A House United

by Caleb Wachter

  “Then let's get to work,” Tremblay urged, drawing a nod of agreement from Guo.

  “Yeah,” Largent flashed another devilish grin, “let's.”

  Chapter XL: The Pride's Proud Pride

  “All hands, this is the Captain,” McKnight keyed up the ship-wide after the Rainbow's crew had gone to Condition One in preparation for what could be their final jump of the unthinkable journey which had brought them from one end of the galaxy to the other, “our star drive is primed and we are about to enter the trinary star system where I,” she hesitated for a fraction of a second before saying the next word, “believe that Captain Middleton and some of the Pride's other survivors are located. We have already encountered evidence of widespread Imperial activity in these Gorgon Sectors,” she allowed a note of pride to suffuse her voice as she continued, “and if Captain Middleton is here, he'll have crossed swords with them already. We need to be prepared to do the same as soon as we emerge from the point transfer. We're almost there, people,” she straightened herself in her chair, “let's put this house back together.”

  A cheer went up from the bridge crew, the vast majority of whom had been part of the Pride's old crew, and even her XO seemed buoyed by her impromptu—admittedly less-than-epic—speech.

  “Chief Winters,” she raised a hand, which she then lowered toward the view screen emphatically, “engage the star drive.”

  “Star drive...engaged,” Winters acknowledged, and a second later the tactical viewer exploded in a riot of signatures.

  “Multiple contacts within short range!” Shiyuan barked as no fewer than eight distinct ship signatures appeared in the Rainbow's immediate vicinity near the trinary star system's hyper limit. “Half of the nearest hulls are mono-locsium; they're all squawking Imperial idents, Captain,” he added with conviction.

  The Rainbow's tactical icon flashed as several laser strikes splashed against its robust shields. “Tactical, return fire,” she commanded. “Full spread at your discretion, primary weapons free.”

  “Confirmed,” Dusk, the droid Tactical Officer, acknowledged before authoring a truly devastating barrage of fire which immediately snuffed two of the nearest vessels off the board. Then the ship's keel-mounted mass driver unleashed a storm of hell upon a third warship—this one apparently a Cruiser—and after three seconds' sustained fire that warship, too, vanished from the viewer. “One Corvette, one Destroyer, one Cruiser neutralized, Captain,” the droid reported.

  “Waldo,” she turned to her new Communications Officer as further and further icons appeared on the tactical plotter, “can you contact the ships not squawking Imperial idents?”

  “Not yet, Captain,” he replied tersely, “there is a dampening field in effect which appears to originate from the Imperial Battleship designated BS-2 on the tactical plotter. Only our proximity to the Imperial warships enables me to confirm their ident codes.”

  She turned her attention to BS-2 and saw that while it was not within short range, it was still well within the Rainbow's ability to neutralize in short order. As she considered her options over the course of three seconds, another forty tactical icons appeared near the star system's primary—only one fourth of which had mono-locsium hulls. The rest were of mixed configurations and design, few of which were in her ship's data banks.

  “Dusk,” she turned back to the Tactical Officer as a fresh stream of fire landed home on the Rainbow's shields, “neutralize BS-2. Ignore all other targets. Engineering,” she turned to Winters as the Rainbow's powerful shields fell to 70% under the Imps' sustained fire, “prep the star drive for a void jump in case we need it.”

  “Yes, Captain,” they replied in tandem, and a few seconds later the Rainbow unleashed a volley of fire against BS-2. Three dozen lasers struck against the enemy ship's shields, and were followed by a stream of one kilo mass driver pellets which tore deep into the enemy warship's hull, with a few even erupting out the other side of the mighty vessel's robust armor.

  “Enemy Battleship is rolling,” Dusk reported dispassionately in his—for 'he' had opted to assign himself a sex for the purposes of address—deep, distorted voice.

  “The jamming field is down—temporarily,” Waldo reported, and a few seconds later the various ships in the star system's interior began feeding idents into the tactical plotter. Then she saw it—a name attached to one of the few Battleships in the tightly-clustered formation near the star system's primary:

  Alliance Gorgonus Supreme Commander Tyrone Middleton.

