by Blaze Ward
Director Ul Turin Dyana Vor had always felt a moderate level of derision towards the barbarians known as Fribourg. Primitive. Rigid. Wild animals unfit for human interaction.
Today, that had grown to anger.
Vor had discounted the lurid tales from the campaigns around Trusski. Steadfast at Dawn had made poor tactical and strategic decisions, and the Red Admiral Keller had exploited them.
But this, here, lent credence to those tales.
Fribourg, that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned realm of barbarians intent on conquering the galaxy under their aboriginal ways, they had learned. Changed.
Vor had served at Samara, facing idiot assaults derived of linear thinking. Fribourg had not changed their tactics, nor even their tactical doctrine, in a century.
Until now.
It did not bode well for the campaign to pacify humanity, that Fribourg had finally awakened to the threat. Nor that they had learned how to fight the current generation of Sentient warships. Vor had a list of notes for the Scholars of Naval Design as to future needs.
Still, they might not be necessary. Not after today.
Ul Turin Dyana Vor could see a future where all of Fribourg lay broken at his feet. Supine and vulnerable.
Ready to accept the lessons of The Eldest and transform themselves into willing participants in the great mission. And as they only understood strength, The Eldest had found it necessary to impose his will upon them in the most spectacular manner possible.
The barbarians would finally come to understand just how hopeless their resistance was.
And he would be accorded the glory to hold the blade itself.
“War Advocate, are all squadrons in place?” Vor called out over his bridge. Calm. Firm. None of the fury underneath that had made this a necessity.
Fools.
“They are, Director,” the man responded instantly.
Vor could taste the rage in the man’s voice. Another jousting pass with the battleship known as Firehawk had gone badly, but at least the Fribourg vessel had been savaged this time, and forced to withdraw some.
“Maneuver Advocate, are the maps complete?” Vor continued.
“We believe so, Director Ul,” the man said. “Three Hammerheads have been crippled or destroyed in the process of scouting them, but all of the heavy mines appear to have been triggered and the lighter ones will not have sufficient power to alter the outcome at this point.”
“And the approach has been identified?” Vor continued. He could taste victory at this point. The greatest defeat of a foe in centuries.
“It has,” the Maneuver Advocate replied.
“Confirm that Sukhoy Nos is in position and then communicate Phase Nine to all vessels,” the Director of Glory in Duty commanded. “One last surge to push the barbarians off balance, and then all vessels scatter and form up at their rendezvous points. Transmit ‘Well done’ to all commanders.”
“I obey, Director.”
Chapter XI
Imperial Founding: 179/11/10. Fleet Headquarters, Above St. Legier
“What the hell is that thing?” Em heard a voice say.
It might even have been his.
A new signal had appeared, high and well away from everyone else, as if it had been hiding out in the darkness before now. Pointed inward, like Damocles’ sword hanging over the heavens. Moving swiftly, but pointed down, rather than along an orbital insertion path.
It made no sense to maneuver any vessel like that. They would just have to flatten out from that much deeper in the gravity well, or jump from so low that even Buran’s best navigators would be hard pressed.
“Admiral, all Buran vessels have just jumped at the same time,” Tifft noted out loud. “They haven’t done that once today.”
Em turned a quizzical eye on the man.
“Not once?”
“No, sir,” Tifft said.
“Ralf,” Em yelled loud enough to drown every conversation. “Bums rush.”
Admiral Frankenheimer paused, cursed under his breath, and began yelling orders rapid-fire.
“Bums rush, sir?” Tifft asked, painfully confused.
“They are about to launch a full, frontal assault on us, while that whatever-it-is does whatever it came to do,” Em said before turning to yell at Ralf again. “Where’s Provst?”
“Firehawk has withdrawn with serious damage, Em, but most of his squadron is still guarding Petrograd.”
“Get them after that new thing,” Em ordered. “This feels like the end of the battle, right now.”
“On it,” Ralf yelled.
Em sucked a deep breath into his lungs. It only felt like the room was choking him with smoke, when everything was clear as spring.
The new signal blinked off of the scanners. Em counted to eight, and it appeared again, at least at the very edge of Type-4 range, if not safely beyond. Ralf’s gun batteries opened up anyway, but that would be like tickling a whale to death at this range.
“What’s he doing?” Ralf yelled over the orders going back and forth.
“Unsure, Admiral,” a man’s voice responded. “Target is not maneuvering as expected, and most vessels are now engaged with the other Buran ships that have come out of jump.”
Not maneuvering? Why would a ship that big not maneuver?
Em felt his stomach go cold. His whole soul.
“Ralf, that’s a bomb,” he yelled. “Get everyone on it now!”
Em watched his old friend’s face turn white as the implications hit. The Roughsharks had delivered missiles as big as Starfighters. This thing was the size of a battleship.
“Tifft, order planetary forces to engage that thing as well,” Em turned to his assistant. “Anyone and everyone who can. Drop everything else to stop that.”
Tifft had gone pale as well. He turned and began barking orders into a microphone, but the planetary network was a mess from all the previous explosions. Nuclear bombs had scrambled all radio below the ionosphere, and it would take hours for the energy released to dissipate.
