“That was the name given to the vessels that, under the command of Commodore Perry of the old US Navy, sailed to Japan and forced that reclusive country to open its borders. I find the term fitting, for my intention is to sail into the Imperium’s heartland and force it to surrender. The Gimps believe they are the center of the universe. We will teach them they are gravely mistaken.”
Anger and hatred from his crews blazed forth like a solar flare, but instead of burning him the emotions filled him with even more strength than before. They wanted revenge for dead shipmates, murdered friends and relatives, the unprovoked genocidal attack that followed First Contact, and the oppressive threat of genocide that had hung over all of humanity for far too long.
“So we will paint our warships black, and sail under the black flag.”
That borrowed from a different, earlier tradition. When old Terran pirates hoisted the black flag, it meant no quarter would be offered to the enemy. It would be war to the knife. To the death.
Sixty thousand minds roared in wrathful resolve, and they were joined by other, more alien voices, from the hundreds of Warplings that hovered around the Black Ships like vultures circling high above a battlefield, knowing that soon they would be fed.
Soon they would be very well fed.
New Washington, Sol System, 169 AFC
“Where the hell are they?”
The President of the United Stars of America didn’t raise his voice very often, but when he did most people cringed in response. Chief of Staff Tyson Keller had been on the receiving end of POTUS’ wrath a few times, however, and he wasn’t impressed.
Al isn’t tracking too well, Tyson thought. Unfairly, perhaps, but times like these required a steady hand, and losing one’s temper wasn’t a good idea, not even in the privacy of the Oval Room, where only the Secret Service, Tyson and the National Security Advisor could witness the spectacle.
Albert P. Hewer had never been called handsome even by the most fervent sycophants; the kindest thing one could say about his features was that they had a lot of character. In the last couple of years, the man had aged visibly, despite having the best anti-agathics money and power could procure. The prospect of presiding over the extinction not only of the country but of the entire species was affecting him in ways that medical tech couldn’t cope with.
“Everyone’s doing all that can be done, Al,” Tyson told the Commander-in-Chief.
POTUS composed himself with a visible effort and sat back down.
“We all have the same information you do, Mister President,” Geoff Chapelle said as if the President wasn’t on the edge of a total meltdown. “All we know so far is that the mutineers and their ships made transit somewhere in Paulus System, in full view of the Wyrashat’s sensors, and failed to emerge at any of its warp termini. The most plausible explanation is that the entire formation – sixty-four ships – was lost in warp space.”
“We should be so lucky,” Hewer said. “Having those traitors eaten by warp goblins would be outstanding. But we all know that didn’t happen.”
“The second most likely possibility is that Kerensky’s ships discovered a new ley line somewhere in the system. Now that Second Fleet is stationed at Paulus, we have survey teams searching for it, but those things take time.”
Tyson wasn’t an expert in FTL travel – a concept he still found ridiculous despite having lived with it for a century and a half – but he knew that finding new warp gates was the work of decades or centuries. The weak graviton emanations that betrayed the presence of a crack in the fabric of spacetime could only be detected at minute ranges – meters rather than kilometers – and even the likely search areas, somewhere within the closest planetary orbits around a system’s star, were impossibly large. God only knew how the original Starfarers had discovered the first conduits, millions of years ago. Whatever they’d used back then, it was a lot more effective than the current state of the art.
And maybe Kerensky has figured it out.
“We need to bring that crazy bastard to heel,” Hewer said.
“He did save our collective ass, Al,” Tyson reminded him. “Twice. The last time after the second enemy fleet our analysts swore would take ‘a minimum of fifteen months’ to build up showed up unexpectedly. That doesn’t excuse the mutiny, but maybe we should worry about the fleets that are coming to kill us, rather than one that, even if it’s still around, is aiming to kill our enemies.”
“The problem is, Kerensky’s renegades may turn the entire galaxy against us,” Chapelle said.
