Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3)

by Richard Flunker

  Back on the Harmoa, the Queen sat down on a chair next to a console. Stargazer updated her as they closed in on the ancient being, now in orbit around Coran, but slowly drifting away from the planet. By now, the Harmoa had scanned the being in as much as its technology allowed it to, and even so, there was much about it that was unknown. A few things were clear. First, it had taken extensively from all the ships it had brought down onto the surface, and scavenged them for parts. The entire outer layer of the being was a Frankenstein of spaceships. Hull, driver, electronics, all had been absorbed onto the being. What they didn’t know was how it was moving, flying. They could not detect any Hausen reactors or anything similar to a gravity focus.

  There was nothing for them to target, even with the powerful beam, it would take them an eternity to simply burn it out of existence, and they had very little time to begin with. And that wasn’t taking into account just how the being would defend itself. All of its machines, drones and spaces, were left on the planet. Perhaps they had been a distraction the entire time.

  What made matters harder for Deespa was that she didn’t know. She had developed the same hubris those she had deposed were corrupt with. She saw herself as superior to all others, despite her good intentions. In this state she had become one now humbled by her place.

  “My Queen,” the Admiral chimed in over the comm, “nearly every ship in orbit around Coran has jumped away. As far as our sensors go, nearly all around Secundaria and Mequa have left too.”

  “How many were we able to save? People?” she asked.

  “Those in orbit held around twenty three million of your people,” the Admiral replied after a brief moment.

  “A mere fraction of our people.”

  “A fraction that will live, thanks to you,” the Admiral added.

  Another call came in from the Captain.

  “We are in minimal range of firing my Queen,” he said.

  She reached out to the console ahead of her and typed in her command code. She had limited access from the engineering room, but it was all she needed.

  “Begin firing,” she started, when a new alarm began blaring all over the ship.

  “You will want to see this,” the AI chirped over the comm.

  “My Queen, sensors are picking up an entirely new reading. An incredible burst of energy just erupted around the enemy vessel,” the Captain yelled.

  Deespa reached forward and switched over to the sensor readings. An entirely new set of data was streaming, along with an image. The giant black vessel floated nearly invisible in the darkness of space, but it was silhouetted against a bright disk of light. Looking back at the sensor data, there was something familiar about the numbers being displayed on her screen. The realization came just as the AI confirmed her thoughts.

  “It’s a subspace portal.”

  “Captain, reroute all power from the weapon and to the drive. Sling the Harmoa directly into that disk of light.”

  “My Queen?” he asked, but she could see from the telemetry info on her screen that he was already relaying the orders.

  “That disk of light is a portal into subspace. The being will flee through it and we must follow before it closes.”

  The few engineers standing next to the Queen looked back and forth at each other. When she stood up, they snapped to attention.

  “Is everything ready here?” she asked.

  They nodded. She pointed towards the exit, and her advisor Clelin followed. They sat back down on the lift, and the Queen ordered the pilot to take them to the bridge. Clelin sat next to the Queen and the small transport took off as fast as it could. The bridge was nearly three miles away in a straight line, and it would take them a few minutes to reach it.

  “Are you sure of this my Queen?” the advisor asked. “I trust your understanding of this subspace you speak of, but what can we expect to find? Our deaths?”

  The wind whipped the Queen’s hair back, so she reached behind and clasped two brackets on her hair, holding the long silver strands tied down.

  “Check the sensor data,” she said, pointing at the tablet in his hands. “Our star has gone supernova. The initial burst of light has already reached us, and the first wave of flare expansion will consume half of the planet not shortly after. Death awaits us here, or through that portal.”

  “But we could jump,” Clelin suggested.

  “But we won’t. Our deaths are nothing against the threat that being poses to all of us.”

  Two minutes away from the bridge, a comm burst brought the Queen to attention.

  “My Queen, the being has vanished through the disk of light.”

  “How long till the Harmoa enters?” she asked.

  “Ten seconds,” the bridge officer replied.

  She sat back and sensed the tension in the air. The entire ship was ready for the unknown, but that was no relief. She counted down, and as she reached zero, she took a deep breath and held it. Nothing happened, and the lift just kept speeding down the inner railway.

  “Bridge?” she tapped on her comm after waiting nearly a minute.

  “My Queen, were not entirely sure what happened. We have gone into the light disk, but nothing physically happened, that is, other than we are no longer in the Coran system.”

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Before the officer replied, the sound of impacts on the ship’s hull echoed deep through the chamber. The long inner rail tunnels that ran along the spine of the Harmoa also served as a reverberator for all sounds on board the ship. More impacts followed the first, and it was clear they were under attack.

  The lift stopped just under the bridge, and Deespa ran off towards the giant archway that led into the massive bridge. It was laid out like a stadium, with the hundreds of consoles and control centers in a raised depression. The Captain’s command center was at the very center of this lowered section. Next to his was the addition of a secondary command center the Queen used when she was onboard. As she rushed down the aisle towards her station, one of the three giant main screens on board the Harmoa displayed the ancient one turning slowly away from their ship.