  At seeing that name, her myriad reservations about following Traian's information to the far side of the galaxy were completely dispelled. “Put me on every channel; audio and visual broadcast with as much wattage as you can muster. Don't worry about burning the transceivers out,” she commanded, straightening herself as the Rainbow suffered another barrage which drove its shields down below 50%.

  “You are on,” Waldo said a moment later, and McKnight did her level best not to flinch as she gave the video pickup a stony glare while she took a precious second to gather her nerves.

  She summoned every ounce of pain she had endured; remembered every name of her shipmates she had lost during her voyage from the Spineward Sectors; and every last shred of determination remaining to her as she imbued her voice with the same unyielding iron she had heard in Captain Middleton's voice so many times before. “This is Captain Melissa McKnight of the warship Rainbow,” she said, her voice lower and harder than she had expected, “with a message for Alliance Gorgonus Supreme Commander Tyrone Middleton. Our world has received your request for aid,” she continued, reciting one of the many bluffs she had concocted prior to arriving in the start system—bluffs which, if successful, would buy Captain—make that Supreme Commander—Middleton a little breathing room, “and has sent us ahead of the main fleet to formalize our new military alliance...” she leaned toward the vid pickup purposefully as the Rainbow suffered another series of weapon strikes against its rapidly draining shields. “We stand ready to assist you. McKnight out.”

  She made a short, slashing gesture across her throat, which Waldo thankfully acknowledged, “Transmission terminated.”

  “Dusk,” she turned to her new Tactical Officer, “secondary weapons are free; buy me some blasted breathing room—now!”

  “Launching missiles,” Dusk replied, and a blossom of missiles erupted from the newly-installed launchers on the Rainbow's outer hull. In a matter of seconds, three hundred kinetic warheads—fully half of the Rainbow's arsenal—surged toward the nearest Imperial warships. The Imps' PD weaponry lanced out, sniping dozens of the low-tech warheads before the barrage slammed into the handful of nearest warships. Two more ships' icons winked off the plotter after the missiles slammed home, and a moment later Dusk unleashed the Rainbow's keel-mounted mass driver against the Battleship which had been pumping out the jamming field.

  A hundred pellets were launched, and eighty of them found the mark as they tore the formidable Imperial warship's shields apart. The enemy vessel shuddered from internal explosions, and two of its fusion reactors were jettisoned a few seconds later. Soon after that, escape pods began to stream off its hull—but in a sudden flash, the titan of the spaceways' death throes destroyed them before they could reach a safe distance.

  “Shields at 30%, Captain,” Dusk reported, though thankfully the primary author of the fire they'd endured was now a rapidly-expanding cloud of mono-locsium. “Contact!” he declared in what sounded like genuine surprise.

  “Confirmed,” Jarrett said as he threw the image of a sleek, insect-looking warship up on the main viewer. It was no larger than a small Corvette, but it made a patently suicidal strafing run against the other Battleship in their quadrant. The Imps' guns seemed unable to land a direct hit against them as it juked, spun, strafed and rolled around the much larger warship while moving far faster than anything but a Courier vessel had a right to move. When the Corvette came within collision range, it dropped what looked like some sort of modified mines—this wh
ile it fired what looked like eight honest-to-Murphy turbo-lasers.

  No Corvette has any business mounting eight turbo-lasers—let alone powering them! McKnight thought, her brow lowering darkly.

  “Incoming transmission, Captain,” Waldo said in surprise. “It appears to originate from a Battleship in the system's interior, but I calculate that the true origin is this new contact,” he explained in something approaching confusion.

  “Put it on,” she commanded, and a moment later the main viewer was filled with the battle-hardened features of none other than her former Commanding Officer: Tyrone 'Tim' Middleton.

