Imperator

by Timothy Ellis

  On the other side of the jump point, Stars appeared behind the immense debris field, and started launching missiles again, while Lacey used the front guns on the remaining battleships, with titan turrets picking off others as well.

  Within another minute, the battle was over. No casualties on our side. I turned to Jane.

  “Do the battlestations have jump drives?”

  “Yes. And there’s nothing in that system now except debris. There is however two fleets approaching the other side jump point.”

  “How long?”

  “Five minutes?”

  “Coordinated jump of all of us a minute before they go through. Let’s give them a reception, and a reason to not do this again anytime soon.”

  “Reason?”

  “Yeah. They lose a battle like this, they lose the system as well. It’s time we started pushing them back when they screw up.”

  “Confirmed.”

  Three minutes later, with fighters all landed on Stars for speed, we all jumped to the other side of the next system, with subtle adjustments so we were not in the same places.

  Fingers on triggers, and the first fleet came through the jump point without having launched fighters first, and our combined fire practically atomized them. The second fleet aborted their jump, and took up a defensive position.

  “Lacey?”

  “Sir?”

  “Have your four squadrons stay on Stars. Send the rest home.”

  “Yes sir. You want them billeted here now?”

  “Yes. Jane will send their gear over when we get back to Imperious.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “In a few minutes time.”

  “I’ll pass the word.”

  “You come back to BigMother for lunch.”

  “Can I take a shuttle this time?”

  “If you must.”

  “Oh, I must.”

  His hollo vanished with the others, and we started jumping back. Once back where we’d started from, I plucked Angel off her pad on the console, and took her down to my living room.

  Lacey showed up about ten minutes later, with a man in American fatigues.

  “I believe you know each other?” suggested Lacey.

  “We’ve met,” said the American, “but not formerly.”

  He was the CAG who we’d put through the ringer in the simulator that first day. He extended his hand, and I shook it.

  “Gregory Boyington,” he said.

  “Do they call you Pappy?”

  “They do. I hate it.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “If you don’t mind me asking sir, what do they call you?”

  “Maniac,” said Lacey, grinning.

  He chuckled.

  “Okay, I can see that.”

  I led them into my private dining room, expecting Aline to be there, but she wasn’t. We sat, and I looked at Lacey.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a titan?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Even though you fought it very effectively?”

  There was a pause, as the two men looked at each other, and then back to me.

  “Actually sir,” said Boyington, “that was me.”

  I looked from him to Lacey and back.

  “You’re joining the Imperium, CAG?”

  “That’s the plan. I was here first thing this morning talking to the Space Commodore here about the logistics of pilot transfers. It was his idea I fought the battle.”

  “And are you comfortable with fighting a titan while your squadrons launch, as well as dropships?”

  “I will be. Quite comfortable. I was amazed the titan handled the same as the Excalibur. But then, I shouldn’t have been. Can I be honest, sir?”

  “Always.”

  “The Nazis were a hand full, but truth to tell, I was already looking for a new challenge. I think I’ve found it.”

  “Welcome aboard, Fleet Captain Boyington.”

  Twenty Six

  As lunch was winding up, I noticed Boyington looked like he had something to ask.

  “Spit it out, CAG.”

  Lacey grinned, and Boyington looked sheepish.

  “I take it you need more CAG’s?”

  “Orion’s Belt doesn’t officially have one now Eagle here is going to build a new unit. I was going to promote Buzzard, but I suspect he’ll want to go with Eagle. Am I right?”

  Lacey’s grin widened, and he nodded.

  “He really doesn’t like being number two of a huge wing. Squadron leader in an independent wing he’ll jump at. Especially flying a fighter again.”

  “I thought so.”

  I turned back to Boyington.

  “You have a recommendation?”

  “I do.”

  “I hear a but coming.”

  “Well, he’s British for a start.” Lacey looked outraged for a moment, but I knew he was acting. “And currently in one of our hospitals minus his legs.”

  Lacey and I both cringed.

  “How did that happen?”

  “The Brits have been allies with us since the first Nazi attack about a hundred years ago, where we lost a lot of good people before our combined fleets finally drove them back. They recently included their only carrier in their rotation fleet, and unfortunately in the last attack, the Nazi’s destroyed it.”

  “Ouch. I did notice the system was strewn with gutted ships. Who’s the pilot, and how did he lose his legs?”

  “The usual thing made him head back to the barn. He zigged when he should have zagged, took a major hit which he should have ejected from, got his bird back on the deck, and was walking away when the carrier was hit. He woke up on one of our battleships with no legs.”

  “There by the grace of the divine, go I,” I muttered.

  “That would never happen on one of our ships,” said Lacey. Boyington looked confused. “You’ll see. As soon as you’re officially Imperium navy, you’ll be issued with our tech.”

