UnArcana Stars

by Glynn Stewart

  “If they’ve attacked a Protectorate System, we’re just to walk away?” Paternoster demanded. “That goes against everything the Navy stands for!”

  “Mage-Commander, the task group we encountered in Korma consisted of five ships with a total mass of over a hundred million tons,” Damien said quietly. “We cannot risk assuming that the Republic has not built warships capable of matching ours on a ton-for-ton basis. I will not start a battle we cannot win.

  “You are authorized to defend yourself, but outside of that, you will not open fire without my direct orders. Is that clear?”

  Paternoster’s interrupting might not have been planned, but it couldn’t have worked better. Damien got to give the harsh orders he knew were needed without directing them at the militia officers he expected to have to handle with kid gloves.

  “Now, are there any further questions with regards to our objectives?”

  19

  Damien had lost track of the star systems he’d visited at this point. It wasn’t that many, he was sure. A dozen. Maybe twenty? He wasn’t certain off the top of his head.

  Even now, however, most of humanity never saw stars beyond the one they were born orbiting. Traveling between planets in that star system was more common, but it wasn’t that unusual to have never left the surface of your homeworld.

  Santiago was the latest in that long line, and he wished he could have visited under better circumstances. It was an unusually calm system, with asteroids and comets mostly limited to an outer belt beyond the system’s giants. Three average gas giants in offset orbits shielded the inner system from debris, resulting in four unusually unmarred rocky worlds.

  Only one of those planets was inside the liquid water zone, and Novo Lar was a tropical paradise across much of its surface, with archipelagos of gorgeous islands and beaches scattered across warm and calm seas.

  The polar storm zones were less congenial, but it was those unending hurricanes that fed the currents that carried warmth and plankton across the world. Vast farms on the surface of Novo Lar’s oceans raised plants and fish sourced from two dozen worlds for their taste or pharmaceutical properties.

  One of the causes and consequences of that—Damien wasn’t entirely sure which came first—was lax drug laws, even by the Protectorate’s standards. Whatever high you were looking for, you could get it on Novo Lar if you had the money—whether that high came from herbs, hyper-processed chemicals or simply sitting on a beach in unending sunshine.

  Santiago’s fourth planet was outside the liquid water zone, but its orbit was neatly synchronized with Novo Lars at exactly double the time. For most of the local year, transit between the two worlds was relatively straightforward, and Cova was rich in the minerals and ores that fuelled modern industry.

  Cova’s atmosphere might not be breathable, but that was often a benefit when industry moved in on a massive scale.

  The combination of the two worlds allowed the system to grow rapidly. Santiago was one of the poorer MidWorlds—but it was also one of the youngest colonies to qualify for that status.

  And the complete lack of shipping between Cova and Novo Lars suggested that growth was coming to a sharp and unpleasant end. That kind of interlaced symbiotic economy was never lacking in ships.

  Today there were none, and Damien watched the plot of the system expand around his ships with grim certainty.

  “We’re not detecting any civilian shipping,” Mage-Commodore Jakab reported. “We’re closest to Cova, and we picked up a dozen gunships before they cut their emissions. A little late on their part, but it’s not like they knew we were coming.”

  “Why not?” Damien asked. “They seem to have had warning of everything else we did.”

  He sighed.

  “Unfortunately, the Santiago Star Guard has gunships,” he pointed out. “Legatan-built ones, at that. They’re mainly used as search-and-rescue ships, since the SSG always relied on Mars for their security.”

  Like they were supposed to. Officially, the Protectorate was opposed to the continuing proliferation of System Militias, but the Charter tied their hands.

  Unofficially, the Mage-King had seen a counterbalance to Legatus in those Militias. And his hands were tied. No one wanted to be renegotiating the Charter at this point.

  “Get coms with the refueling station,” he ordered. “Then continue the recon sweep. If there’s anything bigger than a gunship in this system, I want to know about it before they decide to get clever.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Refueling station is gone.”

  That harsh report from Mage-Commander Boulos was probably all the evidence Damien needed. The data flowing in over the telemetry link was even more so.

  Santiago’s innermost gas giant had been host to a Transmutation facility, tasked with providing antimatter for both the star system’s industries and the Navy refueling station. The refueling station had orbited the same gas giant for convenience, and two RMN destroyers had kept a careful eye on the station.

  Both space stations were wrecks now. The refueling station was simply, as Boulos had said, gone. Thousands of tons of antimatter had gone up in what must have been a spectacular fireball—and probably an intentional one on the part of the station’s crew.

  The Republic was always going to have troubles sourcing antimatter. They’d almost certainly at least attempted to take the station intact.

  The wreckage of the two destroyers was easier to pinpoint. The ships were armored against gigaton-range explosions, after all. There tended to be at least something left.

  Radiation fields were still dispersing. That would let Damien’s people date the battle, eventually.

  “Took out the Transmuter station first, then swept around to hit the destroyers and try to capture the fuel tanks,” Jakab concluded. “Probably figured that trying to capture a station full of Mages was asking for trouble, even if they are half convicts.”

