LOCATION: PORTAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP
AREA: ASHEN CITY, NOCTURNUS
STARDATE: 4205771x257 | TIME: EVENING
---
System Message:
The following events occurred outside the area observed by the System. This historical Record was reconstructed from a memory archive voluntarily released after the subject Trevor Gant’s return.
---
The constant cover of gray clouds hung heavily over Nocturnus. It was more than just a weather report. The clouds were a metaphor for the day those in power on the planet were about to have.
Trevor and the pieces he had set into motion would see to that.
He picked up another device from his desk.
It was a large metallic sphere with simple handles protruding in four directions. It was heavy, but Trevor heaved it over his shoulder like it was nothing, and looked down at Tin.
The resolute look on her face told him all he needed to know. She was ready. She nodded back and opened the door to his office.
“Everyone gather for a moment,” Trevor shouted.
The four members of Portal Tech set their tablets down and walked over.
“What’s this, Varris?” one of them asked.
Varris smiled, and Tin shuddered inside, knowing what was next.
“This,” Varris said, “is the project Magister Kallus and I have been working on for the past fifty days.”
He set it down in the center of the round black table around which they were all standing.
It landed with a thud that caused two of them to jump.
“How were you carrying that when it’s so—”
Varris laughed.
“Never mind that. You’re going to love this tech. Everyone grab a handle. Let me show you how it works.”
They hesitated, but in the end all four leaned forward. The moment they wrapped their fingers around the metal handles, Varris reached out and pressed a button on the top of the sphere.
Then, he simply turned to Tin and said: “Let’s move. It’s time.”
She looked back at the members of Portal Tech, all four of them among the most promising scientists the Empire possessed. Their eyes were open, but they seemed to be staring at nothing.
Their bodies began shaking slightly. One of them, who Trevor knew had the highest Intelligence stat of the four, was trying to fight it. Trying to pull back. Trying in vain to open his fingers and release the sphere.
But once Trevor had pressed that button, they were locked in place. Nobody would move until all of their mana was drained, pulled into the sphere to power the implosion that would take down Portal Tech and most of the Upper District with it.
The horror in their eyes was something that would haunt Tin Shale for years afterward. Every so often, those eight eyes would come back in her nightmares, staring at her, accusing her. Reminding her of the day she helped to take down the Empire on Nocturnus.
Trevor grabbed her hand, wrenching her from her thoughts, and they began walking briskly through the halls.
“If we run, they’ll know something is going on,” he had told her earlier that morning when they went over the plan one final time. They made it to security in eight minutes.
“Leaving early today?” the Guard asked, a mischievous smile on his face.
“Yes,” Trevor replied. “Magister Kallus has given me the day to spend with my mistress here.”
He pulled Tin against his chest, and she forced a shy smile. She knew he didn’t think of her that way, but he had to keep up the ruse around the Guard.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“Ah, I’m jealous. Well, enjoy your time off and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Trevor just nodded once and left the building, Tin right next to him.
“Good,” he said. “Now we head north.”
At the Off-World Transport Station, Black Guard Henson stood at his post. He fished a small disc from his pocket and stared at it.
“How did this get here?” he mumbled.
He couldn’t remember how he had ended up with the object, but he woke that morning with a driving need to bring it to work with him.
It had been sitting on his kitchen counter for a week now, but today was the day. He was sure of it. Stardate 4205771 x257.
That was the day. Now, he stood at his post at the Station staring down at it.
“What was I supposed to do again?”
It came to him at exactly one hour after the second bell, as if on cue.
“Right,” he muttered.
He walked the short distance to the building housing the galactic beacon. It was the tallest building on Nocturnus.
He remembered the conversation with Varris. That guy was so cool. So smart, and definitely heading places.
Henson recalled the instructions he had been given, as if it had happened inside a dream.
Climb 257 stairs.
The same number of stairs as the stardate.
Then, he was told, there would be a spot on the inside wall where the disc would fit.
It was a magnet.
Yes, he remembered now.
Henson opened the door to the beacon and began climbing.