“Geoff, the galaxy’s already against us. The only thing holding them back is the noticeable lack of balls among most Starfarer polities. They ‘lent’ entire flotillas to the Imperium. They did that because they’re too chickenshit to commit to a full war, but they want us gone. Everybody does, pretty much. Even the Puppies have turned on us.”
Hewer and Chapelle grimaced in unison. The Hrauwah Kingdom was cutting back their shipments of war materiel, despite the fact that they were getting paid for them, cash on the barrel, for the first time since the war started. The accidental conquest of Xanadu System the year before had left the US flush with hard galactic currency. At first, the Puppies had been ecstatic about it. After the Battle of New Texas, things had changed; the flood of goods had slowed down again, replaced instead by a growing litany of lame excuses. They also recalled all the volunteer formations that had been fighting alongside America; while the loss of fighting power had been relatively small, the statement that withdrawal made wasn’t small at all.
“That is my point, Tyson. Everybody’s scared of us now. If Kerensky’s Black Ships start performing more allegedly-supernatural tricks, or burning down neutral cities, all bets are off. We cannot defeat a unified galaxy.”
“I want to go after them,” Hewer said. “Problem is, they are somewhere in Imperium space, and we can’t get to them. Not until we finish off the Lampreys.”
“There is that,” Tyson said.
The Lhan Arkh Congress was reeling after a series of defeats, and it had far fewer core systems than the Imperium. One swift offensive could knock them out once and for all, destroying their industrial base and reducing them to a few dozen minor colonies that could be picked off at leisure. Concentrating on the smaller of the two threats made sense.
“Third Fleet is getting some of the new toys that survey ship found. The Lampreys will finally get what’s coming to them.”
“And when we are done, they will call us the Warp Marauders of America,” Chapelle warned. He’d been strongly opposed to using the ancient weapons of the Kraxan civilization. “We are toying with forces beyond our understanding and very likely beyond our control. The prudent thing to do at this point is cease fighter operations until we have a better grasp on the effect they have on their pilots.”
“In other words, abandon the only weapon system that’s kept us alive.”
“Secretary Goftalu is confident we can secure a cease-fire. Neither the Imperium nor the Lampreys are eager to continue fighting, not after losing over fifty percent of their war fleets – in the Imperium’s case, over a hundred percent of its prewar forces. The Imperium spent years building up, effectively tripling its naval strength, and lost most of it in two fleet actions.”
“So we get a cease-fire, and as soon as they’re done building up, they’ll come back for a rematch. We can’t afford to give them time to come up with countermeasures. They have three orders of magnitude more R&D resources than we do. Eventually they will figure out some way to neutralize our advantages.”
“Save it for the meeting with the JCs,” Hewer said. “The final dispositions will be determined there, but one thing is set: we’re going after the Lampreys next. We’ll refrain from conducting offensive operations against the Imperium for the time being – and the Sec-State will try to talk them into a negotiated peace. We’ll ground our fighters for the time being while we reevaluate things. Third Fleet has no fighters, so that won’t affect the offensive aga
inst the Lampreys. And after we’ve dealt with the Lhan Arkh once and for all, we’ll figure out a way to run Kerensky to the ground. If we’re lucky, the Gimps will settle his hash for us. Then we can try for a negotiated peace.”
Chapelle looked slightly mollified. POTUS went on:
“But if the Gimps come at us again, the fighters will get back to work. I can’t ask the Navy to take losses because we’re scared of using our most effective weapon system.”
“I suppose not,” the National Security Advisor said. “I only hope we don’t go past a point of no return. We might already have done just that.”
“You always were a hard sci-fi guy, Geoff,” the President said, trying to lighten the conversation a bit. “Are you turning mystic on us?”
