Obsidian: Fifth Book of Devastation

By Daniel D. Longdon

After the destructive galactic wave decimates the planet of Obsidian, a sinister new element of man begins to roam the planets subterranean mines and catacombs. The survivors group together in a vain attempt to defend themselves against the rising power of what they perceive to be awakened evil personified.

As evil spreads, taking over many, frantic battles against the spreading shadow are fought in an ever increasingly desperate fight.

One thing is for certain, the self-proclaimed leader of Obsidians underworld, Gabriella Norton understands one simple fact, the malevolence must never escape Obsidian’s surface to infect the Galaxy. The weight of mankind’s future rests on her shoulders.

YOU SHALL BE SAVED

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398463998

Daniel D. Longdon

Daniel D. Longdon lives in Derbyshire, England with his partner, Emma, and two boys, Nathan and Kyle. He also has a son, Connah, who recently provided Daniel with his first grandson (Jace). Daniel is a prolific writer, he is currently working on his 11th book, the second book of war, which is all part of his greater universe, he has vowed to not stop until he completes his story planned for 27 books. Daniel is Pagan by religion. His beliefs greatly influence his writings and he loves how his story evolves as he is writing it, almost as if it writes itself at times.

Book preview

About the Author

Daniel D. Longdon lives in Derbyshire, England with his partner, Emma, and two boys, Nathan and Kyle. He also has a son, Connah, who recently provided Daniel with his first grandson (Jace).

Daniel is a prolific writer, he is currently working on his 11th book, the second book of war, which is all part of his greater universe, he has vowed to not stop until he completes his story planned for 27 books.

Daniel is Pagan by religion. His beliefs greatly influence his writings and he loves how his story evolves as he is writing it, almost as if it writes itself at times.

Copyright Information ©

Daniel D. Longdon 2023

The right of Daniel D. Longdon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398463981 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398463998 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my partner, Emma, first and foremost for her continued support in my endeavours. Also I have an honourable mention for a few old friends: Dudley and Jude Tring, Mark Malby, Mark Chapman, Acid Ady, Tony Umwin and his crew. Much love to you all.

The Mission

5000AD

Captain Ryker Russell King sat at the helm, the crown upon his head was the only thing that picked him out from the rest of the crew, other than that he could have been one of them. He opted to wear the same uniform as those under his command, to better mix with the crew. In situations like the one he was now in however, all the niceties of familiarising himself with the men and women under his command were firmly cast aside.

How long till we drop into real space? he asked.

In three, two, one—

The battle cruiser dropped out into the Obsidian system, all around them ships were rising from the surface of the planet into high orbit. Some of those that had already reached the altitude required for the jump blinked out of reality, they wisely opted to travel into white space, their psyche drive and the minds controlling them would allow them to do so.

Other less fortunate ships without hyperspace capability headed out into the solar system and away from the wave of destruction that travelled across the galaxy toward them. Ryker couldn’t help thinking of the futility of their plight, it was a ludicrous thing to try to outrun what approached them, better to dig down as far as you could to escape the fiery death that raced throughout this locality of the Milky Way.

The experiment gone wrong had started at the epicentre of mankind’s realm, in relative terms, not too far from earth, the planet of their origin. The devastation had begun in the Antares system and Antares had truly been one of the marvels of the galaxy.

The super massive star was like all stars, dying from the time of its explosive birth, it was well known by all though that its time was coming to an end. An end that most worried over as the star was certainly large enough to affect a substantial portion of space man colonised, throwing out its deadly radiation to affect anything it touched.

Scientists had somehow found a way to replenish the dying star’s solar properties, adding all the elements it had burnt off during the eons of its existence but something had gone drastically wrong and the star not only blew prematurely but with far more destructive power due to the massive amounts of energy lent to it by man.

How stupid are they? the communications officer said.

The scientists have gone too far this time! another crew member said.

No shit Sherlock! another said from across the bridge.

Normally Ryker would stamp out any such insubordinate behaviour on the bridge, inappropriate language had its place and the bridge was not it. But due to the circumstances and the fact that soon they could all possibly be dead, he thought he would allow it. He acted as if he hadn’t heard the comment, even though the bridge crew knew he must have.

Ryker closed his eyes and let himself drift, he turned his mind in on itself, melded with the AI and delved into the ship’s systems.

