The Last Praetorian (The Redemption Trilogy)

by Mike Smith

  “I think,” Jon went quiet and pinched her bottom lip between his teeth, “it’s a good name.” A deep groan rumbled in his chest when her legs jumped in response to the mind-blowing sensation he was inducing in her.

  A traitorous moan, loud and throaty, escaped from her as he dragged his tongue across her lower lip. Tiny, passion fuelled fires erupted inside each cell in her body as those lips touched her skin. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm in her ears. She couldn’t stop her eyes from fluttering closed as waves of warmth coursed through her. It was the most pleasurable sensation she’d ever felt. The most erotic moment she’d ever experienced.

  But the most delicious taste came when his tongue plunged into her mouth, sliding sinuously over hers. He tasted exactly like he smelled. Tangy but sweet. Smoky and earthy. All combined to make a scent that was uniquely… Jon. The way a man should taste, but more primal, somehow.

  Lost in the tantalising friction of Jon’s tongue tangling with hers, Miranda didn’t realise he’d released her hands until his warm hands slid down her back to pull her firmly against his solid chest.

  The thrust of his tongue, the maddening back and forth motion was all she could focus on as he lifted her up. Wrapping both legs around his hips, she broke from his hungry mouth to moan as he pressed her back against the entrance. The cold steel of the corridor door bit into her skin at the same moment he ground his hard body against her.

  Needing to get to his skin, to feel the heat of him against her, she slid her hands under his shirt. He laughed a husky sound at the brazenness of her manoeuvre. She smiled at the sensation of his bare chest, rippling, alive at her touch.

  “It was only fair,” he laughed as he nipped at her lips. “After all I did kind of trash your last one.”

  Lost in a sea of swirling emotion, she replied confused. “What last one?”

  “Your last ship,” Jon replied with a laugh as she tipped her head back, as he trailed a searing line of kisses up to her neck, she slid her hands down his chest, delighting in every drip and curve of lean, sculpted muscle on the way down to the deep grooves between his ribs.

  He had a body to die for, nothing but firm skin and hard lines. Miranda shivered as Jon’s teeth scraped her throat. Her entire body was on fire, burning hotter everywhere his mouth touched her. His deep moan vibrated against her throat, urging her on.

  The man definitely knew what he was doing, but as quickly as the feelings had risen, they began to ebb and then recede as Jon’s touch began to cool, placing gentle kisses and the occasional playful nip on her neck.

  “There is no reason for you to stay,” Jon commented hesitantly, his voice muffled by her throat. “I know why the others refuse to leave, this is the only life they have known since the Imperial Navy. But you, you are younger, you have your entire life ahead of you, the ship is yours, take it and leave.”

  Jon’s words were like a bucket of cold water on her body and she stepped back, out of his embrace, shocked. “You want me to leave?” she demanded, incredulously.

  Gazing at the young woman in front of him, cheeks rosy, lips swollen from their earlier kisses. “Honestly?” Jon asked hesitantly.

  Miranda nodded.

  “No, I have no wish for you to go,” he replied sadly, “but I have found that people around me, that I care about, get hurt, or worse. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”

  “I’m not going to leave.”

  Jon nodded in understanding, seeming unsurprised at her decision. Reaching forward he pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear, staring deeply into her eyes for a moment, as if he was trying to freeze the scene in his memory, he gently kissed her lips one last time, a parting goodbye. “Then I wish you a good life, Miranda Sun. My advice, find somebody to share it with, otherwise you will find it very lonely.” With that Jon turned his back on Miranda and made for the exit.

  “Is that why you left her?”

  “Left who?”

  “Your Princess, Sofia Aurelius. Did you leave her because you did not want to see her hurt?”

  Jon stopped, barely a foot from the door, cocking his head to one-side in thought. “Partly,” he replied, still facing the door. “But the knight errant only wins the heart of the fair Princess in fairy tales, we both know that does not happen in real life.” With that parting comment he stepped through the door, it sliding shut behind him.

