Core Threat: Black Ocean: Astral Prime, #11

By J.S. Morin

To fight is to lose. Not to fight is to die.

 

The galaxy has gone from troubled to doomed. Now faced with a multiplying threat, the races of the Milky Way are faced with a foe who cannot be stopped, cannot be turned back. And yet, for the sake of their own survival, they fight on in the desperate hope that they can hold out long enough to prevail.

 

And they're running out of time. One of the ARGO core worlds may be next on the menu for the world-devouring monsters.

 

As Cedric frantically searches for an alternative way to combat the abominations, Hiroko attempts to halt the proliferation of ancient weapons that are only making the situation worse in the long run.

 

Core Threat is the eleventh book in the Black Ocean: Astral Prime series. It hearkens back to location-based space sci-fi classics like Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Astral Prime builds on the rich Black Ocean universe, introducing a colorful cast of characters for new and returning readers alike. Come along for the ride as a minor outpost in the middle of nowhere becomes a key point of interstellar conflict.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227870384

J.S. Morin

I am a creator of worlds and a destroyer of words. As a fantasy writer, my works range from traditional epics to futuristic fantasy with starships. I have worked as an unpaid Little League pitcher, a cashier, a student library aide, a factory grunt, a cubicle drone, and an engineer--there is some overlap in the last two. Through it all, though, I was always a storyteller. Eventually I started writing books based on the stray stories in my head, and people kept telling me to write more of them. Now, that's all I do for a living. I enjoy strategy, worldbuilding, and the fantasy author's privilege to make up words. I am a gamer, a joker, and a thinker of sideways thoughts. But I don't dance, can't sing, and my best artistic efforts fall short of your average notebook doodle. When you read my books, you are seeing me at my best. My ultimate goal is to be both clever and right at the same time. I have it on good authority that I have yet to achieve it. Visit me at jsmorin.com

Book preview

Core Threat

CORE THREAT

MISSION 11

BLACK OCEAN: ASTRAL PRIME

J.S. MORIN

M.A. LARKIN

MAGICAL SCRIVENER PRESS

Copyright © 2019 J.S. Morin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Magical Scrivener Press

www.magicalscrivener.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Ordering Information: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

CONTENTS

Core Threat

Back Matter

Collaborations by J.S. Morin and M.A. Larkin

Books by J.S. Morin

Books by M.A. Larkin

About the Authors

CORE THREAT

MISSION 11

Cedric The Brown stood on stage in a theater buried deep within Yaintaa, more commonly known to the wider galaxy as Shadow Planet. The lighting was non-existent. His slippers barely made a sound as he walked. Vaieen-made holographs showed the aftermath of a great battle near the planet JATINE IV.

Victory.

Defeat.

The battle had its share of both. The area was littered with the remains of zheen broodships, their shattered hulls scattered like confetti across local space. He strolled among them, spread over an area no larger than a Shakespearean production. His fingers passed through them without resistance.

The lives lost had not been devoured by the Myllthog. Not the dead one and not its brethren.

Not yet.

Brethren … just as he’d feared. The vaieen hadn’t given him enough to convince Fujita.

You fool. His words were hollow, disappearing into the gloom around him. He wasn’t even certain whether he meant Fujita or himself. He could have stopped her. So many times, he’d talked himself away from the dark impulse to simply end her as an abomination, a living, preaching embodiment of his injunction against the release of vaieen technology.

As he watched, the four Myllthogs circled the area where their comrade had perished. The fabric of reality thinned at the site. But the titanic beasts paid the rend in the cosmos little mind. Instead, they gathered around the remains.

While the first Myllthog had imploded, it had neither been utterly consumed nor had its remains all been spirited off to another dimension. The bits and pieces separated from the main body before it slipped into the quantum vortex held a morbid fascination for the others. They probed with their tentacles, gently, possibly tenderly.

It reminded Cedric of the stories he’d heard of elephants visiting the bones of their ancestors. These behemoths mimicked the reverence in their inspection.

