Introduction

There was a calm like Erin had never experienced in the city before.  The skies were clear and the roads were still.  The clouds even seemed to be waiting and watching patiently as they drifted wearily across the cities sublimed aquamarine ceilings.

Along the calm and serenely peaceful streets the multitudes watched the heavens, their usually busy lives brought to a standstill.  Their necks craned to the sky they watched as an orchestra of light broke out in symphony above them.

Far above, beyond the bustling of life on the surface of the planet, beyond the busy orbits of satellites the ring that surrounded their world was falling.  After centuries of orbit, the great ring had finally been called to end it’s service and the sight was magnificent.

The shimmering white ring that ran from one horizon to the other was littered with blinking lights like Christmas tree lights would light a garland as megatons blew it’s carefully engineered structure apart.  Debris fell from orbit to the atmosphere lighting up once more as it splashed across the daylight sky like raindrops of heavenly fire.

They stood and watched.  The elderly and the infant had never seen such a sight, nor had they imagined they would as the ring had been a wonder of their world. an artificial habitat that protected and provided for them as well as being an unseen grandeur, much like the band of the galaxy goes unnoticed by those who are fortunate enough to ignore it’s grace far from the cities.  Although for many of Tethis’s people, the ring was an aspiration and not such a dream as the distant twinkling lights of the galaxy.

It was only now, in the twilight before waking that the comfort of that dream really fell upon them, and as the lights of its shattered body glowed as they burned through the sky, the dream realised itself upon them.

Erin watched.  But Erin did not watch with wonder and awe as the millions of others across Tethis did.  Erin watched with wide welling eyes and held breath.  Erin watched.  As the twinkling lights across the ring sent their glowing droplets of light and fire into the high atmosphere Erin watched.  

And he watched, because he, unlike the others, knew.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Break right, break right!” Belinda screamed into her helmet mic as clouds of neon green hurtled past her wingman.

Kyle’s battered and smoking fighter lurched to the right.  Narrowly avoiding the plasma fire Belinda had seen before surging upward into a spiral to dance across the wide beam of ferocious light that moved to intercept him as he did.  “Get him off me damnit!”

Belinda’s ship pulled about in a wide circle.  Flecks of paint and metal lit up her afterburners as her eyes trained on the vessel behind her comrade.  “Just get behind me Kyle, same as Rigel remember.”  A hail of tracer fire errupted from the nose of her ship as she moved to intercept Kyle’s pursuer.

Belinda rolled and swerved as her fire drew the bolts of superheated plasma toward her own vessel as Kyle rejoined formation behind her.  A missile lit up the space between her and her oppenent as they raced towards one another.  Soaring over it’s head the enemy vessel swerved downward to avoid the missile, keeping it’s focus very much on Belindas aggressive manuvere.  They closed.  The space between them went from hundreds to tens of meters.  Light poured from one ship to another as they danced with each others weaponry.  A deadly ballet of rolls and spirals with jets of exhaust leaving trails of blue and red in their wakes.

The ships closed.  Belinda pulled back hard on her controls.  Her ship heaved upward.  The enemy vessel followed, it’s violent green clouds of plasma trying to keep up with her movement.

Kyle locked.  He fired.  Tracer shells exploding in the underbelly of the enemy fighter as it exposed itself to him.  The explosion blew the debris clear of Kyles flight path as he rolled through it cheering over his mic.  “Hell yeah!”

“Yeah, we’ve still got it!” Belinda grinned as she watched her long time flight mate take the kill shot.  “Lets regroup, it looks like they’re taking a heavy fire from the destroyers.”

Belinda’s ship looped over itself to rejoin Kyle as they descended to the surface of the ring and followed it’s great crescent.

“That’s a 5 Lieutenant.”

“You gonna make it?” She asked, unsure of whether his answer would actually change her mind on rejoining the main assault.

Kyle bobbed his head as he considered his cockpits damage control readouts. “I’ve been better, but it’s nothing the ‘nites can’t handle before we join the party.”  He stabbed some controls releasing more of the tiny robots to patch up his smouldering hull.

“ETA 4 minutes to engagement.”  She advised, checking her own systems without the same bravado her wingman had.  She tapped her mic channels, “Command this is Evolution C, inbound in 4.”

The response cracked across her ears.  They obviously hadn’t managed to deal with the interdictor jamming their warp and comms, and that meant trouble.

Belinda moved further down, hugging the shell of the ring, skimming above it with only meters of vacuum between them and collision but gaining thrust from igniting the flimsy atmosphere that clung to the exterior of the superstructure.  Her eyes focused on the flickering lights of exchanging hostility on the shimmering white horizon in space.

“How bad?” Kyle murmured.

Belinda didn’t answer him.  She simply accelerated.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The distant screams echoed through the labs.  The thunder of projectile impacts shook the floors.  The fires forced the suppressant systems to kick in leaving technicians running half blind and choking from room to room, floor to floor.  The steel and glass surgical corridors of the lab complex funnelled the heat and the noise, channelling it into the amphitheatre of the ignition complex.  It’s vast looming ceilings shuddering with every impact, clouding with every fire and echoing every thunderous explosion or piercing scream as if some unholy opera were being performed within it’s once pristine interior.