  Miranda stared thoughtfully at the door, many minutes after Jon had departed, before bringing a finger to her still swollen lips. She could still taste Jon on the tip of her tongue.

  As she turned away from the door, to approach the powerful warship that was waiting patiently for her, she wondered if she would ever see Jon again. His parting words sounded far too much like a final goodbye. She wondered if it were she, Jon, or both of them that Jon thought would not live through the next few hours. That depressing thought stayed with her for a very long time.

  *****

  Meanwhile the battle, swirling outside the station, had started to turn against the combined Vanguard and Confederation forces. With the superior number of ships on their side and the Confederation forces ordered not to engage the Imperial Fleet directly, the three Vanguard freighters were taking a heavy pounding.

  Under orders from Harkov, the dozen Imperial frigates, which composed the outer ring of defences for the Imperial fleet opened fire at maximum range. Caught by surprise, the heavily reinforced freighters started to buckle under the concentrated fire of missiles, particle beams and pulse fire. By the time that the freighters came within range of their own hidden weapons, one freighter was already badly listing to one side, with major damage to its engines, the other two fared little better, having taken major external hull damage.

  Even with the warning from Harkov, the Imperial frigates were taken by some surprise, when the three freighters finally got within range to reveal their hidden batteries of rail-guns and missiles. With concerted fire, the three freighters managed to disable two Imperial frigates and destroy a third before the Imperial frigates, recognising the heavy armour on the ships, shifted their aim towards the now exposed freighters’ gun and missile batteries. With the combined fire from the remaining nine frigates, explosions peppered the hulls of the freighters as one by one the gun batteries were hit and went dark.

  With atmosphere venting from multiple hull breaches in the freighters and their weapons all but disabled the remaining Imperial frigates moved in for the kill.

  *****

  With all the systems on the Eternal Light in stand-by mode, it only took moments for the ship to completely power-up when Jon hurried into the cockpit. As he was waiting for final checks to finish, Jon keyed open a communications channel to Terra Nova.

  “How are things going?” Jon asked.

  “Not good,” Paul replied, Jon could hear the strain in his voice. “While we have the threat from the fighters pretty much contained, our armed freighters are taking a pounding. Looks like Harkov did not fall for the same ruse twice.”

  Knowing that Paul could not see him, but shrugging anyway, Jon replied. “Well it was a long shot anyway to hope that Harkov would not know about the armed freighters. You can only pull the same trick so many times before it becomes old. How far away is the Imperial Fleet from the freighters?”

  “Three kilometres and closing, but Jon…”

  “Yes?”

  “We only drew out the frigates, the rest of the fleet has not engaged our forces.”

  Jon cursed silently, careful to ensure that it was not broadcast over the communications channel. Jon knew the importance of keeping morale up among the crew. The plan had called for the majority of the Imperial forces to be drawn out by the freighters, yet another inviting target for Harkov. But it did not look like he had taken the bait twice.

  Unfortunately it was absolutely essential to the plan, that all the Imperial forces engaged those ships. As usual, the battle had barely started and the plan was already screwed. Well there was nothing else for it, as there was
no other plan.

  “Understood,” Jon replied with a confidence that he no longer felt. “Launching now.” With one final check to ensure that the docking stations clamps were retracted Jon threw full power to the engines, quickly accelerating away from the station. “Miranda, where are you?” Jon inquired over their tactical communications channel.

  Suddenly the large fighter, almost as large as the shuttle itself, swooped down and formed up in formation, wingtip-to-wingtip.

  “Here,” Miranda replied.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Good, this baby is not as manoeuvrable as my old Hawk fighter, but boy does it make up for it in the offensive department!”

  Smiling, Jon thought that Miranda sounded like a young girl that had just been given the keys to the candy shop. “Understood, now remember the plan. Whatever happens you must stay exactly on my tail, and stay close!” Jon did not need a view-screen to picture the younger woman rolling her eyes.

  “Yes boss.”

