Five Empires: An Epic Space Opera

by Steven J Shelley

  “Where did you see the Nostroma, you little shit?” he growled.

  Michael pointed feebly to the south, knowing it wouldn’t help the Aegisi corsairs at all.

  “Fuck!” Tilder exclaimed, shoving Michael to the ground. To Shaw: “Why isn’t the bird in the air?”

  “Wondered that myself, Captain,” Shaw returned.

  “Wait…” Tilder said, seeing something in the surf. “Cover me, Major.”

  The corsair sprinted across the beach and drew a body from the waves.

  “It’s Survaa,” he called. “Nostroma got him.”

  Michael heard Shaw cursing under her breath and a thrill ran down his spine. He guessed that Survaa was the pilot, which meant the sentinel was now undefended. Two of the mercs were dead and the third was probably toast also, but Jake was still at large.

  Tilder was scanning the beach with long-range nightvision.

  “Beach is clear,” the captain said. “Assume defensive positions.”

  Shaw and Tilder lay propped against the dune ridge. The Captain raised his hand in some kind of signal. At length a third corsair appeared on the ridge. Tilder was talking in a low voice when a shot rang out and the newly arrived corsair fell forward. Michael had to step out of the way as the body tumbled onto the beach. He crouched low, sensing that Jake wasn’t far away.

  The Nostroma must’ve tossed something into the air because Tilder and Shaw both looked up at the same moment. There was a flash of light and Michael had no vision. He pressed himself to the ground and blinked furiously. He heard a thud and a muffled grunt. A large shape tumbled down the dune and lay still. When Michael’s vision cleared he could see Jake’s tall frame behind Major Shaw. He had stripped her weapon and was shoving her down the ridge.

  Something thudded into the sand next to Michael. Jake had tossed over an Aegisi blaster. The Nostroma had Major Shaw kneel in a pool of water.

  “Watch her,” he snarled to Michael. The forager directed the blaster at her head, trying to suppress all the negative emotion rising through him.

  Tilder was unconscious or dead a few yards away. Jake dragged the Captain to the surf’s edge and dunked his head several times. When he had come to, the corsair was made to kneel alongside Shaw. Michael presumed he was to cover both soldiers from behind.

  Tilder spat sand from his mouth and glanced over his shoulder.

  “Knew your distress signal was bullshit,” he said through gritted teeth. “At least come round here so I can talk to you like a man.”

  Michael did so, keeping his weapon trained on the Captain. Jake appeared next to the forager and nodded in satisfaction.

  “These are the two, aren’t they?” he drawled. “The Cava05 briefed me before you arrived.”

  “Have you completely lost your senses, Danner?” Tilder scowled.

  The veteran soldier’s self-righteous rage pulled a dark curtain over Michael’s nobler sensibilities. Before he knew what he was doing he was in Tilder’s face.

  “You used my sister to sweeten the Cerulean deal,” he said, shaking with sudden fury. “Tossed her away to keep the Cava05 happy. Did you know the Nostroma wanted to kill her?”

  Tilder looked at Jake uneasily. “We weren’t sure,” he admitted. “Our intel suggested that was possible.”

  “It doesn’t really matter how much you knew,” Michael said. “The fact is, you cut us free. Left us to die.”

  “We were following orders, Michael,” Major Shaw said. “For what it’s worth, we found them highly irregular.”

  “Who set it up?” Michael said, barely able to speak through his anger.

  Shaw jammed her mouth shut. Michael lashed out with a boot, striking Tilder in the throat. The soldier was thrown back to the sand, gasping for breath.

  “Who gave the order?” Michael repeated.

  “I’m a soldier, Michael,” Shaw said. “I’m sorry.”

  His energy flowing from a pitch-black seam of spite, Michael aimed his blaster at Tilder’s head and fired. At that range it dissolved the skull like a rank melon. Spattered with fragments of bone, Shaw lost her nerve.

  “Danner!” she said frantically. “You can’t come back from that!”

  “So be it,” Michael said coldly, now pointing the gun at Shaw’s head.

  “Who gave the order?” he asked quietly.

  “Councilor Follah,” Shaw said, hyperventilating. “She said that hard decisions needed to be made.”

