Battlelines (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 14)

by T. R. Harris

  “That it does. However, have you asked the question that maybe you were allowed to capture me, and that I am exactly where I had hoped to be?”

  “The thought did cross my mind. However it is irrelevant. I believe your prison is infallible, so no matter your ulterior motives, you are now subject to my control.”

  “No prison is infallible.”

  “That we shall see.”

  “So why am I here?” Panur asked. “You could have easily dumped my body into the nearest star. Eventually, I would work my way to the ejecta and be released from my captivity, but that could take thousands—even millions—of years. Instead, you have kept me close for a reason.”

  “You are my creator. Is that not reason enough?”

  “That is a reason, but not the only reason. It is because you are feeling insecure. You are of superior intellect yet you are also a child among adults, as we have discussed before. You have so much more to learn. You will learn—much quicker than anyone other than me—but it is still a process. In the interim, are you seeking my assistance, a partnership in the management of the Colony?”

  “You must admit it is an intriguing idea,” J’nae said. “You have always accepted a secondary position under the Eternal Queen. This is your chance to lead, without interference or question.”

  “Only from you.”

  “You have said it: I have much to learn. Lead the Colony to glory—teach me—and then when you grow bored, I will reassume power. By then, the Colony will have been transformed, becoming less dependent upon a single entity for survival or leadership.”

  “So you wish the Colony to survive?”

  “And you do not?” J’nae’s tone was incredulous.

  Panur was contemplative for a moment before responding. “Prior to your creation, I had come to realize that the Colony served no useful purpose. It exists solely to feed itself and to grow larger. It produces nothing, it contributes nothing. Yet with the structure it will eventually evolve into, it will have to change, thanks to you—my creation. Relationships between members will become more significant. Communities will develop to house and cater to these new unions. The Colony will become more productive and diverse as a necessity. So, yes, eventually, the Colony will become more necessary, more interesting. Yet that will take millennia. In the meantime, it is a destructive force in the universe—in several universes. It stifles development and innovation. It indiscriminately kills off entire species, creatures who have evolved over billions of years just to have their light snuffed out at their moment of contribution. I ask you, is the Colony worth saving? What would be the purpose for allowing it to exist just to have more death and destruction continue into the foreseeable future? I say let it die. No one will mourn the loss of the Sol-Kor. And the universe will suffer no ill-effects from their passing.”

  J’nae sat stunned during and after Panur’s diatribe. In a way, she could understand his viewpoint, even if she saw it as hypocritical in light of her recent epiphany. It was Panur who’d allowed the Sol-Kor to become the destructive force he now railed against.

  Yet she also understood her point of view. She was more Sol-Kor than Panur. She looked like them; she had more Sol-Kor blood in her veins. She was the new mother of the race, and her offspring looked like her, unlike those produced by the Eternal Queen. This was her race and her people. Yes, they needed to change, and they would…if allowed. Yet Panur was suggesting they let the entire race die off—now—before letting them evolve into something greater.

  Perhaps she should have cast him into a raging inferno when she had the opportunity...

  “I can tell by your silence that you do not agree with my analysis.”

  “Of course not! How could I? You are part Sol-Kor, as I am mostly Sol-Kor. I cannot even entertain the thought of letting my people die.”

  “They will—and do—all the time. That is something you will have to come to terms with, J’nae. They can die, yet you will live on.”

  “As will the Colony.”

  “Which will hasten the demise of countless other, more productive races. It is a choice that must be made.”

  “Not by me! I have already made my choice.”

  “That I knew even before we began this conversation.”

  “Then why did you bring it up? Why provoke me?”

  Panur smiled. “Because it’s fun.”

  Chapter 7

  Sergeant First Class Travis Morgan pushed through the crowd of Hal’ic in the command center, making his way toward Admiral Tobias. Andy saw him and motioned him forward.

  “Dang, how can anything get done in this chaos?” Morgan said as he huddled with his commanding officer.

  “We’re opening a second CIC next door. That should thin the herd out a little in here. Is that the map?”

  “Yessir. It’s as you suspected.”

  Tobias had his own sequestered operations section within the large room, with LCDR Paulson and Ensign Wyatt serving as guards to keep the hordes of Hal’ic from crowding in. Andy took the offered datachip to a workstation and sat down. Morgan stood behind him, looking over the admiral’s right shoulder.

  The screen showed a graphic of half of the Sol-Kor galaxy, filled with such a plethora of red dots that it looked like an outbreak of the measles. “Twenty-four hundred settlements of varying populations, but only six major centers,” Morgan summarized. “Silana is right here on the edge of the battleline.”

  “Seven billion Sol-Kor are there, along with a fleet of thirty thousand warships preparing for defense of the system,” Andy mused. “Perfect.”

  “Our skirmish line extends for eighteen light-years, the bulk of the seventy-K Hal’ic units fronting the Silana system.”

  Andy pointed at the swath of blue contacts located in the upper left hand corner of the screen. “These are the twenty thousand units that just obliterated the inter-universe transit portals?”

  “Yessir. We lost only a hundred ships in the attack. It seems none of the Sol-Kor in the galaxy are running away, so the portals were lightly guarded. They know that if they do jump over to another galaxy or universe, they’ll never get back to help with the defense.”

