by D. R. Rosier
Vik froze, as did I. Fuck.
Vik asked, “Define moving.”
Jillintara replied, “Three hundred of their ships are moving out system, the other three hundred fifty-eight appear to be remaining around their home world. At their current rate of acceleration, we won’t know where they’re going for over thirteen hours.”
I sighed, “That’s a relief.”
Vik looked at me like I was a beer short of a six pack.
I shrugged and explained, “If they’d adopted our power fix, they wouldn’t be moving at half speed, but at two hundred gravities which would cut the trip time significantly. It seems likely the Stolavii haven’t picked up on any of our advances at all.”
Vik grunted.
Jillintara said, “Still no movement from the Suaterans beyond preparations. The five scouts they sent out are still unaccounted for.”
I frowned, “That’s not good.”
Vik snorted, “I see, so them not moving is bad, but the Stolavii moving is good?”
I giggled, “Sort of, neither is good. We have to assume those scouts are still in our systems gathering data. Which means they’ll most likely be in a position to see our advances and effectiveness when we stomp Tek like a…”
I cut off the statement, considering the citizens of Raitov were bugs.
I continued, “Point is, they’ll get good data on all our new capabilities. Especially the capabilities of this ship, and our advancements in missiles. If I had to guess, they’re aware of our internal bickering, and positioned to watch and take advantage after a battle takes place.”
The Stolavii saw us as lesser races, to enslave and exploit, and probably didn’t pick up on anything because of that, maybe they weren’t studying us at all. The Suaterans, at least up until Denik pissed them off, had been a peaceful independent world in the empire’s area of space. They were the legendary grays of Earth, short, large head and large black eyes, spindly legs and arms. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t picked up on some of our upgrades, and weren’t in our public data-net.
They seemed to me to be peaceful, but also ones to study their neighbors. It wouldn’t surprise me if all the human conspiracy theories of the time were true, and that they’d studied Earth in the mid-twentieth century. Though, with nanites to explore a living creature, I wasn’t sure if that explained the whole anal probe thing.
Point was, now they’d get to see all of our upgrades in action, excepting possibly the ability to open a wormhole inside a star system. Then again, that could come up too if Tek threw us a major curve ball when he arrived.
I explained all that, and my reasoning.
Vik sighed, “I take your point, but there isn’t anything we can do about it except keep suing for peace. They have been peaceful, as have we, but they don’t seem to trust us to remain so any longer. The worst part is I really can’t blame them, we’d be doing the same thing.”
Telidur said, “Agreed. I’ll feel a whole lot less guilty when we take on the Stolavii. We can’t roll over and die though, it’s up to them. If they attack we won’t have a choice but to defend ourselves.”
I couldn’t argue with that, I felt that way too. It wasn’t the first time we’d had the conversation either. We’d regret it, but we’d do it, anything else was suicide.
I checked the chronometer, it was still early morning, and it was going to be a long day of waiting. I also wanted to get Jillintara to dish all the details of last night, but the bridge was hardly the place for that to happen.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jillintara said, “Sir, we’re being hailed by former governor Tek.”
It had been a long day, I wondered if they were around us right now. What if they were all around us, in our formation, in a sphere around our fake fleet? I was getting to the point I hated cloaking, though we had the same advantage and our current trap depended on it. The damned scientists need to figure out that wave soon. Of course, how long will it be before the cloak includes DE emitters once that happens?
What we really needed to do was figure out how to detect quantum connections, through dimensions. If we could do that we could track everything with a communication device or dimensional port in the empire, cloaked or not. But… we weren’t even close to being able to do that. The theory said it was impossible, but I didn’t believe that, it was just a lack of knowledge. We understood how to open ports and entangle particles for communications, and do it repeatedly. We had formulae and field formations that would entangle particles, or poke a hole through our perceived reality into other dimensions and be able to determine and control where the other end of the port appeared. But… we didn’t really understand it.
I had no doubt once we did, we’d be able to track, intercept, and even block such things. I bet the Alirann could do it, they truly understood dimensional technology. It was the difference between having lighting strike a kite with a key on the string and discovering electricity, and harnessing the power of a dark energy reactor. The empire was a baby in the field, in comparison to the Alirann. Of course, someone else would have to figure that out, I sucked at breakthroughs. In that case, I doubted it would even be figured out in my lifetime, I’d have to settle for DE sensor technology, or something else when that was eventually countered.
Vik ordered, “Open a channel.”
A hologram of the tall four-armed asshole appeared on the bridge in front of Vik.
“Your majesty,” he mocked.
Vik took a deep breath, probably for patience.
“Surrender Tek, you’re doing nothing but weakening us for the fight coming against the Suateran and Stolavii. Would you see the empire burn before admitting your defeat? Have you become that selfish? The Stolavii are already on the move.”
Tek’s eyes narrowed, but he looked calm and in control. He was… a true believer, he’d lied to himself so well he believed he was in the right.
“Your family cannot be allowed to rule any longer. You are corrupt, and must be replaced. Step down now, and I will be merciful. I’ll even allow you to serve in my military.”