The bomb was right around three thousand kilometers above the surface right now, but it was moving at a tremendous velocity and accelerating away from the various ships and stations taking shots at it. It would hit some terminal velocity imposed by the thickening atmosphere, the ship’s spear-shaped design, and the materials that comprised the outer hull, but it was still just minutes from reaching the ground, if it was a bomb.
The Imperial Capital of Werder was directly beneath the beast.
Chapter XII
Imperial Founding: 179/11/10. Imperial Palace, St. Legier
His Sovereign Imperial Majesty Karl Johannes Arend Wiegand, Hereditary King of St. Legier, Emperor Karl VII by Grace of God, looked over at the stunningly-beautiful woman seated next to him on the couch. At fifty-eight standard years, her hair had finally faded from the gorgeous blond of younger decades to a pure silver. She was still tall and willowy, as befit most Imperial women of her station and heritage, and those green eyes had lost nothing.
Kasimira Ekaterina, of the House of Alkaev.
The Empress Kati.
Her eyes were troubled now, but she remained silent. All four hands were tangled up in each other on laps as they watched the battle unfold overhead on a monitor.
Joh knew what that thing was as soon as it appeared at the edge of the atmosphere. Knew there was nothing Em or anyone else could do at this point to stop it.
But he also knew that Ekke and Casey would escape the Beast’s wrath. And that the Empire was more resilient now that it ever had been in his lifetime.
The Emperor leaned over and kissed the most beautiful woman in the galaxy one last time.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Chapter XIII
Imperial Founding: 179/11/10. Army Training Depot “King Olaf,” St. Legier
“Nothing?” Vo demanded angrily. “Fire all batteries anyway. We must do something.”
“Firing now, General,” Borel announced. “But we’re
too far south. It won’t overfly us until it flattens out.”
“It’s not going to, Reese,” Vo growled. “That’s a bomb, not an aircraft.”
It made sense now, the targeting they had done earlier. Finding the exact edges of the planetary shields protecting the capital. And perhaps their strength. Vo could see the next step with astounding clarity.
And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do.
Or perhaps there was.
“Reese, override all emergency signals that you can reach,” Vo ordered in a calm, quiet voice. His emotions had come close to getting out of hand a few times today. He was at the precipice now. That wasn’t what the men needed. What everyone needed.
“Sir?” Borel turned, ashen-faced. He could do the math as well.
“Order all aircraft, civilian or military, to ground immediately,” Vo commanded. “Repulsor craft are to land on skids and deploy ground anchors. Tell the tanks to get to level ground immediately. All personnel are to seal themselves tight. Vehicles closed and on internal air. Bases go to emergency lock-down procedures. Now.”
Vo put word to deed and flipped down a jumpseat, strapping himself down tight. He turned to the men of his bodyguard and his admin command.
“All of you, buckle up,” Vo continued, letting calm wash over him and the mad energy of the last two hours recede like a tide. “That’s an order.”
He took an immense breath and watched the dot that was the Buran ship plummet towards the surface of St. Legier.
“Put that warning on loop, Borel,” he said. “All hands, brace for impact.”
“Impact, General?” Stolz asked in surprise. “Where?”
Vo turned a sad face on the young man. He had no words to describe the horror he could see coming. The impending doom. It was there in his mind, perhaps the greatest fear he could imagine.
Greater than even the sort of personal nightmare of a battle that got all his men killed and left him untouched. Even that did not measure to this scope of failure.
Outside, the sky suddenly flashed whiter than the sun.
And then darkness fell.
Chapter XIV
Imperial Founding: 179/11/10. Fleet Headquarters, Above St. Legier
To the end of his days, Em would never be able to move past his guilt. To admit that the first thought that had crossed his mind, watching the sun fall to earth over Werder, was that Freya was home on Eklionstic, and not at their palace in the capital, not far from her favorite park.
That he hadn’t just lost her.
The room had fallen to utter silence, perhaps punctuated by quiet sobs. Em could only hear the pounding of his heart in his ears, as he watched a white-hot plasma cloud engulf his city. From this elevation, he could see the shockwave as the atmosphere raced away from the explosion’s epicenter, trailed by the earth itself moving like waves in a pond as the massive bomb exploded and brushed aside the planetary shields protecting the Palace like curtains.
This was what failure tasted like.
This was what it meant to lose everything. Almost everything. Freya hadn’t been there. And that tiny, greedy thought would haunt him forever.
Joh had been down there. Kati. Cousins. Loved ones. Comrades.
Gone.
Em slammed a fist into the monitor hard enough to possibly break the bones in his hand, but the screen was made of tougher stuff and continued to show him his failure to protect the people who had counted on him.
Tifft was silently crying, a spectacle echoed by many of the men around him. Those with any expression at all. Many had simply vanished inside themselves.
The silence was astounding.
The pain never-ending.
Em unbuckled his harness and rose.
Ralf Frankenheimer looked like a three-days-dead corpse, mouth opening and closing like a fish, even as no words came out.
Em wasn’t sure there were words.
“Ralf, you did all you could,” Em said, stepping closer to the man. “I’ll take it from here.”
