The Fall of Valdek (The Unity Wars Book 1)

by P. L. Nealen

  “Starship Pride of Valdek, this is Captain Brecan Mor of the Caractacan starship Dauntless,” the familiar voice sounded over the command deck speakers. “What is your status?”

  A sigh seemed to pass through the command deck, and Horvaset’s shoulders slumped, just a little bit. She touched a key in her armrest. That was when Scalas noticed that her control panel appeared to be a tablet wired into the partially-disassembled armrest. Apparently, the triamic controls hadn’t been conducive enough to human manipulation.

  “Dauntless, this is Pride of Valdek,” she replied. “We have sustained damage, and are conducting repairs preparatory to leaving the vicinity of the system altogether.”

  “Acknowledged,” Mor replied. “What is your combat readiness?”

  “Minimal,” Horvaset admitted. “Have you detected any Unity ships coming after us?” She was obviously trying to keep her tone even and cool, but Scalas could hear the trepidation in her voice anyway. She had already had one ship shot nearly to pieces under her by the Unity; he could only imagine her fears of it happening again.

  “Negative,” Mor answered. “Though that doesn’t mean that they aren’t on their way. None have appeared within our light-cone, however. It’s only by the grace of God that we detected you.” He paused. “We have sent tight-beam messages to the Vindicator and the Challenger. They should join us within the next couple of hours. Conduct your repairs, Captain. We will hold overwatch.”

  On the holo tank, the Dauntless had gone inert, barely ten thousand kilometers away, and was conducting her vector-matching burn. Even taking the distance into account, it was obvious that the Spear-class ship was dwarfed by the ancient triamic dreadnaught.

  “We will do so, Captain,” Horvaset said. “And thank you.”

  “We are Caractacans, Captain,” Mor said. “We defend those in need of it. Is Brother Legate Kranjick aboard?”

  Horvaset looked back at Scalas, her eyes widening a little. Scalas directed his voice toward the pickup, noting how hoarse it suddenly sounded in his own ears.

  “This is Acting Legate Scalas, Captain,” he said. “Brother Legate Kranjick is dead.”

  There was another, longer pause. When he spoke again, Mor sounded distinctly subdued. “May the souls of the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace,” he said.

  “Amen,” chorused the five Caractacans.

  “What are your orders, Acting Legate?” Mor asked.

  “For the moment, just as you’ve planned,” Scalas said, feeling odd about his old friend’s deferential tone. “I will discuss our next steps with the Commander and the Captain, but for now, prepare to return to the Sector Keep.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mor replied. “Dauntless out.”

  Rehenek had bowed his head at the brief prayer, though from what he had seen, Scalas suspected that if the man had any beliefs, they were the pantheistic sort expressed by both Horvaset and his deceased mother and father. When he lifted his head, he looked at Horvaset.

  “How can my men contribute to the repairs, Captain?” he asked.

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” Horvaset answered, “unless any of them are familiar with welding triamic hull plating. My crew is having difficulty enough. It’s a matter of technicality, not numbers or brute strength.”

  “Show me where your damage control crews are,” Rehenek said, “and I will send working parties, with instructions to stay out of the way unless the crew chiefs have something for them to do.”

  Horvaset nodded, tapping keys to bring the wireframe of the Pride of Valdek closer in the holo tank. She highlighted several areas. “Thank you, Commander,” she said. Rehenek activated his comm and spoke rapidly into it, giving orders and instructions.

  Scalas glanced at his Centurions. They nodded, understanding. There would be Caractacans there to help, as well. Partly out of the sheer urgency of the need to get the repairs finished and get away from the Goran 54 system, partly to keep the men busy. Having tasks to focus on would keep them from dwelling too much on what had happened on the planet below.

  ***

  Scalas paused outside the compartment that Rehenek had taken up as his headquarters. They had been busy, but the repairs were coming along quickly enough, and there was still no sign of the Unity fleet closing on them. It was entirely possible—in fact, it was likely—that there were hundreds of the white, pyramidal ships out there looking for them, but space was vast, and the odds of finding a single ship that did not want to be found, that far out from a star system, were very long. Those odds would run out, eventually; there was no hiding a starship’s emissions, and there were now four ships floating in the void, within a few hundred kilometers of each other. But it took time.

