Rumors of Wars: The Askirti Chronicles - Book 2

by Danny A. Brown

  “Me? Of all people? Emilia, she did nothing comparatively speaking.”

  Emilia was beside herself concerning this sociopath of a woman who acted sadistically towards her and made her and her mother have sex with the Zikar admiral.

  “Jackie, I’m trying to understand but am failing!”

  “Did you see the scars on her body?” Jackie asked her. “Let me enlighten you.”

  Jackie took out a tablet containing a medical report on one Zikar prisoner, Julie Newman.

  Emilia knew that Julie had a burned face, that much was obvious, though she did not know how it was burned. Nor was she aware of the cuts, the many burn marks, the multiple bones that had been broken and healed from an early age, and the various scriptures branded onto the woman’s torso. Seeing the images and scans that were attached to the report, her reaction was evident on her face.

  “She was brainwashed since she was young, sexually exploited all her life, and tortured repetitively from youth. Still mad?”

  “I-Yes,” her Westerly friend said. “I suppose forgiveness starts somewhere. But why does it have to start with her?”

  “For a successful transition, we are going to need many Julies to make it happen. Especially since most in leadership will not live once I get a hold of them.”

  Julie shivered at that statement. She was still trying to come to grips with who her friend was, who she had become. The executions on Lenox-5 were going non-stop day and night. Justice needed to be seen by all for the forty-billion dead at the hands of the enemy and was being broadcast across human space. She just never figured her academy friend would be the one ordering such, or that she would be so comfortable with it.

  “Jackie, how many do you think will face the firing squad at the end of this.”

  “Across all Zikar worlds? Millions.”

  Emilia had never been so scared of the woman before her, her thoughts of Julie now seemed very dim.

  ##

  Jackie thought long and hard about her conversation with Emilia. At what point had she become so willing to shed blood? Would millions of Zikars really have to die to bring about change?

  The problem was the amount of perversion and how widely it was accepted. The authorities all believed in what they were doing and openly endorsed or participated in atrocities, namely against women, in the name of their religion. Torture, rape, murder, slavery, skinning people alive. It was all too much.

  I wonder if monsters in our past justified their actions the same way I do mine.

  The only compromise she could find in her heart was to restrict the death penalty to those who murdered in cold blood, participated in the authorization of weapons of mass destruction, or participated in the heinous act of “cleansing.” In the Zikars they had captured thus far, before and after Lenox-5, she had found that over ninety percent of officers had committed atrocities. And for the priesthood, it was a requirement from day one, as such, none were spared. If those statistics held true for all Zikar space, then she was going to preside over mass-executions the likes of which have never been witnessed.

  I have become what I despise. But had I not, they would continue the slaughter of innocents. What choice do I have but to be the monster they fear the most?

  Chapter 23

  Canton System

  LaGrange point at Canton Prime

  ARNS Mars

  “You know, it’s only been a month since Lenox-5,” Tabitha said.

  “I know, but we have to strike before they can recover,” Jackie responded.

  “We could be hitting other Zikar worlds instead of coming right at their capital,” the admiral added.

  The ARNS Mars still showed tremendous damage on the exterior from the Battle of Lenox-5. Large, hastily patched gashes in the armor were visible, along with man-sized pits all over the exterior along with thousands of burn marks from laser fire. The critical repairs had been made while in-system both to the Mars and to other ships that were either still in fighting form or close to it.

  Since then, Jackie had taken possession of ten more Askirti fleets, each utilizing half the personnel of her original ones as automation was ramped up to new levels. The smallest ships in this delivery, the cutters and corvettes, were completely unmanned. Combined with fifteen fleets from the Commonwealth, they presented a vast armada with which to confront the Zikars in their capital system.

  During the past month, the Commonwealth took over the task of driving the enemy from the Westerly Federation worlds they overran. Each had a small contingent of supply ships in orbit for, even a few escorts, but had many thousands of “priests” on the ground subjugating the population. When it became clear the Commonwealth had the upper hand, the citizens rose up against the Zikars. While blood was shed on no small scale, the time period was short, and the enemy was soundly defeated.

  It had been discussed to work their way up from smaller Zikar worlds to larger. When Jackie had proposed to go straight to the home world, many thought she was crazy. Crazy, until intel came back suggesting the other core worlds were barren of warships.

  The Zikars overcommitted. Apparently, the enemy had stripped their systems clean to mount such a huge offense to conquer human space.

  Their mistake.

  “The planet looks so beautiful,” Tabitha said. “I imagine Earth looked like that, once upon a time.”

  Over fifteen thousand of the most powerful starships devised by man were here to confront an empire that saw to the destruction of over forty-billion souls.

  “I thought it would be more heavily defended.”

  There were a large number orbitals that contained missile platforms, heavy lasers, and railguns, from which the allied fleets remained barely out of range. There was a large shipyard in orbit around Canton-2, along with a large space station like Smirnov Station in Loyola Sentra, before it was deorbited and smashed into the planet.

  “Have we been hailed?”

  “Negative,” Tabitha responded.

  “We aren’t hiding.”

