Rumors of Wars: The Askirti Chronicles - Book 2

by Danny A. Brown

  He could not visit with her until the first phase of training was over. And while they both hated it, arrangements were made to continue their training onboard the Mars should they ship out.

  Rick made a promise to Sylvia, and he was about keeping his promises. They would never be separated again, or so he hoped.

  ##

  <>

  Yes, Pari?

  <>

  What? Are you kidding me? None of us knows how to speak ancient Homem! She will need all the help she can get to adjust to the new reality, much less obtain information on what her situation is!

  <>

  Okay, now I know you're pulling a fast one.

  <>

  Well, crap. To repeat myself…ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

  <>

  Well geez, she might not be alone in that feeling. This gets better and better. You know, I’ve got a plan. Let’s take you out of my head and put you in hers!

  <>

  Jackie sighed…she did like Pari, but the AI could be incredibly annoying at times.

  Spill it.

  <>

  WHAT?!

  <>

  “I hate my life.”

  ##

  Ana was not entirely sure what she was doing, but with Pari’s assistance they believed the process for extracting someone from stasis was rather straightforward, if not idiot-proof. But with the stakes as they were, nobody wanted to be the idiot that did not do their due diligence.

  She pressed a few buttons, then waited.

  ##

  Blackness turned into awareness, then her eyes opened. Not really opened, but squinted was more like it.

  I smell no smoke. I feel no vibrations. Did our relief convoy come?

  She heard talking but failed to understand their words. She did not recognize the tongue being used, and for some unknown reason, her translator was offline.

  Terisa? Why is my translator not working?

  A few moments passed.

  Terisa?

  Mild panic set in. Her AI, Terisa, was sentient every bit as much as she was, and her AI was never completely silent. Not only that, her implants were completely offline. The access menus would not come up. The HUD display was not there.

  For the first time in over six hundred years of life, Helen Rutherford was without her technology.

  Take a deep breath. Something broke, we have people to fix it.

  She closed her eyes and opened them several times, trying to shake off the blurriness. Once she could use her eyes to focus on something, that something she saw made her blood run cold.

  The room she was in was a medical room of some sort, with a few people that looked to be medical staff. Everywhere she had ever been people in the medical field all looked so similar.

  But that is not what captured her eye. On the other side of the room, standing on either side of the door were matte black, expressionless androids.

  The enemy?! I’ve been captured?!

  She was supposed to be immune to fear. She had seen the wholesale slaughter of trillions, but never, until now, had she been so vulnerable. And she was afraid.

  Seeing her panic, the doctor reached for a small tube, jabbed it at the side of her throat, and with a click, everything went dark.

  Some time later she started to wake again. She left her eyes closed on purpose this time until she could gather her thoughts.

  I am a prisoner, but I am still a queen. I will not be intimidated.

  As much mental preparation as she did, she was ill prepared for the next surprise. Opening her eyes, she was looking at herself. A much younger self!

  Clones?

  The clone was wearing the black uniform of the enemy, no surprises there.

  How long was I out that they could get a sample of my DNA and grow an adult clone? Even our best facilities take at least half the time as natural growth. Perhaps a spy spirited away a sample without our intelligence organization finding out?

  The clone motioned to herself, was she saying her name?

  “Jackie,” she said.

  Ah, so we’re naming them now. I’ve now been witness to two abominations. The androids and now a clone. I wonder how many clones of me they made.

  She thought it odd that the enemy did not produce a translation tablet to facilitate communication, it had been such basic tech for tens of thousands of years. The clone kept motioning here and there. She thought perhaps she was introducing her medical staff.

  They are probably all clones. I was wondering though when the enemy would get around to giving them real names, like pets.

  It did fascinate her that they went through the trouble of changing the features on this clone to have the pure white hair, ultra-pale skin, and bright green eyes. Oh, she knew her DNA did not include that as part of the package, as that was due to her nanites changing her body.

  How thoughtful of them.

  The clone looked frustrated with her.

  Good!

  The doctor started basic medical scans though she was having trouble telling what they were scanning for as the machines did not look like anything she was used to seeing. They almost looked primitive, somewhat archaic, which would make no sense whatsoever.

  Then the doctor spent a lot of time scanning her midsection and lower body.

  Finally, she took a sharp object and started poking at her toes.

  Just smiling while blowing out a breath she felt nothing.

  Yup. Just like they were when I was put into stasis! I’d be shocked if this bunch fixed that for me. Harder to escape if I’m crippled.

  Indeed, her fleet had fought a mighty battle and lost before scattering. Her dreadnought made a narrow escape via the transition drive, which then died along with most systems on her once great ship.

  That last battle had killed the last of her flag staff, most of the bridge crew, and left her crippled and scarred. It took the guardians to stay with her while she made a few last attempts to ensure the ship was where it was supposed to be at the rendezvous point before life support failed completely.

