A Greater Duty (Galaxy Ascendant Book 1)

by Yakov Merkin

  “They’ve doing the same thing the Darvians did,” Admiral Kharitzon said over the link as the enemy began to return fire. Not quite the same. It was a much more advanced shield, allowing the defenders to fire outward.

  They would need to work out a countermeasure before engaging. Darkclaw ordered the fleet to fall back and hold just outside of weapons range as his counterparts began to weigh their options.

  “How many of your ships are armed with shield disrupting weaponry?” Grand Admiral Nayasar asked the Snevan supreme warlord.

  “Oonlyy 100, and theee enemyy wiil know to fiire on them,” he responded correctly. In such small numbers, the ships would not help all that much here.

  “The best course of action would be to begin a landing now,” Darkclaw said. “Send a few hundred warships through the shield to engage the enemy at point blank range and protect landing craft as they descend. Once on the ground, our forces will prioritize destroying the shield’s power source.”

  “Most of the ships sent into the shield will be destroyed,” said Praetor Keeneye. If the thought bothered him, the praetor did not let it show. But he had inadvertently raised a question that would have to be answered: What ships would be sent to their doom?

  Obviously, the best option would be to send the Snevans; their dreadnaughts could absorb the most damage out of all of the ships in their combined fleets, and when most if not all of them were destroyed, the Snevans would be significantly weaker when the time came, after the Alliance fell, to subjugate them. Of course, they might well refuse, as the Felinaris might as well.

  “If I may offer a suggestion,” Praetor Keeneye said.

  “By all means, Praetor,” Darkclaw replied.

  “By my estimate,” Keeneye began, “our soldiers and ships are the most easily replaceable, making them the logical choice to send into the shield. Secondly, if we send three hundred ships into the shield, the majority of them will be lost with all hands.”

  “That is true,” Darkclaw admitted. There would be no chance of sending Felinaris or Snevan ships now. Of course, the praetor was unaware that weakening their current allies was in their best interest.

  “I would propose taking fifty of our warships, evacuating all but a minimal crew from each one, and sending them into the shield, where they will self-destruct as close as possible to the enemy fleet. We could shadow these ships with attack groups comprised of our faster ships, which will stage hit and run attacks while the enemy is recovering. Additionally, we would have an opening during which to land ground forces,” Keeneye stated. “It will result in the smallest net loss for our forces, and do the most damage to the Legion forces.”

  “That’s… brilliant!” Nayasar exclaimed a few moments later. Darkclaw could not see her reaction, as the connection was audio only, but he could perfectly picture her expression must have been. And what would her expression be upon Darkclaw’s betrayal? No, Darkclaw said to himself. I overcame the emotional sympathy. I will not fail again.

  “Where’ve you been all this time, Praetor?” Nayasar joked.

  “A sound plan,” Darkclaw said, cutting off any further conversation. “Praetor, I leave it to you to coordinate this operation. Choose ships and have them ready as soon as possible.”

  “As you command, Executor,” the praetor replied, then went silent.

  “I think we’ll have time for five attack groups to make solid runs before the Legion regains their balance after the explosion,” Nayasar said.

  “We won’t be stopping the attack runs,” Darkclaw said sharply. “We will get forces on the ground during the first attack run, and they will take the generators offline while we press the attack. I will not allow the Legion a chance to regain their bearings. Once the shield is down, the rest of the fleet will engage the enemy.”

  “Understood,” the grand admiral replied, then her audio feed went silent as well, muted as she prepared her assault forces. If all went well, a number of Felinaris and Snevan ships would be destroyed during the attack runs, weakening them, as the High Lord wished.

  Darkclaw remained standing as he kept watch on the fleet movements. The large battlecruisers the praetor had decided to sacrifice were being evacuated, hidden from enemy view by a screen of other ships in front of them. Nearby, the Felinaris and Snevans were joining their own fast attack ships with Tyrannodon frigates, the only Tyrannodon capital ships suited for such attack runs.