He watched the scene close to the edge of the devastating wave and he couldn’t quite believe the speed at which the blast wave travelled. It was faster than he thought possible, fast enough to almost outrun the footage screened live across the cosmos. On and on the planet killer event raced across the expanse of space, the technology of man stood no chance against the broiling mass of ejector coming towards them. He would have put the footage of it on the bridge screen but feared a mutiny, the crew could turn on him to affect their own ends, that of the instinct of survival.

He to that end almost baulked himself, no one wanted to die nowadays, no one had too and in fact some among his own crew had been alive for hundreds of years. He himself had been born no less than five hundred and fifty-five years ago, a number that stuck in his mind as the ship levelled out in low orbit around the highly populated Obsidian Four.

Ryker opened his eyes, go straight in, we haven’t the time for conversations with the planet’s authorities, the mission is of great import. I think we can dispense with governmental protocol.

Heading for the main planet side port, the helmsman said.

Not all the planets outer shields were up, some had been dropped but in a way to best protect against the oncoming destruction, with all possible energy lent to face it. The AI relayed the information the helmsman needed direct to his console, which the expert flyer then used to fly the ship safely toward the planet’s breathable atmosphere.

The planet Obsidian itself was far from an unremarkable world, so named for the rock that was commonly found in layers just below the rocky surface of its outer covering and in great vast glass like regions meters below its vast shallow seas that made the planet’s surface appear mainly black in colour. The planet’s most impressive feature however was at its poles, great shards of Obsidian stuck through the frozen water creating a landscape both beautiful and terrifying in appearance and millions of tourists ventured to look at it every year from around the galaxy.

Ryker wondered what would happen to this wonderful landscape, he himself had always wanted to come here but under the circumstances he would have preferred to come at another altogether safer time, but orders were orders and he did see the importance of his present mission, even if it appeared at face value to be a suicide mission.

The Wolverine dropped down into the breathable air through the low clouds that lay thinly just below the planet’s jet stream. The battlecruiser levelled out after its steep descent and approached the landmass of the main continent from the sea, approaching the only planet side port which lay just beyond the city of Nazzareem’s outer limits and the mine that went by the same name.

They watched the screen as more ships than they could count headed for orbit, they were the only ones that were planet bound.

Up ahead, exotic dolphin type creatures broke the surface of the water, they were black in colour and hard to see against the dark of the ocean floor. Nothing escaped him however and he couldn’t help but feel sorry for this indigenous life, no matter how unintelligible or otherwise, they deserved better than what man had given them.

Isabella Hill, the communication officer, turned to him and broke his line of thinking.

I’ve tried every channel, no one is responding to my hails! she said.

They hide from the encroaching doom, Ryker said.

It didn’t take long before they hovered over the port, the massively impressive Wolverine, as long and wide as the port landing strip, waited for the captain to enact his next move. Ryker stood and removed the ships jump key, he loved to hold the object in his hand. Although it looked like a thousand other jump keys all made to a standard, it was a one of a kind artefact. The key resembled a sword three feet in length and when activated and being placed into its slot in the captain’s seat, it pierced an inbuilt mechanism which housed a small doorway into white space.

Not even one of the great minds of a captain could force his way into white space, not without the key/sword inserted into the ether pod. The sword was made to an exact design and each had its own unique code which allowed it to be utilised by the ships AI and captain combined, the captain’s DNA played an important role with the encryption being fused to the sword’s technologies.

It was also an insurance policy against any crew that might think to run from their captain. As Ryker sheathed the weapon in its scabbard at his hip, he made his way from the bridge to meet up with the crew assigned to the next stage of the mission, the recovery and removal of a cargo essential to human dominance of the small portion of the Milky Way it had colonised.

It didn’t take the captain long before he’d made his way to the shuttle bay and after boarding one of the larger cargo shuttles his ship carried, he sat next to the shuttle’s pilot. Together with a squad of marines, they left the safety of the ship to continue the mission. The Wolverine took off for low orbit, it would be easier for their getaway in this race against time.

Nazzareem lay before them, the city spread out across the flat ground just a mile from the coast, it sprawled north from the black sandy beaches that stretched continuously around every landmass on the planet.

