“Do you see?” Lago gestured at the empty space where the two Masama shuttles had once been. “Do you see what we are capable of?” He glared angrily at his crew who stared vacantly back at him. There were a couple of nods, but Lago did not get the enthusiastic reaction he had been hoping for. The bald technician rolled his shoulders with a pained expression. “Hornets and ion cannons, that was all it took.” Lago had been anxious as the Masama shuttles were launched. The technology was formidably impressive, but they were undone by something simple and non-threatening as a swarm of tiny surveillance drones. Their destruction fuelled Lago’s confidence even more.
“It’s a small victory,” said Dato. “We have a long way to go. I assumed we would probably all be dead by now but there’s no time to celebrate. We have seven shuttles left but more importantly we have lost two effectors. The only other effector weapon is on the remaining Tobias shuttle.”
“We should have gone in all guns blazing like I said, they would not have been able to resist us,” said Lago.
“If we had followed your advice there would probably be no one left to re-populate the Moon. At least now we still have a chance.”
Lago wasn’t listening. He looked out the window. The space was littered with debris. Twisted pieces of shuttle, still glowing with heat, drifted back towards the Moon. Hundreds of little burnt hornet husks fell gently like ash, clouds of radiation dissipated, and a few disabled drones still drifted. His shuttle fleet remained in their diamond formation. The two Russians further out, two Dong Feng shuttles, the Honourable Villain, the Tobias troop carrier, and his command shuttle, the Damned Saint, slightly above. The remaining weapon platforms were dispersed around the shuttles, several functioning drones drifted back into position and a few hornets still buzzed about. Seeing his shuttle fleet hovering above the summit of Montes Haemus gave Lago even more belief in his inevitable victory.
He focused on his own snarling face reflected in the window and for a moment, he didn’t recognise the maniac staring back at him until it spoke. “We will kill them all. Nothing can stand in our way. We are immortal. We are everlasting.” Lago nodded in agreement with his reflection. He spun around and yelled at Dato. “We have to attack. Right now, while they are recovering.”
Dato nodded. “For once I agree, we need to draw them out. Corazon, what assets do we have left?”
“One hundred and fifty drones left. And we have manufactured another twenty-five. Of the thirty weapon platforms, we have eight left. We still have one hundred missiles distributed around the fleet.”
Dato activated the open channel and spoke to the fleet. “Dong Feng shuttles move in from the north and south. Vitaly, move your shuttles in from east and west. The weapon platforms will launch twenty missiles, aim for the crater. Launch all remaining drones but station them around each shuttle for protection.”
“This had better be worth it Lago,” replied Vitaly.
“Just follow your orders Vitaly.” The four shuttles he had hijacked were important but expendable. They boosted his numbers and made his disparate collection of survivors into something closer to a functioning war fleet. The Russians fighting at his side had already proved their worth with their ion cannons. Lago knew they were moving into the final stages of battle with shuttles entering the fray. Drone warfare didn’t seem as vital, soulless machines shooting each other like a game, just going through the motions before the real fight began. Lago had to be prepared. He frantically looked around for Klara’s medical bag.
“Dato, where’s the bag?”
“I’m not your drug dealer.”
Lago cursed and looked around at his crew. Klara had reclaimed her bag and was clutching it apprehensively. Next to her was a small skinny girl. She couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old. Lago frowned, he thought he recognised her. She looked Filipino, but he couldn’t be sure. “Who the fuck is she?” He pointed a shaking finger. The little girl was bleeding from her abdomen and the back of her head. A ghost from the past, but she was real, standing there dripping blood on the floor. “Who the fuck let her on board?” He glared at his crew, but no one answered, they just stared at him in confusion and when he looked back the girl had disappeared. He swore again and snatched Klara’s bag from her.