  They needed to discuss their next move. Both men had been busy with their respective commands, but time was running out. The dreadnaught was almost ready to depart, and they needed to get away quickly.

  He knocked, and a muffled voice from inside called out in Eastern Satevic. He gathered from the tone that Rehenek was telling him to come in, and so he opened the door and pulled himself inside.

  Rehenek was strapped into a chair, in front of a holo pickup. He looked over his shoulder as Scalas entered, and inclined his head. “Come in, Legate,” he said. “I have one more thing to do, and then we can discuss our course of action.” He turned back toward the holo pickup, which suddenly glowed red. It was recording.

  He spoke at length in Eastern Satevic. Scalas found that he was able to pick up a few bits of it, though not enough to tell what exactly was being said. That it was a rallying cry and a call to arms was unmistakable.

  Rehenek finished, and shut off the recorder. He turned to face Scalas, a faintly amused look on his face. “You’re wondering why I’m recording speeches at a time like this,” he said.

  Scalas folded his arms across his breastplate. “We are about to leave your conquered home system, possibly for quite some time to come,” he said dryly. “I think I can figure it out.”

  Rehenek laughed humorlessly, and leaned back in the chair, although there was no gravity to make it anything more than an affectation. “People of Valdek, my people,” he quoted, in Trade Cant, “this is General-Regent Amra Rehenek. By now the invaders have doubtless told you that I am dead or captured. As you can see, that is a lie. I am alive, and at large, with a core of Valdekan spacers and commandos who will form the seed of the Free Valdekan resistance. I promise you now, and let the Universe snatch the breath from my lungs if I lie, I shall return. Look to the skies, and do not lose hope. And some day, I will appear at the head of a fleet and an army that will scour our beloved planet’s surface clean of these inhuman invaders, before we all move on Sparat. There, I will launch a memorial to my mother and father’s memory, that will float for all eternity across the lifeless debris field that will be all I leave of that accursed system. Survive, my people. Resist. And do not lose hope.”

  As he had reached the part about destroying the Sparat system, Rehenek’s voice had taken on a new intensity, a new fire. He might have pored over writing that speech for effect, but the words expressed an anger and a hatred that the man clearly felt in every fiber of his being.

  He finished, then blinked and cleared his throat, composing himself and putting on the detached, vaguely amused look that seemed to be his mask. “That will be put on a signal drone,” he said coolly. “We’ll launch it just before we leave the system. It should be able to blanket the planet with the signal for at least a day before they can destroy it.”

  “Hopefully enough of your people still have the ability to receive it,” Scalas said.

  “Enough will,” Rehenek said, unstrapping himself from the chair. “My father was already working on contingency plans within the first day of the invasion, once it became clear how outmatched we were. There are resistance cells scattered across the planet, and all of them will be listening for that message.”

  “Your father seems to have been a man of great wisdom,” Scalas observed. He
was still feeling Rehenek out. He suspected that everything had changed, and that his future was now inextricably caught up in what had started with the fall of Valdek. The Caractacan Brotherhood would not stand still for such an atrocity. The lines had already been drawn.

  Rehenek’s gaze got momentarily far away. “He was,” he said quietly. “He was a great man in many ways. Though I think that without my mother, he never would have been the leader that he was.” His gaze hardened again, as he took a deep breath. “But they are dead, and we have much work to do.”

  “Indeed,” Scalas agreed. “We can reach the Avar Sector Keep in less than three days.”

  But Rehenek shook his head. “And we will go there,” he said. “I can think of no better place to begin building our alliance. But I have another destination first.” He looked at Scalas with a glint in his eye. “I am taking the Pride of Valdek to Sparat.”

  Scalas kept his expression carefully neutral. “A suicide run is not exactly in keeping with the message of hope and resistance you just recorded, General-Regent,” he said evenly.