  “What was the pilot’s position?” I asked.

  “He was their wing commander. What we call CAG.”

  “We use the title and the rank,” said Lacey, “but it depends on which part of the service you’re in”.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Dreamwalker is our best CAG after Eagle here,” I said. “But he commands a Scimitar carrier, so he’s a navy fleet captain, not a fighter group captain. Wing commanders are lieutenant colonel level, or in your terms, full commanders. Yeah, I know, it gets complicated. We use the same insignia, but the PC profile shows the full rank, based on navy or fighters. I know you Americans prefer to have a full bird in command of wings, while the British are happy having an oak leaf running them, under a navy captain. Horses for courses. I rank people for what they’ve done, and title them for what they can do. So CAG’s might be anything from a Squadron leader to a Space Commodore, depending on the ship and the situation.” He looked skeptical. “It works for us, as you’ll see.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “What’s this pilot’s name?”

  “Douglas Bader.”

  “We want him,” said Jane through room coms.

  “Who was that?” asked Boyington.

  “Ship’s AI. All seeing, all knowing. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he said, looking as if he wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into now.

  “I’ve accessed his hospital records,” went on Jane. “With your permission I’ll get him moved to Carter on Haven.”

  “Better give him the choice first.”

  “His record says being beached is his worst nightmare. He’ll say yes. We’ll have him on Orion’s Belt as fast as we can. And on two legs.”

  “Keep me updated, and let Hallington know he has a new CAG coming.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Now, where were we?” I asked, grinning.

  We discussed the logistics of moving some hundred and fifty pilots to Orion’s Belt for retraining and getting
used to the Excalibur four. I went back to my ready room, while the two pilots took themselves down to the pilot’s ready room.

  A little overdue, but I spent the next hour looking over the navmap, updating myself with what was going on everywhere. Missile spamming continued, random fleet attacks were the normal, and we were holding nicely. I wondered when the other shoe was going to turn up. It was only a matter of time before they figured out how to hurt us. It’d taken the Darkness two months after all, so we were due any time now.

  Mind you, back then I had no ability to stop them. Now I could, although it had unknowable consequences for others if I did. For now though, tying up significant amounts of Trixone military was a necessary thing.

  My musings were interrupted by Amy, who popped up as a hollo on the wall.

  “Nice battle,” she said. “Everyone loved it.”

  “Is the whole Imperium seeing everything we do?”

  “Not everything. I edit out you scratching your arse.”

  She thought it was funny, at least. I gave her my ‘not amused’ look. Her grin widened.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m getting requests from the new members for media interviews.”

  “Organize them.”

  “With you.”

  “No.”

  “They won’t take no for an answer.”

  “The answer is still no.”

  “They’ll take that as a challenge.”

  “Keep telling them no.”

  “But…”

  “What part of no do you not understand?”

  She paused for a moment.

  “Can I use that?”

  “Use what?”

  “What part of no do you not understand?”

  “I understand it perfectly.”

  “I know you do, but they don’t.”

  “So tell them.”

  “I will.”

  There was a pause.

  “So when are you available for an interview?”

  “I’m not.”

  “They won’t like that. You’re a public figure. They expect public figures to be available all the time.”

  “Tough.”

  “Okay. Can I make a documentary of your life so far?”

  “No.”

  “But…”

  “What part of no do you not understand?”

  “All of it.”

  “It’s only one word. How can one word have an all?”

  “Easily. One word is all.”

  “No. The one word is no.”

  She looked off screen.

  “See, I told you.”

  Amy appeared next to herself. The first Amy changed into Jane.

  “No!” I exclaimed, and closed the channel.

  Jane walked in the door before I could get my focus back. I looked at her with an exasperated look.

  “No!”

  She sat, and looked steadily at me.

  “I haven’t asked you anything yet.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Oh that. Different conversation. I had a thought.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “Probably. Want to hear it?”

  “Will I regret it?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What then?”

  “I was thinking about the whole publishing thing.”

  “I thought we covered that this morning.”

  “Not this part.”

  “Which this is that?”

  “You remember Firefly?”

  “The ship?”

  “No, the flat screen series. The one they cancelled before it really got any momentum, and then made a final long episode for a few years later.”

  “I remember that. I couldn’t believe it when the first season ended in space abruptly.”

  “No-one has ever understood it, or the fact it was never rebooted, in spite of the original actors being on board to do it.”

  “That frustrated me too. Six hundred years, and no-one ever made a new version of something which was a cult classic. I’ve never understood that either.”

  “Why don’t we fix that?”

  “Fix what?”

  “Do a remake.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about. As well as a publishing enterprise, we could also create an entertainment production enterprise, and remake all the original greats with the original actors.”

  “They’ve all been dead for six hundred years.”