  There were few enough Mages in the galaxy that the Protectorate couldn’t lock even criminals away uselessly. Most Mage prison sentences were served on Transmuter stations, transforming matter to antimatter under strict supervision and isolation.

  Convicted criminals or not, however, those Mages wouldn’t have rolled over for the Republic.

  “What are we seeing at Novo Lar and Cova?” Damien finally asked. “We’ll want to set up for a fast pass between the two planets, see how much we can see.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Jakab said calmly.

  “Which you’ve already done and are humoring me, of course,” the Hand replied, chuckling. “What’s our estimated time?”

  “We’ll blast through them with about a light-minute to spare on either side in about an hour and ten minutes,” the Mage-Commodore told him. “By then, we should really know everything that’s going on in the system.

  “We’ll jump in just over three hours, heading back to Ardennes.”

  “We already know what we came to find out,” Damien said with a sigh. “The Santiago System has been attacked and taken by the Republic. We’re at war.”

  “Yes. The more we know, however…”

  “The better off we are,” Damien agreed. “Get me everything, Mage-Commodore. I want to know how bad it is.”

  Horrific was the correct answer.

  “I make it the same style of carrier group as we ran into in Korma,” Romanov said quietly. The Marine was acting as Damien’s operations officer on the flag deck.

  He supposed he was going to need to acquire a staff. Both his old-style one, for politics and covert ops, and a military one for the war it seemed he was going to have to fight.

  “I’ve got what looks like a forty-million-ton ship and a twenty-million-ton ship in orbit of Cova,” he continued. “Battleship and cruiser?”

  “Probably,” Damien agreed. They had more detailed data now than they’d had in Korma and he looked over the long-range visuals. “That’s fascinating.”

  “My lord?”

  “Look at them.” T
he Hand gestured. The smaller ship was a long cylinder-like shape, presumably an outer armored shell around a rotating habitat. The larger ship, however, looked like two cylinders welded together.

  “The big ship is basically two of the smaller ships connected,” Damien noted. “They’re building one, maybe two styles of hull. The cruiser is one of them, the battleship is two. The carrier is probably two of them with an extra connecting layer for the gunships.

  “Efficient; about as close as you can come to mass-producing starships.”

  “Where are they getting the Mages?” Romanov asked.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” the Hand murmured. “Or do they have a technological equivalent to the Mages? A jump drive of some kind?”

  “That would explain their willingness to secede and go to war, I guess,” his subordinate replied. “But we’ve been looking for that for centuries.”

  “We were looking for a technological FTL com for centuries, too,” Damien pointed out. “We’re almost a hundred percent certain they have that, so I don’t want to rule out the possibility of a jump drive. It would explain a lot.”

  “The ships at Cova aren’t maneuvering towards us,” Jakab reported. “We can’t say the same for the ones at Novo Lar, though. I make it a battleship and a cruiser guarding the carrier. The carrier is staying where she is, but the two escorts are coming our way with a hundred gunships or so.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Damien pulled up the visual on the carrier and nodded as it confirmed his thought. Two twenty-million-ton cylinders positioned about four hundred meters apart. The connecting section clearly served as a launch-and-retrieval deck for the gunships, with covered landing pads and refueling systems.

  He realized that right now, however, those landing pads weren’t deploying gunships. They were deploying assault transports, a new wave of ground troops heading to the surface.

  “Have we made contact with the locals?” he asked.

  “Limited,” Jakab told him. “There is fighting continuing on the surface. So far, it sounds like the RIN is refraining from kinetic strikes outside very specific targets, but they’ve already landed twenty thousand troops.”

  “And if those transports map up to what I think, they’ve got another five thousand headed down.” Damien shook his head. “Do you see any other transports, or are we just looking at the organic complement from the carrier?”

  “I’m guessing the first twenty thousand were from another transport that left to pick up more troops,” Jakab replied. “They can defeat organized resistance and take control of the government with twenty-five thousand soldiers, but they can’t truly control the planet with that.”

  “Can those gunships and escorts intercept us?” Damien asked.

  “No. They’re just making sure we do leave, I think. Do you want to talk to them?”

  Damien studied the ships heading his way. Five warships. The Republic had taken this system with five warships, and he didn’t have the firepower to take it back from them. If he brought everything from Ardennes, including the ASDF…he’d still be outgunned.

  The Republic hadn’t declared war. They hadn’t issued any ultimatums or demands. They’d just attacked, and Damien wasn’t even sure how many systems had fallen.

  “This is a date that will live in infamy,” he quoted softly.

  “My lord?”

  “December seventh, nineteen forty-one,” Damien replied. “The Japanese attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, bringing the USA into the Second World War. There was no warning, no declaration of war.

  “That date wasn’t forgotten…and this one won’t be either.” He shook his head.

  “No, Commodore, I have nothing to say to the Republic’s Navy.”

  20

  “Jump complete,” Roslyn reported, her words half-slurred in exhaustion. “Someone please tell me we’re safe now.”

  Katz laid her hand gently on Roslyn’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “I think so,” she said calmly. “Stick around a few minutes, Mage-Lieutenant. We’ll know for sure.”