  Rehenek’s laugh was a dry bark. “Trust me, Legate,” he said, “I have no intention of attacking Sparat, not yet. But I want to see it. I want to see what my father’s treacherous friend has wrought. The Sparat that my father described was a rich system, but a sparsely populated one.” He nodded in the general direction of the outer hull, indicating the Valdek system beyond. “The force that invaded my homeworld was far too large to have been raised in the same system my father spoke of from the days of the Tyrus Cluster campaign. I want to see what we’re up against, what we’re really up against.”

  He straightened, holding himself still with one hand on the back of the chair, his feet just above the deck. “If you must return to your Sector Keep, I will understand,” he said. “I am sure we can transfer you and your men to your starships in a relatively short time.”

  But Scalas had been thinking about it, and shook his head. “No, I think you are right,” he said. “And if I really am to be a Brother Legate in the war to come, then I agree. I want to see our enemy’s system, too.”

  Rehenek smiled wolfishly. “Then let us go see if Captain Horvaset is ready to depart, before the Unity ships back there catch up with us.”

  ***

  “This is unbelievable,” Horvaset breathed. “Has anyone ever heard of the like?”

  Scalas and Rehenek were floating behind her acceleration couch, watching the holo tank as the Pride of Valdek’s computer slowly built the picture of the Sparat system, collecting light and radiation from farther and farther out to increase the detail.

  “I have heard of a few systems that attempted it, but never succeeded,” Scalas said. “Logistics and unity of purpose have always broken down.”

  The Sparat system had once been typical of most such systems, with a relatively agrarian “first world” and industrial platforms built on orbiting space stations and asteroids. But sometime in the last few years, the entire Sparat system had been industrialized. Completely. The entire system seethed with comm chatter, and hundreds of thousands of ships moved between the planets and the asteroids. Not a single asteroid seemed to have been missed; every one had either been converted into an installation of some sort, or mined into oblivion. Even the gas giants had extensive installations in orbit or in the upper atmospheres.

  And while the details were still fuzzy and indistinct, all of it appeared to be geared toward building war materiel.

  “The sheer numbers…” Horvaset whispered.

  “There must be something different about this cloning technology,” Rehenek observed. “Some sort of acceleration; there is no other way that they could reach these numbers so quickly. My father described a system with a few hundred million people, and that was only twenty-seven years ago. To reach this level in such a short time…they must be producing clones even more quickly than they are building ships.”

  There was a chirp from the console, and Horvaset listened for a moment, then tapped a key. A voice blasted from the speakers. It was strident, bombastic, and unintelligible. After a moment, Scalas recognized the same language he had heard reverberating across the battlefield, directing the Unity’s clone soldiers.

  “That’s Palawese,” Rehenek said. “One of the primary dialects in Sparat. I know a little of it…” he trailed off as he listened, but Horvaset was already ahead of him.

  “…never flag, never fail. The future lies upon all our shoulders. Only through complete dedication to the cause of our Visionary Leader can the future of unity, prosperity, and progress be made real. Only through his Vision can we truly reach the next step in evolution. Work well. Work hard. You are building the future for all the galaxy.”

  The voice changed. Rehenek’s head snapped up, and he had to catch himself on the back of Horvaset’s acceleration couch to keep from starting to spin backward.

  Scalas recognized it, as well. That was Geretesk Vakolo. “The first of our conquests has been wildly successful,” he announced. “Valdek has been brought into the embrace of the Galactic Unity, and soon will be a shining example of what a partner in our great cause can accomplish. The first major system away from Sparat has joined us. The march has begun! Soon, perhaps even within a human lifetime, the entire galaxy will be one Unity! One government, one leader, one purpose!”

  “Turn it off,” Rehenek said. “I’ve heard enough.” He turned to Scalas, though, and there was a strange look in his eyes. Was it fear? “How is Vakolo here?” he asked quietly. “He was on Valdek, on that dreadnaught. There is no way it could have reached Sparat ahead of us. We damaged it too badly.”