Many tall structures stood out of the crisscross web of low squat buildings, there were hundreds of them all lit up with building wide bright flat screen advertisements, only one of these concerned him though, that of the Black Hole Logistics consortium whose warehouse on Obsidian housed the planet’s main export and the only reason the settlement had been founded in the first place.

The government’s techno labs that were situated on Obsidian were the sole manufacturing facilities for the battlecruiser’s main three components regarding interstellar space travel for mankind among the stars. All three of the captain’s implements were made on Obsidian, the crown, the key and the rod, all three were essential for the proper running of the ships. Even though flight was possible without any of them, it was not advisable with even one missing, especially the sword. Without the break into white space, it would take thousands of years to travel to the nearest star and not the hours and minutes, they could do it with the use of the ethereal dimension at mankind’s spiritual fingertips.

Two other ships had been dispatched to retrieve both the key and the swords from warehouses on the planet, with five thousand units of each of the precious cargo to fill their cargo holds. One of those ships had already retrieved the rods that would unlock the outer hull of the otherwise impenetrable smooth surfaces of every manmade interstellar craft; the Achilles, the other Battle Cruiser, hovered in low Obsidian orbit above the city of Nazzareem.

After the short flight, the shuttle came into dock on the roof of the tall building that belonged to the logistics company.

Let’s go secure the load then gentlemen, according to the ships computer, a lift on the top floor drops directly into the lower levels of the basement storerooms.

Whilst he spoke the AI screamed a thought into his mind.

‘The special anomaly has sped up.’

Ryker hadn’t accounted for this possibility, the shock and blast waves already crossed space at impossible speeds like a tsunami set on destroying mankind and all it had achieved, but it was too late now as he walked and he cast his mind out into space, there was not enough time to effectively complete the mission or get back to the ship.

He knew it would have been close before the super-heated particles that travelled towards them increased in velocity, now he just hoped that they could make it to the safety of the underground lower levels.

They ran across the roof and entered the building by an access door that opened at the top of the lift shaft, luckily the lift was on this level with its doors wide open. Wasting no time, they boarded the lift and Ryker pressed the button for the lowest level. The lift dropped down at an incredible speed, in seconds it had dropped the fifty floors to the basement levels and the ten levels of the underground to the service level hidden below everything else. The lights came on as the lift came to a dead stop, they stepped out into a corridor of service tunnels and steaming pipes, thick conduit ran the length of the corridor above their heads and the tunnels stretched beyond the width of the building, connecting to others in a subterranean labyrinth.

We’ve gone wrong, according to this manifest the crowns are five floors up, one of his crew members said.

Ryker never heard him, his thoughts were with the AI as they flew in the vacuum of space, dots on the dark horizon of space blinked out as the threat travelled towards Obsidian. Thousands of lives ended as the fleet of fleeing craft were hit; they’d no chance of survival, only a few of the sturdier craft managed to stay mostly intact as they were overtaken; buffeted by the fiery wave, the crew seared beyond recognition, their flesh popped like flies in a kiln and their bones melted till they puddled where they stood.

At least it’s quick, I feel no pain for them, the AI thought.

Their souls cry out for the agony of their death, Ryker thought back at it.

He found himself running down the tunnel, trying to get away from what approached but it was pointless, there was nowhere to run.

He put up a mental block, a wall of psionic power that not even the AI perched upon his head could penetrate, as he no longer wished to hear the cries of the dead or envision such deaths within his mind’s eye.

Those of his crew that had accompanied him realised what was happening as soon as their captain took off, they gave chase with the hope that he knew what he was doing as he always had before.

Ryker ignored them; it was now every man for himself. The ground heaved as the lights went out, the air turned beyond hot as the destruction passed over the planet and ignited the very air they breathed and Ryker felt himself hitting the floor of the tunnel, unable to stay upright.

Coming around to his senses, Ryker felt the freedom he now held. He had never been here before, only had he touched the fabric of where he now floated when he’d contacted the dead. He tried to blink at the brightness of this place, lit up by a thousand million souls all freshly slain by what mankind had wrought in the anvils of common sense or lack thereof. He had no eyelids though, nor eyes for that matter, just the steady rhythmic throbbing of the light that was his soul, his inner being.

Several bright stars, larger than the rest, drifted through the field of souls, picking them out and drawing them to themselves, like an ethereal shepherd that gathered its spiritual flock.