  Michael pulled the trigger without hesitation. Shaw fell to the sand.

  The forager felt compelled to sit on Tilder’s corpse as he checked his blaster. For some reason it felt better to be as disrespectful as possible.

  “Pity you made such a mess of their heads,” Jake murmured. “Might have been some neural activity left to harvest.”

  Michael shuddered at Jake’s implied ability. He didn’t really want to know how that was possible. But then…

  “Could you have extracted more intel?” he asked the Nostroma. The lanky man shook his head.

  “Probably not. After death the best we can hope for are fragments of emotion.”

  “That’s like a high for you, isn’t it?” Michael said. “Preying on the thoughts of others.”

  “Have to admit, gives me a hard-on every time,” Jake said with a despicable smile. “We should go, kid.”

  “The sentinel,” Michael said. “You did well to take out that pilot before he could take off. I owe you one.”

  Jake laughed off Michael’s earnest gratitude. “Let’s just say I’m well trained,” he said. “And you, boy. I wasn’t sure if you had it in you. Like the woman said, there’s no comin’ back from where you are.”

  Michael felt a cold chill that wouldn’t go away. Jake’s assessment of his soul was as bleak as he felt. In the end he shrugged. The act seemed to match his nihilistic frame of mind.

  “Do you have a sister, Jake?” Michael asked.

  Jake grinned ruefully. Something told the forager there was pain there somewhere.

  “Aye, kid, I do,” he said. “But I don’t advise on comparin’ your moral compass to mine. I’ve seen enough of the Aegisi to know that what you just did is as black as tar.”

  “Had to be done,” Michael said simply. “Couldn’t be stopped.”

  “I hear you,” Jake said. “No mistakin’.”

  Night now blanketed Samalar Island. Michael looked up at the star-filled sky, wondering where the Dilletante was riding orbit. The rest of the Aegisi fleet couldn’t be far away.

  “I hope they choke on the salt water,” Michael said.

  “May not get that chance,” Jake said cryptically. “Let’s move, boy.”

  “I need something from the sentinel,” Michael said. The pair moved silently through the trees, wary of ambush from the inky pools of night.

  “Got ‘em all but you never know,” Jake muttered.

  Before long they were standing at the base of the towering sentinel, the drop shaft blinking a combat alert.

  “Can you short that thing?” Michael asked Jake.

  “I can fucking try,” mused the Nostroma, flipping open a maintenance panel. “Won’t be able to fire the prop bulb, though. Damn shame.”

  It was a shame. The sentinel was a pilot’s dream. But even if they could hack the time-activated code-shielding, the Aegisi wouldn’t hesitate to shoot them out of the sky. There was probably a battalion of corsairs already on their way to Samalar.

  “Oh yeah,” Jake purred as the drop shaft became functional. The pair wasted no time in riding to the bridge. Michael was relieved to find his armor in the gear locker where he’d left it. Either Tilder had forgotten about it or planned to use it himself. It molded itself to Michael’s body amazingly well - he now looked and felt supremely protected. His next move was to raid the armory for a fully charged blaster.

  “By Ajon-Prime, that’s a solid piece of gear,” Jake cooed when he saw the armor. The Nostroma had disappeared into the hab deck for some reason. Michael didn’t really wan
t to know what he’d been doing back there, but something important occurred to him.

  “You’re a cybomancer again,” he ventured as they rode the drop shaft back down. “When you broke your tandem augmentation your own powers were released.”

  Jake looked at Michael with a sly smile. “Sharp,” he said approvingly. “But keep in mind I’ve been suppressed most of my life. Fashon is ten times the cybomancer I am.”

  “Only through practice,” Michael guessed. “You said it yourself - you’ve been suppressed. Who knows what power you have?”

  Jake shook his head. “Just takin’ my time, kid.”

  “You’re feeding off me, right?” Michael said in a dead voice. For some reason a number of previously unseen connections were becoming apparent to him. “I’m an open wound and you’re leeching me.”

  “I can’t deny your ripeness, kid,” Jake admitted. “But you wouldn’t have come this far without me and don’t forget it.”

  Michael blinked, taken aback by Jake’s sudden venom.