  She remembered being placed in the stasis pod by her guardians, seeing the look of fear and hopelessness on their faces.

  I’m the queen who presided over the fall of the mightiest empire the galaxy has ever seen, and now I’m a crippled prisoner. At least it seems they can’t talk to me.

  A silent tear fell from her eye at the thought of just what was lost for her actually to be in enemy hands.

  ##

  “I think her fancy tech is broken. Don’t these guys have translators and such? I thought they could read minds or some crap,” Jackie wondered.

  “I think she’s having a difficult time with her surroundings,” Ana added.

  “Whatever do you mean?

  “Hmm, let’s see,” Ana started, her pointer finger on her lips. “I believe you called those ACUs ‘killer robots’. I also think I saw a video of some of the ‘killer robots’ that were pulled off the queen’s dreadnought. I think ours look extremely like those.”

  “Crap,” Jackie said, shaking her head.

  “And then, let us not forget this fearless leader you are so anxious to speak to looks exactly like you. Or I should say you look exactly like her, or how she did when she was much younger.”

  “Double crap.�
� At this point, Jackie’s hand was covering her face.

  “I have an idea,” Ana said with a spark in her eyes. “We need to get her a teacher, someone to teach her Standard.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll make it happen,” Jackie said.

  “Better make it human too.”

  “Ha, sure she shouldn’t be taught by ‘killer robots’?” Jackie quipped.

  She then turned and left, taking the two ACUs with her.

  Chapter 14

  ARNS Mars

  En Route to Zikar space

  Jackie was sitting in her ready room listening to all the latest on the conflict with the Zikars. While the Commonwealth was struggling in a few places, the Westerly Federation was being rolled over, and nobody had much on the United Planets Alliance as to how they were doing against this enemy.

  It baffled Jackie why the Zikars would take on three major powers at once. Strategically it just made no sense. And then the ship losses the Zikars were facing, they were just throwing lives away. They did not care for the lives of their crews, and it showed. Even modifying their strategy just a little bit would cut down on their losses. It seemed they wanted each system as fast as they could win it and then move on like they were on a timetable.

  The conversation then moved to the recovered artifact, the ancient Homem dreadnought. In the short time they were in possession of it, all her scientists told her it would be years before they reaped any technological benefits from it. They were adamant that the long-term technological gain was dramatic with the dreadnought in the picture, it was just going to take years, even decades to unlock enough of its secrets to make a difference. And according to Pari, it would take eons to unlock them all.

  She hated pulling Doctor Ana Novak away from the Homem survivors, but her place was on the Mars, and she gracefully conceded that point.

  The former High Queen was not alright emotionally, that was easy to tell. She seemed threatened, even frightened after being awoken. As a result of Ana’s feedback, the ACUs were pulled from her security detail as only human soldiers would be used. And they brought her a teacher, a kind, elderly woman who had been a teacher for ninety-plus years. Hopefully, once they returned to San Agustin, she could have a real conversation. Still, she felt bad waking the woman and not sticking around for her. In the meantime, Jackie authorized additional Homem survivors to be awoken, just nobody with white hair.

  We don’t need a group as powerful as me running around half scared out of their minds.

  <>

  “Tell me about the changes to Marine Country,” Jackie asked with a smirk.

  “Well, it was already huge, but it’s been expanded by thirty percent, at least temporarily as we’ve confiscated part of one of the hangars,” Rick answered.

  Jackie had every intention of helping Rick to keep his promise to his daughter by keeping her on the same ship as her father. Jackie needed Rick here too. This was the only way both women got what they wanted. Plus, if this group were going to become her Praetorian Guard, they would need to get used to going where she goes.

  “We can replicate most of their training needs,” Rick continued, “plus provide some they would not have on the base.”

  “Oh, such as?” Tabitha asked.

  “Well, they might be on the outside of the ship as we speak practicing boarding it midflight,” he said.

  That drew no small amount of laughter in the room.

  The ship was not in FTL, so boarding could be done quite safely in fact if it were not for the thirty-minute oxygen supply they were restricted to. They were in no danger of suffocation, not really. Of course, their instructor never told them that. An additional hour supply of oxygen was actually in the tank, but the worst they would experience would be asphyxiation, at least to the point of passing out, at which time their onboard computer would turn on the surplus oxygen. The same instructor also disabled the equipment they would use to override the airlock controls on the exterior of the ship, guaranteeing a particular outcome. This was an experience they would have many, many times.

  Pressing a few buttons, Jackie began a fleet-wide conference call to go over their current objectives. One by one, each face in their little fleet appeared on the wall screen. The wall screen did not carve out a box for each person but rather created an auditorium-like view whereby the captains of the larger ships were on the front row, and those towards the back were the captains of the smallest ships.