“SF, not sci-fi, please. And I believe I can develop a properly materialistic hypothesis that explains everything we know and suspect so far. Warplings could simply be some sort of energy beings that derive sustenance from the sophonts they kill. The important thing is that they are trying to use us for their own purposes. If the testimony of Commander Genovisi is to be believed, those entities are largely inimical to us. Except for another faction that might be on the side of the angels. We have no way to verify her account, unfortunately.”
“I spoke with her, before we shipped her off to Xanadu,” Tyson said. “She didn’t seem crazy, but I wouldn’t set policy based on a junior officer’s report.”
“Of course, but we can’t discount it completely, either. In any case, our reputation as ‘warp demons’ is going to be set in stone after this war is over.”
“We have to be alive to care about what others think of us.”
“And we’ve had the same argument enough times already,” POTUS cut in. “People are looking into it. We’ve got entire multidisciplinary teams working on all the data we’ve collected in the past couple of years.”
“Top men,” Tyson said, eliciting a chuckle from his fellow senior citizens.
“We’re not sticking anything in Warehouse Thirteen, Ty. We’ll get answers, sooner or later. But meanwhile, we have a war to win.”
Tyson nodded. The planned Lamprey offensive should work, and finally rid humanity of a major threat. But the enemy, that dirty rat, had its own plan.
One
Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 168 AFC
“I wish I was going with you,” Heather told Captain Peter Fromm, USWMC.
They were enjoying a dinner date for the first time in months; for the first time since his brief leave shortly after the USS Humboldt’s return to Xanadu, as a matter of fact. That was one of the problems with two workaholics trying to have a relationship.
On the other hand, we both want to make things work, and are more than willing to put in the effort, Fromm thought.
“Not much need for an intelligence officer in a straight fight,” he said. “You’ll be a lot more useful here.”
“I know. Captain Gupta was nearly sobbing with relief when I offered to help him out in my spare time. Turns out that running the biggest artificial habitat in the galaxy isn’t as easy as he thought.”
They shared a less-than-nice smile. Fromm had some vague idea of the heroic task Heather had undertaken after a series of unexpected events led to the US takeover of the former Habitat for Diversity. The new commandant had been confident he could do a better job than she had, and made it be known in no uncertain terms. Half a year later, Captain Gupta was eating a well-deserved serving of crow.
“And that’s only a side job,” Heather went on. “I still have some ten thousand years’ worth of Kraxan records to analyze, and only two t-wave rated assistants to help me do it.”
“The stuff you’ve already developed is damn impressive,” he said. He wasn’t blowing smoke up her ass, either. The new weapon systems they’d built thanks to her research were game-changers. Assuming they worked as advertised, of course. His company would be among the first to try them out under field conditions.
“I think we’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit, though, tech-wise at least.” She grimaced. “And here we are, talking shop in our free time.”
“Do we have anything else to talk about?”
“One would hope so.”
“We agreed not to get into what happens after,” he added, somewhat cautiously.
“I know.”
They knew too well that the chances there would be an ‘after’ – after the war was over, after they could look forward to a life outside the service – weren’t great. He was due to depart with the 101st MEU, currently attached to Third Fleet. They were headed for Lhan Arkh space to settle scores with the architects of the Days of Infamy. The infamous Lampreys knew what awaited them, and they weren’t likely to go gently into the night. He’d fought them before, most recently for the amusement of the former owners of Xanadu System, and he knew they were going to have one hell of a fight in their hands.
Fromm had seen too many men and women die, and too many of them died because of orders he gave or mistakes he made. He knew how easily he could be next. Lately, he’d started to believe he should be next. He’d all but courted death recently, and only a small miracle – courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Zhang – had saved him. Next time his death wish might come true.
“Stop it,” Heather said. She couldn’t read his mind, even with her near-magical tachyon-wave implants, but she could sense his emotional state, and she knew him well enough to not need any gadgets to figure him out.
“Sorry.”
They’d tried to talk things out, but in the end talking only led to wallowing in their problems rather than solving them. Better to set that garbage aside and keep it buried under a steady avalanche of hard work. Those gloomy thoughts kept resurfacing, though; not often, but more than often enough. There was no magical cure.
