smiled as it fired a volley at another ship, shearing off the aft engines and crippling the vessel.

The navigator turned the battleship slightly to port, and Reth’vir targeted the now crippled ship with the starboard secondary turrets, tearing it apart as they glided past.

Reth’vir sent two aft anti-ship torpedoes towards it to finish off the job as the battleship bulled its way into the mass of Balrikan ships ganging up the two Magnati warships.

Ordering the AI assistant to multi-target with the secondary weapons, Reth’vir aimed the primary bow turret at a badly damaged Balrikan battleship that was being pummeled by the two Magnati heavy cruisers.

All four beams entered a large hull breach that the Magnati had already caused, and the beams hit a critical system, causing massive secondary explosions that tore open the bow of the ship.

Frozen fluids and bodies were expelled as the Magnati warships repositioned and started targeting the gaping wound of the Balrikan battleship that was now splayed open like a blooming flower.

The Glory turned hard to starboard to avoid the wreckage of a derelict Ma’lit light cruiser, and Reth’vir felt anger surging within it at the sight before looking at its panel for another ship to kill.

For five solar months, they have been on the defensive as they tried to stem the tide of the Balrikan onslaught and prevent further penetration into the Federation.

Twenty-three worlds had been scourged, and almost eighty-seven billion Federation citizens had been murdered.

Two species were virtually exterminated after their home worlds and colonies had been glassed, with both species having less than five million survivors that were on other Federation worlds during the assaults.

Another species, the Hooneans, was eradicated entirely. They were advanced Cetaceans, but they were planet-bound due to the unique synchronization of their brains to the peculiar magnetic field of their world.

Leaving the planet would cause their higher brain functions to rapidly shut down, and they would lapse into a coma before eventually dying if they passed beyond the magnetosphere.

As a result, none of the over one billion Hooneans were able to leave their home world, despite the best efforts of Federation and Hoonean scientists to replicate the unique field dynamics of their world.

The hateful creatures, to ensure the extinction of the Hooneans, changed their tactics to adapt to the unique problems of bombarding an ocean world.

They flashed in and quickly destroyed the picket ships before jamming all signals to prevent distress calls from leaving the system.

They did not utilize antimatter bombardment on the ocean planet, knowing that the Cetaceans would be able to dive deep and escape the destruction.

Instead, they towed a dozen massive asteroids from the belt and accelerated them to speeds of over seventy likals per solar second.

The smallest one had a diameter of 300 likals, while the largest was over 600 likals in diameter. They were planet killers and exactly what the Balrikans needed.

They released the asteroids, slamming their deadly payloads of iron and rock into the oceans that covered the world.

The energy of the impacts created cataclysmic tsunamis and caused the oceans to boil, initiating a runaway greenhouse effect that superheated the planet.

Within two solar days, over 90% of the life on the planet was dead.

In preparation, the Balrikans split their fleet and launched a diversionary attack on another system in the sector to hide their true intentions of exterminating the Hooneans and misdirect nearby Federation ships.

As a result of the deception and jamming, the small Magnati fleet guarding the sector was out of position and could not get there in time to defend the system.

When they finally arrived, there was only a single pod of a few hundred Hoonean survivors still clinging to life within a trench deep under the ocean where they had sought refuge.

Hydrophone probes were sent under the boiling waters to contact the last of the survivors, and their final words shattered the souls of the Magnati warriors in orbit.

Remember us with love, our friends. We regret never being able to swim among the stars with you.

Perhaps in the waters of the afterlife we will swim together. We will be waiting for you, and we will sing songs of joy when you finally enter the waters to join us.

Promise us that you will forgive yourselves for being too late to save us. You have come, and that is all that matters to us.

You are here to listen to our last song as we face the end. We feel your spirits swimming with us, and now we are no longer afraid.

Bring the songs of our people to the waters of other worlds, our friends. Our songs are of us, and if our songs live on, then we are not truly gone. May the currents guide you well, our friends. We love you.

The last of the Hooneans then began to sing a mournful song lamenting the end of their people, and it echoed alone through the waters of their home world, finding no other Hooneans to add to it and pass it on.

Heard only by single-celled thermophiles and the hydrophones sent from orbit, their chorus dwindled rapidly as they succumbed to asphyxiation, using the last of their air to sing the final song of their people.

The song became weaker as the Hooneans continued to die, the ones still remaining trying to keep the song alive for just a little longer as they faced the coming end with courage and grace.

There was one last call, and the final sorrowful howl faded away into nothingness as the last Hoonean went silent and slowly sank to the bottom of the trench to join the rest of its pod.

Their world, once alive with the sounds of billions of songs traveling through the waters, went silent for the first time in over two million years. The Hooneans were no more, and the music of their world died with them.

The Magnati warriors in orbit went into a rage and flashed back into null space to hunt down the Balrikan fleet that had exterminated their Cetacean friends.

They ignored all attempts by Fleet Command to reestablish operational control over them, and they chased the Balrikan fleet for over five hundred light years before they finally caught them.

The 314 Magnati warships attacked the over 2,000-strong Balrikan fleet without hesitation, and on that day, the Balrikans faced Magnati warriors consumed with grief and vengeance.

After twenty-one hours of non-stop battle, the remaining 27 Magnati warships finally powered down their weapons; there were no more enemy ships left to destroy in the system. They claimed their vengeance, and now it was time for them to grieve.

Fleet Command was angered by the disobedience and the waste of precious ships, but they wisely chose to drop the issue, and none of the Magnati commanders were brought up on charges.