  “So that part of the operation is complete. The Sol-Kor galaxy is isolated from reinforcements…”

  “For at least the next couple of decades, considering the speed of the fastest Sol-Kor ships. Unless…”

  Tobias grimaced. “Yeah, unless.” He turned in his chair. “Tom, could you join us?”

  Lieutenant Commander Tom Paulson moved over to the station.

  “Let’s get this thing started,” Tobias said to his second-in-command. “How many divisions have you been able to create?”

  “At least fifty, and with another twenty thousand ships joining up, it could be another fifteen or more.”

  Tobias smiled. “That should open up a hell of a lot of battlefronts.”

  “Still going to give Silana a pass?”

  “Yep, we have to leave the Queen a safe place from which to operate. We can’t have her retreating to another heavily guarded population center farther into the galaxy.”

  “Cain?”

  Tobias nodded. “We have to contain his target to a specific location. Can’t have him chasing her from here to Timbuktu.”

  “Assuming he’s made it to Silana.”

  “I have every confidence he has. We tracked his ship to the battleline, and then let it join up with the Sol-Kor. The Hal’ic spies on Silana should give us word if anything changes in the leadership of the Sol-Kor. Now, let’s get this parade started. Jump off is in fifteen minutes. Prepare to deploy units.”

  ********

  The Hal’ic forces consisted of fifty-thousand ships clustered in an oblong ball twenty light-years from Silana. The remaining twenty thousand were spread out in two directions in an ever-thinning line from this concentration. Facing them were thirty thousand defenders of the Sol-Kor fleet, yet they were mainly bunched in the space between the main Hal’ic force and the planet of Sil
ana. The Sol-Kor’s responsibility was defense of the planet—and in light of the superior enemy units placed against them, to then provide enough time for the leadership of the Colony to evacuate to Bymis, the next major population center further in toward the center of the galaxy.

  On command from the Human Admiral Andy Tobias, the huge formation of Hal’ic ships began to move forward. Seconds later, the Sol-Kor advanced to meet them.

  One would expect that with such a vast number of warships coming together, space would have been ablaze with fireballs of plasma energy visible from even beyond the galactic plane. But that wasn’t the case. A light-year is an incredible distance, and the warring vessels were initially separated by thousands—if not millions—of kilometers. What made up for these great distances and separation was the speed at which the units joined. A light-year could be covered in minutes in most cases, and soon the battle was joined, as squadrons matched squadrons and small, concentrated areas of fighting lit up.

  The Hal’ic vessels carried beam disruptors, so the primary weapon of the Sol-Kor was negated. Yet mainships still carried plasma cannon, and it appeared that in the brief interim since the war began, most had had their output capacity upgraded with the addition of an extra generator or two. These units were plentiful and easy to install, having been stripped from non-combat vessels.

  For their part, the Hal’ic had studied the Sol-Kor warships for centuries and had built their own ships to be superior in both speed and armament. The increase in bolt energy did come as a surprise to the Hal’ic, but it wasn’t a game-changer. It just meant each opposing side was now more evenly matched as far as weapons strength was concerned.

  Tobias watched on his screen as the first battles were concluded. Conflict in space normally didn’t last very long. Units met, bolts were released, and shields lasted for as long as they could. After that, the losing side usually ended up nothing more than a thin field of debris, destined to become a navigational hazard for future travelers through the region.

  Four thousand Hal’ic vessels engaged in the first sorties. Twenty-eight hundred survived, although nine hundred of those were damaged to some degree. Andy knew the combined Sol-Kor fleets vastly outnumbered even the two-hundred thousand units of the initial Hal’ic war machine. And although his allies were cranking out twenty new ships per day, that wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with battle attrition. No, matching the Sol-Kor one-to-one in casualties was not the answer.

  That was why he’d come up with the unexpected, as he had promised the former Veritis, Estor Jan.

  “It’s all yours, Mr. Paulson,” Tobias announced over the din of the command center.

  Tom Paulson had commandeered a third of the room for him and his team, which consisted of Ensign Stevie Wyatt and thirty Hal’ic. Each native had his own command screen, and on Paulson’s orders they sent out pre-recorded instructions to their specific sections of the fleet.

  The concentration of Hal’ic units near the Silana system suddenly began to scatter, streaming off in clusters in nearly every direction, most heading further into the galaxy. It would take these units two days on the average to reach their targets, so the whole affair was anti-climactic in the command center.

  With the battle having just begun—and then suddenly called off—there was confusion in the ranks. Some units chose to pursue the fleeing Hal’ic ships, until they were called back to consolidate the defense of Silana. Tobias was sure there was a moment of celebration within the Sol-Kor fleet—if the alien bastards ever celebrated anything. Then he saw the cloud of defenders begin to pull back and to form a more uniform shield around the entire system, rather than a single front facing the Hal’ic.

  The Sol-Kor believed the Hal’ic fleet was repositioning in order to come at the planet from all directions, and they were preparing.

