by Nick Cole
“I’ve been told by a number of Black Fleet officers that Rechs challenged Sullus to single combat, and that Sullus killed him.”
Kaar raised his eyebrows. “Impressive. I think I’ll share that bit of information when the House of Reason needs some cheering up. They no doubt will by the time this day is ended.”
02
Black Fleet
Third Wing, First Squadron, “Pit Vipers”
Hangar Deck Three Aboard Terror
Off Tarrago Moon
0153 Local System Time
The crew chief stepped back from the hatch of the tri-fighter, ground attack variant, and saluted Lieutenant Haladis as she finished strapping herself in.
“Good luck and good hunting, Lieutenant!”
The pilot snapped back a salute, her gloved hand brushing against her thick flight helmet. She felt that familiar rush of goose bumps and emotions as she plugged into onboard life support. As the deck crew disconnected her fighter from Terror’s power conduits, she switched from auxiliary to internal power.
A ground crew member ahead, out beyond the cockpit glass, pulled out light batons and signaled to her. She gave a two-click acknowledgement. As she waited for the internal turbines to cycle up, she watched the rest of the flight line. Her squadron, and other squadrons throughout the massive hangar, were approaching go mode.
She finished preflight and double-checked the master weapons. They’d installed a new munitions package on her tri-fighter, replacing the standard blasters with twin 30mm chain guns capable of independent auto-targeting.
Actual slug throwers.
She took the throttle and yoke and settled her feet on the rudders.
“Viper Two, this is Viper Lead,” came the squadron leader’s call over internal comm. “Taxi into position and prepare for immediate departure. Once we’re clear, form up on me to target.”
Just as it had been planned in the endless briefings. Trained for in the months prior. And what she’d been headed toward for what seemed like her entire life.
She acknowledged. “Roger, Viper Lead.”
Repulsors engaged beneath her, and the tri-fighter lifted off from its docking cradle. She moved the throttle ever so slightly forward and taxied toward the centerline. Viper Lead taxied in front of her. Other fighters were moving off the flight line into the ready position. The hangar echoed with the ghostly howls of their engines.
The tri-fighter was a wicked-looking agile starfighter unlike anything the Republic had ever even thought about fielding. Three independent deflector panels, skinned in black and angled forward like vicious scalene triangles outlined in the standard fleet gray, covered a central pilot pod and engine system. The pilot looked out the forward-looking latticed canopy, guarded by the deflectors to the sides and one above—but this provided limited visibility and was useful only for landing. It was the augmented reality pilot interface system that took this ship to the next level. With it, Haladis could see the battle going on all around her while still orienting for standard flight control. It took a bit of getting used to, but once you did, you saw all the advantages you had over fighters that relied on the pilot’s visual interpretation of the battle.
She ran through the deflector pre-launch checklist and tested the inverters to standard. The deflectors also acted as impulse directional thrusters that allowed more agile maneuvering than the typical turn-and-burn heavy fighters of the Republic. Everything looked good for flight.
“Pit Vipers… you are cleared to depart,” came the call from flight control high above the hangar’s upper reaches, where a monumental tower hung down from the top of the cavernous deck. “Get ’em, snakes!”
“Go for throttle,” murmured Viper Lead.
Haladis could barely tell he was nervous. He seemed as calm and as quiet as ever. Great pilot. Quiet leader. He’d kill you in a dogfight through sheer patience. And he’d done it many times to her in sim, back on Tusca. She was glad he’d beaten her out for squadron leader over the course of the intense, and at times brutal, training they’d spent the last year living through. Surviving, really.
Unlike in the Republic, everyone in this fleet had been trained to kill. From light infantry skills to Legionnaire training, to escape and evasion… everyone was a fighter—whether they were a cook, a transport driver, or even a pilot. The sadistic TAC officers had required this of them all.
But being in charge… that was a whole other job.
A tough job.
Flying a fighter in combat was also a tough job.
Doing both at the same time was more than she’d wanted.
She just wanted…
She pushed forward on the throttle and realized she was holding her breath. Suddenly what remained of the hangar and launch deck raced past her as she shot beyond the hull of the massive ship.
Breathe, Kat.
Said her brother.
Just breathe.
“This is for you, Dasto,” she whispered.
And then they were out in space, the entire squadron racing toward Tarrago Moon.
Black Fleet
Bridge of the Imperator
Off Tarrago Moon
0154 Local System Time
“Admiral,” signaled the flight ops officer. “First strike underway. Five minutes to first-targets engagement.”
Admiral Rommal watched the real-time combat operations map located on the lower deck of the two-story bridge, currently set to display the Tarrago system. All targets were highlighted in red. Friendlies were identified in a ghostly blue. Targeting data and countdown bars circled and undulated, providing real-time updates for each target within the three major areas of the operation.
Fortress Omicron on Tarrago Moon would be hit first.
Then the system defense force in orbit around Tarrago Prime would respond and draw away from the planet—if the Republic’s traitor followed the plan.
