by Evan Currie
Commander Heath nodded. “Understood, sir. I’ll issue the orders. We’ll be under way as soon as the Forge authorizes out transit through the corona.”
“Good, see to it.”
Miram saluted quickly and departed, leaving Eric standing in what was normally the squadron command station. He supposed he should shift to the ship’s command deck shortly, but he was too used to issuing orders from where he was.
The Enterprise will be here soon enough anyway I suppose.
Damned if he wasn’t getting used to the whole squadron command thing again, though it wasn’t quite the same as the Archangels.
Eric turned his attention back to the computer, opening up all the files they had on the Imperials, their ships, and their tactics. The files were far from complete and in fact were far from adequate in his opinion.
So far, they’d faced what he believed were a couple of Imperial probes in force.
That was, they’d deployed enough force to be taken seriously, but hadn’t really tried to take any ground. They were fishing for information, and he had to assume that they’d acquired it. They could possibly deploy a third probe in force, but Eric knew that sooner or later the Empire was going to make its real play.
And he was almost certain that the enemy had better intel than he had. That made any plans he might make rather open to frequent and abusive visits from Mr. Murphy. Hell, he might as well invite the old bastard onto the bridge and roll out the red carpet for him in the process.
The admiral will have redeployed the Prometheus Rogues by now, but I can’t count on them. They have their own mission to fulfill, Eric thought grimly. Roberts will follow his orders to the letter, and I know we can count on the Priminae, but our order of battle is barely able to deal with a couple of their probes.
That was the crux of the situation.
Ships.
Eric had men to call on. The finest he’d known and more than capable of overcoming anything thrown at them. He had plenty of territory to give up if he needed to. He could fall back for light-years, sacrificing space to draw the enemy into an extended logistical chain.
What he didn’t have was ships.
Earth had five Heroics.
He was aware that the Solar Forge wasn’t ready to build more anytime soon, so the Terran order of battle was five Heroics. Not a single one more.
The Priminae order of battle had grown significantly, and from what he’d been informed they now had fifteen, with three more in various construction phases. Still, that left them with no more than twenty Heroics to cover the Priminae core worlds and Earth.
He wasn’t sure what the current count of Rogues was, but the last numbers he had indicated that they had at least thirty of the smaller ships. Unfortunately, ten were assigned to Prometheus, and those ships would be doing a new job that wouldn’t leave them at his disposal.
Since another ten were assigned permanently to Solar Defense, along with two Heroics, he couldn’t count those either unless things went horribly wrong, which honestly meant that he was likely to be deploying those ships in combat before this was all over.
Assuming we make it that far.
He knew they didn’t have enough ships to defend against what the Empire was likely to send after them, what they would certainly send, sooner or later.
Eric had been on the wrong side of bad odds more than once in his career. The place was starting to feel like home.
And to think, I wanted to retire after the war. What the hell would I have done as a retiree?
CHAPTER 8
AEV Autolycus, Deep Black
Morgan stood the watch, looking out at the expanse beyond the observation screens.
They were in deep space, no star around them for light-years. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be, he had found since taking command of his lovely King of Thieves. Normally the view was distorted by the warp fields and was beautiful in its own way but unnatural enough to be little more than a fancy screen saver.
With warp drives active, the color shift from the Doppler effect, combined with the high-energy particles trapped in their fields, actually made it look like the starfield was streaking around them. The scene was almost like the old science-fiction films, entirely illusory in nature.
The Prometheus Rogues were not warping at the moment, however, and despite the fact that they were bombing through interstellar space at almost eighty percent the speed of light, nothing out there was moving.
The stars weren’t even flickering.
Somehow that felt far less real than the illusion of motion created by the warp fields.
“Sir?”
Morgan didn’t turn around. He just continued to drift and stare out at the depths beyond the ship. “What is it, Daiyu?”
Commander Li drifted up beside him. “No contacts as of yet, sir.”
“Well, that’s not surprising. We’re casting a wide net, but no one has any idea when our targets will show up.”
“Yes sir.”
“Worried, Commander?” Morgan asked, hearing something in her voice.
“Concerned. We could be reinforcing the others. It doesn’t take this many ships to stand a sentry watch.”
“We could. However, if another ten Rogues would make that much difference, then we’ve vastly misinterpreted the intelligence we’ve been gathering. Our mission may be critical, however, both in warning the others of what’s coming and . . . other things.”
Daiyu looked at him sharply. “Other things?”
“Classified, Commander. Admiral Gracen has a plan for us. Leave it at that.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes Captain.”
AEV Dericourts, Deep Black
Captain Jackson of the Henri Dericourts was casually sucking his coffee from a military issue “sippy cup,” no longer noticing the loss of dignity he had originally felt when first presented with the zero-gravity cup. The coffee still tasted as bad and still got too cold too fast for his taste, but he was always amazed over what he could get used to.