Vik’s breath caught, “You’re insane. I’m not my brother, and I’ve proven my faithfulness to the empire and what it stands for. Even your own world has turned against you, can you not see it?”
Tek’s nostrils flared.
“Last chance, surrender, or I’ll be forced to destroy you. Hopefully your sister will be wiser and decline the throne.”
Vik said, “That’s not going to happen.”
Tek’s hologram wavered and disappeared.
Jillintara said, “He disconnected.”
Vik frowned, “Why hasn’t he attacked, signal the fleet to be ready.”
She replied, “Yes, sir.”
I shrugged, “A distraction, he might be using his fleet to lay cloaked missiles around our fleet at this moment.”
Telidur said, “That makes no sense, he could have done that without calling.”
Jillintara said, “Psychologically, maybe he called to give you that chance to soothe his own conscience. To give himself the high moral ground. Even if it’s a false thing to us it might not be false to him and his twisted perceptions of reality. He seems to believe his own propaganda.”
Vik shoulders visibly relaxed, “Thanks, that fits. Be ready.”
The dark void lit up with gravity fields, plasma, and missiles as Tek’s fleet de-cloaked. His ships looked similar to the Empire’s destroyer class ships, but were a little sleeker. There were almost six hundred missiles, and we’d have been hard pressed to defend enough to survive his first strike, were it not utterly wasted against our fake visible fleet.
As it was, we ignored the attack and took our free and surprise shot at his fleet. The next round of attacks we’d have to shield the fleet, and use our ship to counter his shielded missiles. But not this first time.
My hands flew across the console and targeted ten ships, and I fired. A hundred lines of plasma appeared from nowhere inside his fleet’s forma
tion, split evenly between ten ships. It didn’t take five seconds to destroy them, apparently his designers weren’t as good as I was. It only took four seconds.
While I’d done that, the A.I.s had launched four hundred missiles, and the two hundred ships in the fleet also fired everything they had. The space around us looked like it was on fire, and Tek lost those ten ships I targeted plus forty-two more, annihilating more than half his fleet in under ten seconds under intense fire that the shields just couldn’t deal with. The rest of his ships had degraded shields, but were still in the game.
Of course, we outnumbered him now by four to one.
The enemy’s shielded missiles that passed harmlessly through our decoy fleet and out the other side, started to turn, and I realized we’d have to deal with them after all.
I focused on the destroying the missiles before they could change vector and close with our fleet, at the same time both fleets opened up with more plasma. It would be at least twenty seconds before they or we could fire another round of missiles, and I had a feeling it would be over before then.
Or at least, I hoped it would be.
I did the best I could, but I could only do so much by myself. It would have been completely one-sided if our entire fleet was all scout-destroyers, but we only had the one prototype. I destroyed close to sixty missiles, and some failed to acquire a lock through spoofing, still others were taken down by plasma fire, but the rest of the enemy’s missiles slammed into the fleet.
Most of the two hundred ships absorbed the punishment easily on their shields, but twelve of our ships were hit by more than ten missiles and plasma attacks in total, and were taken out of the fight. I knew I’d feel the deaths later, but right then I was in that psychotic zone of cold non-emotion and clarity of thought.
The enemy fleet on the other hand, was almost completely gutted by plasma fire in that second round, twenty more ships were destroyed outright, and the last twenty-eight had seriously degraded shields.
I assigned ten more enemy ships as targets, while another volley of plasma left both fleets. At that point the battle was over, the enemy fleet was torn apart in the third plasma exchange before either fleet could get any more missiles out. Unfortunately, our fleet lost three more ships, a total of fifteen lost in the brief nasty fight. That was a hundred fifteen ships we wouldn’t have to face our external enemies.
“Status?” Vik asked.
Jillintara said, “Fifteen ships lost, thirty need light repairs. Enemy fleet completely destroyed.”
I frowned, “Do you think Tek de-cloaked his command ship and joined the fight?”
Vik frowned at me, and I shrugged sheepishly.
Telidur said, “Even if he’s alive and in one ship, he’s cut off and can’t build a new fleet. He can’t even resupply his ship without us noticing, since we’re monitoring every system in the empire.”
No, but he could probably set up a few ambushes, or even suicide and ram his ship into ours.
Hopefully, he was dead.
Vik sighed, “Alright, send some of the ships to investigate the ten ship building sites. Maybe we can learn something. Though, the fleet seemed to just have the updated power cores and the newer missiles, otherwise they weren’t as strong as our destroyers. Regardless, we should either rent those out to civilians once their secure and on our data-net, or we could use them for further production.”
There was a loud explosion, and the ship shook violently. If it wasn’t for advanced inertial compensation, we’d have been dead. As it was, my body felt abused. The lights blinked, and then went out. Fuck, did we just lose our only prototype, and why weren’t we space dust?
Vik yelled, “Report!”
Jillintara looked a little lost for a second, “Apparently Tek wasn’t dead, and decided to ram us to kill you. A last act of futility. I was forced to shut down the reactor. The ship is scrap. I’m interfaced with one of our other ships, Tek’s ship is damaged past repair as well, and his reactor is going critical. We need to abandon ship, now. We… don’t have enough time to get clear, estimate in fifteen seconds.”