  “As we are going to be taking a more direct role in the Zikar war, our first objective is disruption of their supply lines. To do this, we need to ‘pave the way’ for our fleets to move into Zikar space with impunity. Yes, I said fleets, because this is a joint Askirti-Commonwealth offensive.

  “As you all know, we dispatched a large number of our corvettes on missions a few weeks ago. What you don’t know is that they have been flying via FTL into Zikar space, along with many Commonwealth ships.”

  That got the attention of everyone.

  “Their primary mission,” Jackie continued, “is to disable the Gate Keepers at certain junctions thought to be vital to their supply chain, with a secondary purpose to keep us apprised of what is going on in each system.”

  “How can such small ships accomplish this task?” one of the captains asked. From the looks on the faces before her, many had the same question.

  “It’s relatively straightforward. They fly in under stealth, subvert each respective Gate as they will have physical access to it, implanting our code such that we can take ownership. This gives us access to all communications that go through that Gate. Then, they will plant nukes on each of the Gate Keepers. And finally, our ships will remain on station near each Gate until such a time as we are ready to go in. At that point it is their responsibility for disabling any and all communications satellites in proximity to the Gate.

  “I see the shocked looks!” she exclaimed, wearing a large smile. “Believe me when I say that I thought it was an ambitious plan when I first proposed it. But trust me when I say not only is it doable, but reports from the earliest corvette crews report complete success thus far. So, once we give the signal, our team on the other side of each Gate will blow the Gate Keepers, destroy the communications satellites and report back to us. Oh yes, it will also be the last time the Zikars ever used those Gates for travel.”

  “So, what about supply systems that are too far away? Some of these systems are six months or more at our best FTL speeds, even when starting off from friendly Gates?” asked John Papadopoulos.

  “We are flying in where it is practical,” Tabitha chimed in, being privy to the plans. “High priority targets that are more than two months in FTL are being handled with a different operating procedure. Our ships will open the Gate while in full stealth and cross over. They have to wait a few minutes off to the side to see if the Zikars send any missiles in, which is usually the case. Even though our ships are in full stealth, we still don’t want the enemy to know we are taking over the Gates, at least not until it is too late. But I’m sure they will guess something is up. Those remote systems are some of the first that will be hit.”

  “What are the chances of success in such instances?” John asked.

  “Those are the systems that reported in first, having achieved successful infiltration,” Tabitha said smiling.

  “I will add,” Jackie said, “that more than one Zikar system has had to lose access to their Gate ahead of our surprise party. Two systems had major supply convoys trying to get out. Obviously, we could not let that happen, so we disabled Gate communications and travel.

  “What a shame both of them were four months or better travel time at FTL from anything else,” she deadpanned, to lots of snickering. “We are currently en route to a third system that has a major convoy getting underway, so the field is ripe for the harvest!”

  ##

  Coming into Zikar space, the ARNS Mars was first to cross the threshold of the Gate.

  “
Wow, what a sight,” Alice said.

  On the wall screen was images of the Gate Keepers, or pieces of them at least, tumbling in the distance along with many small pieces of debris.

  “Welcome to the Tapira system,” Captain Jim Mauro of the Naozumi said.

  “Thank you, Captain Mauro! It’s good to be here. Excellent work, by the way!” Jackie said.

  Most of the Askirti fleet was barreling into the system at this point, vectoring towards their primary target, a convoy of twenty-four thousand ships that were halfway between the Gate and Tapira-prime.

  As the Gate Keepers had been destroyed just minutes ago, the light from their destruction had not yet traveled all the way to the convoy. They would have the drop on the Zikar fleet, and the escorts would be out of position, not expecting an attack in one of their primary supply systems.

  As the Naozumi had seeded the system with FTL satellites between the Gate and Tapira-prime, the Askirti knew exactly where the enemy was, and all of Jackie’s ships engaged FTL in unison.

  ##

  As they dropped out of FTL, Jackie imagined what the scene was like on the bridges of the convoy ships seeing the Askirti fleet suddenly surround them.

  I’d be crapping in my pants.

  Even though the escort outnumbered Jackie’s ships by almost a factor of ten, they were out of position, and ill prepared. In contrast, the Askirti fleet already had their firing solutions plugged into their tactical computers.

  The massive railguns on the Mars could be heard inside the ship as they opened up against the Zikar fleet. The heavy slugs tore some of the smaller ships in half with a single shot. The vibrations of the titanic lasers could be felt as they shot clear through battleships at the close range they were at.

  Two of the enemy dreadnoughts started returning fire, firing off missile salvos that were summarily destroyed by the massive amount of point defense and Smitz drones deployed.

  Suddenly the Mars lurched under Jackie’s feet.

  “Status report!” Tabitha cried.

  “Twin nuclear detonations against the hull, sections 5-2 and 6-1 have been compromised, with casualties!” Sheila, the tactical officer on the flag bridge said.