The Shattered Empire (The Shadow Space Chronicles Book 2)

by Kal Spriggs

  Mason should have felt something, he knew, as they killed those pilots, but in his mind, he had already given them a chance to survive. War was no place for amateurs and responsibility for the losses of life fell at the feet of the commanders who hadn't prepared their men with better training and a more effective battle plan. Lauren looked over her shoulder as the last of the fighters powered down. “Send our combat shuttle to retrieve pilots and then we'll take as many fighters aboard as we can fit,” Mason said.

  He forced himself to smile again, even as his blue eyes went cold. He had thought that he could use and discard the pirate crew without attachment, but despite the distance he kept and the disguise he functioned under, he still had a protective streak that made him want to keep them alive. They were scum, they were villains, but they were his scum.

  And as he considered that... he wasn't sure if it was good or bad.

  ***

  Chapter XII

  Danar System

  Chxor Empire

  November 16, 2403

  The three massive Crusader-class vessels emerged from shadow space well outside missile range from Delvar, the system's inhabited planet. Lucius Giovanni checked his display and nodded slowly as the ships began to disgorge fighters and parasite frigates. They had just enough Harrasser fighters, throughout the Fleet, for him to swap out the Raptor fighters for them aboard the three big ships. It had taken some modification of the hangar bays to facilitate the Harrassers, particularly for reloading them.

  Lucius's dark eyes studied the formation as it coalesced. The parasite frigates were designed both for fighter and missile interception and also to engage and destroy light and medium craft. Basically they were there to allow the Crusaders to engage enemy capital ships and not to worry about smaller, more agile, threats.

  The Harassers, in contrast, Lucius had armed with full loads, three heavy Mark V shipkiller missiles. As the sensor image updated, they began to shift into the attack patterns as squadron and flight commanders updated their pilots.

  A wave of probes went out, many of them stealthed to give them better chances at survival, even as the big ships swept the area ahead of them with active radar, mass detectors, and even lidar. Combined with the massive energy signature from their drives, the three big vessels would be huge targets, easily identified by the Chxor forces in the system.

  During the Third Battle of Danar, Admiral Ambrogino had attempted to sneak into the system after dropping out of shadow space well outside of the existing sensor platform visibility. The plan then had been to launch a heavy fighter strike on the Chxor vessels and to follow up with a close engagement by main line combatants.

  The loss of the Praetorian, his carrier and flagship, to a minefield had thrown his entire force into confusion. His pilots, uncertain of reload or even recovery, had failed to launch one devastating strike and had instead operated under separate squadrons and flights. When his forces withdrew, Lucius remembered that some of the pilots brought aboard the War Shrike still had full missile loads. Admiral Ambrogino had survived, but his career had not. Which was unfortunate, because Lucius thought the man might have turned the war around if he'd received the backing he should have. Bad luck for Nova Roma, Lucius thought, but such is the way of war. He, at least, would be wary of such hazards.

  As expected, the system was clogged, not only with defenses, but also with civilian and military traffic. Ensign Jiang highlighted enemy combatants as the various commands identified and confirmed them. Slowly the battle topography began to take shape and Lucius couldn't help but smile a bit. Apparently, moving more rapidly had not only caught their other enemies by surprise, but it had also shocked the Chxor.

  “Caught them with their pants down, eh, sir?” Forrest Perkins said. The Saragossan's accent sounded sharply anachronistic for the time and place to Lucius. In part, he realized, because it was a former Nova Roma system and in part because in some ways, Lucius realized that he still identified with his homeworld.

  Lucius quirked an eyebrow at the ensign, “I don't know that these Chxor reproduce that way.”

  Forest snorted with laughter, “Well, sir, maybe they were a little confused. They don't have a ton of tactical brilliance, you know.”

  Lucius smiled back, but his face settled into a solemn expression as he considered the overall threat. Humor aside, the Chxor still had a significant presence, with a sizable force in standby over the planet. As Lucius watched, other military vessels and systems went live. In some ways, he felt his suspicions aroused at how many ships began to power up, despite how far out his own force still was.

  “Worried that they're keeping some elements in reserve?” Captain Daniel Beeson asked. The young officer had a confident expression, despite his words. Then again, he wasn't from Nova Roma so he couldn't feel the hovering doom that even Lucius had to keep at bay. The system, in many ways, had come to have a cursed feel to the Nova Roma Empire, even well before the war with the Chxor.

  “Possibly,” Lucius said. “They have more than enough time to bring ships online if they want to come out to meet us. With the patterns of minefields and static weapons platforms, we'll have to take our time. Showing us their full count before we get close suggests they don't want us to look too closely.” Lucius spoke loudly enough for everyone on the flag bridge to hear. The flight time through shadow space from Melcer was only ten days. It was twice as long a voyage, in fact, than if they had stopped at the Tehran system and then come to Danar, in one of those vagaries of shadow space. That hadn't given Lucius much time to work with his staff and many of them were still painfully new at their jobs. Almost all of them were also involved in Captain Beeson's investigation... in one way or another. Two of them, Ensign Jiang and Lieutenant Moritz were deliberate selections to give the conspirators, or possibly both factions of conspirators, positions in Lucius's staff so that they didn't feel locked out.