  “Good of you to join us, Captain McKnight,” he said with the slightest emphasis on her rank. His already stern features had taken on a darker, harder edge than she remembered—and the metal plate affixed to his jaw, looking like those used by battlefield medics on skull fractures, only added to his chilling appearance. “I was afraid you'd miss the party,” he said casually as the second Battleship suffered major damage from a trio of tightly-clustered mines which somehow slipped beneath its shields before detonating. “Think you can keep up with my tactical package?” he asked, his words no less a playful invitation than a professional challenge from one commander to another.

  “We'll hold up our end, Supreme Commander,” she retorted, placing the same amount of emphasis on his new rank as he had done hers. “Just make sure your ships don't get too close to our main gun,” she smirked. “You've already seen what my peoples' ships can do.”

  He nodded approvingly, and then an uncharacteristic grin spread across his chiseled features—a grin which only partly reached his eyes, telling her that her bluff of being the vanguard for a larger fleet was one he had every intention of leveraging, “It's good to have your world aboard, Captain. The rest of the AG will be pleased to hear it—and I'm sure they'll be appropriately impressed by your theatrical entrance. Let's just hope your comrades are half as impressive when they arrive. In the meantime,” he said, and the image of the insect-looking ship somehow vanished from the viewer—along with its tactical icon, “let's get to work.”

  With that, his image disappeared from the viewer and McKnight straightened in her chair. “You heard the man,” she barked, feeling a primal thrill course through her body as she raised her voice, “lock and load!”

  The End

  Sneak Peek Chapter: The Eternal King

  Cold.

  All other words paled in comparison, including attempted embellishments like 'frigid,' 'biting,' 'deep,' bitter,' or even 'deadly' could only serve to dilute the experience of it.

  With his power armor's face plate open, Nikomedes drank in the cold through his nostrils. Memories flooded his mind as he did so, including the battle with Kratos atop Blue Fang Pass in front of the Ice Raiders who had called that benighted place home. Such thoughts sharpened his wits and resolve better than any auto-stimulant his suit could provide.

  Overhead, through the driving snow and impenetrable blanket of clouds, were the remains of a Bug Hive Fleet—or at least the partial remains of one. The Captain of the Courier Ship which had brought him to this forsaken place had been understandably reluctant to linger in orbit of the frozen world. But after seeing images from orbit of the citadel which now loomed before him, Nikomedes had convinced the ship's commander that it was in his best interests to do so.

  The citadel was superbly constructed, situated on a bluff which jutted defiantly from the base of a truly majestic mountain that stretched well over a kilometer above the sea of ice beneath.

  And that is precisely what it was: a sea of ice. Nearly unbroken for a hundred miles in all directions, the glacier which skirted the great mountain before him somehow made the vast, untraveled oceans of his native Tracto seem like placid, inviting fish ponds by comparison. Where terrible beasts had made those oceans too dangerous for humans to traverse them, somehow the endless sea of ice was even more foreboding.

  His mind flashed back to his Trial of the Deep, where as a youth he had single-handedly—and unprecedentedly in the entire history of his world—slain a great kraken in order to earn his freedom from the Hold Mistress who had sought to end his life for the crimes of his father.

  “Crimes...” he scoffed, the cold air seeming to swallow his word almost before it graced his own ears. He thought about all of the things he had done as an AI slave whose mind had been manipulated and twisted by Men, the so-called 'god' of his people. He had indeed committed crimes while under the AI's spell, and he had received punishment at the hand of Jason Montagne—a man who Nikomedes now considered as much a benefactor as former rival. Were it not for Montagne's deviousness—which had been on full display both times they'd fought—Nikomedes would still be under the influence of Men.

  Since awakening after the last battle with Jason Montagne, Nikomedes had come to value nothing so much as freedom. And so it was impossible not to acknowledge the so-called Little Admiral's role in freeing him from the shackles of servitude placed on his mind by the pitiless computer masquerading as a god.