  She reached her console, where her two aides were sitting down sifting through data. One turned to her immediately.

  “We went through and were under attack immediately by the enemy, my Queen. It seems to be detaching mass from itself and hurling it at us. We were caught off guard, and were hit along the downward spine. There is some damage to the drive. Our close defense guns are hitting nearly everything it is throwing at us now.”

  The Queen sighed in frustration.

  “But our drive?” she asked, trying to calculate the data in her own head.

  “The drive is fine, just the relay centers to the ring are, well, offline.”

  “So we are just sitting here,” she said.

  “Yes, my Queen.”

  “It knows what it hit,” she said, pointing at the screen.

  The gargantuan vessel had turned swiftly, and was receding quickly from the eye view scopes. It was flying away from the stranded Harmoa at a rapid pace.

  “It’s beyond firing range!” someone shouted.

  As the ship diminished in size, the long range scopes kicked into gear, bring it back into a zoomed view. On the bottom of the screen, a small distance counter showed just how far it was going, and how fast. There had been no gravitational pulse, but somehow the enemy ship had performed a sling away from their location.

  “Keep that ship on scopes and get the rings back online,” the Captain shouted. He exchanged glances with the Queen.

  “Where are we?” Deespa asked, looking at the stars in the background. Even she couldn’t figure it out as quickly as she’d like to.

  When she didn’t get an immediate answer, she looked around, glancing up towards navigation. The chief navigations officer held his finger up, waiting for the results to come in. In moments, the look on his face showed disbelief. He looked down towards the Queen, and then reached forward, tapping on his s
creen. Deespa looked down on her screen, where a system map was displayed. A sun sat in the middle, with several systems in orbit around them. One name was prominent around a predominantly blue planet some distance from the sun. Surprised gasps were filling the bridge.

  “Alioth,” Deespa’s aide nearly laughed. “That can’t be right?”

  Deespa tapped into the navigation command’s comm.

  “You are certain?”

  “One hundred percent my Queen. And the enemy is heading straight towards Alioth.”

  “But that would mean we just jumped one hundred and twenty eight light years…” her aide said again, after the confirmation.

  “…In mere seconds. If that,” her other aide finished, astounded.

  “Alioth.”

  Memories flooded her mind immediately.

  “My Queen,” a shout came from sensors. “Incoming ships. Two carriers and three cruisers from our fleet in Coran. They followed us through the portal.”

  Deespa looked down quickly at the scanners. The portal was no longer open, but some of her ships had come through along with her. Stupid, but loyal.

  “How long till the rings are brought online?” she bellowed.

  Two set of numbers were transferred to her screen. One showed thirty three minutes, the other forty one. They were estimates on repair time, and neither was good enough for her. There was a reason the ancient one had chosen Alioth, other than the fact that it was one of the largest and most populous systems. It could have jumped straight to Earth, and it didn’t.

  “It needs an army,” a digital voice chirped in her ear.

  “We have to stop it now,” Deespa said out loud. “Admiral, have the two carriers and the cruisers come along side us in ring formation. We are going to use their rings and the Harmoa’s driver to sling in unison.”

  “That kind of maneuver is going to require a few hours to align, it would be faster to repair the rings ourselves,” the Admiral replied in an instant.

  “Stargazer?” Deespa asked quietly. “Ah, yes. Of course. Our friend can help us. Sending instructions to the ships now my Queen.”

  3127 – Alioth

  Ragula sat in his Falcon, just waiting for the order to launch. The entire fleet, all six ships, were in a unison jump towards Alioth. The reality of that hadn’t quite sunk in yet, but it had been quite the day of realities laid bare. The enemy, their target, was nearly twenty minutes sling ahead of them, but going slowly faster than the fleet. It was clearly headed towards the ocean world of Alioth, the capital of the Alliance of free worlds. Ragula had never been this far from Dominion systems, and certainly, no Dominion ship had come this far into Alliance territory. The Freemen of these systems were notoriously fierce and quite technologically advanced. What they lacked in numbers against the Dominion or the Commonwealth, they made up with technical savagery.

  And now Ragula was here. But just barely. After dropping the Queen off at the Harmoa, the pilot had jumped on the first shuttle back to his carrier. The order for the emergency jump had come when he was just docking with the carrier and he half expected to be on a jump to some random system when word came through for all wings to prepare for immediate launch. For four hours and thirty minutes now he had been sitting inside of his small fighter craft, and only because he was a wing commander was he able to get updates as to what was actually transpiring.

  He ran his mission briefing from within the tiny craft as well. Thankfully, he didn’t need the briefing board. The mission was simple, they had to provide escort to bombers who were going to drop as many torpedoes on the enemy as possible, and hope it did something. Ragula had flown right beside the beast, and he had doubts as to what they could do. Their bombs would have about as much effect as they would hitting an asteroid, and that is not much, other than some fireworks.

  An update came through his visor. Scopes had just picked up the giant black rock coming to a stop in orbit around Alioth. That meant that they would be dropping out of their sling in less than twenty minutes. He continued to keep an eye on the updates. The fleet had tried, unsuccessfully, to send messages through to Alioth concerning what was bearing down on them. Whether it was the ancient one, or just Alliance tech, something was jamming them hard. That was bound to present some trouble.