And finally… the Kesselverk Shipyards would be open for assault and capture.
There lay the real prize of this operation. With a fully functioning automated shipyard, the fleet could begin construction of more battleships and the planned destroyers.
The third area of operation would be space itself. The Republic’s Seventh Fleet would respond, and there would be a battle like none seen in a generation. Fire would be exchanged, and people would die. That was all that was guaranteed in the admiral’s mind.
Other staff officers, each in a crisp, black, almost Spartan uniform, highly polished black boots, and a small dark cap, gathered about the lower deck of the bridge. Their datapads tracked and reported on operations underway, impending, and ready to mount. They surrounded the admiral at a distance and waited for any adjustments he might offer them.
“Second strike on deck and ready to launch,” called out the combat information commander, or the CIC, as everyone had taken to referring to him, just like they’d referred to the same position in the Republican Navy. Admiral Rommal had known the man from before. Ex-Republic naval officer who’d never managed to make rank because he hadn’t attained the right connections along the way. “Too right-wing,” they would’ve murmured in the hallowed halls of the House of Reason assignments department.
That he was eminently competent mattered not to them.
Rommal gave the man a nod and turned back to the real-time updates coming in from intel assets all across the system. Out there in the dark, tri-fighter scout variants running active cloak, unmanned drones, and recon shock troopers on the ground were feeding as much intel into the fleet’s system as possible in the moments leading up to the operation.
The attack.
The rebellion.
The new… whatever it would be at the end of this very long day… whatever it would be would be new and different. And all the wrongs would be righted.
Do you really believe that? Admiral Rommal asked himself within the quietly seething cauldron of his own mind. A mind tortured by a thousand what-ifs and the responsibility for them all. A mind trying
to keep painful memories and new realities at bay.
Do you?
Third Wing was now three minutes from target, and it was still, for all intents and purposes, undetected by the Republic. Scouts across the system were jamming every Repub sensor as best they could. It looked like it was working. And now if this rogue Republic admiral could deliver them the goose…
Rommal didn’t trust the man. He was the worst, in that he was typical of a House of Reason point: both incompetent and ambitious. But even he should be able to handle this assignment. Down on Tarrago Prime they would be expecting nothing of what was about to happen next. Instead they were looking forward to another celebration of nothing.
“Unity Day indeed,” murmured the admiral.
Yet one more opportunity, staged by the House of Reason, to shirk work and enterprise in a near-constant effort to reward themselves for the accomplishment of nothing. To make the people think they were part of something grand, instead of just a cheap carnival show run by huckster carnies who never tired of performing for power and power alone. Liars lying in order to maintain cheap power, they would give away anything they could in order to have that power for just a little while longer. And they often preferred to give away what others had worked, bled, and died for.
And how much of your involvement, his tactical mind asked himself, is because of what they took from you? And how much is because it’s the right thing to do now at this moment in the galaxy?
The Galactic Republic was a slave republic. Slaves and nothing more. And very few were even aware of their indentured servitude. They just called it “taxes.” Endless taxes that everyone, except those in the corridors of power, paid. There was always some exemption, or some special treatment, for the House of Reason and their family members
Like the medical care that might have saved her? that other part of the admiral’s mind asked as he watched those memories of his wife dying in med bay all over again.
They’d cared only enough to send some flowers when she finally passed. Two months late. That had been like opening an old wound to him. All over again.
He pushed the thought away and watched the digital icons streaking toward their destinies. Outposts across the system that were about to be strafed into oblivion. Incoming freighter traffic that would be destroyed in order to maintain some surprise and secrecy. Across the military forces of the Republic, there would come the realization that a day never planned for had suddenly arrived. That destiny happened regardless of who you voted for. And sometimes, because of who you did vote for again and again, despite all the evidence.
And you, too, he thought as he watched all the icons representing Third Wing streaking toward Tarrago Moon. You too were once slaves in service to the elites of a Republic that cared little whether you lived or died.
Elites. What a dirty word it sounded like now, when once it had been such a high aspiration. Even Admiral Rommal’s aspiration. Yes, he knew he was bitter and angry. But he was not false. Not even with himself. Not in the midnight hours of his soul or in this last moment before the revolution had begun. Before the dice were flung. He too had once wanted what so few had. He too had once wanted to be an elite.
He heard the approach of unmistakable footsteps. One leg barely dragging the boot it wore. The result of some injury in yet one more of the Republic’s endless liberation conflicts.
“We’ve got to knock out that orbital gun, Rommal. Today’s success depends on it. And so might our lives.”
Admiral Crodus. In charge of fleet intel.
“I’m aware of the need for success, Admiral Crodus. And I would remind you… much of this depends on your spies and assassins. Everything is in order, I take it? We have confirmations from out teams.”
Crodus nodded and studied the real-time updates.
But he was right… if Third Wing didn’t knock out the massive orbital defense gun that guarded the approach to Tarrago Prime… well, it would make short work of the three technological wonders that comprised the entirety of the Black Fleet at present. Not even battleships could stand up to that kind of firepower.