They feared a backlash from the Magnati and the Wan’sho if they pursued the matter, and even they had to admit to themselves that the greatly outnumbered Magnati fleet destroying the over 2,000-strong Balrikan fleet was a major victory.

After the Hoonean extermination, it seemed as if the whole Federation finally realized this was a fight to the death against an implacable adversary.

Even the pacifist species were changed by the event, turning their industries entirely to war production.

They would not fight and kill, but they now made weapons and built warships that would be used by those who had no such restrictions.

After five months of brutal combat and billions of deaths, the Federation had finally blunted the Balrikan advance and was now on the offensive to drive the demons out and kill them all.

The Magnati and the Wan’sho were the only two species that had retained their martial abilities, and they were the only reason why the Federation had not yet fallen.

The Ma’lit were highly advanced and excellent builders of warships and weapons, but they lacked the intrinsic war-making capabilities of the Magnati and the Wan’sho.

They were learning quickly, and the Federation had finally been able to convert all the economies and different societies of its membership to a war footing.

Tens of thousands of naval apprentices were graduating every month, thousands of warships were pouring out of the shipyards all over the Federation, and the great arsenal was finally ready to be unleashed.

Magnati and Wan’sho elders were assigned to the ships of other species to train and lead them in the way of the warrior, like what was happening on the Glory right now.

“Dil-Son Reth'vir, why aren’t you firing?” barked the Wan’sho elder, startling Reth’vir out of its musings.

It quickly looked at the panel and toggled the secondary weapons control, sending over a dozen particle beams out of both the port and starboard turrets that smashed into the Balrikan ships that had slid next to the battleship to bracket it between them.

Pay attention, you fool! Reth’vir thought to itself as it continued to scan the area around the Glory for more ships to target as the secondary turrets continued to chew up the flanking ships.

Seeing anomalous readings, Reth’vir squinted its eyes as it double-checked the scanner results. The Balrikans were charging their null drives. Alarmed, Reth’vir spun around to face the elder.

“Elder, I am seeing signs of null drive activations!”

The Elder snapped its head back to look at Reth’vir before growling at the sensor officer to confirm the scanning results. It looked at its panel and then looked back up and signaled confirmation to the elder.

Balrikan ships started flashing out of the battle, and the Elder howled in frustration at the cowards for fleeing.

The Balrikans had started this battle with 2,800 ships, and now there are less than a thousand of them still combat-capable. They were fleeing, something they had never done before.

As hundreds of Balrikan ships flashed out, the bridge crew started banging their fists against their panels in the Ma’lit version of applause, and the elder growled at them to cut it out.

“Do you not see, young ones?" He barked as they looked at him in confusion. “They are learning, and now they will no longer fight to the death and allow us to wipe out their fleets.

They will force us to hunt them and pin them down. This is not a victory; this is a disaster. Now we will be fighting an insurgency of genocidal maniacs.”

As the elder’s words hit the apprentices, Reth’vir saw them deflate, their earlier elation crushed by the brutal truth of the elder’s words.

Feeling bad for them, Reth'vir turned its attention back to its panel, feeling disquieted by what the Wan’sho elder had said.

Ominian System

Automated Border Outpost 1D-25

1,893 light years from Earth, 2175 A.D.

Ray woke up, gasping for air. This was the third time he had undergone the procedure, and he had gotten better at his reaction to the end of the sessions.

Looking to his right, he could see the Ma’lit waiting in the usual spot.

Pulling the wires away from his forehead and temples, he sat himself up and swung his legs over the edge of the table before lightly pushing himself off to stand.

He stayed there, waiting for the android to come with the usual glass of water.

“You seem to be adapting to the procedure, my human child. This gladdens me.”

Ray nodded, acknowledging the statement from the Ma’lit before emptying the glass of water and giving it back to the android. “I think so, Honored Elder. I am still emotionally affected by it, but I feel like I have a better handle on it.”

“I agree with your assessment. Do you have any questions for me?” The Ma’lit asked as the suit moved closer to the table, peering into Ray’s eyes with the sensor lenses as they zoomed in.

“I do, honored elder, but I must confess that I am extremely tired from the procedure. May I have your permission to rest for a while?” Ray answered, feeling like he could sleep for days.

The Ma’lit responded. “Of course, my human child. Sleep well; we shall speak when you have rested sufficiently.”

“Thank you, honored elder; I will depart now.” Ray turned around and started to walk towards the entry door. He was halfway there when he turned around.

“Honored elder, do you have any of the songs of the Hooneans? I feel like... I need to hear them. They will live while I listen to them sing.”

The Ma’lit was silent for some time before answering him. “Yes. I have them.” The Ma’lit flicked a suit finger towards Ray. “I have transmitted their songs to your wristpad.”

Ray bowed his head slightly. “I am grateful. Thank you, honored elder.”

He turned around and exited the quarters, leaving the Ma’lit alone once more.

The door silently slid out of its recess and sealed the quarters. Hreth’nir stood there for some time, thinking about what had been happening over the last few days.

The human child had been surprisingly resilient and logical with the revelations, and Hreth’nir thought it was a good sign for when the time came to involve all the sons and daughters of the Magnati in the coming struggle.

Turning the suit towards a wall, Hreth’nir flicked the suit finger again. A few moments later, an achingly beautiful song came over the hidden speakers. It was a love poem of the Hooneans, one of Hreth’nir’s favorites.

As Hreth’nir continued to listen to the haunting refrain, it felt tears falling out of its eyes as the song of unrequited love brought it to the lifeless waters of their ocean world, where silence now reigns.