Cath

The Cradle

With a bit of help from Vreta, 595 shrugged off the bulky transit station. Still sliding through the snow on her side with the Rothian keeping pace, she pulled the comms cable out of her back and stood up. The sky immediately above them was alight with plasma fire, but singed x-wings had found their way under the umbrella now and were flying about them.

Gritting her teeth, 595 caught a vampire out of the air as razor claws scraped her armour. She punched another one to the floor, then violently squeezed the creature she had in her hand. It disappeared in a flash, with a small cloud of ash floating out from between her fingers.

Bright blue accents appeared on the Agent’s armour, and jagged arcs of energy crackled around her. She pushed her arms out to either side of her, and chain lightning erupted through the swarm of predators, connecting all of them like leaves of a giant fiery tree. Hundreds thumped to the floor straight away, and the others screeched and rolled about them, confused.

“Lets go!” 595 bellowed, as the whole mountain shivered and vibrated under their feet. The rig dropped out of sight - was the cube staying still or rising up? - and a great shower of stone burst from the side of the peak off to their left.

The head of a giant worm, similar to the one who had greeted them into the simulation last time, poked out of the mountain. It was followed by more of its body, like a train emerging from a tunnel and off a cliff. Its beady front-facing eyes were fixed on the flickering lights of the rig. A continuous stream of light spat from somewhere below them, from the rig’s turret. It splayed across the worm’s face, narrowly missing its eyes.

---

”I need to reconnect with the Rübezahl! You won’t have the last minute, and that could be the key! Swap with me!” Freyr shouted over the crescendo of alarms blaring in the bridge now. She locked the steering controls in place then jumped up, moving back to the command console. “Power at 5%, anti-grav failing!” Dr Zimmermann reported, having transitioned from the code lab to the power plant. “Don’t let us spin!” Freyr urged Nirann. “Everyone else out, get clear!” Activating her mag-boots, Freyr keyed in her command override, trying to find the loose groundmast in the tumbling slurry of rocks around them.

The Cradle

595 ran forward, stepped onto a low slab of rubble and jumped. Her EVA harness jets activated, and she flew across the ruined temple, arms windmilling. She palmed off one of the standing pillars and landed awkwardly by the spectrometer, one hand resting on the ground. She quickly checked it; dead.

She straightened up and stared out of the doors, through showers of brick dust towards the rig. The mountain had receded dramatically since they’d gone inside, and it now hung precariously on the edge, one side of wheels up in the air.

As they watched, another ear-splitting boom shook the mountain. Rocks fell from the peaks off to their left, and a big crack appeared between the top face of the cube and everything else. The rig dropped about ten metres as the shelf of rock it clung to came loose, then carried on slipping down the mountain.

“Freyr, can you re-” 595 started urgently calling in, when the cables attached to her snapped taut, pulling the agent off her feet, down the temple steps and through the snow of the plinth, now flashing blue. “Argh!” 595 grunted, struggling to get the transit station off her back.

---

”Not yet! The ground team is out there!” Freyr shouted from inside the cockpit. She slipped into the pilot’s seat and wrestled with the controls. “If we’re being sapped, so are they! Someone please give me everything we’ve got to the anti-grav thrusters!”

---

The rig’s sonic countermeasures had ceased, which meant the swarm above them was regaining its coherence. They saw an isolated, tasty morsel sliding out of the temple, and swooped in for the attack with a deathly screeching.

The Cradle

595 stood up unsteadily and grabbed her gun. She could tell there was more to learn here, but they needed to re-establish contact with the rig first. “Alright. Let’s move.”

They set off at a jog, scanning in all directions. They’d only made it halfway round the masonry covering the throne when the relative calm of the simulation was interrupted by an unbearably loud blip.. “I’ve heard that before! Ground team, come in and tell me you heard that.” The Agent urged while on the move.