Do you truly mourn? he mused, addressing the holographs that drifted at chest height before him. Or are you simply confused? I don’t imagine your kind dying often.

Turning from the macabre sight, he glared into the darkness above. You knew this would happen, didn’t you?

NO.

It’s not worth lying about.

THE DEATH OF THE MYLLTHOG IN THIS UNIVERSE WAS UNTESTED.

Hah! Cedric barked. As good as an admission. Even if you didn’t know for sure, you certainly suspected.

UNABLE TO INTERFERE WITH PRIMARY FUNCTION: COLLECTION OF DATA.

It rankled Cedric to hear that he was part of this computer’s experimental programming. He was a wizard, not a bauble to spit back numbers to a scientist—no matter what universe it came from.

What else have you hidden from me?

A COMPREHENSIVE INVENTORY OF THE DIFFERENCE IN YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND MINE WOULD TAKE LONGER THAN YOUR PROJECTED LIFESPAN TO CONVEY.

Cedric resumed watching the Myllthog funeral service—at least that’s what he decided it was. What can you tell me about these creatures that your primary function forbade until the outcome of this battle?

THE VAIEEN HAD NO MEANS TO CONTAIN THE MYLLTHOGS.

The weapon was a ruse, then? Fujita was your puppet?

IT WAS UNTESTED IN THIS UNIVERSE. ITS EFFECT WAS HYPOTHESIZED.

He swept a hand across the carnage. And did it perform as expected?

YES. UNFORTUNATELY.

Where did the new ones come from?

UNKNOWN.

Hypothesize. Or at least, share the hypothesis of your makers.

There was a pause.

TWO POSSIBILITIES SEEM LIKELY. NO CONSENSUS. EITHER THEY COME FROM THE SAME UNIVERSE OF ORIGIN FOR THE MYLLTHOG … OR THEY MIGRATED FROM MY UNIVERSE.

Cedric had thought his capacity for dread had peaked. But then the full gravity of their dilemma settled upon him.

You’ve unleashed a weapon that can kill them at the expense of summoning reinforcements … away from your universe!

THAT IS THE HOPE.

You’ve sentenced us to extinction!

YOU WERE GIVEN SENTIENCE FOR A SINGLE REASON. YOU WILL FULFILL IT. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

Cedric’s mind froze upon a single thought: Fujita had handed out knowledge of a weapon that would summon monsters without end from a universe where the most advanced species in the galaxy had been chased to the brink of annihilation.

Then, like cracks in his brain’s ice, a second realization emerged.

They’re not going to stop killing those monsters.

Tatsu was, in Zoti’s estimation, both miracle and abomination, like dwelling inside the belly of a mythic beast from the annals of forgotten myths. A dragon ship which, though he knew it had been created but a few months back, somehow felt ancient, like something that had tasted the passing of eons and glimpsed the infinite.

His time aboard here—for Hiroko had summoned him from Astral Prime to serve as her Templar, both bodyguard and enforcer—had failed to inure him to the wonder, awe, or disquiet that accompanied walking through the narrow, rib-like halls that formed the bowels of this living ship. He passed the corridors, afraid to touch the walls, wondering if the ship would feel his fingers brush its insides like some violation.

Wishing, in fact, he could pass along without his lower hands touching the floor, though such frivolous use of his magic seemed even more blasphemous than treading upon the dragon’s innards.

The Sibyl had told him once that Tatsu was a mere servant, no more apt to take offense at their using it for its intended purpose than a computer was to grow irate at sentients inputting data into it. Was it a limitation of his mind that he could not hold organic technology and purely mechanical tech by the same standard?

He passed deeper, coming into what they called the common room. The Sibyl had private chambers above it, though she spent most of her time in the cockpit. Here, mostly, he found Vixen and Juggler, always huddled around an omni screen, ever vigilant, ever watching to see where the krakens would strike.