  “Maybe he boarded another ship,” Scalas suggested. “There was plenty of time while we were repairing the Pride for even one of those cruisers to get past us.”

  Rehenek nodded, though he still seemed unsure, unsettled. Scalas realized that after what had happened, Vakolo truly had become something of a bogeyman to all the Valdekans, and Rehenek was not immune.

  An alarm sounded. Horvaset looked up at the wider display in the holo tank. “We have been detected,” she announced. “Drive flares at forty-three light minutes out, coming our direction.”

  Considering how far they were from Sparat’s star, that was worrying. The Unity must have had pickets everywhere across the system. “Get us away from here, Captain,” Rehenek said, pushing off for an empty acceleration couch. “I’ve seen enough.”

  Epilogue

  The Herald of Justice wasn’t a dreadnaught, but the Pride of Valdek was currently in orbit over Kaletonan IV, so the Angelos-class starship was still the biggest vessel in sight as she descended on the Avar Sector Keep’s landing pads atop a tower of golden-white fire. Her drives rumbled through the ground even before she’d touched down.

  The Herald settled, and Scalas turned away from the window overlooking the spaceport. He was standing in what had been Kranjick’s inner sanctum until they had left for Valdek. The printout of the missive from the Herald was on the desk before him. He looked around at the relatively small room, which still held his mentor’s spare personal effects, let out a faint sigh, squared his shoulders, and turned toward the door.

  Costigan and Cobb were waiting for him in the hallway. Costigan clapped him on the shoulder, and he returned the bruising blow, just to tell his friend that he was all right. Cobb met his eyes levelly, then shook his head a little.

  “They should have stood by the Brother Legate’s decision,” Cobb said. He smiled tightly. “And no, I’m not saying that because it means I won’t be a Centurion yet. The Brother Legate knew what he was about.”

  “You should be a Centurion, Cobb,” Scalas said quietly, as he started for the stairs at the end of the hall. All three men were in their white tunics, sidearms at their hips. Scalas had not yet put on the red tunic of the Legate; he had had too much work to do, and somehow it hadn’t felt right. Now that word had arrived from Caerfon, it was probably just as well that he hadn’t.

  But his senior Sq
uad Sergeant shook his head again with a chuckle. “Is that still bothering you?” he asked. He stopped and faced his Centurion. “I’m a good Sergeant, Erekan. I know it. But I’m not ambitious. We work well together. The Brotherhood isn’t like some planetary military where advancement means political power later on. I couldn’t care less. Besides, who was always taking the lead during our novitiate? It wasn’t me.”

  Costigan was smiling faintly. “He’s got you there, Erekan,” he said.

  Cobb turned toward the stairs. “Come on,” he said, the conversation apparently settled in his mind. “We best not keep the Brother Legate waiting.”

  Scalas felt a pang at the words, though not because he thought he should be wearing the red. No, it was because for the last ten years, that title had belonged to one man. Now Kranjick was gone, and they were on their way to meet an unknown quantity.

  Side by side, the three men headed for the steps.

  ***

  By the time the sleds reached the main gates and the courtyard, the ragged remnant of the Avar Sector Legio was drawn up in formation, all in whites and blacks, the Centurions and Squad Sergeants wearing sidearms, the regular Brothers holding their well-worn powerguns at port arms. The Blade of the Protector had arrived while the other five Centuries had been on Valdek, so the Legio didn’t look quite as understrength as it might have otherwise. But the gaps in the ranks were still noticeable.

  The lead sled came to a stop, and a short man with short, iron gray hair got out. He was nearly as wide as he was tall; the red tunic was stretched tightly across a barrel chest, and the sleeves looked like they might burst around his massive arms. Brother Legate Dravus Maruks hailed from the high-gravity world of Draeyeen, and he looked it.

  Maruks marched crisply up to the steps, his sidearm held stiffly in front of him to return the salutes offered by the ranks as he passed between them. He halted before the five Centurions with a stamp of his heels. He looked like the impact should have shook the ground.