  When Keeneye informed him that the sacrificial ships were ready and in position, Darkclaw ordered three hundred landing craft to follow in their wake, safe from enemy fire and far back enough to as to avoid the blast zone when the warships self-destructed.

  With another order, the empty ships made a microjump—a split second jump to hyperspace—bringing them very close to the shield, and enemy, while avoiding enemy fire until the end. It was a very useful, if potentially risky maneuver that only the Tyrannodon ships were currently capable of, though the Felinaris in particular wished to learn to enable their own ships to do so as well. Unfortunately for them, Darkclaw could never allow that. Even he had not known of his ships’ own capability until he had analyzed the information recovered from the Reizan’Tvay outpost. Another important thing they had hidden. The High Lord was right if he wanted to eliminate their creators; they had never had the best interests of the Tyrannodons at heart.

  Immediately as the empty ships performed the microjump, the transports sped toward the enemy, the empty ships reappearing by the time the transports were at risk. As the warships reappeared, the Legion Navy opened fire, but it was too late. Only a portion of their fleet was in position to fire, and it only took the empty ships moments to reach and pass through the shield. Several were crippled or destroyed as they moved deeper into enemy lines; the Legion had likely realized what was about to happen. But they could not destroy enough in time.

  The ships self-destructed, the violent explosions tearing through hundreds of Legion ships, leaving next to no resistance as the small transports sped past, down to the planet’s surface.

  Mere minutes later, the first attack group, made up of Felinaris and Tyrannodon ships, made the first attack run, swooping into the shield and firing as much as they could before exiting and falling back out of range. Few Legion ships fired back; they were still stunned and disoriented. And as the first attack group departed, another took its place.

  By the time the third attack group began their run, Darkclaw began receiving reports from the ground forces that they were pushing toward the shield’s power sources. The Legion forces on the ground were fighting hard, but they were far too few to hold out for an extended period of time. Darkclaw would have expected a larger force on a world so valuable; it was clearly the High Lord’s doing, somehow influencing figures within the Alliance to make the Legion less effective. The conquest of Venariss II might be even simpler than he had expected.

  “Beginning my attack run,” Nayasar—the grand admiral—announced over the audio feed.

  “Understood,” Darkclaw replied as he watched her ships make their move. For reasons he could not pinpoint, he followed their movement closely as they began their attack run. There was no reason to watch so closely; he was responsible for the entire fleet. But he could not bring himself to turn away.

  A few minutes later, the attack force passed through the shield and began to fire at the Legion Navy fleet, which was steadily regrouping despite the repeated attacks. A handful of the Felinaris ships were destroyed before the attack group escaped. As each one disappeared from the tactical display, Darkclaw felt… sadness? Grief? He should not feel anything. The battle was going just as planned, and the Felinaris and Snevans were taking some losses. This was the best possible outcome for the High Lord’s plan. But why was he feeling this over the deaths of some Felinaris?

  I overcame this! He shouted to himself, belatedly realizing that he was angry. No, he would not lose control again! He could not! Darkclaw clutched his head with his hands. The dead were dead. There was no reason to fee
l for them. He had a battle to conduct.

  A warning alarm began to blare a short time later, and Darkclaw’s mind snapped back to itself. There were enemy ships inbound.

  According to the tactical display, a response team of 500 Legion Navy warships was about to arrive in the system. Five hundred would be quite manageable, particularly once the ground forces got the shield down; at last report, they had been surrounding the site, preparing to destroy it. Once that happened, the entire fleet would be able to move in and engage, and even a thousand more enemy ships would not stand a chance.

  Then Darkclaw saw where the enemy ships would enter the system: Within weapons range of Nayasar’s attack group. Without microjump capability, her ships would never get out in time. She had already seen the oncoming ships and was falling back, but it was not fast enough. Darkclaw’s own ships in the attack group, forty frigates, could escape if he gave permission for a microjump, leaving the Felinaris to their fate. Death was a part of war, and Nayasar’s death would be an unfortunate loss, but not insurmountable. And then she will never have to see the betrayal.