Ralf responded like a marionette whose strings had been cut, collapsing to the floor before Em could catch him. Only the sobs emanating from the man’s chest let Em know that Ralf hadn’t simply willed himself to die.
Em could understand the feeling.
He blinked back the tears. He had spent decades fearing this moment’s arrival, ever since Karl VI and Empress Ailina had died in a tragic accident twenty years before.
He had never expected to have to stand on this deck. To say these words.
He would not cry. Not today. Perhaps not ever, but he would have to face Freya at some point. His reserves of strength might not be equal to that task.
“All hands, continue engaging any Buran vessels,” Em ordered. “No quarter given.”
He didn’t expect there to be many of the invaders remaining. It was obvious now what they had been up to. The tapes would just confirm what he already knew in his soul. One last push to distract everyone, so that they could drop a battleship-sized bomb on Werder.
“Someone get me eyes on the planet that aren’t obscured by a fireball and mushroom cloud,” Em continued, amazed that he was able to function at all, let alone give orders.
Some things were bone deep.
Tifft seemed broken, along with Ralf. Only the blinking eyes and falling tears confirmed that his aide was still living.
“MOVE IT,” Em yelled at the men, all of them currently cowed into submission and lost.
Something broke free in one of them. A man suddenly pushed a button with shaky hands and began talking into his mic. Slow and labored, but functioning, however minimally. Others struggled to follow.
On the monitors around him, Em could see the red dots vanish one by one. Many had already fled, reappearing well out and moving away from the planet at high speed, but he needed to be sure. The casualties Em had been able to inflict on them today had been utterly devastating. They wouldn’t have stood for it, but for the knowledge that they were here for a larger purpose.
To bomb St. Legier again. To destroy Werder.
Em wondered how badly damaged the planet itself might be, given the scope of that explosion. The entire hemisphere might have heard it. Within minutes, they would feel it.
“Engineering, concentrate on that blast,” Em ordered the room, uncaring who responded, as long as someone did. They were all hard men, professionals. That training was still underneath, and would carry them, if he could reach it.
Or it would break them.
“Find out what that thing was,” Em continued. “How big was it? What type of explosive? What are the fallout risks? What’s the state of communications with the ground?”
“I am receiving no signals from Fleet Operations in Werder, Grand Admiral,” one of the men replied in a mechanical voice. “Nor Imperial Land Forces Headquarters. Nor the Palace.”
“Find me someone on the ground,” Em countered. “Anyone.”
“Sir, I have Admiral Provst aboard Firehawk,” someone yelled. “Asking for a private channel.”
“I don’t have a private channel,” Em snarled. “Put him through on the main board.”
Tom Provst’s face appeared on the screen and Em’s heart fell the rest of the way.
He had known the man since Ensign Provst had first earned his transfer to the original Blackbird, twenty-five years ago. Had guided Tom’s career along the right lines, until Captain Provst had commanded the Blackbird at the battle known universally today simply as Third Iger, the battle where a young, Republic destroyer squadron commander named Keller made her name, preventing Emmerich Wachturm, the dread Red Admiral of older days, from mousetrapping a Republic fleet and annihilating two fleet carriers commanded by that idiot Bogdan Loncar.
“Tom?” Em asked, but he already knew. Could see it in the man’s haunted eyes.
“I put him in the safest place I could find, Grand Admiral,” Tom Provst’s voice sounded like glass ground into shards. “The bridge of a battleship surrounded by the b
est squadron in the fleet.”
Tom’s voice broke. Perhaps his mind as well. The eyes got wild for a moment.
Em found his own center, forcing himself to be there now for this man, one of his students. One of his best. One of his few true friends.
“What happened, Tom?” Em breathed slowly, trying to hold his sanity together with both arms.
“That last pass at Petrograd, Em,” Tom said. “They learned from what we did to them the first time. Every ship ignored my escorts and fired on the ’hawk with everything they had, just before they ran like hell for deep space. We took a bridge hit. Bad one. Al Kistler’s dead. Everyone’s dead.”
He gulped, and Em could see insanity take root in the man’s soul.
“Crown Prince Ekkehard is dead.”
The room itself groaned.
Em felt like someone had walked up and punched him in the stomach as hard as they could, driving all the breath from his body.
“I failed,” Tom continued in the voice of a precocious six-year-old discovering death for the first time.
“I failed you, Tom,” Em interjected, trying to get inside the man’s mind while he still could. Tom was rapidly losing himself. “You did everything you could.”
“It wasn’t enough,” Tom cried in pure anguish. “He’s dead.”
“I know, Tom,” Em said in a quiet voice. “So is Karl VII. So are a great many people.”
“Are you sure?”
Em glanced at another screen, a jittery image from a frigate that was flying as low as it could with the shockwave and smoke battering and obscuring.
“Looking at the images of the ground, Werder’s been destroyed, and everything around it.”
“What do we do?” Tom asked.
The madness had fled his eyes, Emptiness had taken hold instead.
“There are procedures in place for this, Tom,” Em said, taking a deep breath. “We keep moving forward and hold it all together until everyone else recovers. The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor.”