“What...have...you...DONE?” A synthesised voice called to them from behind - the hatchway! 595 spun round and raised her weapon, breathing heavily. She could see nothing there. Just then, a burst of static arrived via comms from the rig. It was drowned out by a longer sound they’d identified as some kind of data transmission, then an immense crash from the mountain they were on. She could hear cracks spreading. “Shit!”

595 looked back towards the door. They only had a thin view through the temple at the spectrometer. She focused, and saw the boxy shape begin to scrape backwards towards the rig, pulled by its cable.

---

Freyr had only just recovered from her own vision when the mountain started to collapse. A faint blue light shone through the snow covering the plinth, and the lights inside the rig started flickering wildly. Some consoles around Freyr turned off completely; others flashed with alien symbols.

“What's going on?” Dr Wetherall shouted. He’d moved up to the bridge to attend Freyr when she’d shown signs of distress. No immediate response from Nirann. “Nirann!”

Freyr’s stomach lurched, and suddenly the floor wasn’t even any more. She grabbed hold of the command console for support. “Get back downstairs now! Figure out what's going on.” She ordered. “Marae, where is Nirann?” She asked, moving awkwardly towards the cockpit.

The Cradle

The group hallucination in the temple only lasted a couple of minutes in real time. About halfway through, the crew of the Barbarossa knew something was wrong.

Captain Andersen had felt a bit like a spare part to begin with. She’d remained in the staging bay with her officers, even as most of the scientific staff had been rushed down to the forward operating base.

The rows of harnesses were quiet now, with just a few people and drones attending them. So, they’d clustered around the workspace that was feeding through telemetry from the simulation. Andersen didn’t understand most of it, so she contented herself with listening in on comms chatter between the rig and the real world team.

She grew fidgety when it became apparent the rig had lost comms with the team inside this alien temple, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it too long. A holo of her XO, stationed on the bridge, appeared on the table facing her.

“Ma’am, we’ve uncovered a signal originating from outside of this system! They’re sniffing our connection to the FOB, and hacking into our mainframe.” Andersen’s eyes widened. She looked at Rareth, who appeared on the surface as surprised as she. “What!? How is that possible?” She asked her second in command.

“It looks to be piggybacking on the simulation’s connection, ma’am.” her XO replied.

“Well shut it down!” Andersen snapped.

“We can’t close the connection now. Our team will be trapped inside.” The sole awake Human scientist from Freyr’s team who stayed behind on the Barb protested. Andersen was in her personal space almost immediately. “Well you tell them to pull out then, NOW!”

Andersen whirled around as the scientist rapidly got in touch with the FOB. She stormed past Rareth with her staff in tow, towards the waiting buggies. “I’ll contact you from the bridge, Rareth ‘Jharn.”

---

595 blinked furiously, her mind full of scorpions. She felt confused and extremely hungry. She eventually realised Vreta was talking to her. Her mind cleared a little bit, as one of her newly configured implants administered chemicals to level out her brain activity. She forcefully pressed her need to feed to the back of her mind. “Uhh...yeah. I can move. What just happened?”

The ground beneath them shook violently. 595’s ultra sensitive hearing picked up the sound of rocks falling in the distance. “Ground team to the rig. What’s your status?” … Nothing. 595 looked at Vreta.

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The Cradle

They piled into the jet together. It was cramped and overcrowded; 595 squashed into the corner by the forward doors while the Senator was bustled to the hot seat. Dozens of civilians noticed they were preparing to launch and spilled past overstretched security onto the runway. “Stay your course.” She saw an advisor order the pilots through the open cockpit doors.

The jet thundered out of the hangar at breakneck speed, heading upwards and off to port, away from the Hegemon. 595 pushed her eye against one of the portholes, mesmerised by the asymmetrical slaughter unfolding before them.