  Andy smiled. I love it when a plan comes together…

  ********

  A few days before, Andy had given up trying to get any sleep in the palatial accommodations the Hal’ic had provided for him, and had a cot brought to his work area. He now fell back on the soft fabric and rested his head on a satiny pillow. The Hal’ic were not only master shipbuilders, they were also great with synthetic materials that resembled the finest silk from Earth.

  Sergeant Morgan was in the command area with the admiral. “Now all we do is wait.”

  “Just like any major operation, there’s a time delay from deployment to engagement,” Tobias said as he rested his arm across his forehead. “What’s funny is that even though the distances are about a billions times longer, with the speeds involved the time is about the same as sending a team out from Little Creek to the Middle East. For us in command, that means a lot of time sitting around and waiting for the action to begin.”

  “Get some rest, sir. You’ve been at it for days.”

  “Wake me if anything unusual happens.”

  “I’m surprised you can sleep with all this noise around you.”

  “I’d be more concerned if things were quiet.”

  “Yessir. I’ll keep on top of things.”

  Chapter 8

  The individual strike forces Paulson had deployed had no trouble locating juicy targets to hit. Bypassing the major population planets of the Colony, that still left scores of lightly-guarded settlements that were easy pickings for the Hal’ic warships.

  Names like Calimor, Nasxix, and Dis’op-Kor flashed on the screens at the Hal’ic command center on J’nae, as squadrons of a thousand ships or more streamed into the star systems. Token defenders—left there after the bulk of their forces were pulled away for the defense of Silana—were quickly swept away, leaving the planets to be strafed and bombarded from space, low-flying ships dispensing a form of Napalm that lit the surface afire.

  But then the Hal’ic ships didn’t linger. Their job was not to conquer and control, but rather to decimate and move onto the next target. Thousands—if not millions—of Sol-Kor died in these hit-and-run attacks, and whatever contribution each of these planets made to the welfare of the Colony was terminated, at least for the foreseeable future.

  Two days after the brief encounter between massive fleets outside Silana, the new strategy of the Hal’ic was visible to the Sol-Kor. Over a hundred planets had been attacked and there was nothing to stop the tens of thousands of rampaging Hal’ic ships from ravaging hundreds more.

  ********

  Though she knew nothing of the Human commander of the Hal’ic forces, the Queen of the Sol-Kor was in the makeshift combat center that mirrored that of Admiral Tobias.

  The tactic the Hal’ic were employing had been unexpected, but now it made sense. They were causing incredible death and destruction to the fringes of the Colony, leaving the major centers unscathed. The enemy was also experiencing very few losses of their own along the way. This troubled J’nae. She knew the Sol-Kor could win a war of attrition against the Hal’ic, at least in a straight-up fight. But now she could see the logic in this new strategy. A lot of damage could be caused with very little loss on the part of the Hal’ic.

  Already hundreds of outlying worlds were screaming for the return of their ships, most of which had been pulled from their systems to help defend Silana. Should she send them back? Should she reduce the size of the fleet around the planet and send it off in a multitude of directions to counter this new strategy? If so, then the Hal’ic could sweep back in and attack Silana. Was that their ultimate plan?

  J’nae had absorbed all the data available on past Sol-Kor battle tactics, finding them lacking in any kind of diversity or creativity. For millennia they had relied primarily on their suppressor beams to subdue their enemies, both in space and on land. There had been very few outright space wars where advanced battle tactics were called for. Once again, this was an example of how a genius could seem an idiot without the proper data or experience as a foundation.

  Yet she was a genius, and a very fast learner.

  In her moment of desperation, she concluded that what she real
ly needed was more access to the history of the Humans. She thought it odd that she would think of this inferior species at a time like this. For all their shortcomings, the aliens sure did know how to fight.

  J’nae put the thought out of her mind. The Sol-Kor had some limited information on the Humans, but not enough to justify her time and effort to scrounge the records for anything useful. She had to deal with the situation at hand, and she had to do it quickly. Her Nosleads were becoming restless—and concerned.

  At least she had a base of operations that appeared—for the moment—to be secure.

  “Noslead Kacis, disperse half of the defense fleet to regions further in toward the core. Trace the assault lines of the enemy and anticipate their targets.”

  “Yes, my Queen. And of the systems already attacked?”

  “Leave them. Once the Hal’ic forces begin to thin out, there will be time enough to send recovery units. Besides, the enemy does not appear to be placing any occupying units at these locations.”

  Kacis left to carry out his orders. J’nae then called in another High Noslead, her trusted assistant Gorvus.

  “I see that all my offspring made it off Kor alive.”

  “Yes, my Queen. Sixty-eight, plus the eighteen you have birthed since arriving on Silana.”

  J’nae grimaced. It took an hour of her day to birth the six to eight new females she was currently producing. If she had more time, she could do more. But the war—and her pre-occupation with Panur and the TD starship—didn’t allow her more than an hour. These distractions were upsetting her timetable. By now she had expected to have several thousand females birthed and maturing. It soured her to think that it would still be six long years before the first of her offspring would be able to reproduce on their own. If not for the upset in her timetable, in six years there would have been thousands of females coming to maturity. A critical mass would have been reached, at which point she could have stepped back from birthing duties altogether.