  But Darkclaw could not give the order for his ships to flee, just as he had been unable to kill the Darvian weeks earlier. He… he cared about Nayasar, about her people. There was no denying what he felt. He had to help her, and damn the consequences! Cursing himself all the while, Darkclaw ordered his frigates to turn and prepare to engage the oncoming force, then ordered a battlegroup to microjump to their position.

  True to form, none of his captains questioned their orders, and went willingly to their doom.

  As the Legion force dropped out of hyperspace, the shield around the rest of the Legion fleet went down. Their only advantage gone, the Legion Navy made a dash to escape as Darkclaw ordered the fleet to close in. And the enemy’s escape path was directly through the ships Darkclaw had dispatched to give the Felinaris time to escape.

  There was no stopping the destruction of the battlegroup and the frigates. They fought well, taking down an equal number of Legion ships and stalling others so that the main fleet could destroy them before they were able to clear Venariss II and jump to hyperspace. But they had all died, and all because Darkclaw had chosen the Felinaris. And he was happy.

  He had not fixed his emotion problem, he realized. Only suppressed it, and it had built up pressure, finally exploding at the worst possible time. Darkclaw barely even heard the reports from the ground an hour later saying that the planetary government had surrendered unconditionally, and the reports that over half of the Legion Navy fleet had been destroyed, with far less than half as many of Darkclaw’s allied fleet lost, counting the sacrificial ships. All he could think about was that he did not want to subjugate the Felinaris, or the Snevans, that they had a right to exist. And that if they did, so did the other flawed, emotional races, of which Darkclaw was now one as well. What will the High Lord say? What will he do? Darkclaw did not want to die, but he was technically already committing treason. The battle may have been won, but the High Lord would not be pleased.

  * * *

  A short time later, a slightly more composed Darkclaw descended to the planet’s surface to personally oversee the gathering of Reizan’Tvay and intelligence-related information, as ordered. He had hoped to complete his task quickly and quietly, but Nayasar and Felivas ambushed him almost immediately. Darkclaw tried to shut them out, but it was a doomed venture. Even when he did not respond, for fear of what he might say, the couple continued to accompany him. And it turned out that Nayasar was aware of what had happened during the battle, and both of them were so grateful. Darkclaw wanted to yell at them. How grateful would they be when they learned that once they had served their purpose they would be discarded and conquered just like all the others? Why did they insist on venerating him?

  Once he was finally through with his tasks, Darkclaw went over the results as he approached his shuttle, the Felinaris still tagging along. There had been a sizeable amount of military intelligence recovered, but unfortunately nothing on the Reizan’Tvay. Where their outpost should have been was a large building, with a plaque noting that the site had been bombed to the ground in an old war.

  Once Darkclaw reached his shuttle, Nayasar finally had enough. “Why are you ignoring us, Darkclaw?” she demanded. “You didn’t have a problem talking to us before. You’ve been acting strange, and I would really appreciate some straight answers.”

  Darkclaw was trapped. There was no way out of this without talking. He was silent for several long seconds, then finally formulated a reply. “I apologize, Grand Admiral. The High Lord gave me specific tasks to carry out here, and I had to complete them before I did anything else. Please allow me to make my report to him. Afterward, I will answer questions as best I can.” Time in the shuttle would give him an opportunity to create fabrications, consult the High Lord. He could also order his pilot to lift off.

  “And don’t think about flying off in the shuttle. Felivas knows flying things. We’ll keep this shuttle grounded until we can talk.”

  “Normally I’d avoid a confrontation,” Felivas said, “but we do deserve answers.”

  “Of course,” Darkclaw said, hoping his voice sounded normal. “I would not even consider departing without speaking to you.”

  “Uh huh,” Nayasar said in the tone of voice they had called sarcasm. “We’ll be here when you get out. Oh, and while you’re there, put in a good word for us with your High Lord, and convey our appreciation for all he’s put in motion.”