“Lago, you can’t take any more. You already have dangerously high…”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Lago as he rummaged through the bag, muttering under his breath until he found what he was looking for. He opened the little case with shaking hands and extracted two glass vials. The procedure required concentration and coordination. He breathed out, cracked one, held it under his nose and inhaled deeply. Then repeated the process with the other, letting out a satisfied sigh as he exhaled. He stood up hissing, “yesss,” between his teeth. He drank a bottle of nanite solution as well. He could feel millions of the tiny machines surging through his body, his fingers tingled, he clenched his fists and ground his teeth. He turned around to see Klara staring at him with a horrified look. The entire crew was watching him. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, he never had, and he never would.
He looked at them all evenly. “We are on the verge of victory; you are all lucky to be here with me on this momentous occasion when we start a new civilisation. We will begin a new era of humanity; we will prosper under my leadership.” There was no response, his crew looked even more frightened than usual. There was a pool of blood on the floor where the little girl had been standing. He stared at the blood in confusion. “Clean that shit up,” he turned away in disgust. Dato and Corazon were talking quietly, they both stared at him apprehensively as he approached. “Don’t look so shocked, Corazon. We all have to stay sharp.” He looked at the projection and took some deep breaths, the shabu had his head spinning but he was indestructible and totally in control. He wanted action, he was unstoppable, he could take on the Masama single-handed. He tried to focus through the red mist at the view in front of him.
Inside the crater of Montes Haemus, red lights flickered ominously but there was no sign of activity as the shuttles launched their missiles. Then, as before, the Masama drones rapidly deployed from the crater to intercept. Lago gritted his teeth as the missiles hurtled towards the crater from four different directions. The Masama drones flew straight at the missiles, sacrificing themselves to protect the mountain. There were bright sparks of explosive light just above the crater as the missiles slammed into the drones. None of the missiles got through but they were close. It would only take one to avoid a collision, penetrate the drone defences and fly down into the crater to destroy the Masama habitat.
Lago smiled as he watched the four shuttles advance towards the summit. “More!” he shouted as he ground his teeth and snarled. “More missiles, as soon as they run out of drones, we are in.”
Dato looked at him and shook his head. “We will run out of missiles before they run out of drones. But we might be able to keep them occupied so we can move in with the effector beam.”
“Just fucking do it!” Lago spat, anxious to press home their advantage.
Dato spoke into the comms again. “Launch another twenty missiles. Tobias, start your advance, ready the effector beam.”
Twenty more missiles hurtled towards the crater and again the Masama drones were there to meet them. Explosive flashes pockmarked the space below but this time one of the missiles got through. Slightly off target, it smashed into the slopes of Montes Haemus. The missile exploded half-way down the mountain causing a violent flare and plumes of red-tinged, super-heated dust to rise in a slow roiling cloud. The solar panels installed on the slopes shattered and were sent flying into space. The explosion created a scar on the slopes of the mountain but did no damage to the thick layers of basalt protecting the tunnels beneath.
Five shuttles closed in, escorted by the eight remaining weapon platforms. They launched another clutch of missiles and this time the Masama drone defences barely had time to exit the crater before crashing into them. Lago could sense a change in momentum, he was sure the Masama must be running out of drones. There was an inevitability he could feel in his bones. It was a familiar feeling, he was on the verge of victory, he always won, there was never any doubt. His mind was outside the shuttle, hovering in space, as big as the fleet, manipulating his weapons like a vengeful god dispensing destructive justice on his enemies. He bared his teeth and snarled as his missiles pummelled them and the effector beam moved closer. “More!” he shouted. “We are almost in.”
“Forty missiles left, the printers can’t keep up,” said Corazon.
“Launch them all!” shouted Lago.
Then Masama drones started streaming from the crater. They just kept coming, A slow eruption of bright titanium spheres flowed into the space above the summit. There were so many they blended into one long torrent of glinting metal. Corazon magnified a section showing different configurations of the drones, some were like miniature Masama shuttles with six legs, some were shaped more like flattened wings, some appeared to be changing shape even as they were circling above the summit. Numbers scrolled through on the projection. Lago counted four, then five hundred. The numbers rolled past and still they kept coming. He was speechless, stunned, but his confidence remained.
“Fire! Everything we have!”