Fake it till you make it. Probably the best advice. If you pretended everything was all right, you might just make it so.
“No forlorn hopes,” she said. “No heroic last stands. No ‘die trying.’ That crap is for losers. Let the Lampreys die trying, Peter. Come back in one piece. That’s an order.”
“I will.”
Dubois System, 168 AFC
Lieutenant Colonel Lisbeth ‘Lamia’ Zhang gritted her teeth as she led her squadron into yet another precedent-setting maneuver.
“Ready to dance, boys and girls?”
“Oh, yeah,” Captain Desmond ‘Kong’ Franz said in a throaty voice. The massive heavy-worldler Marine was shaping up to be the second-best pilot in the squadron.
“Deus Vult,” Ronnie ‘Preacher’ Johns whispered. A religious fanatic, but sharp and fearless.
“Up and at them.” That was Leroy ‘Jenkins’ Rodriguez. The clown of the team, but all business where it counted.
“Roger,” was all Grinner Genovisi said. Lisbeth’s own warp-witch, able to tell fortunes, talk to angels, and pull the occasional miracle out of a hat.
“Kong, follow Grinner’s lead. Preacher, Jenkins, you’re with me.”
The bizarre Corpse-Ships – still looking creepy even after getting painted in red, white and blue colors – were zooming through real-space at 360 km per second, better than a light cruiser going at flank-plus with all engines redlined, and they were about to go a lot faster than that.
Transition.
From the cockpit of a Corpse-Ship, warp space was a bright rainbow river, a swirling flow of strange energies, a place where imagination could impose its own reality if your will was strong enough. At the moment, the five pilots were too busy concentrating on their flight plan to do anything fancy. What they were about to try was supposed to be impossible, and would in any case be risky. Perhaps too risky for the irreplaceable quintet of ships, but if it worked, it’d be more than worth it.
Sun-Blotter tactics – massive missile swarms designed to overwhelm the defenses of warp-adept warships – had been developed many millennia before the current conflict. The Lampreys – the reputed developers of the technique – had either reinvent
ed it or somehow stumbled on some ancient records and stolen the idea. The enemies of the Warp Marauders of Kraxan had used saturation missile volleys against the murderous aliens, and for the same reason: to deal with warp shields that made direct fire weapons all but useless at most ranges.
Naturally enough, the Kraxans had come up with countermeasures of their own. Lisbeth was about to plagiarize the hell out of one of them. When you stole, you stole from the best.
“Grinner, you’re up.”
The two-ship element led by Commander Deborah ‘Grinner’ Genovisi performed the first part of the evolution, creating a warp aperture with a two light-second diameter. They kept it open, hanging on the threshold between real and null space. The maneuver was similar to what warp pilots called ‘ghosting,’ except it worked on a much larger scale – the warp ‘door’ those two ships were holding open was hundreds of thousands of kilometers wide, although only about a dozen meters tall. It drew a rainbow of shifting light between the two vessels over a longer distance than that between the Earth and the Moon. And that was just the first stage.
“Our turn,” Lisbeth told the other two pilots. The three Corpse-Ships assumed a triangular position and performed the same maneuver. The three ships emerged from warp in a triangular formation, also two light seconds apart and on the same plane as Genovisi’s element; new linear warp apertures formed, connecting all five ships. The roughly A-shaped configuration now turned into a five-pointed star, or a pentagram, if you would. A moment later, the apertures grew in size and the area in-between filled up with light. A five-sided polygon of constantly-shifting colors larger than any planet broke through the darkness of space.
Just one little push…
Something like an electric current burned through her nervous system. She nearly lost consciousness, but held on with the stubbornness that had kept her going in many situations where a more reasonable person would have curled up and died. Somewhere rather far away in real space but nearby via telepathic link, she felt the other members of the squadron go through the same process.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 126