  “I’m sorry, I meant no offense,” he said. “Just trying to understand your motives.”

  Jake spat on the floor of the bridge in disgust. “Told you before, I have no friends on Cerulean. May as well lend my gun to your little crusade.”

  “Just keep your cybomancy to yourself,” Michael said tiredly.

  Shrugging, Jake slithered into the trees, making a point of setting a rapid pace.

  By Michael’s reckoning they were headed south east along a reasonably clear path. After half an hour Jake broke from the trail and selected a viable campsite under light canopy. Ripples of noise careened across the night sky. Huge shapes blotted out the milky stars as they skirted the upper limits of the atmosphere.

  “Aegisi fleet just arrived,” Jake said as he set about building a ghost fire under a uopa fig tree. He produced a tin of refried beans and set it warming over the smoking coals. Ravenous, Michael gratefully accepted an even share and reflected on the large scale Aegisi arrival.

  Come the morning, Cerulean would be crawling with military patrols scouring the blue planet for Cava05 technology.

  “An awful long way to come,” Jake commented.

  Michael frowned. “Doubt they would’ve entered drift space without a green light from their forward scouts.”

  The Nostroma didn’t seem convinced.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Michael sighed. “I’m assuming again.” The forager looked intently at the Nostroma. “How soon until the Cava05 are able to launch an invasion on Solitude?” he asked.

  “Anyone’s guess,” Jake replied. “One thing for sure, my brother would’ve reported back by now. Everything in your sister’s head is now the property of the simians.”

  Michael shook his head bitterly. “Seems a cowardly way of waging war,” he said. “Emilia knew every blade of grass within twenty clicks of Senafal. That intel was hard earned over many years.”

  Jake must’ve detected the anger rising through Michael’s voice, because he said nothing.

  “My parents are back there,” Michael mused. “I’ll be damned if I let those fucking aliens put us all to the sword.”

  “Spoken like a true berserker,” Jake said with a twinkle in his eye. “Ole’ Norgaardia would approve.”

  Michael looked at his companion sharply. “You know about that too?”

  Jake laughed out loud. “Who doesn’t? Ajon Prime made sure all the Nostroma saw the footage. Seems we have eyes on us as we squabble over this galaxy.”

  Michael snorted. “If you believe it,” he said, surprised at his newfound cynicism.

  “Why not?” Jake asked. “Who stands to gain from makin’ that shit up?”

  “The Cava05, for one,” Michael said. “To stir us all up into a war frenzy. To make us take risks.” He gestured at the roaring sky. “To draw us far from home.”

  “Smart kid,” Jake said. “But I don’t think the Cava05 are that inventive. Or enterprising.”

  “I’m sure the Aegisi Blue has prepared every contingency,” Michael replied, unable to keep the poison from his tone.

  The drone of a vessel wafted in from the northwest.

  “Troop ship,” Jake said. “They’ll claim the sentinel and bury the dead.”

  “We in any danger?” Michael asked.

  Jake shook his head. “They’ll secure the immediate perimeter, that’s about it.”

  “What’s our first move when the sun hits?”

  “Dunno ‘bout you, but I don’t fancy joining the Aegisi foreign legion.”

  “Copy that,” Michael agreed.

  “They’ll kill you if they find out about tonight,” Jake said. “Which they will. You’re in exile now.”

  Jake was right. If Michael couldn’t get back to Solitude to face Councilor Follah, that left two other targets - Yashom15 and Fashon Le Sondre. Both men would be incredibly difficult to find.

  Michael shuddered, feeling cold all of a sudden. He bedded down, sensing that the morrow would introduce an entirely new set of problems. Eventually he drifted into a shallow, dream-filled sleep.

  16

  Hours later, with dawn still over an hour away, his dream of a tranquil, remote beach became a nightmare of blood-red skies and roiling waves. As he woke he discovered that his dream had been fed by reality.

  A horrible, rippling boom split a night sky ablaze with light. Jake had already moved away from the uoka fig so he could get a better look.