The Hegemon appeared to have grown bored of the warships flitting around it now, and was lazily turning towards their own reef. The Agent watched on in horror as the quartet of lasers pored over her home, forming a perfect grid…

Suddenly a blinding blue beam, a hundred metres in diameter, connected the top of the Hegemon with somewhere above the waves of the sea. The machine’s horrific alien shriek disturbed the heavens. A pulsing shield flared across its entire surface area, and it wobbled precariously in the water, as if struggling below the weight of this beam

595 pivoted to look upwards, straining to catch a glimpse of what might be unleashing such fury on their aggressor. Flashes of confusion and awe rippled through the jet’s occupants.

In the blink of an eye, Hegemon shot towards the surface, breaking through and disappearing in an instant. The blue beam followed it, sporadically hitting the seabed before disappearing too.

In its wake, the Hegemon had left an enormous bubble of energy that was expanding in all directions. A solid wall of vaporising water rushed forward to encompass the reefs on both sides.

“Punch it!” The advisor gestured strenuously to the pilots. The engine noise rose to a crescendo and 595 instinctively grabbed hold of the door’s handle as alarm noises began sounding in the confined space. “EMP!” The co-pilot flailed, a few seconds before the wall of water hit them.

The Cradle

“Follow me closely, let's move!” The soldier commanded, before swimming up the sheer face of the reef. Flagging a bit from her wounds, 595 followed beside Vreta as they stuck close to the side; one of her beady eyes fixed on the Hegemon at all times.

The cephalopod warships were launching everything they had at the massive inverted pyramid. But the salvoes of time-delay missiles all bloomed harmlessly on crackling shields before getting close enough to deal damage. That deep, thumping laugh issued across the seabed again, making the Agent shiver.

The Hegemon ignored the vessels. A large red eye-like opening appeared in one of its faces, which then lazily turned to the reef closest to their own. A quartet of bright lasers expanded from the eye into a precise grid across the entire monolith. With barely a moment’s delay, the entire grid lit up in a blinding flash of white light.

595 stopped swimming and pushed the Senator and herself again reef as a supersonic bang exploded across the empty space. “Come on!” She saw the soldier shout, whacking them all with her tentacles. “Don’t look at it! We’re nearly there!”

595 looked anyway, and struggled to comprehend what was happening. The entire billion tonne monolith was beginning to fall apart, shrouded in superheated steam. Coral dust filled the water, and a second wave battered them against the rocks.

They reached a large rectangular aperture and rushed inside. Large civilian and military transports were mixed up together, hurriedly being packed with people to evacuate. It was a living hell of desperate people, driven by fear and loathing. They had to stop by the cave’s mouth to avoid being pulverised by a leisure cruiser coming in to land.

The soldier barged through the swirling crowds, one tentacle firmly holding onto the Senator. “There they are!” He signed, waving wildly at a sleek military jet that was taxiing to launch. The pilots must have seen them swimming into their path, because it stopped and one of the side doors opened. A mess of government officials and senior military officers spilled out and approached them.

“President Pro tempore! The President, Vice President and Lower Chamber are all gone. That makes you the commander in chief now, sir! We need to get you to safety right away!” One of the advisors signed hurriedly, gesturing for the Senator to come with them to the jet. A bulky general floated in close. “What are your orders? We’re being torn apart!”

595 looked nervously back at the Hegemon as they began swimming; it was still clearly visible through the hangar entrance. It was now picking off warships with dozens of precise energy beams, like a child might pull wings off an insect. Another grinding wail blasted her senses. “If we’re going to go, we need to go right now!” She urged.

The Cradle

595 felt compelled to follow the Vreta into the borehole, despite a niggling feeling in the back of her mind that this was a terrible idea. The whole area was unstable, and who knew what was on the other end! Somebody find me a weapon, she thought to herself, and her mind flashed back to two strange looking hands cradling an awkward-looking gun. The thought left as quickly as it arrived, and the Agent obediently entered the hole after the Senator.

They quickly wiggled along the claustrophobic tunnel with the help of their tentacles. 595 knew that these arteries crisscrossed the entire reef and were reserved for VIPs, military and government employees. She knew they were supposed to be reinforced, but that knowledge was no comfort when after a few minutes a crack appeared above their heads. The two sides began grinding together like two tectonic plates. “Go, go, go!” 595 flashed, pushing up against Vreta as the sides tightened around her bulbous form.

