8. Hero's Fight

Arren’s exclamation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Father excused himself, told everyone to stay calm, and pulled Arren out of the room, mumbling something about insubordination and knowing his place.

The doors, or whatever was left of them, were closed. They were alone in the corridor.

What could he say? His eyes avoid father’s gaze.

“Is this coming from you or that robot?” he asked.

Arren looked up in surprise. “I shut down the robot completely. I swear. Does it matter?”

“I can’t put my trust into numbers, or screens, or electricity. I can’t trust the judgment of a piece of code.”

His finger poked Arren’s chest and he grew a faint smile.

“But I trust your judgment.”

Arren’s heart grew to twice its size. He threw his arms around his broad-shouldered dad. He smiled until it hurt.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“I barely know what Delja is,” he whispered. “But they’re dangerous?”

“They wanted to collect all Heavenmatter, because a prediction said they’d rule the galaxy if they did. They also thought their home base was in some faraway solar system. Thanks to the Heavenmatter, they cold travel through space far earlier than us.”

Father nodded. “Your approach, however, needs some refinement. They’re an important ally in this fight. We must not make an enemy out of them.”

“Sorry. I won’t yell a surprise arrest again.”

They grabbed each other’s shoulders and stayed silent for a while.

“If we, per chance, do not win this fight—”

“Don’t say it, dad. If you’ll just keep control of the rocket next time—”

“The spaceship is badly damaged! I had to improvise, for multiple steering systems were offline. can your robot do that, aye? Improvise? Steer based on intuition?”

Arren grimaced. “Not when she’s off, she can’t.”

Father’s fingers tapped a soft rhythm against the door. He made no move at all to walk back into the control room. Inside, people shuffled around, and the woman was talking, but she didn’t seem angry about the accusation.

“What—erm—are we doing now?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

A spaceship appeared behind the window. As if it just blinked into existence right there. It hastily connected to our second gate.

A group of soldiers stormed the corridors in a neat triangular formation. They all wore the same blue-white uniforms, bearing the HERO insignia, and took off their masks.

“I am captain Kirren. Much thanks for your quick intervention. In the mean time, we may also have captured the leader of the Delja. She’s in the room behind me.”

“If that is true, officer Kirren, we have not brought enough soldiers.”

“How so?”

The first soldier opened the door. When the woman saw them, she instantly transformed from a human into a gigantic bird of prey.

Her sharp wings scratched the machines and created showers of sparks. She crowed and shrieked. The soldiers shot her legs from under her body, while another group threw an electrical fishing net from behind.

The woman knew she was beat. She changed back into her scientist shape, though her clothes were torn now and her legs covered in burns.

“No time to lose,” said the HERO soldier. “We spotted a Planeat, as per your description, not far from here. Its dinner had almost completed: the planet called Nimadwarf. It will surely come for us then, as its senses seem advanced enough to recognize spaceships.”

“It’s useless. Give up,” said the woman from underneath the netting. “This is no grandeur, no suggestion. I know it is useless.”

“And why is that?” asked father.

She stopped wriggling. Her face dropped all expression.

“For I made the Planeats.”

Passengers stood up and approached her. Kirren didn’t know what to say.

More HERO spaceships arrived. Soon, they could not see any part of the galaxy anymore through the windows, only metal and blinking lights.

Arren bent his knees to get close to the woman. “Is that how you lost the other Heavenmatter?”

She nodded.

“I combined them, just as the prophecy said, and I received … this. A black fog that ate everything and seemed immortal. They started quite small, you must know. But if an animal has no natural enemies and no solid body—what prevents it from growing and growing and eating more and more? Our own planets were the first to be eaten.”

“You, indeed, uncovered the secret to conquering the galaxy,” said father grimly. His hands already steered the ship again. “But it wasn’t you who conquered it.”

Arren stood. “And the Heavenmatter is …”

“Destroyed. We only have leftovers now. The Hespryhound ran away, perhaps that’s why the procedure failed.”

It meant that all that magic was inside the Planeats. The power of the Firering. All knowledge and wisdom from the Book of Meaning. Their enemy had no weaknesses and all strengths. They were literally gods.

His shoulders drooped. The woman cackled.

Maybe humans simply were no match for Planeats—but a robot might be? Humans had feeling, intuition, experience, creativity. But calculate like a computer, execute tactical battle plans without mistake, they could never.