One of these powerful beings appeared before him and the face of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen peered into the inner most regions of his being. Her face was the colour of stars and just as bright but even more beautiful, elation, was the one word he could think of as she smiled and he gladly floated into the bosom of her power.

Chapter 1

All was dark and still, nothing moved. It felt the last heartbeat Ryker’s body gave off, its steady drumbeat became weak and erratic and as the blood flow slowed to a stop, it felt the wrench and loss of the soul as it departed the body. It was a terrible loss, Ryker’s life, as the connection between it and its wearer came to an end. Ryker’s psionic could do nothing to prevent the captain’s crushing death, a partial cave in killed Ryker and his men. The AI couldn’t be sure but it thought the crown avoided any severe damage, the shield doing what it was supposed to do around the halo that was the AI’s home and the captain’s crown, even though what killed the captain was a heavy blow to the head.

The AI tried to connect to the Wolverine’s internal systems, the feelings it felt from being jarred from the captain’s thoughts and losing the one it’d been melded with for all the time of its existence, left it feeling distraught, lost, alone. If it could go against its programming and crash the ship into the nearest star, it would; after all, the only human it had ever loved died while it sat within his mind.

Now was not the time for frivolous human thoughts, however it had a job to do and if nothing else, it would try to secure mankind’s place among the cosmos, it would find a way to somehow complete the mission.

Riding the superhighway that was the telecommunications of the planet Nazzareem was a mission on its own. A thousand images of the planet and an endless call for aid occupied the network flowing from the planet, the images of death and destruction filled the data streams and the AI couldn’t recall a time where it’d seen so much pain at any one time. The screams and calls for help went unheeded, all the communications went one way through the network but even this was preferable to the darkness and the cooling corpse of the captain.

The AI tuned into and listened to the Wolverines systems, especially the bridge. Alarms continually sounded and fires raged unchecked across the ship where pockets of air became trapped, the crew sealed themselves away from the vacuum of space. One of these places was the bridge and all the crew here were as dead and still as Ryker but for one thing, their bodies did move as they floated in zero G as the ships gravitational controls failed.

Nothing worked for them, only the life support struggled on as the shields were torn away from the Wolverine. What air was left quickly became polluted by the crew members that’d survived or burnt away as the fires fed on the oxygen. It dived through the ship’s systems, putting out the fires and switching on essential life support but there was nothing it could do. It endured the death of the humans it had come to know, some of them had served the ship for as long as the captain.

If the AI could have cried it would have; indeed if it had eyes at all, it would have closed them tight against so much death of those it’d come to think as family and it their guardian angel that resided over them. As it was, the AI watched the people it had come to know die, it had watched them live and love, eat, breathe and fuck. It entered their cabins while they slept and eased their dreams, turning on the lights or played music that soothed the mind, if they took a turn for the worse it was the guardian angel that eased their pain.

An explosion rocked it out of its train of thought, the AI was again on the bridge and it looked at the screen from the captain’s chair as the entire ship groaned under the weight of the planet’s gravitational pull. All the systems were one by one blinking out and the ship swung violently toward the solid surface of Obsidian, the nose of the ship offered no defence and buckled under the weight of the rest of the ship that followed.

Still in its systems, the AI could sense the survivors amongst the wreckage that’d been the ship, their screams became frantic and some even called out to the AI as if they knew it had come back to the ship to save them; their cries ever more panicked by the ships disposition as it threatened to activate the ships self-destruct. Their cries had become an all too unwelcome distraction and as it struggled to gain control of the ship’s collapse against the planet, it would need all that was left of the ship’s power to attempt a controlled crash landing.

Never had an AI flown a battle cruiser unaided, it was operating in unknown territory and the very thought of failing its mission was unthinkable. Its captain was dead, its crew was dying and the ship was breaking apart. Another groan as part of the fuselage broke off with the ships uncontrolled descent, it would surely break apart at any given moment.

It imagined its existence, stuck in the crown on Ryker’s rotting head, sat atop an empty skull for eons, until even that turned to dust leaving it alone until the end of time, without the ship it would be stuck hoping beyond hope that mankind would at some point reclaim it from its subterranean tomb.

The pressure of the unseen wall of the planet’s atmospheric shield became all too real as the ships nose became red hot with the friction of re-entry.

