by Mike Smith
Chapter Two
Five Years Previously
The “Imperial Star” – Flagship of the Imperial Navy, Epsilon Indi System
On the bridge of the Imperial Star Commodore Harkov tapped his fingers impatiently against the armrest of the captain’s chair. The owner of such chair was hovering impatiently just behind, but for much different reasons….
“What is taking them so long?” Harkov demanded aloud impatiently.
“I assume you informing them of Emperor Aurelius death has thrown them into a certain level of confusion,” Captain Pendleton responded with more than a hint of his irritation showing. The Commodore had appeared only moments before and summarily demanded his seat. The nerve of the man! Pendleton thought to himself. Obviously the Commodore had no concept of bridge etiquette; or he just did not care!
“Sirs!” The ships tactical officer called out, “they are moving again!”
“Finally!” Harkov exclaimed.
Finally! Pendleton thought. I can have my seat back!
*****
Faced with such poor options either to continue forward – into an ambush or to reverse course back towards a now hostile fleet, Jon elected for the latter, on the assumption that if nothing else it would take the fleet by surprise.
The element of surprise is a formidable advantage in combat!
The voice of Jon’s flight instructor came to mind as he rolled the shuttle back around on a reverse course – back towards the fleet - and accelerated rapidly! The remaining ships of the 58th Squadron, caught by surprise by the abrupt manoeuvre took a few moments to reorientate themselves before accelerating once again into escort formation around the shuttle.
“Combat Formation! Arm Weapons!” Jon ordered over the squadron’s encrypted tactical channel as he continued to accelerate, far beyond the possible speed of a standard shuttle, still pointing directly towards the now oncoming fleet.
“What’s going on, Commander?” Elsie demanded to know. “Why are we returning to the fleet?”
“It’s an ambush, Elsie!” Jon explained. “The fighter complement from the fleet is waiting for us at the edge of the asteroid belt!”
Elsie’s expression just tightened on hearing the news, it was a testament to their faith in their Commanding Officer that none questioned his explanation. Their CO had saved their lives more than once with his insight and none were going to question him now. “But how to get through the fleet?” Elsie queried. “We will be cut to pieces by their guns.”
Jon glanced at the navigation computer, which indeed confirmed that the route to the next nearest FTL point would take them directly through the fleet. Jon dared not risk a more indirect route, as he knew that at any moment they would lose the element of surprise and the fighters behind would be recalled.
“Arm your missiles!” he ordered.
*****
“Sirs!” The ships tactical officer called out once again, “They have changed course!”
“What?” Harkov demanded, darting to his feet and moving towards the tactical officer. “How, why? What is their new course?” he demanded spitting out the questions in rapid fire.
The officer checked the ships sensors once again before replying in a confused tone. “They have reversed course…they are on an intercept course with the fleet.”
The Commodore was confused for a moment before relaxing. “So…Radec decided to follow orders for once in his life, they are returning to the fleet.” Harkov allowed himself a moment to envisage having Radec within chains, kneeling at his feet once and for all…
What fun that we will have together Harkov thought, already picturing Jon’s face contorted with pain and his screams, begging him to stop.
“Sir,” the tactical officer interrupted his imaginings. “The squadron is continuing to accelerate towards the fleet, they are not slowing down. Time to intercept five minutes and decreasing. They have just armed their weapon systems! They are going to attack!” The officer exclaimed in alarm, throwing a worried look at the senior officers.
“What?” Harkov roared, whirling to face Captain Pendleton. “Launch fighters to intercept them!”
Suddenly all thoughts of his chair flew from Pendleton’s mind as with a cold sweat he replied. “We don’t have any fighters to launch Commodore. You ordered all available fighters for the ambush. Hail the fighter-group in the asteroid belt and order their immediate re-call! They are to make best speed and intercept the Praetorian squadron.” He ordered, but even as he said the words he knew that their fighter cover would arrive too late, far too late. However, their fleet was not defenceless… “Order missile batteries one through to three to target the incoming squadron and fire as soon as they have a lock!” Pendleton ordered, at last feeling that he was starting to get a handle on the situation that had started to spiral out of control.
“Sir!” The tactical officer cried out, “all missile batteries report negative missile lock. Sir, the missiles will not lock onto our own fighters!” Shocked, Pendleton fell back into his chair in disbelief. The missile targeting computers had specific blocks to avoid hitting a friendly ship by accident. Each missile would take hours to reprogram; they did not even have minutes before the fighters would be on top of them. Closing his eyes in despair he wondered else could possibly go wrong?
“Missile launch!” The tactical officer yelled out in fear. “Incoming fighters have just launched missiles!”