Rocket engines roared around them, as if the control room lay inside a volcano. Jannih handled all communication with HERO.

Someone screamed over the radio. All spaceships accelerated and painted a path towards the black circle that approached them.

The fight with the Planeat had started.

Enormous spaceships whizzed through space like tiny flies. Flashes of light—all blue—flew ahead of them and could barely keep their lead.

A regular battle on Somnia was chaos. Add a third dimension, and a dark space, and Arren could barely follow what happened.

HERO stuck to formations. They circled the Planeat in triangles made from a dozen spaceships, without ever getting too close. Flash after flash hit the monster and pushed the black fog aside. Holes appeared, larger and larger, until there were too many holes to repair.

Father watched helplessly. His spaceships could not participate nor fly as fast as the others. Besides, the commander of the other ship writhed on their floor, caught in a net.

The Planeat shrunk. It lashed out with increasingly long tentacles of fog. The pilots dodged the attacks with grace.

You couldn’t get any closer. A monster as large as a planet meant your entire horizon was blocked and you had no sense of direction. Any approach would feel like you were about to land on top of the Planeat.

Arren’s vision was peppered with blue and white splotches. He had to turn away from the window.

Were they winning?

The shadow cast by the monster slowly disintegrated. Rays of sunlight found the paper maps in the center, as HERO’s ships pushed the Planeat back. Its attacks weakened.

But one ship became overconfident.

It flew too close and was snatched out of the air. The Planeat ate it and immediately rekindled its fire. Enough to grab another spaceship before it fled.

“No!” screamed Arren, who would’ve wanted to look away now.

The Planeat fed itself with spaceships and humans as if they were nothing, mere morsels, and every time it grew in size and strength.

“We must help,” said Arren, taking his father’s hand.

“How?” said father, fear in his eyes.

“She was right: they can’t be defeated. We must have a plan to get away.”

“How?”

He pointed at the screen that showed the spaceship’s layout. A large section of rooms was lost, just as many vital systems. The Planeat could keep eating, keep winning, until all of HERO’s forces were depleted.

That couldn’t happen.

“We need AR-BOT. She must know something.”

“That robot stays off. Otherwise she determines our fate, instead of making our own fate.”

“I can control the robot. That is my judgment.”

Father shook his head. Once dozens of spaceships had been swallowed, the command to fall back was uttered. The ships formed new formations, arrow-shaped this time, and stopped shooting. Darkness and silence returned with surprising swiftness, as if the fight had just been a bad dream.

Was the Planeat satiated? It didn’t attack. It even retreated a bit.

“No,” said father.

Arren pulled on the steering wheel in frustration. “You said you trusted my judgment!”

Father looked pained, his eyes watery. “But people lie. And they don’t see things clearly because of emotion.”

“Even more reason to involve a robot,” said Arren. He looked over his shoulder. He estimated that all living passengers left were gathered here now; a pitiful bunch.

“Even more reason to ignore your statements at this moment.”

One person can make stupid decisions because of feelings. But hundreds of them should be able to compensate each other’s mistakes, right?

Arren stepped away from father and climbed on top of the table, flattening the paper maps further. He spoke to all passengers.

“Everyone knows AR-BOT’s intelligence. We can use her help in this fight, but she has been off for a while now. Must I turn her on again?”

Murmurs. Whispers. Those were his only answers.

Until a man stood and spoke.

“That robot turned my children into zombies! Shackled to a digital world all day. Never think for themselves. You can’t hear them speak a single sensible word, for they let the robot do the thinking and speaking for them.”

The girl with the head wound stood too. “AR-BOT saved my life.”

Jannih hesitantly raised her hand and lowered the volume on her radio.

“The only reason we’re still online, is because AR-BOT helped us find new fuel and food on that planet. It also led us away from Nibuwe. If we’d gone there, we’d have unleashed the Planeats on all humans left.”

A distaster that still loomed, if they didn’t put up a defense right now.

More people joined the discussion, but they yelled over each other.

Arren raised his hands and stomped the table.

“Who among you is for turning on AR-BOT again? Hands raised, please.”

Arren softly heard his father count hands from behind him. They didn’t need to get the full count: this was clearly the majority already.

He jumped off the table to visit his workroom again.

Roars filled the space. Jannih’s radio faithfully relayed the deafening sound for several seconds, before it exploded in her lap.

The Planeat was back. And it had brought more planet-munching friends.