Apparently, they had sent their children to stay aboard the ship of a man they trusted, some former associate they wouldn’t name whom they trusted to stay well clear of the void krakens. Still, worry tore at them, and Vixen’s commentary grew ever more barbed, laced with the venom of a mother rendered helpless to protect her children.

Even as the Sibyl had compelled Tatsu to grow smaller, organic fighters armed with miniature Paradox Beam Cannons. The vessels were modeled after the layout of Earth Navy fighters the couple affectionately referred to as Typhoons. These fighters Vixen dubbed Vyphoons, at first in jest, then simply in earnest.

Distractions, really, since they now knew destroying the krakens only exacerbated the problem the galaxy now faced.

With a sigh, Zoti settled down at the table beside them. Even this—a simple metal slab on legs—was grown from the ship. The table, the chairs, the lighting fixtures, the omni screen they watched—all part of living being they trod upon, slept upon, and used as a beast of burden.

The Sibyl told him Tatsu had no feelings on the matter.

She told him such things, and he had to believe her. For she was the Sibyl, after all. How much had he sacrificed already for her? Because she brought Truth, and Truth meant more than even the most comforting of lies. Because Truth outweighed self-delusions, even if it led to pain.

And Zoti felt his insides churn like a singularity had opened inside. His dreams were haunted by the parade of his myriad sins, in sickening recreation, in soul-wrenching clarity, played out night after night. He watched himself flay away bits of his own soul with each act of righteous violence, knowing himself always justified, always both sanctified and damned by the blood staining his hands.

Reports claim there’s eleven now, Juggler said, sparing him a glance. Eleven giant, planet-eating squid things.

Squids have bodies, Zoti pointed out. These entities are merely masses of entwined limbs that manifest eyes and maws seemingly at random.

I knows a squid when I sees one. Don’t be giving lip about the anatomy of these bloated calamari like you’re fresh back from the Royal Aquarium and saw some bloke with a nametag give five minutes on ’em.

Zoti frowned. Do you not understand? They are limbs, because they are literally appendages themselves, aspects of a greater unreality manifesting into the universe. Identifying these aspects as singular entities in and of themselves is one of the mistakes the zheen continue to make. One of many.

Despite the evidence accumulated over the month since Jatine IV, the zheen insisted on continuing to shoot down krakens. Each one they killed gave rise to a seemingly random number of additional intrusions into this universe.

Look here, Vixen said. I don’t give a flying fuck if there’s one big squiddie or a hundred little buggers. I can’t go home to the nippers until they’re all fooking dead. Which means I’m camped up a dragon’s arse with you lot for the duration.

Juggler grunted. Well, if a dragon’s asshole is the only place from which we can protect Lisa and Jax Jr., then I guess we’ll wade through the deep shit.

Don’t you start … Vixen warned.

Zoti folded his hands on the table. We face eleven manifestations that we know of. There could well be more already. We have limited reports from inside zheen space, but we do know they continue to hunt the krakens.

And why wouldn’t they? Vixen asked. Squiddies be coming at their planets soon enough. What should they do? Strap thrusters to their homeworld and bugger off?

Zoti did not pretend to have a solution, and Vixen was right. One could not expect the zheen to simply sit by while their worlds—increasingly densely populated worlds as the krakens pressed ever deeper into their space—fell one by one. Instead, they killed those krakens who drew too near.

This obviated the immediate threat, only to redouble the danger to other nearby worlds.

Yesterday, the Sibyl told him the Zheen Collective would collapse entirely before the end of October. Less than four months and one of the most powerful civilizations in the history of the galaxy would become a race of nomadic refugees, no better off than the ershorass or countless other victims.

Ain’t never going back to how it was, Vixen said. That’s for sure.

Zoti cocked his head at her, and even Juggler paused, staring at his wife.

What? she demanded. You think we kill every last one of these things, the Ocean goes back to normal? Half the eyndar fleet’s gone. Zheen won’t come out any better. Second ARGO’s done looking after their own arses, it’s a Boxing Day feast out there.

Zoti cleared his throat. "You mean, if