The shuttles and their drone contingent opened fire with a railgun barrage as the weapon platforms fired the last of their missiles. The swarm of Masama drones circled in the space above the mountain, they stayed close together, linking up and forming a fluid, intact entity that slowly began to resemble a giant coiling snake glinting silver in the sunlight.
As he watched the Masama drones Lago could hear voices swirling around him. Whispering in his ear, the words were garbled and indecipherable and the voices were becoming shrill and tortured, interspersed with shrieks and screams. His name shouted over and over, he put his hands over his ears and screamed as his fleet threw everything they had at the drone swarm. The nanites surged around inside him, they were part of him, but they wanted to be free. They wanted to escape the confines of his physical body. He closed his eyes and tried to maintain control. In his mind he could see his shuttle fleet and the writhing mass of Masama drones. He was above it and part of it, he suffered every blow, surfed every success. The fleet was an extension of himself.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The railgun barrage was relentless, iron slugs battered the swirling enemy drones, but it was not enough to stop the main body linking together to form a solid shape, a giant looming snakehead. The drones had connected into a shimmering, writhing outer surface like chain mail. There were too many. Lago opened his eyes. He recognised what was coming. They weren’t going to break up and engage in any dogfight. They circled faster building momentum, spiralling into a kamikaze arrowhead designed to smash through anything in their way. The same, brutal, primitive tactics that had destroyed his elevator.
“Send in all the drones,” he shouted. “We have to stop it!”
The last of the BPI drones flew straight at the main body of the swarm, unleashing railgun slugs as they flew. The Masama drones swept through them, direct hits caused sparkling explosions as clouds of vapour swirled, littered with metal debris. A few BPI drones got through and collided with the main body. The impacts shattered the smooth silver snakeskin, sending shards of hot metal flying and disrupting the momentum of the coiling snakehead which lost its integrity for a few brief seconds.
Every muscle in Lago’s body was tense, his head was overheating, his eyes were going to explode. His skin tingled and when he looked at his hands, he could see millions of nanites surging under his skin. He looked up as the snakehead broke apart momentarily, but the destroyed drones were quickly replaced, and it regained its solidity again. He screamed, trying to drown out the voices in his head. “We have to destroy it! Throw everything we have at it!”
“Only a few missiles left. Almost all the drones are destroyed. A few platforms have survived but they don’t have many railgun slugs left. We should retreat,” said Dato.
“Retreat to where? We have nowhere to fucking go!” Lago grabbed at Dato’s arm and turned to face him. “Fucking do it!” he screamed. Dato shook his head with resignation and shrugged him off. He glared at Lago before ordering the Honourable Villain, into the fray.
“All shuttles, use whatever weapons you have left. This is our last chance.”
Lago watched the few remaining weapon platforms unleash the last of their arsenal, the larger railguns did some damage, punching holes into the surface of the snakehead but not halting its momentum. The ion cannons also had a damaging effect, causing drones to break formation and smash into each other, or go spinning off into space but there seemed to be an unlimited supply of drones. Every one they destroyed was immediately replaced with another and the snakehead retained its shape. Lago’s head was spinning, he could barely see through the red mist, but the snakeheads were right in front of him. He reached out with grasping hands. “We have to get closer and strangle it!”
Dato didn’t reply. “Did you hear me?” Lago screamed at him. He was losing control of the battle and losing control of himself. His mind kept jumping out of his body, his view kept changing perspective. The screaming voices were louder all the time, and he couldn’t contain the furious nanites inside him for much longer. He roared again and forced himself to focus on the futile battle between his depleted shuttles and the approaching snakehead. The shuttles used up the last of their railgun slugs on the coiling mass. The effector would soon be the only weapon left. As the Damned Saint, approached, the two Dong Feng shuttles stopped firing their railguns and started to move out of formation.
“Where are they going?” yelled Lago.
“There’s no reply. The last communication I had with them was minutes ago, the soldiers were having trouble subduing Son and his passengers.”
“Just fucking shoot them!”
