Dance Of The Damned: The Dawn Gods War chapter four.
Chapter 4
Cruithne glowed in Auroras of rainbow patterns, fields folding within fields across the electromagnetic spectrum. Whirling maelstroms moving like dancing flames in the Solar winds. Llew watched the beautiful apparition grow before him. A kaleidoscopic candle flickering in the endless night of space.
Maneuvering thrusters pulsed. The ionized exhaust glowed as it dissipated in the vacuum of space. The transport vectored into position, set to fall into close orbit around Cruithne. The crew readied themselves for their missions. Each squad held a specific set of objectives. Altogether, to strip and retrieve every scrap of technology from their brief refuge of Cruithne. The continuing wars between Aos Sidhe and the Fomorii on Fenias, the third planet in the Solar system had devastated both sides. The Aos Sidhe held only one single base remaining, Atlan. The Fomorii were much more dispersed. The Formorii dwelt in the thick swamps, the deserts. Hiding now. Ruled only by their terror and envy.
The Aos Sidhe, lived in a desperation of their own. Centuries of war madness had marked the survivors minds and spirits. Now, rebuilding, survival and remembering had become central to their existence.
Llew fell towards Cruithne. Maneuvering thrusters pulsed. The battle armor served well. Wings folded, cocooning the body. Wrapping about Llew's armored form providing additional layers of protection.
Wings could provide no other more critical function in the vacuum of space.
Though, when fully extended they did provide for greater multiband coms range and gathering additional solar power. As with all tech of the Aos Sidhe, layer upon layer of complexity, complexity designed to compliment and enhance the natural capabilities of the Aos Sidhe.
The rest of the team followed planned descent paths. Accessing Cruithne was a tricky process. Threading through multiple layers of defense, field dampers, wave pulse jammers, variable frequency Maser arrays. All designed to not only prevent Fomorii intrusion, but to obliterate any such attempts.
The Aos Sidhe insertion team moved with the precision only the Aos Sidhe were capable of. There were only one hundred forty four Aos Sidhe remaining. Well, one hundred forty six if the triune Morrigna were counted as three. No one knew exactly how to count the Morrigna. Llew however had ascertained clues. He believed that Badbh, was in fact the original Cathabadua. That Macha and Nemain were the clones. Well, at the least, that was Llew's current belief. In the three centuries since the Morrigna had been discovered, having escaped their Fomorii tormentors, Llew had studied them closely. Gone was fair Catha, his beautiful young wife , in her place walked this triune anomaly of fury, terror, and destruction.
Llew himself was a new thing. Once he had been Nodens. Nuada the silver hand. Now, he was becoming something, someone, else. One could not take up one of the godslayers and not be changed. Llew had schemed and schemed successfully. Managing to bond with all three.
The Morrigna had been planning to take up the three remaining weapons. Llew, seeing how much his Catha had already suffered could not allow that calamity to befall her, them, each, what did he call her, them , ahh that insufferable irritating woman, women aaach!!
Is falling flying? Is flying falling?
It feels like both. Either way, it's exhilarating. A Thing for certain though, zero gravity feels like neither. Zero G feels like movement, in every direction simultaneously. A bit confusing. In zero G the only way to know your relative motion is visually. That keeps things exciting.
Distracted by thoughts of Badbh/Catha Llew had failed to note his approach to the surface of Cruithne. Zero gravity gave no sense of motion. One only knew direction, and velocity by observation and comparing positions between relative objects. Such as, Llew and the small moonlet Cruithne. That distraction was corrected rather abruptly. Sudden Impact tended to get ones attention.
Luckily, Llew's head was harder than the silicate surface of Cruithne. The impact giving the airless moon a sort of dusty atmosphere. The rest of the team touched down in delicate form. Laughing and pointing at Llew, who having rebounded was drifting slowly away.
No one offered assistance. The stream of cursing , being both impassioned and inventive established the fact that everything other than Llew's pride was more or less intact. If slightly dented. Thrusters activated and Llew joined the team on the surface.
Access to the interior would be more difficult than the team had planned. The Fomorii had bombarded the planetoid with kinetic weapons. The interior systems were still functional, as the visible fields clearly showed.
Still, the hatches were, missing. Destroyed in the kinetic bombardments. Cutting a new access was going to be tedious.
Can you imagine the joys of pickaxe and shovels in microgravity? The Aos Sidhe team dare not employ laser, maser, or chemical explosives in clearing access. There was no way of knowing what automated defense systems were still active. Explosives would alter the orbital characteristics of Cruithne. Not to mention potentially drawing the unwanted attention of defense systems.
Swinging a pickaxe while using maneuvering thrusters to counter act leverage, impact and movement is problematic. It can be done, not without difficulty though. Cataloguing the continual debates with force, momentum, motion and miscalculations is counter productive. New curses, expletives and the eloquent expression of frustration raised the difficulty of the task at hand. Laughter is distracting in itself. Better to laugh than cry any day.
Complications aside progress was made. A week of frustrated hilarity, sweat and effort paid off. Accessing a service shaft the team managed to enter the interior.
Can the disappointment be expressed?
Cruithne had been stripped centuries before.
Despite the desperate hopes of recovering equipment left behind, very little remained.
A few computer terminals, batteries, and data crystals remained. The defense systems still operated, powered by solar charging systems. However, they were far too large to remove and transport.
The mission was a bust. Yes the data crystals were priceless. So much had been lost over the centuries . The kinetic bombardments had eradicated the Aos Sidhe tech base. A hundred thousand refugees were now one hundred forty four. Chemical weapons, high energy weapons, and bioweapons had altered the Aos Sidhe. Gone were the few Draeg that had survived initially.
The Aos Sidhe, were a doomed people. Having won the war so to speak, their victory had left only ashes and ruin.
The team gathered what they could. The return to Fenias, was, not joyous.
Knowledge of technology is rather insignificant without the ability to produce that technology. No industrial base, not even the tools to create said capabilities.
Once the few remaining pieces ceased to function the Aos Sidhe would literally have only Rocks and sticks to begin rebuilding.
Nanotech machines with vacuum energy systems, were incredibly difficult to produce with the tech base. Without it, centuries would pass before anything could be accomplished.
If the Aos Sidhe survived that long.
Plan A, was inoperable. Plan B, was their only hope. Long term breeding programs, racing to use the fragments of tech they had left to alter native Fenian life for the desperate needs of the Aos Sidhe.
Vengeance and rage are unforgiving false gods.
Still, the Aos Sidhe, as war mad as they had become were incapable of surrender. It's a long fall though.
