Scent of Smoke - Prologue. Prologue - Abandoned

There was a siren blaring, somewhere. Its rhythmic shrieking was pounding within her skull as much as the shots that had just sent her head jarring into the panel before her. She looked up, her vision rippling as though she’d dropped a stone into a glassy lake. Forcing herself to resume something resembling a sitting position, her fumbling hands found again the controls of her craft as a soft, male voice played in her ear.

“Major, our FTL drive continues to degrade. Failure is inevitable.”

Ariss Temaga shook her head, repressing a growl in her throat. She had little patience for the artificial pleasantries of the fleet-wide A.I. network at the best of times, least of all now. But a cursory glance at the ship status display confirmed what he–it–had said. The faster-than-light pods slung above and below her cockpit were dancing between minimal output and something rather less, the distorted rainbow of high-space beyond the windshield growing darker as her ship threatened to barrel out of warp into cold normality.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said aloud, more to herself than the computer. The vibration translating through the seat of her flight suit gave the lie to her statement, but the ship did not contradict her. “You’ll hold together.”

Within a moment, however, something caught her attention that seemed keyed to give the lie to that, too.

“Fuck!”

The expletive escaped her lips even as her right hand slammed the throttle into full reverse, sending the craft crashing back into low-space in a groan of metal and a roar of engines as the sub-light exhausts flared into life.

Her reason for doing so arrived within moments; a second ship, not much bigger than hers, but ugly, asymmetrical and with deep black armour plates bolted on apparently wherever there was room, and sometimes where there wasn’t, too. The intruder exited the higher realms somewhat more gracefully than her own ship had, but that was to her advantage; before the sensors had fully resolved the image of her foe, she had already sent two brilliant white lights hurtling into its predictable flight path.

Temaga did not need to witness her inevitable victory over this one ship. By the time the oxygen fire had been snuffed out by vacuum, the black metal shell surrounding it having been blown apart by her weapons, she had already turned tail and resumed her dogged jump for home.

She silently cursed the lone Pestilence bastard. The engagement, though fleeting, had stolen precious seconds from her lead ahead of the armada; which, she thought bitterly, had been their plan this entire journey. Send single ships to harry her, whittle away at the gap between them, rather than commit the resources of an entire carrier group to chase down one survivor.

Within minutes she sighted her goal, a huge gravitational spike directly ahead. Descending from high-space in a more dignified manner than before, she could feel the final death-rattle of the FTL pods as they gave out at last, their wondrous innards finally defeated by stresses they were never meant to endure.

Despite her agitation and anger, the serene, blue-white orb that was the Motherworld soothed her as it always had, and she felt something that might have been calm as her basic duty took over, one finger depressing the transmitter button on the control lever.

“Base One/Temaga. I’ve got three hive ships riding my tail, I'm gonna be coming in hot.”

The planet quickly filled her entire field of vision, her ship shuddering on contact with air as she began retrograde manoeuvres. She drummed her fingers idly while the descent continued, awaiting a response, whether vocal or digital.

“Base One/Temaga, I say again, you’d best have the big guns rolled out. I’ve got three hive ships up my ass. Please acknowledge.”

Still her earpiece gave her nothing. Breaking through the cloud layer, she saw the beloved sight at last; her city, the impeccable blend of new and old, high and low, stained a deep, ruby red by the setting sun. Still lower she flew, noticing neither air cars nor foot traffic in her intense visual sweeps of the streets beneath her.

“No…” she said aloud, her lips curving into a mocking smile at the thought of the Pestilence managing to strike here while she had been away. Her people had merely taken refuge in the underground shelters to prepare for the siege, or else…

But no, she thought again, this time not giving voice to her feelings. They would never run, not now. The very idea of fleeing turned her stomach, as it should any being who called themselves Builder.

But it was not without a certain disquiet she leapt from her cockpit upon her arrival at the military complex at the city centre moments later and strode across the deserted, and seemingly much bigger than usual, hangar deck. Despite the panic she felt bubbling in her chest, she managed to keep her face expressionless, removing her helmet and running a hand though her short, black hair as she boarded the elevator and ordered it up to the command level.

When the doors snapped open, she still kept her face inscrutable, though the sight of the empty room hit her like an iron ball to the stomach. With each deliberate step she moved across the control area to the balcony doors, which opened silently before her gaze; a gaze that fell upon the impossible, the inconceivable.

They were all gone. Neither the hum of a car, nor the shout of a friend, nor the song of a bird reached her ears. Another step brought her hands to rest on the balcony rail above the vast, impossibly empty metropolis, the wind singing its own mournful dirge through her hair, and for the first time, Ariss Temaga allowed a look of fear to mar her previously impassive face.

For in the darkening sky ahead, she saw the shadows of the great hive ships coming for her.