The soldier noticed the crack and turned a right angle at the next junction. They burst from the tunnel as fast as they could, just when millions of tons of coral shifted violently, crushing the last of the Senator’s staff members before they could escape. 595 flashed a pattern of pure anguish and rushed to pull at the tentacle tip protruding from the rock face - it tore clean away.

The Agent dropped the dead appendage and turned to face the group. Only then did she notice that none of them were looking at her. “What’s happening?” She asked, surveying the scene.

They were on a ledge of polished stone that wrapped around this section of the reef - a gargantuan monolith protruding from vast sandy plains on the ocean bed, extending all the way to the unlivable heights above. Far off in the distance, they could see other reefs through the dusty waters. One of them looked to be erupting with jets of lava.

The sounds of battle were deafening here. 595 noticed manned point defence cannons clinging like limpets to the ledge and reef above them. They were all firing missiles at once.

A sleek metal vessel shaped like a squid but hundreds of times the size roared over their heads before heading upwards. 595 followed it with her eyes, and realised dozens of ships were rising from the reefs, heading towards-

Oh.

High above them, hovering like an obsidian tear in the bright backdrop of the surface, was the Hegemon. Its tetrahedral mass hung completely motionless in the water, wavy points of energy flickering all around it like monochrome sunbeams. The shoals of combat craft strafing it looked miniscule by comparison.

Another mechanical siren pierced the cacophony around them, sending a chill through 595’s nervous system. A thought entered her mind that was entirely alien; a deep, soulless evil.

><^You

DARE

defy your

GOD?

“It’s not safe here. I need to get you on a transport right away, sire. Are you hurt? We need to swim along the reef.” The soldier shouted in front of Vreta, checking him up and down. A group of other soldiers barged past them, carrying nets of equipment behind them. “I need a weapon, and we should fight, not run!” 595 shouted, immediately feeling a disapproving tug in the back of her consciousness.

The Cradle

The swell violently dragged 595 against the verdant sides of the tunnel. Jagged rocks slashed her sides, mixing blue ichor in with the clouds of debris that’d come loose. Skin lighting up with pain, she used her powerful tentacles to push out from the wall and down, away from the initial surge.

“Stay close!” The Agent signed, maneuvering round a two-storey boulder that’d come free of its coral moorings and was sinking to the bottom. She searched desperately for an exit along the sides of the tunnel as they swam in loose formation, but all the main causeways were now jammed with hundreds of giant cephalopods desperately trying to escape all at once. Even more were emerging from their homes in chasms below them, swerving erratically to avoid being crushed by falling parts of the reef.

Another monumental explosion rocked the reef, and a billowing mushroom of superheated water exploded through a new crack in the roof a mile in front of them, vaporising dozens of their kind instantly. 595 did an abrupt about face, scanning the area ahead when two long tentacles grabbed her from the side and spun her around. She found a bulky soldier in full armour, with just her head and two arms sticking out of a borehole in the reef. “Where is your Senator!” They shouted at 595 through the chaotic din. “Who?” 595 signed back, confused.

The soldier immediately lost interest in her when Vreta swam into view. The tentacles dislodged from her and wrapped around the smaller male squid, pulling him towards the hole. “Senator! I need to get you to safety right now!”

Just then, a long, eerie, alien wail penetrated the waters. It was similar to the sound their ancient predators made when on the hunt, but finished with a deep thumping that almost sounded like...laughter. Most of the civilians in the tunnel cried out in fear and panic, redoubling their efforts to flee. The distant sounds of battle, weapons and bombs, wafted through the water from above somewhere, assaulting 595’s senses.

“What is happening!” She demanded, swimming over to the soldier, wrapping one tentacle around Vreta to stop him moving. The soldier looked at her. “It's here. Let go.” was the reply.