Spoke to soon, Captain Pendleton thought to himself despairingly…
*****
As Jon nervously watched the minutes count down on the navigation computer before they intersected with the fleet he began to plan their next steps. Right about now the fleet would discover that their missiles would be useless against the incoming fighters. The missiles would just refuse to lock-on to what they considered friendly ships; however the ships’ gun batteries were a different matter. They would but cut to shreds as they navigated through the fleet unless…
“Arm your missiles,” he ordered. “Let’s give the fleet something else to aim at…” While Jon knew perfectly well he could not shoot at the fleet, nothing was stopping him shooting at where the fleet would be! The navigational computer plotted the intercept co-ordinates based on the fleet’s current speed and heading uploading the target co-ordinates to the rest of the squadron. Jon waited until they were less than 50 kilometres from the fleet before ordering… “Fire!”
The squadron was momentarily blinded as one after another, wave after wave; the squadron released their missiles in the direction of the oncoming fleet. Upon launch the missiles accelerated away from the squadron until no missiles remained. Within the space of a few moments 120 high explosive missiles were racing towards their target.
Then suddenly the strangest thing started to happen. Almost as if the missiles started to run out of energy they began to slow, first one, then another, until all the missiles velocity had dramatically decreased. Inch by inch, meter by meter the squadron started to catch-up with the missiles!
Reviewing the ships sensors carefully Jon confirmed that all the missiles were following the correct flight profile, the squadron began to disperse, to avoid bunching up and giving the fleet an easy target, soon they would be within range of the fleets guns.
*****
“God damn it!” Harkov raged, pacing up and down the command deck like a caged tiger. Turning on the tactical officer he demanded. “So we cannot launch missiles at them, but they can at us? Would you like to explain this?”
The tactical officer just shrugged helplessly and uttered, “They’re Praetorians…” Having only recently graduated from the fleet naval academy, the young officer had been surrounded by the rumours of the enigmatic and mysterious Praetorians.
Praetorians swords could slice through anything…
Praetorians could tell when you were lying…
Praetorians were invincible…
Pretty much everybody in his graduation class was in awe of the Praetorians and he could not bel
ieve his luck when he was assigned to the Imperial Star, the flagship of the Imperial Fleet, home to the Praetorians. However, reality has a bad habit of setting you down with a bump. The first Praetorian he encountered was cold and arrogant! The second, worse! Within the span of a week his dreams of meeting and becoming one of these mythical warriors was dashed on the rocks of reality.
The Commodore made a lot of sense when he explained how the Empire had become rotten at the core. The Emperor surrounded by his Praetorians had become decadent and corrupt, leading the Imperium to ruin! They had to be replaced, so that the Empire could still be saved.
However, Commodore Harkov’s speech seemed a world away now, and the stories of the legendary Praetorians suddenly became far more frightening when facing them. Having just watched them miraculously avoid the ambush cleverly devised for them, how they were immune to the fleet’s weapons but could use their own. For a moment he wondered what the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach was, before finally recognising - that it was fear. Fear of these invulnerable warriors that had never been beaten, fear that he had made a dreadful mistake siding with Harkov…
“Guns!” The word filtered through the young officers thought process, interrupting his contemplation of the Praetorians.
“Excuse me, sir?” The young tactical officer stammered, glancing in the direction of Pendleton who was still collapsed in his chair and where the exclamation had originated.
“The ships guns are tied into our own targeting system, is that not correct?” Pendleton insisted.
“Yes, sir,” the tactical officer confirmed, “All the ship’s guns are tied into the ship’s central targeting system…” his voice trailed off as he finally got what his commanding officer was thinking. “…And we can reprogram our system to mark the fighters as hostile,” he confirmed excitedly.
So much easier to reprogram one system, than hundreds of smaller ones spread throughout the missiles in the fleet
“We would have to rely upon the smaller, point defence weapons; they have less range but would be able to better target the incoming fighters,” he exclaimed aloud confidently.
Pendleton just nodded in agreement, before snapping his fingers. “Quickly, reprogram the targeting computer and bring the guns on-line, before the fighters get within range.” With a quick flourish of his fingers the tactical officer made the changes and held his breath…
“Guns are on-line and tracking the incoming targets, sir,” he exclaimed in relief. It was only when he double-checked the tracking sensors however, that the realised that the guns were tracking all the incoming targets – both missiles and fighters.
Uh Oh.
*****
As the squadron came within range of the fleet’s guns they continued to disperse and started jinking, up, down, left, right all in random patterns to help confound the aim of the fleet’s guns. However, as they got closer and closer to the fleet the gunfire became more and more accurate until…first one missile then another started to explode in a huge pyrotechnic display!
The missiles launched from the squadron minutes earlier were weapons designed to target fighters. These targets were small, agile and quick to escape. Hence these weapons were designed to fragment prior to exploding, scattering dozens of deadly bomblets throughout the area. Of the original squadron of twelve fighters, this had grown to over 130 targets for the fleet computers to track following the launch of the missiles, as each missile began to explode showering the area with bomblets the number of targets that the ships gun began to track increased exponentially, first 200 targets, then 400, then 800. As the Praetorians blasted through the fleet, sensors were tracking over a thousand individual targets. Unable to track so many, finally the guns just fell silent, their targeting computers stuck in an infinite loop – and then the squadron was through the fleet and escaping towards the FTL entry point.