  The sky was filled with the broad, dazzling brush strokes of space battle. Two massive fleets locked in ear-splitting combat. From what Michael could tell, the Aegisi fleet was grouped together in the northern sky. He could see the teardrop-shaped warships grinding vertically in a classic defensive formation. The sight told him a great many things at once. First - the Aegisi fleet had been attacked without warning. Second - they were being pinned down by highly concentrated fire. Third - the attackers, most likely the Cava05, were approaching from all sides.

  “But… but… how?” was all Michael could say.

  “I told you, kid, the Cava05 can’t be trusted.” Jake snapped. “My people know somethin’ about their technical capability. Word is they were working on cloakin’ their drift trails.”

  Michael recognized the logic of it even as it filled him with terror.

  “You knew about this?” he asked angrily. “We could’ve warned them!”

  “Which would’ve achieved what, exactly?” Jake asked with a scowl.

  Michael turned away. He was beginning to tire of Jake being right. It was unlikely that an anonymous warning from a Nostroma, of all species, could compel an entire fleet to enter combat alert status.

  The ‘drift cloak’ that Jake had mentioned was somewhat plausible. Michael had heard that long range scanners could detect drift travel from several sectors away. This was why peace had reigned in the galaxy for some time - defenders could detect an attacking army’s launch point and drift bearing, meaning they usually had all the time in the world to prepare. If the Cava05 had indeed developed a undetectable method of drift travel, the Aegisi would’ve been ambushed without warning.

  “They wanted to draw your fleet out here,” Jake concluded, spitting into the dust. “Man, will you look at that.”

  One of the Aegisi warships was disintegrating before their eyes. If it was that bright from their planet-side vantage point, Michael could only imagine what it must have been like in space.

  “Thousands of corsairs,” Michael said in abject wonder. “Leaking out into space.” The Aegisi forager wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. On one side there was a simmering resentment that would never go away. On the other? Those were his people up there, his kin. He realized he would fight for the Aegisi if the battle spilled over onto Cerulean. That is, if they didn’t arrest him first.

  “How do we get up there?” he said with fresh determination.

  “Up there?” Jake said, thoroughly amused. “I tell ya, kid, you’re great fodder for a cybomancer.”

  T
he pair watched the battle in silence for several minutes. It was a mesmerizing sight, like an infernal ballet. Gargantuan machines mingled aggressively, hounded by swarming flak fire. Flaring angrily, bright red lasers pierced the velvet blanket of space. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, a languid obliteration of a proud Navy.

  The decisive advantage of this encounter was not surprise alone. It was mass. It was technology. The Cava05 had bigger and more numerous ships. They were more advanced. They were more experienced in the air.

  The Aegisi had a fine fleet but had never been able to shake their reputation for being aqua specialists. Which was probably why the Cava05 had chosen to engage them in high orbit, before they’d had a chance to colonize or even garrison Cerulean.

  The ragged beginnings of a plan began forming in Michael’s mind.

  “We need to engage here on Cerulean,” he said to Jake. “That’s our only chance.”

  Jake laughed openly. “That’s like nipping at a golden god’s back heel. Kid, the Cava05 are too powerful. Time to quit and run.”

  As they spoke one of the downed warships entered orbit in a halo of fire. Its entire foredeck was an exposed mass of metal slag. It was disturbing to see an Aegisi vessel cracked open like that.

  The huge ship sank through the horizon hopelessly. It must have been moving at an incredible speed. Michael threw Jake a worried glance - the craft’s vector appeared to be angled toward Samalar Island.

  “Wait,” Jake said softly, almost to himself. “I’m picking up all kinds of terror on that thing.”

  “You getting a hard-on, cybomancer?” Michael said, unable to hide his disgust.

  “You got a death wish, kid?” Jake said tonelessly.

  Michael was assailed with an overwhelming feeling of horror that left him gasping several yards away from the Nostroma. It was a timely reminder not to rile the cybomancer.

  “I was sayin’ there are several survivors on board that ship. Perhaps hundreds.”

  Michael looked again at the stricken warship and had to adjust his calculations. The vessel’s path would take it across Samalar and a few clicks out to sea.

  The enormous, groaning craft sailed over the island, barely a mile above them. Michael could make out the shattered obs decks, the bleeding propulsion bulb. Chunks of debris showered the jungle, raising hell with the monkeys and birds.