“They won’t get far.” The snakehead swarm was whipping around furiously beneath them. It split into two silver streams like a forked tongue. Aiming for the two Dong Feng shuttles which were trying to escape in different directions. They were defenceless and not moving fast enough. Lago watched one snakehead smash straight through the hull, not bothering to use any beam weapons, cutting the shuttle in two with brute force. He could see a few bodies falling out of the gaping hole as the snakehead passed through like a giant spear before the shuttle was ripped apart by multiple explosions. The other Dong Feng shuttle was caught at its stern. The second snakehead smashed into its firing boosters causing a spectacular phosphorus flash that tore through the ship. The explosive light lit up the sky as the reactor blew and the snakehead emerged out of the eruption undamaged.
“Got what they deserved, the spineless bastards.” Lago couldn’t help but feel satisfaction in the destruction of Son and his entourage, for trying to abandon him. The twin snakeheads swept around towards the two Russian shuttles who held their ground defiantly. Their ion cannons disrupted a few of the drones. Some crashed back into the main body of the snake, some drifted off into space like they had given up, but every destroyed drone was replaced by another. The speeding, curling snakeheads severed the Russian shuttles simultaneously, passing straight through like they weren’t even there, leaving behind two more explosive flashes and an expanding cloud of debris and dead bodies. Lago could hear brief screams and Russian curses as the comms connection was abruptly cut.
The destruction focused Lago’s scattered brain for a few seconds. He had three remaining shuttles. The Tobias troop carrier was their last chance, its effector the only weapon they had left. The railguns were spent, and the on-board printers had no more substrate to work with. Lago leaned over and grabbed the comms from Dato.
“Tobias! Fire your effector.”
The snakeheads coiled around each other in a double helix, eating up the space between. The two defenceless K-star shuttles held their ground behind the Tobias as it faced them. As they came closer, within range of the effector, the snakeheads began to disintegrate. Their seemingly solid form breaking apart and individual drones went haywire. Spinning off wildly in explosions of sparks. Twisting backwards and crashing into the snakehead body or just zigzagged off into space or towards the Moon’s stark horizon. The snakeheads tried to change direction, but their long twisting bodies were already committed to a momentum that had them flowing straight into the effector beam.
“It’s working!” Lago shouted triumphantly. “Use the slave mode, turn them on their own, have them attack their own swarm.”
“They are too many, we can’t control all of them at once,” came the reply from Tobias. “Each drone under our influence needs to be handled individually and we just don’t have the capability.”
Dato grabbed the comms back from Lago with a glare. “Make a template instruction package, order the slave drones to attack the mountain, aim them at the crater opening. Send it to as many drones as possible and have them relay the instruction. Do it quickly.”
Every muscle in Lago’s body ached with tension, he ground his teeth, his jaw was going to crack, and his head was overheating. He was fighting his own internal battle trying to contain the nanites inside him and control his own mutinous mind. He needed a drink, his fevered brain craved more amphetamine, but he needed to win this war. The Tobias crew worked quickly, and the slave drones reacted as soon as they received their instructions, peeling off in a controlled dive towards the mountain below. One by one they stopped their erratic spinning and shaking, regained their composure, and plotted their downwards trajectory. The Masama drones that were unaffected by the beam started to give chase, opening fire on their defected siblings to protect their home. Lago soon lost track of what was happening. The red mist around the periphery of his vision closed in. All the drones looked the same and it became impossible to tell which were enslaved and which were giving chase.
The Masama drones opened fire with their beam weapons, visible as red flashes burning lines across space through the residue. They targeted the enslaved drones and blew them apart. Glowing bits of hot metal gently rained down on the slopes of the mountain which was littered with shards of broken solar panels.
“Can’t they fire back? They are sitting targets getting slaughtered,” shouted Lago.
“Slave mode has never been used before, it was designed to control one operating system, not hundreds.”
Lago swore as the last of the enslaved drones exploded. It had gotten close, exploding only a hundred metres from the summit of the mountain. The remaining Masama drones swooped around in the space above the mountain and reformed their twin snakehead shape. The languid movement of the snakeheads was graceful but deadly, they quickly closed the gap to the shuttles. The sharpened point at the tip of the head made their intentions obvious.
