A Fight Already Lost

[Kelly MacAryn]

This is a fragment of Kelly's pre-Omniverse history: events that took place in one of the many realities he's visited previously, now recalled during unconsciousness. As such, it has some of the qualities of a dream, and is without context in many ways - during the course of these events he knew many things which he does not now recall. 

The traveler stared at the city around him, at the battle that raged through the San Francisco streets. Alien warriors with segmented, chitinous bodies, clad in greenish-gray armor that rattled and hummed as they moved, traded energy-beams with clockwork automatons and shining silver hard-light constructs. A ship, fully as large as the city, red and threatening, disk-shaped and almost organic in texture, hovered overhead.  The basso-profundo roar of its anti-gravity propulsion shook the ground. People ran and screamed, largely ignored by the combatants.

But the scene, however dramatic, took a back seat to what Kelly's erstwhile opponent had just revealed. It was everywhere – a thread running through the world, a rusty-flavored vibration in the fabric of space that he couldn't quite identify. 

Now that he knew where to point his extrasensory perceptions, Kelly's new friends and the world they lived in were like a mural painted over a window. If he cast his senses wide, and focused, maybe he could see what was on the other side of the glass.

The psychic gestured for the Mulgaren to hold on for a second, closed his eyes and concentrated.

All he saw was waste.  

Ashes and Waste. The skeleton of an ancient city, gray with age and a patina of soot, cowered beside a vast, dry basin that stretched to the horizon - the Pacific Ocean's empty grave. Alien soldiers flittered and skittered among the ruins, battling assemblies of half-functional junk and flickering, inconstant vector-sculptures.  

He opened his eyes and keyed his mic.

“Solicus?” he said, shocked at his own calm. 

“Kinda busy, new guy. How's the tower? Don't tell me you beat the Mulgaren's champions already!”

“They're not important. The Mulgaren called a time-out... look, Solicus. I'm sorry. I don't know how else to say it - You're not real.”

In New York City, Solicus frowned, kicked an alien warrior in the chest. The four-armed veteran flew backwards as though it had been shot by a cannon and smashed against the stone steps of the courthouse. Two more grabbed his arms, and he swung the creatures into one another with such tremendous force that they practically exploded. Blindingly bright plasma bolts from a dozen weapons burst harmlessly against his shining torso.

“I feel pretty real, new guy! And so are those champions you're not fighting! What's up with you all of a sudden?”

Whatever the signal was, the traveler could tell, it changed things. It actually looked an awful lot like how Archimedes had described Kelly's own warp-effect, only on a much larger scale, pulling tiny levers that controlled very big things indeed. The Anointed were real in a certain sense – something was making them real.

But it was paper thin. The effect was global, but the 'signal' was weak, and starting to fail. The reality it was creating was breaking down.

Kelly remembered Anne, the Indestructible Girl, hiding in the Arizona desert,  and so happy to see him because she'd been absolutely convinced that she was going to spend the rest of eternity alone.

Solicus keyed his mic and pulsed his thermal aura, leaping into the air and burning through a wing of alien spacecraft.

“Vortex? Kelly! Answer me, dammit!”

The traveler felt ill. The way things kept breaking down when he tried to use them, that people around him kept getting mysteriously sick, suddenly had an explanation: His own reality-warping qualities, the mysterious potency that let his mind and body adapt and grow among myriad worlds and times, was much stronger than whatever was maintaining the facade he'd been interacting with, and it was poking holes in the illusion.

The Mulgaren of Mulgaren chittered sympathetically.

Do you see, Breaker? This is not a War. You fight shoulder to shoulder with ghosts.

Kelly looked up at the Classicorp Tower, a technological wonder of artificial metals, many-angled and shining in the sun, then back at The Mulgaren and his multi-limbed, chitinous champions. The traveler sat down heavily on the tower's front steps.

“All of them?”

The Mulgaren blinked eight of its eyes.

The female who lairs in the wastes is the last of her kind.

“But why? And for that matter how?”

The Mulgaren skittered over to the steps, his hundreds of tiny legs clattering on the pavement, and after some adjusting managed to sit beside Kelly.

Loreley's voice crackled in his headset, updating the team on the situation over the Atlantic. Solicus started to say something about Kelly.

He didn't want to hear it. He took off his headset and crushed it in his hand.

Five hundred and twelve of this Earth's solar cycles past, it was much as you have come to know it. Human civilization thrived, nations bickered, and the Anointed were this world's Champions, and it's protectors.

Kelly nodded. He'd pretty much put it together himself already – not the specifics, certainly, but generally speaking it was at least somewhat clear what was going on.

Still, he listened. He wanted to know.

The Anointed had faced threats from the stars before, but there was a rhythm to it. A form. Wars in this galaxy follow certain rules of engagement. The aggressor must state his intent. There must be a contest of champions. If a planet is to be destroyed, the populace must first be warned. Certain tactics and classes of weapon are banned under penalty of xenocide. A state of Total War has not existed between civilized worlds since before I was Mulgaren, and I have been Mulgaren for a very long time.