  And they were not. Stealth was not engaged on their warships, and with their sensors going active, it lit up the system like a spotlight in a dark room.

  “Get them on the line,” Jackie demanded.

  After a few minutes, a channel opened to a man wearing an elaborate outfit, looking ridiculous to the point that Jackie was not the only one to stifle a laugh.

  “I am His Holiness, Jim Roberts. Why are you here?”

  “You know why I’m here,” Jackie said evenly, the disgust written on her face. “I am here because you have engaged in genocide against your neighbors!” Jackie said.

  “It is our duty to confront unbelievers in their sins and spread the truth of the Madonna. You are a prime example of our plight! A woman in a position only a man should hold. Your shoulders are not wide enough for this, it is not your fault you don’t understand. Perhaps there is a man I can talk to?” the man said snidely.

  Jackie could not decide whether to laugh or scream at him.

  “It is my duty to defend the defenseless,” she said, “of which your fleets have destroyed forty billion of them! Oh yeah, we caught up to your fleet at Lenox-5 as they were attempting to nuke the planet. We utterly destroyed them all!

  “Your Holiness, I am here for your unconditional surrender. The Zikar Empire has entered a war unprovoked and committed atrocities on an unprecedented scale. Your reign of terror ends today.”

  “The unbelievers do not understand,” the dictator said in an aggregated voice. “It is for your own salvation that we do what we must! Do you not see that for the many to be saved that the few must suffer?!”

  He walked over the soldier nearest him and took his sidearm. He then walked to the nearest servant, female, and put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger, the woman’s body crumpling to the ground.

  “Don’t you see!” he exclaimed, motioning the gun around, “their salvation is in obedience! And they all obey me!”

  He took his gun and shot three mor
e female servants in cold blood. The rest of them remaining still, though the look of terror was apparent on their faces.

  “I Am, that I Am!” he shouted, shooting two more women. “I am the great I Am! All of creation will bow to me,” he said, raising his hands into the air, “as I bow to the Madonna! You will bow to me too! I am all-knowing! I am all-powerful! I am..”

  CLICK

  “Thank you, Admiral Summers, now we know where to start to fix our Zikar problem,” Jackie said grimly.

  ##

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “You told me that monsters were not real.”

  “I know, darling.”

  “I used to say they were under the bed, and you came, and you looked, and you said there was nothing there, and there was no such thing as monsters!”

  “I know darling, I was wrong.”

  “Mommy, they took Tommy and Lexus! The monsters, they took them! I followed them, mommy! They made them dead!” Amanda exclaimed.

  “Darling,” her mother started, a quiver forming in her lower lip, “what have I told you about the monsters?”

  “I know you said to stay away. But they had a puppy with them! Tommy misses his puppy! So, we went, we went where they make people dead!”

  “Amanda, where did you go?” her mother said as her voice broke.

  “They never saw me, I promise. I hidded real good! I told Lexus it was a bad idea, I told her! You have to believe me, mommy!”

  “I believe you, my love.”

  “I saw what they did to Tommy and Lexus! They caught them, mommy! They put them both on the stick! They made them both dead, mommy! It was awful!”

  Jackie just held her little one, not believing how close she had come to losing her to a violent death. She knew exactly what the ‘sticks’ were, having seen them so many times all over Orlando. Whether it was longitudinal or transversal impalement with a thin, irregular pole with a sharpened end, if the victim was lucky, they would be killed beforehand. Many were not lucky.

  Longitudinal meant to drive the pole through the rectum, while transversal meant to drive the pole in one side of the torso and out the other side. The pole would then be set in the ground, holding the victim up in the air. Both ways were common and depended on the mood of the animal committing the act as to which to implement.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she told her daughter, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you, and I promise I am not mad at you.”

  “Will you fight the monsters, mommy? Will you stop them?” her tearful daughter asked.

  “Yes, baby, I will fight them, and I will never stop fighting them. They will pay for what they’ve done.”

  ##

  Jackie reflected on that promise made so long ago, before losing her own children, murdered before her very eyes. Her promise to stop monsters from butchering innocents rang loud in her mind. That memory was at the forefront of her mind when she looked over at Tabitha.

  “Open fire.”

  As one, every ship in the allied fleet opened fire on the orbitals. The railguns fired half ACPs and half slugs as they hoped to take some of the orbitals intact, but that was a secondary priority.

  After an hour of firing, the orbitals were all disabled or destroyed and the fleets began moving towards the planet.

  As they approached the planet, sensor reading started sounding alerts.

  “I’m picking up a massive energy buildup from the planet below!” said a noncom.

  “What kind of energy?” Tabitha asked.

  Before she could get a replied, there was a tremendous discharge of energy from Canton Prime.

  Suddenly the HMS Invincible, a Bojovník-b class dreadnought, shattered on their port side.

  “Command the fleet to jink, now!” Jackie yelled. “And where did they get planetary defenses that can take a dreadnought out in a single shot!”

  Immediately the fleet began jinking randomly while approaching the planet. It was a much slower approach, and tremendously wasteful on energy to do so, but at this point, they were committed.

  Suddenly there were several more discharges as additional planetary defenses came online.