Those who had managed to find the few doorways that led from the cavernous smog filled complex clambered over each other to get out, the choking toxic coolant burning their eyes and mouths as they fled.  Their screams muffled as the screech of escaping gas overwhelmed even the noise of the barrage from outside.

Plumes of blue fire jetted up from the floor as the heavy fumes passed over electrical outlets and devices smashed in the disorder of the technicians escape, glittering off the walls and intermittently lighting the room briefly as their incandescence flared above the now silenced flicker of the chambers own glow.

Like an electrical swamp the complex turned into some form of surrealist nightmare.  Towering trees of computers gripped by acid smog vines and an undergrowth of furniture slowly melting into the bubbling cloud that had begun to stagnate across the tar-bed of  polished flooring.  The ignition system itself standing monolithic in the centre of this swamp, presiding over it’s domain and letting out a humming drone as if to warn those who were still here to listen that it alone would survive this place.

But there was one listener to it’s warning drone that disobeyed it’s ethereal dominion.  His fingers worked furiously across switches and keypads taking care not to damage them as the fumes ate at them.  His eyes not concerned with the dull primordial flicker of fire light and his throat unquenched by the thick smog of coolant.

His feet sturdily negotiated the searing, smelting plates of ground between the consoles he worked at.  Unencumbered by the bodies that he stepped across and the crunch of brittle dissolving bone that followed his footsteps.  His mind clear and focused on his task and his soul empty of the hellish chaos around him.

Power sequences.  Injection protocols.  Polarity monitors.  Flux relays.  Quantum capacitors.  They all danced across his thoughts in turn and each was deftly woven into place.

With each console visited, with each task complete, with each motion perfectly in time and attuned the monolith of the ignition system droned in higher and higher pitches.  It’s conical structure pointing deep into the reactor below began to light from it’s base buried in the charred dome of the chamber.  Electrical blues and greens began to make the dense black smog glow and the static charge of the vibrating metal let out spasming streaks of crackling current through the fog.

For a moment, he considered his safety in this tempest, but it was the briefest of moment.  He was too close now to give concern to remote possibility.  Only absolute certainty lay ahead.  The certainty that centuries of waiting had ingrained in every subroutine and every  splice of coding in his mind.   His fingers danced across another console as his eye drew upon the ultimate controls for the now angrily charging ignition.

That moment was interrupted.  A cataclysmic shock shuddered swiftly through the chamber.  The clouds of acidic coolant smog began to scream around him as a hurricane of vacuum violently guzzled the air.  Loose equipment and charred smashed bodies of unidentifiable technicians ripped themselves from the ground, smashing into everything in their path as they lunged directly to the now gaping chasm in the hull.  The fog tornadoes around the ignition cone sending streams of electrical discharge furiously lashing out in all directions.  The scream became a howl as the thicker gasses made their escape and flayed what little colour remained on any console or paint work that had adorned the controls of this great machine.  The scream became a howl, the howl became a thunder and the thunder became little more than a whisper.

There was silence.  An empty cold silence.

His feet clunked as they connected with the floor.  Taking his final magnetic steps to the final command console.  It was time.  Had he had lips, he would have smiled to himself as this long awaited moment drew to port after it’s centuries on a sea of earnest work.  But he could not ignore the hurricane of silence around him.

He must hurry.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The shuttles ion drive growled furiously as it tore itself from its hangar bay, it’s stubby wings drooling vapour as its engines forced it through the air.  The plexiglass cockpit screen shook violently as safety threshold after safety threshold was broken and left in the smouldering plasma trail of electrolised ionic haze behind the craft.

Erin grasped the controls tightly.  He knew they were beyond his own control and that holding onto them at this velocity was merely a tactile comfort but as the altimeter raced through meters as if they were miliseconds and his speed went through mach 2, 3, 4 and finally hypersonic.

The twinkling cascade of light from the ring had turned into a nightmarish glow.  The droplets of fire had become a rain of ash as larger and larger sections of the once grand ring fell to Tethis’s quickly panicking surface.

He focused firmly on the rings fire fight light display as the shuttle held itself together through sheer will alone.

“Come in control?”  He pleaded, trying not to think about the glowing nose of his shuttle as the airs friction flayed it’s protective layers.  “Control come in please?”

“This is control.” Came the computerised reply.

Erin wiped sweat from below his eyes as the cabin temperature rose quickly.  “Erin Constable requesting docking permission control, please confirm.”

There was a moments silence.  The sky around the shuttle turned from blue to dusk as the atmosphere began to give way to the abyss of space.  “This is not a good time.”  Control responded with a subtle air of confusion.

Erin’s eyes exploded saucer wide.  “Not a good time?!”  He barked.  “Time isn’t something we’ve got a lot of!  Grant permission.”