  Ragula could only image what the Alliance navy was going through. Some four hours ago, something that looks like a giant space rock suddenly showed up in their system, followed right after by the Dominion’s, or the Union’s, largest military vessel and a few support ships. Then, they all began speeding down towards their capital planet. The pilot had no idea just how much information had leaked after the fall of the Dominion, or whether the new Union had sent out any peace envoys, but he was sure that it didn’t matter. Instead, what the Alliance top brass were looking at was an invading fleet, albeit, a rather tiny one if you exclude the giant black rock barreling down on them.

  The pilot thought about it for a minute and came to the conclusion that is why Harmoa command was using the bombers on the ancient one. Perhaps if the Alliance navy saw them trying to destroy the being, they’d at least get a bit of a hint. And if they didn’t, then everyone was about to get a huge surprise. What made matters worse was the fact that if they didn’t destroy the ancient one, and it took control of the Alliance navy fleet, whatever it was they had in orbit, they wouldn’t last long.

  “Standby for launch. Counting to five.”

  The blaring comms snapped him out of his slight daze. He began to run the checklist through his wing. After the battle over Coran, several wings had been reorganized as one larger wing under his command. Thirty Falcon escorts stood ready to fly with nearly ninety bombers of different classes. Most were the lighter Jeghua Seven Badgers, agile bombers with a decent load, but there were at least eight heavy Heffe Arguiles. Nicknamed the Whale, the bombers were armed with the highest capacity of torpedoes, but also had close range plasma cannons. If provided with a good escort, they packed a punch, and could just maybe burn through layers of hull.

  “Prepare for launch alignment.”

  The gravity field began to lift the small ships out into the bay and line them up. Two reorganized wings were quickly loaded out, a stack of fighters and bombers ready for action. In the bay of the carrier, each inch of space was carefully lined up with each fighter and bomber, put together like a puzzle.

  “Sling completed. Emergency launch.”

  The bay doors opened and the carrier performed its little side step, moving off to the side and leaving all the ships in space next to it. The bay doors began to close and the carrier dove downwards, revealing the giant Harmoa and its giant axe shaped tip, gleaming from the light of Alioth’s sun. Ragula felt pride, there, for a moment. No matter what the people of other nations and systems said, sometimes bigger was better. Of course, as his wing sped off in formation, up and over the bow of the Harmoa, the far bigger ancient one came into view.

  Ragula had seen big before. Some space stations were impressive, the Harmoa clearly large and space tugs covered so much space, but this was more than that. It was more than just a rock. It was an active enemy, and they were now speeding down towards it. The ancient one had already crawled down into a slightly lower orbit than that which the Harmoa was in and therefore speeding away. The other carrier, the Yehuam, released her limited wing, and the sky over Alioth filled with the ships of the former Dominion for the first time in hundreds of years.

  “Harmoa command,” Ragula barked into his mic. “This is wing alpha command, begin sensor link.”

  “Wing alpha, link established. Harmoa is secure, firewall holding. Be advised hacking attempts being made.”

  The capital ship worked hard to scan the ancient one, looking for structural integrity issues they could exploit, or energy readings they could disrupt. What Ragula did see bothered him. As deep as the scans could get, the whole outer hull of this beast was covered with layers and layers of salvaged ships, those that had been crashing down on Coran for three weeks no
w. It was difficult to see beyond that layer of metal and electronics. The interference it created was enough to keep the Harmoa sensors at bay.

  It also kept their sensors mostly blind to any other craft in the vicinity. Harmoa scopes were likely scanning the skies for any Alliance ships, but had so far not found any. Spotting a vessel in the vastness of space was virtually impossible to begin with and generally only served as a secondary source after Gravity assisted Radar.

  Ragula formed up in the lead of his sidewing, and took the lead in the entire wing as the bombers began to line up for their run.

  “Incoming debris pattern. Almost like flak,” echoed in his helmet.

  Ragula checked the incoming data from the Harmoa and put it against his own ships sensors. The enemy was throwing out a cloud of debris to make their flight path towards it that much more difficult. He gave the order, and the run changed formation to a wider spread. Without any kind of interceptors to hunt down the bombers, they were still safe. Sensors picked up larger masses being shot off towards them, but even the larger bombers were able to avoid direct impacts.

  They cleared the first cloud of debris and then a second. Once clear of it, the bombers began to coordinate their target. Since the Harmoa had been unable to find any specific target along the enemy’s hull, the wing decided to pack their firepower into a single punch to gauge its effect on the large black vessel. From a vantage point up above the bombers, Ragula saw the first wave of torpedoes zip off towards the ancient one, and begin impacting in a row at the designated spot. The torpedoes were designed to achieve some minor hull penetration before explosion, so visually, from the outside, it wasn’t much, but his sensors were registering every single explosion. Seventy torpedoes all hit the exact same spot within a minute, and as the wing spanned off and began to fly up and around the black vessel, a large plume of debris spouted from the spot of their explosion.