  We're just being very careful about what they see, Lucius thought. But more important to this battle, the entire staff had yet to fully learn how to work, both with each other and as extensions of Lucius's plans. They needed to learn how he thought to better function. The added distraction of investigating a possible conspiracy to overthrow their new government made that a bit more complex. They had all, thus far, impressed him with their professionalism and ability to think outside the box, but they all had some room to grow. While Lucius wished that he had Anthony Doko to back him, that was mostly because he had years to work with the other officer. They both knew each other and Anthony knew how Lucius thought and Lucius trusted him enough to leave many of the day-to-day decisions to the other man while he focused more long term. His loss meant that Lucius had to focus more and more on the details... and Lucius knew that his long term planning had suffered as a result.

  Lucius watched the sensor feed continue to update and then turned his attention to the officers at their stations. Of them all, Lieutenant Moritz was the most at ease. He was pulled from under Captain Magnani to act as Lucius's logistical officer. Of them all, he had the least role in the coming fight. Whether out of caution or suspicion, he hadn't tried any of the 'creative' bookkeeping that Captain Beeson had already uncovered elsewhere. The tall, muscular Lieutenant was a native of Tau Ceti, though his records noted that his entire family had died in a Colonial terrorist attack, which had set him on his military career. In one of those oddities of fate, he had actually served as a pilot as an Ensign with a young Lieutenant Tommy King at the Battle of Rana, where apparently he had disappointed the Lieutenant to the point that he was taken off flight duty. His record showed that he had worked logistics after that, first in fighters, and then later for larger ships. He seemed friendly and competent, but very reserved, almost as if he subconsciously realized that he was an outsider.

  Ensign Michele Konetsky was his communications officer. She was not only extremely proficient with the military communications equipment, but also a proficient programmer and hacker. She was the one who had allowed Captain Beeson to ac
cess some of the hidden files of the conspirators. She had a passionate hatred for the Chxor, matched only by her anger at the conspirators. Lucius had pulled her aside once after a staff meeting where she'd savaged Lieutenant Moritz for a relatively minor logistical error related to stocking communications equipment before their departure. Not that he hadn't counseled the man later, but it wasn't the Ensign's place to do that and she'd let her anger at his illegal activities get the better of her. She had taken the warning remarkably well and her behavior since, while icy, had at least been civil.

  Ensign Forest Perkins was just the wild card that Lucius had expected. Which was to say that he continued to surprise Lucius in the time since he'd joined the staff. The Ensign seemed physically incapable of thinking not only inside the box, but anywhere in the vicinity of a box. His sense of humor and passion for odd and esoteric words and phrases was balanced by his love of old cinema, to include digital copies of movies from before humanity had achieved more than rudimentary space flight. It is good to be able to make obscure references with someone again, Lucius thought. The ensign was officially junior for his position as Lucius's Flag Lieutenant, but his age and experience allowed him to fill the role perfectly. His Saragossan accent, though, seemed to annoy not just former Nova Roma officers, but also some of the former Amalgamated Worlds officers. Which makes sense, Lucius thought, considering that Saragossa was a hive of insurrection activity during Amalgamated Worlds' reign.

  Ensign Camilla Jiang was his junior-most officer, but had over six decades of experience as a senior noncomissioned officer under Amalgamated Worlds. She was one of the handful of commissions from after the Third Battle of Faraday. At the time, Lucius had been surprised at her decision to go for the officer track after years of intelligence work as a non-commissioned officer. If anything, he would have expected her to go warrant, yet given his knowledge about the conspiracy, it made more sense. She would be better positioned to influence people over to the conspiracy's position as the intelligence officer for a captain or commander rather than as an intelligence analyst. Alone of his staff, she had approached him, just two days before their departure, to request an appointment to his staff. She was well junior the official rank needed for the position of an Admiral's intelligence officer. Then again, Lucius had never bothered to promote himself, so his rank was still technically, Captain, even though he was the Commander in Chief of the United Colonies Military Forces.

  Unlike Moritz, she had worked hard to integrate herself into the staff. Lucius had no complaints about her performance. If anything, she seemed very adroit at predicting what questions he would ask and finding an answer almost before he could ask them. The short, delicate Asian woman was originally from China on Old Earth, but had lived on Greenfall in the Centauri system before she enlisted. For whatever reason, Senior Captain Ngo seemed to be her patron and he'd been the officer to sign off on her commission packet. He also had her as his intelligence officer and Captain Beeson said that he thought at least some of the rumor network was either run or overseen by her. All of that was a shame, because her performance and apparent dedication to duty made Lucius wish that he could really trust her.

  Lucius finished his mental catalog just as the initial estimates over the Chxor forces came up. His eyebrows went up and he looked over at Ensign Jiang. “That's all?”

  She gave him a nod, her expression serious, “Yes, Baron, we're only detecting around forty of their Five-class dreadnoughts and a hundred and sixty of their cruisers. They've an additional squadron of dreadnoughts with their cruiser escorts in the outer system and another stationed near the salvage yard, but there are no signs of any other mobile forces in the system.”