He was admiring the static starscape beyond the ship as he relaxed in a casual float, a snack bar drifting by his head as he kept one eye on a projected repeater view of the ship’s scanner station off to his left.
The Prometheus Rogues had been drifting through interstellar space for the past two days. Most people would consider traveling at eighty percent the speed of light to be moving pretty quickly, but for a Rogue it was downright pedestrian.
He reached for the snack bar just as the ship’s proximity alarm went off. He twisted in space to see what the hell was sending alarms off around him. Grabbing a hand grip, he pulled himself in toward the display repeater, leaning in as close as he could and staring at the screen.
What the hell is that? I’ve never seen a space-warp that size. Is that a black hole?
Jackson reached up and flipped a few switches. “All hands, Jackson. Sounding general quarters.”
The alarm shifted from generic mode to general quarters, calling the crew to duty as he pushed off the wall and flew toward the hatch that would take him down to the bridge.
His first officer, Commander Orson, was waiting for him by the time he slid into command.
“What do we have?” Jackson demanded, noting that the key stations were manned and people were already working furiously.
“Massive space-time warp, sir,” Orson said, not looking up.
“What do we have that I couldn’t have figured out on my own?” he growled in response.
“Still differentiating targets, sir.”
“Targets? It’s not a single warp?” he asked. Well, there goes the black hole idea.
“That’s a big negative,” Orson answered, face buried in his station. “We’re showing a lot of signals, clustered so tight they look like one big signal. They’re moving fast too, hundred times light, maybe hundred fifty.”
“Give me vectors!” Jackson snapped. “And start backtracking them on light-speed imagers! I want to know where they’re going and whe
re the hell they came from. Put this over the network, right now. Right the hell now! This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
I wish it was a black hole, damn it.
AEV Autolycus
Morgan swung himself into the command station and pulled the straps over his shoulders, locking himself into place as others poured onto the bridge of the Auto and did the same.
“Do we have numbers yet?” he demanded.
“Negative, sir,” Daiyu Li responded. “Targets have not entered visual range, and they’re flying too close formation for our gravity scanners to pick out individual signals. Estimate . . . a hundred ships, sir.”
Morgan paled. “A hundred?”
“Give or take,” his first officer responded with a gesture of uncertainty. “It depends wildly on what sort of vessels are in this formation. Our estimate is based on the squadron formation of the last two Imperial formations, which leaned heavily to cruisers with some destroyer-level support.”
“Log it all,” Morgan ordered, “and send to all ships in the net, run silent. No unnecessary maneuvering. Do we have anybody in their path?”
Li shook her head. “Not such that it would be noticed.”
“Good,” Morgan replied, though he’d have been surprised if they had.
Space was a massive, well, space. The odds of their having any ships directly in the path of the Imperial vessels were incredibly long, even considering that they’d arrayed themselves along the likely approach paths based on the earlier probes.
“All ships are to maintain passive scans only,” he ordered. “I want every detail we can grab as their light reaches us, but in the meantime keep working on getting actual numbers from the space-warp. Every piece of intel is going to mean life or death for some poor bastard in the order of battle when the time comes. Let’s get them everything we possibly can.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Imperial Formation: Lord’s Own Dreadnought, Empress Liann
“My Lord, we’re approaching the outer limits of Oather-claimed territory.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Jesan said as he walked around the console and looked at the large display of the projected stars ahead of them. “Any signs of contact yet?”
“No, My Lord. No ships have been detected,” the captain of the Liann responded. “We’ve been scanning for any disturbances since shortly after we left Imperial-claimed space.”
Jesan frowned. “The anomalous species masks their ships better than that, Captain. Maintain visual scans as well.”
The captain nodded. “We have, My Lord, however nothing has shown there either. If there are any ships out in the abyss, then they are cloaked as well as running without any drives.”
Jesan was well aware that was possible as well, but there was little he could do about it he supposed. With a force the size of the sector fleet, they would be unable to sneak up on any moderately competent enemy.
“Very good, Captain. Continue with the plan,” he ordered. “Inform me when we enter Oather territory.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
The captain left him, returning to his duties, while Jesan examined the star charts before him in detail, not even remotely for the first time.
The Oathers hadn’t spread out as much as one might have expected, given the time since they’d broken away from the early Empire. A few dozen star systems were under their control, most of which were now in tatters thanks to the Drasin. There was good reason for the lack of systems under Oather control; even the Empire had grown slowly past a certain point.
Among other reasons, communications at the distances involved were problematic, even with faster-than-light signalling. The Empire only annexed what territory it was certain could be controlled and integrated into Imperial culture. Expanding beyond the ability to maintain that cultural link would merely encourage splinter groups to form, which would require fleet intervention and generally became a massive hassle.