I ordered, “Myra, get us out of here now!”
The other three looked at me sharply, it was my last-ditch line of defense to keep the emperor, to keep Vik, alive. It hadn’t been tested yet, at least not for a being in a ship suit, but it was what I’d arranged with Myra in secret just a few days ago. It was the last function of the orbs that followed us everywhere. It should work, in theory.
I hoped.
The ceiling lit up with four glowing vortexes, directly over our heads. My ship suit’s shields snapped on automatically, and our face masks turned opaque, and we were pulled up out of the bridge, and through the event horizon of wormholes just three feet in diameter…
Chapter Thirty-Three
It felt a lot like it might feel if I was two inches tall and thrown in a washing machine. Our ship suit had inertial compensator fields as well as the shields, but they weren’t as robust as a ship’s. Then I was floating.
Vik growled, “What the hell was that?”
I groaned faintly, “Congratulations, we’re the first beings in the empire to go through a wormhole, without a ship.”
It worked on paper, but not everything on paper works in the real world. It wasn’t fun by any stretch, but it was better than being dead. Our face plates turned transparent again, that was because wormholes and subspace shouldn’t be observed with the naked eye. It wasn’t a guarantee of insanity, but some beings had been known to go insane by viewing subspace directly. Why take the chance?
I added, “Thanks Myra.”
Telidur sounded angry, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Value of surprise, I didn’t want it to get out. There were assassins after Vik, and I figured it would work at least once, if there was a need. Sorry, only Myra and I knew about it, not even Jillintara was aware of that function. On the good side, it worked, which means on all our new ships the crews can escape as long as they have a few seconds foreknowledge of a ship’s destruction.”
Vik growled, “You weren’t sure?”
I shrugged, “We were dead anyway.”
Telidur snickered.
Jillintara broke in, “I have ship coming our way, they’ll be here in twenty-two minutes. Why here?”
I said, “It increased the chance of success, though theoretically we can open a wormhole that’s only three feet wide on a planet, only the ship sized ones need to be opened over a light second away, I thought it prudent not to add difficulty to our escape unless we were on the planet and needed to get away.”
Vik sighed, “Thanks Lori, but we’re going to discuss you keeping secrets from me later on.”
“Will there be spanking?”
Vik snorted, “Nope.”
I said in mock disappointment, “Yes, sir.”
Telidur said, “Tek really hurt us, we really could have used that ship for the coming battles.”
True, as long as the enemy didn’t cloak, we could have picked them off from light hours away once they made their intentions to attack clear. The Stolavii were on the move, and I had no doubt the Suaterans wouldn’t be far behind. There was still almost three weeks left before we’d have our first wave of scout destroyers complete. Once that happened we’d be relatively safe, as long as the Kruterran and Alirann empires behaved that is.
At least, until our enemies caught up to us again in technology, but that was life, wasn’t it? We’d be pushing too of course, but I was fairly sure we were at the limits until a scientist had a breakthrough, then I could design a new ship. That wouldn’t help us now though.
Jillintara sighed, “I should have guessed where they were going. The Stolavii have entered subspace.”
Vik asked, “Where are they going?”
Jillintara said, “Earth, they’re going to need slaves in their new ships. I bet they plan to pick up slaves for all of their ships, and take them back to Stolavii before they attack.”
Oh… duh. I shou
ld have seen that as well.
Vik sighed.
Jillintara said, “It will take them over thirty-six hours in subspace to reach Earth, then another thirteen or so to Earth. We have time to plan.”
Yeah, and we’d have to coordinate with Earth. I hoped Janson was still around. We took care of a civil war, or perhaps feud would be a better description, hopefully we’ll have as much success with the Stolavii and Suaterans.
Time would tell…
Afterword:
I hope you enjoyed the story. Book four, Star Freedom, should be coming soon. Book four will complete the series.
If you can, please take the time to leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
About the Author: If you have any comments or suggestions you can send me an email at [email protected]. I started out posting short stories online and at readers’ requests started to publish them. If you like my work, or even if you don’t, please consider leaving a review of this book.
Other erotic fantasies by D. R. Rosier:
Cirenthian Chronicles – Book one is Out of Darkness.
Marcus, an ancient vampire, finds himself moved to another world where suddenly he is alive again, and magic is a known and powerful danger. No longer a vampire and dealing with emotions he hasn’t felt in over a millennium, will he be able to start a new life? This series is now complete.
Necromancer Chronicles – Book one is The Necromancer.
Vincent is a necromancer and has an even darker secret. Feared by the rest of the supernatural community he lives on his own, often struggling with his powers, and how to use them. But change is coming, and he will soon find himself dragged into the middle of a suspicious and untrusting community.
Anise is a sorceress, but she has secrets of her own. She is an ancient being, who has walked the earth for time immemorial. She lives in a never ending cycle of life, forever watching those she dares to care about age and die. But she is about to find something new that will offer her hope, if she can live long enough to find it.