But once the shipyards on Tarrago Prime were captured… who knew what would be possible after that.
231st Gun Battery Assigned Orbital Defense Command
Fortress Omicron
0155 Local System Time
Captain Thales walked the midnight corridors of Omicron. As the watch officer on duty, it was his job, and a boring job it was, to patrol the various outposts and watches within the inner fortress surrounding the orbital gun bore in the center of the defensive works that was the entire moon. His thankless job was to make sure everyone was ever alert for an attack everyone knew would never come. Never ever. There was no other power big enough, within the galaxy, to attack the Republic. It was universally agreed that nothing would ever warrant the use of the orbital defense gun that guarded the approach to Tarrago Prime and its sprawling Kesselverks Shipyards.
Nothing.
To be assigned here was a kind of purgatory.
True, it was a powerful weapon system. And an excellent one, by all accounts. But it had only been built to employ workers the House of Reason wanted votes from. One of the most great, and grand, make-work projects of the last recession, which had really been a depression, but which the media insisted on calling something less dire. Thousands of private citizen core-worlders had been suddenly forced into government contracts just to keep their families in the latest luxuries the Republic’s culture of wealth had managed to tempt them with. Anything to stave off the inevitable collapse a few had been assuring everyone was inevitably inevitable.
Lock that down, Rogg! Captain Thales ordered himself as he left Turret Four after a surprise middle-of-the-night inspection. That kind of thinking won’t get you promoted off this rock.
And Rogg Thales wanted off this rock.
His perfect assignment would be as artillery forward observer for the Legion. Or at least a Legion liaison officer.
Deep Sensors, his next check, lay thirty yards ahead down a massive hall cut into the dead rock of the lifeless moon. He’d check on them, then maybe get some coffee from the duty station farther on. It was going to be a long night.
Right now this, the “eastern” tube, was the only gun bore covering the approach to Tarrago Prime. The other three tubes bored straight into the core of the moon—referred to conveniently if inaccurately as the northern, southern, and western tubes—were considered off rotation, though they could go to general quarters within five minutes and be ready to put rounds on any targets approaching from their directions.
Targets that would never appear, of course. As everyone knew.
What other government was there besides the Galactic Republic? What other fleet was there out in the darkness of deep space that could match even one of the fifteen major fleets the Republic had in operation at any given moment across the reaches of all the spiral arms?
Each fleet had one super-destroyer. One carrier group. Ten destroyers, and numerous task-specific corvettes and support ships. Each carrier could launch over a hundred fighters for a full Alpha strike. And if that weren’t enough, all the fleet’s destroyers, the super-destroyer, and the carrier group could put together the fabled Omega strike—two hundred and thirty fighters launched from across the fleet, able to deliver a devastating blow to any ship or fleet known to the galaxy. In the past, the strike had been used to ruin small dictatorships on edge worlds. A stark reminder of why it was best not to cause trouble for the Republic.
There wasn’t a fleet out there that could stand up to that kind of attack. So who, exactly, was going to attack Tarrago Prime?
No one.
He was just on the verge of admonishing himself to once again lock it down when he walked into Deep Sensors and saw the two dead sensor techs. Both were slumped over their stations. At first he thought he’d merely caught them sleeping. Then he saw the burnt scoring of blaster fire on their upper backs. Neither even had a chance to turn; neither
had known death was about to happen. Which meant—
There’s two of them, minimum, Captain Thales remarked in some other part of his mind. Someone didn’t want sensors to pick up something—and they didn’t want either tech to alert the base. So both assassins had needed to fire at the same moment. Or one imminently skilled, and quick, killer could’ve done the job. But that was far trickier, and people who planned operations didn’t like to put all their eggs in one basket. He’d learned that at Strategic War Studies College during his less than meteoric climb toward major.
He drew his duty blaster, a thing he’d never figured he would need to use as an artillery officer, and pulled the nearest dead sensor tech out of his chair and onto the floor. His eyes furtively ran across the readouts on the various screens, and he quickly ascertained all sensors were being scrambled by some sort of HK malware algorithm, probably running locally. So whoever—whoevers, there are two of them remember—took out the techs then uploaded a virus to knock out local access to the Deep Sensor web. Sensors the gun and the fortress needed to acquire incoming targets presenting as threats.
Because even though the gun had been one giant make-work distraction, it was still beyond deadly to any capital ship that dared approach it. Alone, the orbital gun system could knock down an entire fleet if it chose to. If it was used for such a purpose, in such a specific and inconceivable instance… it could easily do that.
But there are no other fleets, thought Captain Thales as he slammed his hand against the internal security alert button and got an immediate comm from Defense Command. His mind was racing through all the possibilities, and none of them were good.
There aren’t any other fleets?
Really?
“Defense Six here, sir… what’s the problem? I have you in Deep Sensors—”
“Go to battle stations now!” ordered Captain Thales. “We’re about to be under attack!”