  “True, but we have the suits. There’s enough digital material around for each actor to be duplicated by an avatar, at least for their roles, if not for real. We don’t even need human actors either. Us AI’s can each choose a role, learn it so no-one can tell the difference, and then play the part in a full hollo version.”

  “You’d need to get permission from the actor’s families to use their digital version as a base. Are any of them still with us?”

  “All the Firefly actors still have families, so they should be contactable. The families, not the actors. And several of them are on record as allowing future digital use of their body image. It was common up until Earth became uninhabitable, and then the industry moved on from remakes and old actors.”

  “Would you do it how it was originally done?”

  “Hell no. Back then the studio making the series was totally clueless. I’d first design a two or three sun system, something along the lines of Verse, and then model the orbital dynamics of every rock in the system, and especially what’s in the goldilocks zones, and build it into the plot structure. I’d replot the main character arcs, for both long and short reveals, and structure it around the versatility of the crew.”

  It sounded feasible. But doubtless today’s diehard fans would disagree.

  “I mean, a war captain, pilot, soldier, brawler, engineer, doctor, companion, and a psychic; make a very interesting mix when moving around a system with a constantly changing set of routes between the various levels of civilization. I’d make it less about being on the wrong side of the law, and more about each character having the needed skill for each stop. Less western in space, less junk heap in space, and more crew making a living any way they can without being the bad guys too often. With a first season arc explaining where everyone came from, and a longer term arc leading to the origin of the Reavers, and then the aftermath of that discovery.”

  She paused a moment, but I said nothing.

  “Lots of space action, ground action, and blood thirsty cannibal attacks.”

  “Really?”

  “Probably not. But the Reavers and the agents after the psychic can create a lot of havoc over five seasons. And I’d set it a bit further into the future and get away from solid shot guns. The whole western thing doesn’t work anymore.”

  “What’s a western?”

  She looked at me as if I was crazy. But seriously, I don’t recall ever watching one. I wasn’t much into horror either, growing up. I was born in space, and lived in space. Space consumed me from a very young age.

  “I’ll ignore that. What do you think?”

  “About westerns?”

  She mimed hitting me.

  “About the Firefly reboot idea.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “You think so?”

  “If you can get the permissions from the actor’s families, and can buy or obtain the rights, go for it.”

  She gave me a Cheshire cat grin.

  “Let’s be bad guys!”

  Twenty Seven

  “Hey, they took a shot at us!” exclaimed Jane.

  “Who did?” I asked.

  “The Nazis. Fourth jump into their space, and they fired missiles at us.”

  “Why not the first?”

  “No idea. They still had a fleet at the jump point, even though nothing can come through it. I guess they sent a message we were coming, and by the fourth jump someone had time to expect us.”

  “Waste of missiles.”r />
  “Quite. But I guess it explains why we haven’t heard from them.”

  Hot on the heels of my discussion with Jane, had come requests from the Japanese, Russians, Chinese, and Indians, for us to visit and discuss issues of mutual interest. So we’d left Stars behind, with key people organizing the movement of troops and pilots to Haven. I still had Lacey and the four squadrons of Excaliburs on board in case someone got rowdy.

  But I hadn't expected those whose space we were crossing to get narked about it. In hindsight, maybe I should have. We’d thwarted the Nazis making war on the Americans after all. One would expect them to be a bit narked about that.

  What I truly hadn't expected though, was the Germans firing on us as well as we crossed their space, and even more surprisingly, the Earth fleet took a serious shot at us as well.

  Mind you, the Earth sector was at war with the German sector, so maybe they were firing on anything which seemed to be coming through the shared jump point. And they had it staked out pretty well. We didn’t use it, but they were hair trigger anyway. Neither had tried to contact us that we were aware of, and so we didn’t stop.

  Jane jumped us from Barnard’s Star clear over Earth to Wolf 359, in a single jump, so as to avoid the fairly massive fleet around Earth itself, and spread across the system between the two jump points. Which was impressive given the sector was a small fraction of what it had been before the time line change, and the serious lack of resources in the system itself. Ship building relied on mining from the systems on either side, but they did have the population to support the fleet.

  We’d not heard from the Arabs, French, Italians, or Spanish either. The Arabs didn’t have a spine system, so we saw nothing of their ships, but knew they had them from the navmap. Paris was still in the same system, and all three jump points had fleets at them. Switzerland had still managed to grab their own system, and there were only police vessels in there. The Scandinavians had carved themselves the same four spine systems, and they had token forces, but nothing major. And Gibraltar and Portugal were also single systems. It made a line of seven independent systems, none of which seemed to have any problems with the others.

  There were vacant systems off Portugal and Gibraltar, but neither seemed interested in finding them. The rest seemed content with what they had, although if I started changing the trade routes, they might suddenly have something to say.