The radio crackled silently for a moment.  “Permission granted.”  Control responded flatly.  “But this really isn’t a good time.  We have a situation.”

“Noted Control.”  Erin glared, space now enveloping his shuttle and the ring becoming a solid feature in his view ahead, the light of war flickering around it.  “Other than your situation, what’s our status?”

The radio crackled silently again, the tiny lights that appeared as Christmas lights from below were now clearly the bitter fires of dead pilots exploding against the ring as they crashed or collided with it’s mass.

Control whispered above the crackling disruption.  “Initiated.”

Erin peered at his controls to find the docking relay, his eyes picked out the nearest seemingly safe port.  He reached for his comms control.  “Deploy it.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Belinda’s fighter creaked as her thrusters forced it into a 90 degree turn, the missile behind her flying past and off course into the side of one of the destroyers.  Laser and plasma fire had left heavy scars across her hull and her own weapons pulsed intermittently as her power systems began to suffer under the stress.

“On your six Lieutenant!” Kyle screamed over the mic.  His cannons firing wildly under his commanders smoking vessel.

“Keep them off me Kyle!” Belinda pleaded.  “I just need a few seconds for auxiliary to reroute.”

“I’m on my break, union rules!” Kyle smirked, trying to sound as in control as he knew he wasn’t of the situation.  

The background chatter of the fleet covered her far from amused retort.  But after all the battles they’d fought together, this was the closest.  A little humour, however, ill timed, went a long way.

Kyle fired the last of his missiles at two of the pursuing craft.  One hit and forced the enemy fighter to veer off course, the second missed and slammed into the burning carcass of the interdictor cruiser in a ferocious plume of blue light.  Switching to guns he let off a hail of tracer fire that clipped the second ship, not enough to bring it down, but enough to change it’s mind about it’s target.  “Oh s**t.” Kyle said between gritted teeth as he reversed thrust.  Forcing his stick down.  Charging toward the ring he looped.  The ring got closer, closer and as he made the turn into the loop he felt the impact of his tailfin being torn clear from it’s housing on the rear of his ship.  Not a big deal in space, but it was hull integrity he didn’t need to lose, ‘nites aren’t discriminating about what they repair.

Rolling back to right himself against he horizon of the ring he saw plasma fire rocket past him, rolling and swerving to try and keep himself alive long enough for Belinda to come to his rescue.  At least he hoped she would.  “Lieutenant?”

Belinda’s fighter came into view.  A trail of debris and fire behind it.  She moved into a direct collision course with Kyle.  “Pull up!” she ordered.  His ship bucked and lurched upwards.  Her guns opened fire.  The enemy did not change course.

The two ships locked in a deadly stand off with flickering weapons careered towards each other.  Kyle watched in his rear display as the enemy craft sped towards his Lieutenant.  She pulled down to fly under it, it moved to intercept and pulled up at the last moment.

It was too late, the backwash from it’s ion stream had caught her.  Their heavier ships had heavier thrust and inertia wasn’t enough to hold Belinda on course.  Kyle watched in horror as her ships engines flamed out and she listed out of control, tumbling towards the ring and colliding with a gaping scar of flame and ejecta from it’s titanic structure.

He jerked his controls, flipping his ship without changing thrust to face Belinda’s assassin.   Guns blazing he tore through space after the craft, his shots pounding into it.

“We’ve got an energy build up!” Someone yelled over the mic.

“Break off the attack, break off the attack everyone get to distance!” Came another voice.

“F**k you.”  Kyle grimaced, his eyes filled with hate and anger.  He hand gripped like a vice to his controls.  His guns firing thousands of rounds a second at the focus of his rage.

His comrades   had broken off.  Jumped to warp and fled the area.  He didn’t need to win this war, just this one fight.

The enemy ship turned sharply downward, heading for Tethis’s surface.  Kyle wouldn’t let it retreat.  His rage had engulfed his senses.  His only expression to the universe was his gunfire.  And it would be his last.

As his ship made the descent, the ring began to move.  Before Kyle could say anything his ship was hit by the structure and smashed like a china cup being hit by a monstrous space borne club.

This is what the others had feared.  This is what they had fought against.

The ring began to turn.  Circling Tethis below.  In a short space of time it’s huge partially broken body hurled itself faster and faster and faster around the planet.

Satellites and debris from the battle were thrown or smashed against it’s mighty hull as it began to gyroscope itself turning in all directions but keeping the planet at its core.  The distant red sun shimmered across the surface of the ring.  As it turned faster and faster until it was a blur the reflected light made Tethis appear as a sun itself, glowing with all the brilliance of a star twice as bright as it’s parent sun.

Silently in space, it spun.  The fleet so determined in its destruction far from it’s whirling glowing technological cocoon.

Had they been there, had anyone been there they would have seen something that they would never have believed with their own eyes.

In an explosion of red light and leaving behind it a violent shockwave who’s only victim was the three asteroidal moons: Tethis, the ring and everything held within, vanished.

Author's Note

I'll sort out the grammar and spelling later, this was freewriting to get the ideas flowing.