  Darkclaw nodded. “Of course.” If only you knew. Before they could speak again, he entered the shuttle and connected it to the communication terminal on the Hudecar. Before contacting the High Lord, Darkclaw collected his thoughts, attempting to organize and put them in an order that would seem less treasonous. Maybe the High Lord would be willing to make a singled exception? Wise as he was, the High Lord would understand how costly turning on their allies could be in the long run.

  He took a deep breath, then activated the communication system.

  Immediately, the High Lord appeared, the projected image far smaller than on the Hudecar, but large enough to be imposing. Moments later, the familiar sensation of the High Lord’s mind touching his enveloped Darkclaw, but it did not feel as…right as it once had.

  “I see the battle went well,” the High Lord began. “Your military command capabilities are unparalleled, apart from my own of course. And information was recovered, good,” the High Lord spoke into Darkclaw’s mind as he went through the memories in the order Darkclaw had arranged them, the good first. “Oh. It’s a pity the Reizan’Tvay outpost here was destroyed. I would have liked to learn what they thought of the inhabitants of this galaxy, would have liked to learn where they vanished to.” Then the High Lord was silent for so long that Darkclaw almost began to wonder if the High Lord had somehow closed the communication link.

  “But clearly, you still have something to learn, Executor,” the High Lord said, his tone menacing, and for the first time, Darkclaw was truly afraid of him. “I thought you truly wanted to fix what was wrong with you, Darkclaw! To be perfect, as I created you to be! You were to rectify your past failure, and instead you have regressed even further!”

  “But my lord, I—” Darkclaw tried to begin.

  “Don’t bother, Executor! I can see full well what you want to say, and you aren’t going to articulate it any better in words than in your mind. But to humor you: No, there will be no exceptions to our conquest! I am insulted that you might even think I could be convinced of such a thing. These Felinaris you seem to care so much about must bow to us, just as the Reizan’Tvay must. We are destined to rule all!”

  The High Lord paused, and Darkclaw considered speaking, but stopped himself. At least you still know your place, Darkclaw,” the High Lord remarked. “I should order you to execute the Felinaris commanders and destroy their fleet now; by both of our reckonings they are what caused you to fall. But we cannot afford a second war just yet, Executor, and I still me
an to salvage you. No! Do not bother to speak! I will send to you a plan that will enable us to quickly put an end to the Galactic Alliance. The sooner they fall, the sooner the Felinaris and Snevans will fall.

  “This is what you will do and not do, Executor. I’ll spell it out plainly. The Felinaris and others will never hear of this conversation. You will not answer questions. You will find some way, I care not how, to rid yourself of these emotions. After the first step in my final plan you will contact me again for further direction. By that point in time, you will have resolved this issue. I have invested a lot in you, Executor, and I am not inclined to discard you. But I do not tolerate liabilities. You have this one last chance. Know that I am merciful; I am within my rights to kill you where you stand!

  “You understand.”

  Darkclaw did not speak, but made sure the High Lord knew that he understood and would comply. It was what he was meant to do. But he could not keep the objections away completely.

  “You are a disgrace! Still objecting, though you cannot control it, and sniveling like a coward. If you were meant to have emotions, it would be appropriate. But you are not. I will leave you with a final reminder of my power, and know that if need be, I can and will find a new executor.”

  Suddenly it felt to Darkclaw like every cell in his body was on fire, the most intense pain he'd ever experienced. If not for his conditioning, he would have been lying on the floor, screaming. As he was, he didn't move or make as sound, though he desperately wanted to. After only a few seconds it stopped, though it seemed like hours.

  “I see you respond well to pain,” the High Lord added. “Maybe I should use it as a motivator more often. I see that you do wish to do what is right, but you are malfunctioning. You will have your last chance. Oh, and one final thing. Thanks to you, I now have everything I need from this world. Have all forces return to the fleet and then destroy everything on this wretched planet as part of our example to the Galactic Alliance. I expect nothing less than perfection,"