  Lucius's gaze went to the still evolving diagram of static defenses. Danar had served as a stockpile and construction site of both munitions and defenses. After Admiral Vibius had failed to destroy both the storage and construction facilities, the Chxor had captured massive stockpiles of those materials. The Chxor had made extensive use of those stockpiles, both in defenses throughout the system and even in firing Nova Roma missiles from their missile tubes. Since many of their systems were militarized versions of human designs anyway, that worked unfortunately well.

  The display showed that the Chxor had cleared out much of their previous defenses after the fall of Nova Roma. The thick minefields around Delvar appeared much lighter, though it was hard to tell at this range. The first probes wouldn't reach the planet for several hours yet and they wouldn't know how thick the mines were until then. Most of the mines and static defenses were designed with at least some stealth capabilities... if only to lie passive until activated.

  Lucius's forces had already identified three minefields in parallel orbits, designed to block the least-time approaches from typical shadow space emergence areas. Those minefields were much closer and data from scans of it showed fewer than expected contacts. For that to happen, they must have pulled mines out for use elsewhere, Lucius realized. He glanced at Ensign Konetsky, “Message Admiral Dreyfus's staff. Inform them that defenses are lighter than expected and that the Chxor may have shifted some to Tehran.” Admiral Dreyfus's force had left eight days after Lucius so that their two attacks would strike at the same time. He should just now have arrived and begun his own scans of the Tehran system.

  Lucius frowned as he stared at the display. There were two probable routes for his force to advance with where the staggered minefields lay. The quickest was to go straight for the planet. Lucius liked that method, in part, because it would give the Chxor the least amount of time to prepare. If they were hurried, they were more likely to make mistakes. That route, however, would take them past Delvar's moons, both of which contained serious fortifications, some of which dated back to Amalgamated Worlds. The alternative was a more circuitous route which would bring them past the salvage field. With the vastness of space and the variations they could build into their acceleration and maneuvers, neither route was remotely fine-tuned, rather they were both more like corridors or avenues of approach. The other alternative he had was to bring their force above or below the elliptic plane and move that way, but that route would take longer with how the minefields were arrayed. But, time is an issue, he thought, those approaches would take too long and that's assuming they haven't any minefields in place to slow us further.

  “We'll go with course bravo,” Lucius said and highlighted the circuitous route on the screen. Really, it was a somewhat odd decision to have to make. Few nations had enough resources to squander the sheer number of mines required to even somewhat restrict the approaches to their worlds. At best, they could mine blind spots in their sensors or sections directly above their planets in order to prevent surprise attacks. It was only the stupendous stockpiles they'd captured here at Danar that allowed them to do even what they had. This, of course, meant that it wasn't something most officers were used to planning around. Even the thinnest of the fields contained over a thousand mines in order to be able to cover the vast swath of space to have any effects on an invading force.

  As his Fleet moved out, Lucius monitored the sensor feeds and running estimates. Now and again there would be an addition to the tactical overlay as they identified a defensive emplacement or sensor station. “It looks like the moons are even more heavily fortified than I expected,” Lucius said softly. “And that bothers me.”

  “Sir?” Ensign Perkins asked.

  Lucius glanced at Ensign Jiang, who gave him a nod, “I projected a certain expansion of the existing fortifications there, based on their excess industry in the system and their policy of conscripted labor in regards to local populations.” She phrased it nicely, but what she meant was that the Chxor would use slave labor to build fortifications as a means to eliminate some of the human population. “That they have put more resources into it, especially considering the strain that has been projected into their logistics suggests that they felt fortifications on those two moons has value.”

  “Which doesn't make sense, consider
ing that, even with missiles, they can't cover all of the approaches to the planet,” Lucius said. “Some of these,” he highlighted five of the new installations still under construction, “Look to be for energy weapons, like the ones on Faraday. Those would only be useful if any enemy had to come in close. That only makes sense if something else prevents use of the other approaches.”

  Lucius didn't like that thought. He especially didn't like anything which didn't make sense, because whatever their other flaws, the Chxor were extremely logical. They still had several hours before the probes would be close enough for a real look at those approaches. Lucius looked around, “Alright, everyone make sure you keep to your rotation. I'm going to be in the briefing room.” Where I'll be reading through reports and monitoring the situation while pretending to rest, he thought dryly.

  The pilots and crews of the frigates both were on rotations as well, to prevent exhaustion in the lead-up to the coming battle. As Lucius unstrapped from his chair, he made another mental note to monitor their rotations and to ensure their commanders took their required rest time.

  ***

  Squadron Commander Thxan updated his logbook as the human attackers continued their approach. They had already defeated the first wave of their probes, with his squadron chosen to form the outer perimeter and conduct the sensor sweeps. After that, in the hours as the enemy force drew closer, he had conducted a full inspection of his flagship. While he had noted very few deficiencies, he made note of those. High Commander Chxarals had emphasized the importance of accurate reporting. His investigation report, sent out to all his ship and squadron commanders, had detailed extensive examples of inefficiency, false reporting, and even outright corruption that he had discovered throughout the Chxor Empire... a report which rumor had it, the Benevolence Council had initially ordered suppressed.