  “So why are you still on my wing tip?” he demanded.

  “I’m not,” Miranda replied, laughing.

  Jon cast a quick glance out of his cockpit windows and could no longer see the large fighter. Shaking his head in disbelief at her excellent piloting skills, Jon thought that in another life Miranda would have made an excellent Praetorian.

  “Paul, where are the Frigates now?”

  “Now holding at two kilometres… Jon I don’t think the freighters are going to hold up much longer, they are taking a real beating, even with all that extra armour that we installed.”

  “Very well, I guess the frigates are already as close-in as they are going to get. Let’s move to the next stage of the plan.” With that Jon adjusted the course of the shuttle to put it on a direct intercept course with the Imperial Fleet, still many tens of kilometres away. The warring frigates and freighters were lying directly ahead, almost a dozen kilometres away. At this distance, in the darkness of space Jon could not make out the ships except for the odd spark of pulse cannon fire. The ships tactical sensors however could clearly ‘see’ the melee-taking place ahead of the shuttle, with the frigates and freighters locked in an intimate life or death struggle.

  “Ok, on my mark then,” Paul replied, rising from his command seat in the C&C on the station to approach one of the command consoles ringing the room.

  “Three,” Paul stated, flicking open a cover on one of the consoles.

  “Two.” Paul entered a short code into the adjoining command console.

  “One.” The button hidden under the cover started to flash an urgent red warning.

  Act Two, Paul thought to himself. “Mark,” Paul stated, depressing the button.

  *****

  For an instant, nothing seemed to happen, as if something had gone wrong, the command failed. Then a bright spark of light lit-up the space in front of Jon’s shuttle, rapidly joined by another, then another. The three pinpricks of light rapidly grew in size, and intensity until the light coming from ahead of the shuttle dwarfed even the light from the surrounding stars.

  The high explosive charges that had been installed throughout the three freighters days earlier had detonated exactly according to plan, causing the three freighters to disintegrate into balls of rapidly expanding debris. The well placed charges, caused the debris from the ships to expand outward in the direction of the encircled Imperial Frigates. Being warships, the frigates were heavily armoured and therefore the debris posed little threat to these ships. While the debris posed little threat to the warships, the 3000 odd magnetic anti-ship mines, secreted deep within the freighters’ holds was an entirely different matter.

  The mines, which had been obtained by Jon and Miranda several days earlier from the Erebus weapons dump, had been tightly packed into the hold of the three freighters. Meanwhile flight controls on the freighters had been adjusted to allow for the remote piloting of the ships. Pilotless drones, the ships had become nothing more than flying bombs, awaiting the arrival of the Imperial forces…

  As the expanding debris cloud enfolded the nearest frigate, a dozen of these mines impacted the ship. A blossom of explosions ripped along the length of the hull of the frigate, decimating armour, hull, weapons, engines… everything. Within seconds the ship was a drifting lifeless, derelict, split into dozens of pieces. As the debris cloud continued to expand, to encompass the remaining frigates, the same scene was repeated time and time again. The massive ships attracted the mines like mosquitoes to blood, and over and over again the resultant outcome was devastating. Within the space of a few minutes of the nine frigates remaining, six were completely destroyed; the remaining three had all suffered catastrophic damage and were adrift, powerless…

  Checking the ship’s sensors, Jon observed the destruction ahead. Where previously the sensors were reporting the three freighters and almost a dozen frigates, now all the ship could identify was three remaining frigates. All three were emitting low power signatures, adrift; obviously their engines and power plants had taken heavy damage. Suddenly what had initially appeared as a strong Imperial task force blocking the shuttle from the remaining Imperial fleet had vanished, like rain clouds following a storm. The ship’s sensors now reported a clear path for the shuttle to the remaining Imperial fleet…and the Imperial Star.

  “The enemy’s gate is down,” Jon breathed.

  *****

  “The gate is down,” Paul uttered. He had followed the outcome of the mined freighters just as closely as Jon with the station’s sensors.