  Roslyn was in the seat attached to the simulacrum, usually the Captain’s chair. With the odd setup for officers aboard Stand in Righteousness right now, it had been relegated to “the Jump Mage’s” chair, with Katz commanding the ship from the tactical console.

  The Commander’s codes were apparently sufficient for her to remotely override the repeater screens around Roslyn’s seat, updating them with the tactical plots of the star system as Roslyn looked with half-closed eyes.

  She’d probably jumped as many times in the last few days as she had in her entire life before this, and she’d done so at shorter intervals than she ever had before. She was awake, yes, but she was riding the hard edge of nonfunctional.

  And Mage-Commander Herbert’s example meant that she wasn’t going to take the uppers available to her—and she doubted that the overworked medic acting as ship’s doctor would give them to her after the Commander’s death, either.

  Even through her exhausted state, however, she could make out the IFF codes being transmitted by the destroyers around the refueling station. Ardennes had a major Navy anchorage, barely a step short of a full fleet base, and ten destroyers were standing guard over it.

  “The IFFs check out,” Armbruster reported. “I make it the Sixteenth Destroyers and four ships of the Third Destroyers.” He paused. “Confirming two cruisers and a slew of destroyers in orbit of Ardennes as well. Their IFFs read as Ardennes System Defense Force.

  “Sir, the system appears to still be in our hands,” he concluded.

  “Good.” Katz turned her gaze back to Roslyn. “Mage-Lieutenant Chambers?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get your butt to a bunk and sleep. If you need help sleeping, talk to Sergeant Ryan. You’re off duty for forty-eight hours, and I will by God kill anyone who tries to suggest differently. Am I clear, Mage-Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.” Roslyn admitted. She half-stumbled out of her chair, but one of the POs Chey had put on the bridge with her caught her. “I’ll be fine,” she slurred.

  “No, she won’t,” Commander Katz said firmly. “PO Karlson? Please see your boss to her quarters. Everybody on this ship owes her their lives. Let’s make sure she gets the rest she needs.”

  When Roslyn woke up, her wrist-comp happily informed her that it had been just over thirteen hours since PO Karlson had bodily hefted her onto the bed in her new quarters and turned the lights off. She was still wearing the uniform she’d been wearing before she’d been sent off duty.

  She had a short mental battle between shower and catch up on what’s going on—but shower won pretty handily.

  By the time she was cleaned up and dressed in a fresh uniform, she was feeling something close to human. She still had over a day off-duty according to Katz’s orders, but she also needed to know what was going on—and the best place to find that out was the bridge.

  To her surprise, however, Stand in Righteousness’s bridge was very quiet when she entered it. Commander Katz was holding down the command chair, but there was no one else in the room.

  “Ah, Mage-Lieutenant,” Katz greeted her. “If you so much as twitch toward a console, I’ll have to find a Marine to escort you back to your quarters.”

  “That doesn’t look like it would be easy, sir,” Roslyn replied. “Where is everyone?”

  “If they’re following orders, asleep,” the Commander told her. “I crashed after sending a report in to the Ardennes Station, leaving Armbruster in command until an hour ago. We’re taking single-person watches until we make Ardennes.”

  “Is that safe?” the much-younger woman asked—and was surprised when Katz chuckled and gestured to the screens around them.

  “Pretty safe, yes,” Katz said. “Meet our new friends, Mage-Lieutenant: the ASDF cruisers Appalachian and Himalaya.”

  Roslyn blinked. She hadn’t even checked the screens around them for other ships, but she saw them now. Stand in R
ighteousness was an even-sided pyramid, a hundred meters on a side. Her two escorts were much bigger.

  “Export ships,” Katz continued as Roslyn tried to scale the four-hundred-meter-long spikes in space against her own destroyer. “Tau Ceti–built, no amplifier, but missiles and battle lasers for days. I think we’re safe, Mage-Lieutenant.”

  “I’d have to agree,” Roslyn admitted with a chuckle of her own. “Cruisers, sir?”

  “Our report is being relayed to Mars already,” Katz told her. “RTA transmissions are already sent and a courier left the system with our entire sensor records two hours ago. I think the Navy is feeling twitchy about us, though, and asked the ASDF if they could borrow some big guard dogs.”

  Roslyn nodded.

  “It’s been a bad week,” she said in a small voice.

  “It’ll get better,” her boss promised. “It won’t get more peaceful, though. Commodore Cruyssen has confirmed your commission. Last I heard was that he was scrambling to put together a replacement crew for Stand, but I’ve been assured that you and I are remaining aboard.”

  Katz sighed.

  “For my sins, I get the XO slot. From the sounds of what Cruyssen is saying in terms of his available hands, I think you’re staying at Tactical, too.”

  “That’s…a hell of a jump from ‘I haven’t graduated yet.’”

  The Commander grimaced.

  “Welcome to war, Lieutenant Chambers.”

  “It’s certain, then?” Roslyn asked.

  “The relayed message from Mars arrived just before you did. It’s going out across the entire Protectorate—the Mage-King has drawn his sword, Lieutenant.

  “The Republic doesn’t know what they’re walking into. The Protectorate has never gone to war.”