“And somebody stopped following the rules.”

The Mulgaren chittered sadly.

I wish that had been the case, for then there could have been justice. No, Breaker, the Old Treaties remain intact. Tell me, has your Archimedes mentioned a project he is working on? A new kind of sensor or communicator for exploring the structure of the cosmos?

The psychic thought immediately of the Lambda beacon.

“What does that have to do with anything? Are you telling me his pet project malfunctioned somehow? Destroyed the world? That it's creating this... this echo?”

The Mulgaren snorted, its many respiratory orifices contracting. There was something a little peevish about the sound, though it could have been Kelly's imagination.

No. Archimedes never built anything that did not work exactly as he expected it to. But he had drastically misinterpreted the nature and origin of the signals that led him to construct the device in the first place. You see, Breaker, there are two great military powers that exist beyond our universe, moving freely throughout infinity and utterly unconcerned with the laws of our galaxy. One is largely benevolent, though with a long and violent history. The other is sheer, perfect terror.

A cloud of dire understanding drifted across Kelly's face. “Austroavia and Harboria.”

All twelve of the Mulgaren's eyes pivoted in their sockets.

You have traveled far, Breaker, that you know those names.

Kelly's head was starting to hurt, split between stress and an aching sense of loss. He'd been beginning to think he might have finally found a place here, in this strange, bright reality, and he could feel it slipping inevitably away.

He could picture it so clearly in his mind. Little, wizened Archimedes in his shiny, golden coat, standing in his lab, so thrilled that his machine was working, basking in the triumph of science and the thrill of discovery. The super-scientist would have practically been floating as he beamed naive good will out into the multiverse. Smiling his knowing little smile as he accidentally hacked into Harboria's military network and called down unforgiving doom on the human race.

“What did they do.”

The Earth's planetary defenses were all designed to protect against attacks from within the orbit of Mars, using bright, hot, fast-moving weapons launched from space. I know, because my people helped to build them. Harboria is not so polite. As near as we were able to reconstruct when we responded to the Anointed's distress beacon, the Harborians located this planet's supervolcanic calderas and seeded a sufficient mass of antimatter within each to trigger an eruption. The Earth and its people boiled, choked and froze.

Kelly's entire body felt stiff, and cold. Like if he moved, did anything at all, he'd crack and fall to pieces. It was a feeling he'd had before. Seattle. Dunkirk. It was helplessness.

He stared at a spot between his feet and tried to make sense of it.

“So if none of this is real, if this iteration of the Earth is dead, then why are you here? Why is any of this here?”

The Mulgaren of Mulgaren stood up and pointed a tentacle at the Classicorp tower.

Archimedes. Alone in his tower of wonders, he survived, while Scipio strangled on poisoned air and Loreley sank beneath the waves for the last time, and Solicus made his weeping, furious last stand against a trio of Harborian Champions, mighty planet-killers sent to be sure this terrible thing was well and truly done.”

Kelly had to ask.

“Solicus....How'd he do?”

Even among the fire and the dust, the scar of their battle cut across the surface of this world like a beacon aimed at the stars. He avenged himself upon them with such great anger and all-consuming passion that for a brief time the Earth's sun burned low – but his body was never meant to draw so directly on the energy-load of a G-class star. In victory, mighty Solicus perished in his turn, and in his grief and his recklessness he saw the terrible goals of Harboria through to their end, ruining the planet beyond their darkest of dreams.

The traveler nodded. That sounded like Solicus.

“You were talking about Archimedes.”

The Mulgaren made a sound like a dog's squeak toy.

He went mad. He re-purposed his communications device to affect the fabric of time and space instead of merely exploring it. Archimedes tried to restore the world he knew. Unfortunately, he died before he could perfect his device – and the the Artificial intelligence he left to complete his work lacked his scope of vision.

The alien lord flailed his tendrils.

You see the result all around you.

Kelly closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. He'd experienced enough tragedy that by now he had riding out the emotional impact down to a science. He wasn't going to cry. 

 “I still don't understand why your people are attacking.”

The Mulgaren turned to the traveler and blinked – only three of its eyes this time.

I would have thought you'd have figured it out by now. We are saving the galaxy. The ghost of Archimedes is building his communicator, and he will call down the Harborians once again. It will take them no time at all to discover that Earth is an illusion, and they will look elsewhere for the perpetrators. After all, they have already left this world a cinder!

The Mulgaren twiddled it's various appendages, clacked its mandibles, clearly nervous.

Harboria cannot be allowed to notice those civilizations of this galaxy that yet survive. We have not the means to contact Austroavia for assistance, nor the power to stand against Harboria. Our only safety is in silence.

"Then I suppose," Kelly responded quietly, speaking slow in order to keep the tremor from his voice. "That you and I have some work to do."