Jon breathed a sigh of relief as the squadron finally escaped from the far side of the fleet. However, checking the sensors their squadron had not come out unscathed. They had lost two fighters to gunfire from the fleet before their guns had fallen silent. Jon allowed himself a momentary pang of grief; he knew all the Praetorians personally. Both of them had loved ones and family back at home. Knowing that it was his actions, his decisions that had resulted in their loss made it no easier. He pushed the guilt and blame aside for a short while to focus on the problem at hand. Meanwhile Jon noticed that the speed of the Eternal Light had suddenly started to fall dramatically.
Quickly he ran a full diagnostic of the shuttle and cursed vehemently upon seeing the results. Slower and bigger than the surrounding fighters the shuttle had taken a beating passing through the fleet. Jon had hoped that the heavier armour surround the shuttle would protect them, but it had not. The flight computer reported catastrophic damage to the port engine, which the computer had shut down, the shuttle was continuing to limp forward on the remaining engine but their velocity had fallen by half. Jon had no need to check the aft sensors to know that the fleet’s fighters were now gaining rapidly on the Praetorians.
*****
Commodore Harkov sub-consciously ducked as the Praetorian fighters scattered around the Imperial Star, at times seeming to pass mere feet from the command deck – and then in a blink they were gone.
“Report!” Harkov roared across the command deck.
“Two targets destroyed, Commodore!” The tactical officer reported, who felt, unfairly, to be on the receiving end of most of the Commodore’s short temper. “Remaining squadron is setting a straight course for the FTL jump point,” he said in a calmer voice. At least the Praetorians were no longer heading in their direction! Suddenly the tactical computer updated with the latest squadron heading and velocity and the young tactical officer had to blink a couple of times to ensure that he was not imagining things. “Sir,” the officer replied cautiously, “the shuttle is losing speed. I think we managed to damage it. The squadron is now also reducing velocity to keep in escort formation.
In a flash the Commodore was at his side. “How close are our fighters?” he asked directly. Running both trajectories through the computer, it seemed an eternity before the computer spat out the numbers. The fleet’s recalled fighters would intercept the Praetorians in a little over two minutes at present velocity; five minutes before the Praetorians could escape into FTL.
“I’ve got you now, you bastard!” Harkov gloated in glee.
*****
At almost the same instant as the computer on the Imperial Star, the flight computer on the Eternal Light was reporting exactly the same result. They were all going to die. Three minutes and a little less than 170 kilometres from escape.
The communication from Elsie was not unexpected but for the first time in his life Jon felt the weight of command bearing down on him.
“Lieutenant… Elsie,” he acknowledged his second-in-command reluctantly.
“What is your situation?” she inquired brusquely avoiding his gaze.
“Damage-control computer reports that the port engine is damaged beyond repair and it has been shut down.”
“Tactical computer reports that the fleet’s fighters will intercept us in a little under two minutes,” Elsie reported matter-of-factly.
Jon had no response. The squadron continued to fly onwards in tandem, in silence for a few moments more until Elsie shifted her gaze to Sofia and uttered the words that Jon had been expecting, but dreading to hear.
“We all swore an oath.”
Jon closed his eyes in despair; they had all sworn the same oath. To protect the Emperor and his family, at all costs, at any cost. Jon was not a man to take such an oath lightly, and neither were his squadron, his friends… his family. Refusing to open his eyes and stare into the face of his second-in-command, refusing to order their deaths he just whispered. “I cannot order you to do this.” Finally opening his eyes he stared at Elsie who offered him a soft smile.
“I would never ask you to make such an order, Jon.” Finally looking ac
ross at Sofia, who seemed frozen in shock. She added, “Princess, it’s been… fun.” Sofia looked up, surprised at the kind words from the Praetorian.
“Sofia, you can call me Sofia… anytime,” she replied.
“Sofia,” Elsie replied seeming to try out the name before she nodded in thanks. For a moment it seemed to Jon that an unspoken communication passed between the two women, then after a small nod from Sofia, Elsie once again turned her gaze towards Jon.
“Good luck, Commander! I think it’s time that the Praetorians taught this bunch of idiots how to fly. I’m amazed that they haven’t collided with each other by now…” She laughed as the communication ended and Jon watched on the sensors as one by one the Praetorians flipped their fighters and accelerated back towards the incoming fighters; leaving the Eternal Light to finish her journey… alone.
*****
As a young boy, the tactical officer on the Imperial Star remembered sitting on his grandfather’s knee being recounted endless stories of acts of great heroism and bravery. Of soldiers refusing to surrender, to fight to the last man and woman because they knew that their cause was just and right. Of parents standing between their children and those that would harm then, of many selfless acts of heroism and courage. Never in his life did he think he would observe such an act until he watched on the sensors as one-by-one the Praetorian fighters reversed course to engage the on-coming fighters. Sacrificing their lives to allow the lone shuttle to escape.