As if in a trance, he counted the steps. Winding round and round the narrow, cylindrical structure, he climbed.
When he got to number 257, he turned to his right and to his surprise, there was a metallic plate affixed to the wall.
Had it always been there?
Henson didn’t know.
But before he could question anything, his hand raised. When he was several inches away, the disc in his hand shot forward, affixing itself to the plate in the wall with a solid bang.
The sound surprised Henson and caused him to fall backward. He slammed into the wall behind him and nearly lost his footing.
He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs, and was surprised to find himself in a circular stairwell.
“What the hell am I doing here?”
Henson shrugged and took the stairs back down, returning to his post.
Minutes later, triggered by the shockwaves from the explosion in the Upper District, the metallic disc activated.
The vibration it emitted was not mechanical, but electromagnetic. It was a rapidly oscillating field that bloomed outward from the disc once it detected the surge it had been waiting for.
The powerful magnets embedded inside locked it firmly to the plate, anchoring the field in place.
The disc had only a finite store of energy, but it had been positioned with surgical precision.
Just inches away, a conduit carrying power and control signals upward to the galactic beacon ran through the inner wall of the tower.
The electromagnetic field flooded the conduit, inducing chaotic currents and corrupting the beacon’s phase-control systems.
Protective fail-safes tripped in rapid succession as the signal collapsed, severing the beacon’s connection to the wider Empire.
The resulting surge was enough.
Deep within the tower, a second device, one Trevor had placed there in his Rogue form two nights earlier, registered the fault and armed itself.
As the beacon went dark, the bomb at the tower’s base detonated, exploding outward and annihilating the Off-World Transport Station, thirty-six spacefaring vessels, and the Nocturnus Black Guard Headquarters in a single, catastrophic instant.
All across the Ashen City, Black Guard and other security forces were redirected from their usual patrols to the Upper District, Portal Tech, and Transport.
The second explosion was the cue, and Tin’s friend Gray led over two thousand people to the Storehouse, through the tunnel, and out the other end.
As the throng approached the shimmering portal gate, six mages stood as if in a trance, three on either side. Their hands rested on pads just below waist level, and their eyes showed only the whites.
Gray waved her hand in front of the nearest mage’s face, and when the mage didn’t react, she nodded. It was exactly as Tin and that man Varris had told her.
“Okay,” she yelled. “Let’s move! Run!”
They didn’t need to be told twice, and hundreds ran through the gate every few seconds. When Gray thought they were about halfway through, she took out the small piece of metal Tin had given to her.
She reached under the pad on which the mage rested his hand and placed the module against the pad.
She heard a click sound out loud enough that she jumped backward, but the mages didn’t budge.
“We’re on a timer now,” she yelled. “Keep it moving! Keep it moving!”
She waved the people through, and kept a close watch on the time.
When there were around a hundred men left, staying back and talking quietly, apparently trying to decide whether to leave or not, Gray shrugged.
The final bell of the day rang out across the Ashen City. It was her signal. Time was up.
She ran forward through the portal at the last minute.
The module she placed had switched the portal’s source of power from mechanical means, back to the mage’s own mana.
This much was part of the normal portal shutdown procedure.
But this time, the pads their hands rested on did not send the signal to their brains to bring them back to consciousness.
Just after Gray passed through, smoke began rising from the six mages as their entire mana stores were depleted in minutes. They began turning to ash as the machine took everything from them to keep itself going. All biological, metabolic, and cellular energy was pulled through the pads until there was nothing left.
Finally, when all that remained of the six mages was a pile of greasy, black soot on the ground, the machine had nothing to power it.
It was unable to engage a safe shutdown procedure, and it released the bridge from the origin side. This created a vacuum effect, pulling all forms of matter in range into the rift.
The backlash on Nocturnus was so massive that it nearly created a black hole.
The hundred men who had been pondering reporting all of this to the Empire died first, their bodies sucked first into null space, then disintegrated at the molecular level.
Next was a sizeable piece of the Ashen City itself. When the cycle of destruction finally slowed, the rift closed, leaving a gaping crater from which, in the end, the planet Nocturnus would never recover.