“Here we go again, ready the effectors,” said Dato.
The snakeheads twisted around each other in a spinning coil, gaining momentum then separating in different directions. One arcing north, the other to the south. They flew in a coordinated curve, curling around to ram the shuttles from both sides. The two K-star shuttles were close in behind the Tobias, protected by the wide beam of the effector but neither of the shuttles could be protected from a pincer attack.
“Tobias, move around to target one attack front. Villain, try to fend off the other front with the last of the railguns,” shouted Dato desperately.
The Damned Saint shook, the alarms and the crew started screaming. Lago’s mouth was open, ready to curse, bark orders, or abuse, but the only noise he emitted was a low growling moan as he realised there was nothing he could do. “Fuck!” he yelled defiantly. He couldn’t believe this was happening. As the battle outside turned against him, so did his internal battle to maintain control. He began to lose focus. The voices got louder, and the red mist closed in. The nanites were trying to burst from his body, to escape their flesh and bone prison. He fought to maintain control. He was immortal, enduring, unkillable. He would fight to the end then fight some more.
The projection wavered, cutting in and out. Or was it his vision. It showed the drones closing in from the south. Their flight path was smooth and direct, gliding towards the shuttles in a graceful arc. They struck simultaneously. The Tobias was still trying to get its effector in range as it was hit from the stern and the exploding boosters lit up the sky. The hull split apart, disintegrating in an expanding cloud of volatile gas and debris. The Honourable Villain was helpless having expended all its weapons. The boosters ignited in a last-minute attempt to escape but it was too late. The elegant K-star shuttle was cut in two as the drones scythed through the hull, spilling bodies into space as their warheads exploded, shredding the shuttle into scraps of twisted metal.
“Fire the boosters,” said Dato. “Aim for the landing pads, we will see how far we get.”
Lago was losing control of himself and the battle, but he couldn’t accept defeat. “Shut up!” he screamed as the voices grew louder. Chaos unfolded inside the Damned Saint. Scientists screamed and cried, soldiers broke down in the face of certain death, whispering last minute prayers, asking the universe for mercy, for a miraculous intervention. Dato and Corazon were silent. There was nothing they could say or do. Lago tried to concentrate on the flickering view with his distorted vision, but nothing made sense. Identical drones with identical weapons screamed around the shuttle, multiple explosions lit up the sky as the space around the shuttle became a chaotic, confusing, sphere of destruction plummeting towards the dusty grey surface of the Moon.
He heard a voice behind him say his name. “Lago.” He turned. It was the little Filipino girl standing behind him. Her stomach was bleeding from a gaping wound. Blood dripped down her skinny little legs and onto the floor. Her hand disappeared inside the bloody gash. She withdrew her arm, pointing a red finger at him. Lago screamed and the little girl vanished. He looked around in confusion, his vision clouded with red as the shuttle started to disintegrate.
A glancing blow took out the port side wing sending the shuttle into a gut-wrenching spin. Anything that wasn’t tied down was sent crashing against the walls, bodies flying, limbs breaking. Lago could barely hear the screams above the alarms and howling rush of escaping air. The stern was ripped away. The boosters exploded as they separated from the hull and bodies were sucked out into the ball of fire. Dato turned and shouted something at Lago, but he couldn’t hear. Their eyes met and Dato smiled as he and Corazon were engulfed in a searing blast of superheated vapour that blew through the window, razing them all with glass and fire. Lago tried to protect his face as the flash of heat ripped through him, searing his clothes, boiling his skin. Shards of glass lacerated him, and the air was sucked out of his lungs. The pain was intense, and he almost lost consciousness, he vomited, nauseous with the spin and a stream of acidic bile coated his burning face. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as the remains of the shuttle hurtled down towards the surface. Lago had no idea what direction they were headed, his last view was of the slopes of Montes Haemus before the red mist enveloped everything. He tried to scream, to bellow a final defiant roar but the vacuum sucked the air from his throat.