  “The ARNS Haiti! It’s gone!” she heard Tabitha say.

  The two-and-a-half-kilometer battleship never stood a chance as it zigged at a time it should have zagged and turned directly into one of the deadly beams coming from the planet.

  “All guns, target those beams!” Tabitha commanded.

  The AI powering the battle network understood what to do once the unexpected new type of target was inputted. In a coordinated fashion, it reached out across the fleet and powered up heavy lasers, railguns, and missiles to fire at the planetary weapons.

  Two more battleships broke-up, while a dreadnought was left powerless, and five heavy cruisers were vaporized in just moments.

  “Where is my return fire?!” Tabitha demanded, seeing some of the ships firing, but not all of them and not at all the targets.

  Another dreadnought was torn in half.

  These defenses are only targeting the larger ships! Jackie thought to herself.

  “The computer says most of the sites are within large population areas!” Tabitha responded.

  A battleship suddenly lost power when a beam went clear through it, forcing it to ram one of its own escorts.

  “Override! Open fire on all targets!” Jackie said.

  The programming was taking no chances regarding what sort of shielding these weapons possibly had. Each one was going to get multiple railgun slugs, missiles, and heavy lasers.

  “How many!” Jackie yelled.

  “How many what?!” Tabitha asked in a panicked voice.

  “How many planetary weapons? Put it up on the screen!”

  Four more heavy cruisers broke apart.

  “Five hundred and twelve originally! We are now at three hundred and fifty!”

  Suddenly there was a large explosion and the ARNS Mars lurched violently, followed by several more explosions jolting the mighty ship.

  “What happened?! How bad is it?!” Jackie asked, as the holographic display in the middle of the room died, the lights went out and emergency lighting came on.

  Moments later over the intercom, “ALERT, ALERT, ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP! I REPEAT, ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP!”

  “Get the Captain on the line!” Jackie commanded.

  “High Queen,” responded Captain Forseth.

  Adam Forseth had taken the place of Jeri De Vitis after his promotion to flag rank. Jackie hated giving up Jeri and would have preferred for personal reasons to promote him as an admiral serving on the Mars but was not about to play favorites.

  “Adam, how bad is it? We don’t have any information!”

  “We are spinning end over end, apparently we took a glancing blow against whatever weapon that was. It took out a third of our rear thrusters and a great deal of the ship with it!”

  “Can you save her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “If they don’t take an easy pot-shot, perhaps, but we’re falling straight towards the planet. You should get off now!”

  “If I’m getting off, you are too!”

  “There should be time, and right now I want to do everything I can do to save the Mars first! I have to try!”

  “We can build another damn ship!” Jackie said.

  The captain just looked at her, “Godspeed, and give them hell. But my place is on the bridge until I am absolutely certain nothing else can be done. Forseth out.” The connection closed.

  “Did he just hang up on me?!” Jackie was perplexed.

  “We have to go! Now!” Rick shouted, grabbing Jackie by the arm.

  ##

  The mighty dreadnought was tumbling towards the planet below, belching out escape pods, MACs, Smitz drones, and the Bolzen fighters as every conceivable asset that could be useful was expelled from the dying ship.

  Jackie’s pinnace had been close to the flag bridge in
its own private hangar meant for such an occasion. Explosive bolts blew the thick hangar doors off the ship, allowing the tiny luxury shuttle to escape. As they pulled away and the ship oriented with the planet below, Jackie could visually inspect the Mars, and was both astonished and impressed the ship had held together when she saw the scale of the damage. While the ship was spinning end over end, she noted the rear of the ship was gutted, having a section missing that was larger than the WFS Colt on which she originally served.

  The beam fire was diminishing rapidly at this point, few of the planetary weapons remained active, and those were already mapped out and would soon be destroyed.

  “We have missile fire!” Tabitha said.

  “From where?!” Jackie exclaimed.

  “Everywhere! They had stealth platforms in orbit!”

  All over fleet positions, stealth missile platforms came to life, rapidly firing their payload as tens of thousands of missiles belched out of their platforms all at once, charging their targets.

  After the beam weapons disaster, the smaller ships changed to a tight formation around the larger ships they were escorting, sacrificing many to protect the larger ships in addition to the many thousands of Smitz drones and point defense cannons swinging into action to shred the approaching missiles.

  While the point defense of the allied fleet was far superior to anything else out there, many of the platforms were simply too close for point defense to be truly effective. As a result, the missiles found their targets too often. As the larger ships were bracketed by the smaller ones, the smaller ones were outright massacred. Thankfully for the Askirti fleets, most of the smaller ships in the newest fleets were the tiny cutters and corvettes whose AI’s happily sacrificed themselves to protect their charges.

  For the Commonwealth, this was not the case as the smaller ships that sacrificed themselves were crewed by humans, brave men and women that did not stray from their mission nor abandon their posts.

  While the smaller ships that were struck were complete losses, destroyers and cruisers could deal with a few hits from these missiles. The larger ships barely registered them. Still, death could come from a thousand cuts, so their strategy remained unchanged. The capital ships were to be protected at all costs.