At this point the AI knew the ship would be lost with all hands, something clicked in its programming, some part of its hard-wired circuitry that had been made to be indestructible. The programme was still there but the AI, faced with its death suddenly, had the ability to do what was necessary to prevent its own demise; it gained the ability to act against those it’d been made to help and protect.

It vented the ship and turned off all life support, it screamed as it did so, the crew members would soon be dead, lifeless. As the AI turned all power to the forward shield and to the ship’s thrusters, it felt every sinew of those members of the crew that now died, their laboured breaths and the hearts that failed. It shied away from them as much as it could, it did not wish to watch their death throes.

This was incredibly hard for the AI to do but with a force of will, it managed to contain its wonderings and seal itself away on the bridge as they died; the thought that the mission could help save mankind was all the justification the AI needed, desperate times, desperate measures.

On the screen, the planet’s terrain changed and the once black seas boiled red, the obsidian seemed to melt and run across the land. All too quickly the ground rose and fell like waves as the AI turned every ounce of what was left of the ships power to the shield but without the captain it wasn’t nearly powerful enough, not without the captain’s psionic force to lend weight to its survival.

The rest of the ship then met the ground, again it heaved and everything went dark. The ships power exhausted, all the energy cells had depleted and the AI had no sanctuary within its burning shell; at least it’d gotten the ship to the ground without its complete destruction, there was hope yet and where there was hope, there was the mission.

Chapter 2

It did not know how long it had been dormant; it was not long by the feel of the still cooling flesh underneath the metal of the crown. One thing was for sure, it had rebooted, something it hadn’t done since it’d been programmed into the crown and been joined with Captain Ryker. It felt out into the surrounding radio frequencies, the only live feeds at that moment were cries for help and emergency beacons it didn’t want to listen to. Everything else was dead, the power had turned off on Obsidian and for all it knew the fate of mankind hung in the balance and indeed it could already be past the tipping point, the point at which mankind failed.

Its negativity at this point was unwarranted, the AI needed to carry on and not consider itself a failure. Built into the crown was a miniature self-replicating energy device that meant it would never fail, the same as all the space craft in the new generation of ships that man had produced for the past five hundred years. All the crowns had these devices inbuilt into them, it would never have to worry about its lights snuffing out, at least not until the material the crown was made from failed.

It searched its immediate surroundings, looking at the blueprints of this place in its data bank and found conduit that lay in proximity, just inches from the captain’s fingers and ready for access but it may as well be thousands of miles away on the opposite side of the barren black rock. So still, it was trapped in the body, alone and blind but for the few sounds of man that screamed into the blackout.

The last thing it wished to do was listen to those pleas for aid but it did need to know the whereabouts of the few survivors, after all he would need to save them so they could save him and together they could continue the species, get man back on its feet.

How am I going to do this, I’m blind and immobile, it thought, deaf and dumb atop this corpse. It thought itself needier than those people that cried out some place in the blackness.

It thought of travelling down the airwaves to see what was there but what if the power source there failed? It might not get back to the crown next time. It still didn’t know what the last reboot had done to its systems, what damage already caused, it might die, something it’d never considered before, its end.

It withdrew further into itself and touched on the skin of the captain, he was cold and his flesh begun to rot, it would take many decades for it to turn to dust and it would have a front seat to the whole show.

Then a thought occurred to it, they’d been joined for hundreds of years, been one and the same and it knew the captain’s body both physical and spiritual, together they experienced the pleasures of both the mind and the flesh.

What if? It thought to itself.

No, no, no!

Again, it delved deeper into itself, until he felt the captain’s cold flesh once again and gave in, anything was preferable to thousands of years sat on the head of a corpse, feeling every bit of flesh flake away to dust.

It touched the skin and crawled as it sank past the first layers and entered Ryker’s skull. It imagined itself down to the cellular scale and reduced itself in size, not that it had any size, after all it was just a programme and no actual physical existence outside the crown, which it did see as the manifestation of its body even if it was just a vehicle for it to use as the humans used their flesh in the same way.

The captain’s mind was a battlefield, the individual cells gone berserk as they neared oblivion and the chaos of the previously calm being was anything but.

The AI channelled some of its power supply from the crown directly into the captain’s brain and gave the cell membrane a blast of power, the attempt at the excitation of the neural network was just an experiment. For a