  He turned back to face the citadel and lowered his armor's face plate before trudging up the snow-covered ruin which must have once been a truly breathtaking path leading up to the citadel proper. His shuttle's sensors had mapped out the topography of the area, finding stone steps carved directly into the mountainside. It was those very steps which he now climbed, his power-armored form thankfully isolated from the harsh environment outside. Without its protection, he doubted he would survive more than a few hours in the hellish cold.

  It was not lost on him that there was only a thin sheet of snow covering the steps beneath his boots, whereas the rest of the citadel was covered in fully six feet of packed snow where such quantity of it could be supported.

  His power armor, lighter than most in terms of overall protection, was fitted with a modest anti-grav chute that would permit him to survive an otherwise fatal descent into the stone beneath his feet. In addition to the anti-grav chute, he had brought two dozen micro-grenades, a pair of blaster pistols, a crew-served plasma cannon, two vibro-knives, a boarding axe, and the anti-grav sword which he had first used in battle against Senator Raubach's guards on the so-called Alpha Site.

  Had he expected serious trouble, he would have brought considerably more firepower.

  But this world appeared to be utterly dead, with no localized heat signatures anywhere save for the relatively shallow volcanic vents beneath mountains like this one. Not a single bloom of plant-life was present anywhere on the planet's surface, which meant nothing could survive there. The Bug fleet had apparently lingered in orbit for several centuries, according to various readings taken of the lingering debris still in orbit, and their scans suggested the planet had been entombed in ice for that same interval.

  Hardly a coincidence as far as Nikomedes was concerned.

  He passed through the great gate, the archway of which was impressively still intact. He saw telltales of the same stone-working techniques which had crafted some of the mightiest citadels on the world of his birth, which similarities even included the shape and size of the keystone which sat at the apex of the archway.

  Hardly a coincidence as far as Nikomedes was concerned.

  Moving into the courtyard beyond the gatehouse, he saw that a foot-thick sheet of ice covered most of the flagstones. The center of a citadel's courtyard was generally where deep wells were constructed, and for a citadel this high up in the mountains that well shaft would have been exceptionally deep. With nothing to eat, life could not survive above ground on this truly damned world. So even if the well still held liquid water, the only place life might hope to survive is deep beneath the surface near the volcanic vents surrounding the mighty peak. Located precisely where such a well should have been was a great gash in that ice, the edges of which still appeared rough and jagged unlike the gentle curves of the rest of the visible ice.

  Hardly a coincidence as far as Nikomedes was concerned.

  He stood at the edge of the sh
aft and peered down, letting his suit's limited sensor suite—which far outpaced his own senses in penetrating its thousand foot deep shaft, revealing only fractionally warmer temperatures below—feed him information on the landing below.

  The suit's readings confirmed what the shuttle's had shown during his final approach, which was why he had chosen this particular citadel from the seven similar citadels situated along this particular mountain range. He activated the anti-grav harness, ran a quick diagnostic to confirm it functioned, and stepped off into the shaft. He fell slowly at first, but the suit permitted him to plunge with increasing—and dangerous—velocity until decelerating him for the last two hundred feet.

  His boots touched down on the hard stone and he glanced around the largely natural cavern. His suit's low-light video feed showed what looked like three separate exits from the chamber, but he quickly saw multiple sets of tracks which led to one while no such tracks led to the others. The tracks were several days old, but they were clearly human—if a bit on the small side compared to what he grew up with on Tracto—which confirmed his choice in coming to this place as the right one.

  Drawing a vibro-knife in one hand and blaster pistol in the other, he made his way toward the tunnel. There looked to have been a great pool of water in this cavern at one point, but it had been drained long ago. There were shards of pottery here and there, but the cavern was far from cluttered.

  He clomped down the tunnel, leaving the cavern behind, and soon came to the ledge of a great chasm which stretched six hundred feet wide and fifty feet across. He knelt at the edge of the precipice and looked down, where his suit's thermal sensors detected significantly higher temperatures five hundred feet below where he stood. Not far from his perch he saw a trio of well-oiled ropes stretching down to the narrow floor of the chasm.