So the Empire only allowed that sort of situation to happen on rare occasion, primarily to maintain training and readiness among the fleet, but also to occasionally expend munitions as a boost to the Imperial core worlds’ economies. Building new weapons kept the people busy and believing that they were earning their keep. So few of them realized that their jobs could have been better completed by automated factories.
Another revolt was brewing, this time closer to the core worlds and with the empress’ permission, that would be allowed to begin shortly after the issue with the Oathers was dealt with. Close enough to remind the fools of the lower classes to wave their flags and stop grumbling about how much money was spent on fleet operations.
The revolt would make for good training, assuming this situation with the Oathers was resolved as quickly as he expected. If not, well then, this would be excellent training as well.
Navarch Misrem looked at the clear scopes being repeated to her command station, a hint of trepidation filling her as they approached the Oather sector.
“Are you alright, Navarch?” her adjutant asked softly, his voice pitched low enough that only she could hear it.
“I’m fine,” Misrem responded calmly. “I’m just wondering where they are.”
“They, Navarch?”
“The enemy. They’re out there. I can feel them.”
The adjutant frowned, examining the screens. “Nothing is on the screens, Navarch.”
Misrem smiled thinly. “I am aware of that, yes. Nonetheless, they’re out there. The enemy has the capacity to hide from our scanners, both gravity and visual . . . and that’s inside a star system, when they have a few light-hours at most to play in. Out here they have light-years. The pure chance it would require to locate them in deep space isn’t worth thinking on. No, unless they’re complete fools, and they are not, then they’re observing us even now.”
“I see . . .” The adjutant looked concerned. “Should we do something?”
“No. Let them watch,” Misrem said grimly. “If our intelligence is correct, it will do them little good, and likely depress morale if anything.”
“And if it is not correct?”
“Well, then we’re in for a real fight, aren’t we?” Misrem asked, laughing harshly. “Still, if they show significantly more force than we expect, the fleet lord can withdraw and call up the Imperial Home Fleet. There is no possible way that our information is so faulty that they have enough forces to survive that much power.”
“Ah, I see.”
Do you? Misrem wondered, glancing at the adjutant.
She rather doubted that he did, but that was another irrelevance. Her adjutant was ostensibly there to assist her, but since he’d been assigned after she had lost her ship in Oather space, she suspected that he was there to keep a close eye on her.
That was fine. She’d expected as much to happen. Any competent fleet commander would. As this one seemed competent, which was more than she’d come to expect, she was fine with the assignment, not that it would matter if she weren’t.
In either case, the die was cast, and they would all soon see how things turned out.
While she was confident that the fleet lord had sufficient power assembled to annihilate anything the Oathers and their allies could put before them, Misrem suspected that the fighting would be more intense than the Imperial forces were used to dealing with.
Whatever else these people are, they are far from Imperial patsies pretending to be revolutionaries.
“Entering the outer limits of Oather-controlled space, Fleet Lord.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Jesan didn’t look over to where the captain was standing, his eyes focused on the projected display of the stars before them.
They had officially crossed over into the section of space that demarked where the Empire would draw the line between unclaimed and claimed territory. That was just a political divide, however, a place to draw lines on projection maps, and was relatively meaningless.
So while they were officially within Oather terri
tory, he doubted that they’d see anything in terms of resistance until they entered one of the star systems, and likely not one of the less-populated ones either.
Still, they were now officially in enemy territory.
“Signal all ships. We are on combat alert until further notice,” he ordered.
“Yes, My Lord.”
A soft alarm sounded in the distance, one that he knew would be repeated on every vessel in his fleet.
The sound of the Empire at war.
Jesan smiled. It was a sound he loved to hear.
Whoever you are, he thought, looking at the stars laid out before him, thank you for this.
AEV Autolycus
“Bold as brass,” Morgan said as they watched the formation fly by on visuals.
The ships had passed them hours ago, of course, but the light was only then reaching the forces of Operation Prometheus. Where the gravity scanners had been unable to pick out individual signatures, the light-speed scanners had no such problem.
“I would say that they have reason to be,” Commander Li said, sounding a little numb.
“What’s the final count?” Morgan asked, blowing out a breath of air.
“Not available yet. At least four hundred and twenty-three so far. The computers are having difficulty getting an accurate count on visual alone. Even in clean formation, they’re moving enough to throw off the software.”
“Great.”
He supposed a fully accurate count didn’t matter all that much. A hundred ships seemed like overkill compared to the forces Morgan knew Earth and the Priminae could muster. Four hundred was the end of the war.
“We should get a more precise count once we can run comparison analysis against all the different angles from the Prometheus Rogues,” Li said, examining the data. “There are at least eight ships in that formation larger than anything we’ve ever seen. They make Heroics look very small, Captain.”