  “I’m sorry sir?” Lieutenant Patterson inquired, not catching what Paul had just quietly uttered.

  “Sorry Chris, I didn’t mean to speak aloud,” Paul apologised. “It was something that Jon stated when he originally presented the plan. “How do you go about slaying the devil when he is surrounded on all sides by the walls of hell?”

  At the confused look from the Lieutenant, Paul answered the question for him. “You fight your way into the depths of hell and when you finally reach the gate, well, you kick it down. That’s what we have done,” Paul motioned towards the tactical display. “We have eliminated the Imperial fleet’s fighter cover, now we have just taken down their outer defensive ring, Jon now has a clear run to the Imperial Star.” Paul drew a line with his finger on the tactical display from the Eternal Light to the Imperial Star.

  “I don’t understand sir, I thought the plan was to destroy the Imperial Fleet?”

  “Destroy the fleet?” Paul looked surprised, as if he had never considered the thought. “Of course not, we cannot destroy it, they have far too many ships, too much firepower, and we would never even get close to them. No the plan was always to give Jon one shot, one Hail Mary pass at the Imperial Star.”

  “And what is the Commander going to do now he has the chance?” Patterson asked curiously.

  “I have absolutely no idea, he would not tell me,” Paul replied in a worried voice, as the tactical display showed the Eternal Light passing through the gap recently made in the Imperial fleet defences, accelerating through the gates of Hell…

  ******

  “What the hell was that?” Harkov yelled, as the distant horizon lit-up with three bright stars, before they rapidly started to die away.

  “Sir, we have lost communication with the frigate squadron!” the communications officer called out.

  “What the hell is going on?” Harkov shouted, red faced at his deck officers.

  “Ships sensors reported that the three Vanguard ships exploded,” the Captain reported checking the ship’s sensor history with a frown.

  “We destroyed them?”

  “It seems unlikely,” the Captain replied frowning deeply in thought. “According to the sensors the ships exploded within the space of a few seconds of each other. It would seem far more likely that they self-destructed.”

  “Radec destroyed his own ships, killing his own crew?” Harkov stated, impressed. Frankly he did not think that Radec had it in him to order the death
s of his own people. Obviously he had underestimated the man. “But what about our own ships? They were destroyed when the Vanguard ships exploded?”

  “Unlikely,” the Captain replied. “They were too far away…”

  “I don’t want to know what is unlikely!” Harkov turned around, yelling at the Captain. “I want to know how Radec destroyed those frigates!”

  “This is the last sensor reading that we received from the squadron,” the Captain stated, passing a data-pad to the Admiral. “Look at the image of the Harbinger,” he explained, pointing towards the numerous detonations running the length of the hull of the frigate.

  “What are these?” Harkov breathed. “Some new weapon that Radec has deployed?”

  “Unlike…” this time the Captain stopped mid-word at the furious look from the Admiral. “They look like mine impacts to me.”

  “Radec has mined the system?” he asked, aghast.

  “No, we did a full scan of the surrounding space when we first exited FTL. Sensors did not detect any mines. I think those freighters were seeding the mines, they either detonated prematurely or one of our frigates hit one and set-off a chain reaction.”

  Falling back into his seat, ashen faced at the thought that it was only last minute caution that stopped him sending the whole fleet. If the Imperial Star had been close to those minelayers when they detonated…

  “Incoming ship!” the tactical officer called out, interrupting Harkov’s thoughts.

  “One of ours?”

  “Negative sir, it’s not broadcasting any recognition signals, either Imperial or Confederation. It looks to be a Vanguard ship. Strange… the computer has this ship on file. It’s registering as the Eternal Light, ship registry has the owner as…Marcus Aurelius,” the bridge went deathly still at the announcement.

  Looking around at the pale, frightened faces of the young officers surrounding him, Harkov growled. “For god sake, get a grip on yourselves men! Marcus is dead! The Emperor is not flying that ship, it’s Radec!”