Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  When that happened, a few torpedoes actually changed course towards Ecclesiastes herself, and might have hit, too, had Nuerthanc not extended its great tail and batted them away.

  No matter how fast Ecclesiastes went, though, she could not catch up to the Ascendancy on the other side, who kept pummeling the asteroid’s surface and taking out the station’s sensor buoys. Only the starscreamers and flocks could take out their torpedoes, but the ’screamers were fast running out of ammo, and the wyrms’ numbers were dwindling.

  Utica realized what this was. This was the Ascendancy telling them that they would pummel Cryzek as long as the Republic remained present. But if we back off, we leave behind all those Marines and Army personnel we’ve already dropped on the surface.

  And matters just kept getting worse.

  “I think we’re being hacked, Captain,” his XO said. “Signals have been spoofed, they’ve been accepted by some of our antennas. They found a way to slice into our COR. Operations says the hack is thorough, something in main fire control. If we try to coordinate all fire with our sister ships, the Ascendancy can take over all our guns and force us to fire on each other.”

  They could still fire as individuals, but a starship captain felt naked without COR.

  And the bad news didn’t stop there.

  Sensors were showing five more Ascendancy ships, smaller than the others but also much faster, appearing within the asteroid belt and making changes to their trajectory that would probably bring them to Cryzek.

  “Sir, what do we do?” his XO asked, in a voice just low enough that no one else could hear.

  CIC was bustling with activity. Helm was shouting out his speed to the orbital dynamicist, who was telling him which maneuvers were advisable and which ones were not. The TAO was shouting through a mic to his people down in the torpedo bay to get the tubes refilled. The officers at the weapons stations were cueing up their rotary turrets and engaging with an Ascendancy drone that had materialized out of nowhere and was approaching their stern.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re pulling out,” Utica finally said.

  “Sir?” His query took on a different tone now. Instead of desperation, there was incredulity.

  “I said we’re pulling out, XO. Don’t make me say it again.”

  The executive officer blinked, started to say something, then nodded solemnly. “Prepare to break away from orbit! All stations, make ready for retreat—”

  “Conn, sensors!” a voice called from his station.

  Captain Utica tapped a button on his armrest. “Sensors, conn.”

  “Sir, those five incoming ships are showing registered in LOG!”

  Utica thought that was odd. So far, the Ascendancy ships seemed to be far older than anything previously recorded. “Some older model Ascendancy ships?”

  “No, sir. Not Ascendancy at all. Scans show one cargo hauler, two skiffs, and two old Faedyan destroyers.”

  Utica blinked. “Faedyan? But they’re nowhere close to…”

  The XO cut in, “Sir, Comms One says we’ve got an incoming transmission. Tightbeamed to us just now. Non-belligerency confirmed.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  A voice came over a loud speaker, talking in low and grave tones. “—is Commander-Request John Ri of the Humble Sons, captain of the Kneeling Penitent Man, hailing Republic ship SDFA Ecclesiastes. We contrite brothers come on behalf of Senator Holace Adamik Fuller Kalder, with the full backing of the Repentant Designate and the grace of the Three Goddesses of Mercy. We see you are presently engaged and we wish to help.”

  DUTIMEYR WAS A Jovian planet 450,000,000 miles from its parent stars, and had attained, in its five billion years of existence, eighty-seven moons, a third of which were occupied by unmanned drone colonies, functioning by AI hive-brains alone to mine ice, silicates, polymers, and in one case even precious gold. Dutimeyer was mostly blue, with a few white and red streaks moving about its equator. It was along this equator that the Miss Persephone flew alone, save for the seven starscreamer squadrons flanking her. As a Scythe-class, she was the largest type of ship the Republican Navy had ever built, eight hundred yards long, armed with a Pacifier, twenty gauss cannons, ten rotary turrets, twelve railguns and eight torpedo tubes.

  And if even half of those weapons worked, Miss Persephone might have been the flagship of Second Fleet.

  Miss Persephone’s job was to monitor the mining installations. There were a handful of humans out here, highly-paid overseers sent from Widden to keep an eye on all mining operations. This was considered a critical crutch in the Phanes economy, but so far there had been no engagements.

  Captain Laura Trepp could never sit down when an operation was ongoing. She stood, and sometimes paced, while sipping her coffee and looking down at the tactical readouts that were streaming at her station. They had received multiple tightbeams from all across the system. She wanted to be at Widden, or Cryzek, or out in the Oort cloud, somewhere she could make a difference. It was infuriating just knowing that Miss Persephone ought to be the most powerful ship in all of Second, and thus should be at the head of the Widden deployment campaign. But too many old battles had worn the old girl down. She had been the flagship of Twelfth Fleet before it was decimated by the Ecophage, and had flown with First and Fourth before circumstances forced her into Second.

  Now, Miss Persephone was just a big behemoth, slow-moving, with only enough weapons to make her about as intimidating as a Cutlass-class. But half her corridors were dark from broken lights, the engines were always on the fritz, and life-support had completely failed twice and nearly killed the crew. Once an engine of war without peer, she was now barely hanging on. Big, slow, unreliable, and entirely capable of crashing into a planet once she encountered its gravity bow-wave. But Miss Persephone had thick armor, a working plasma shield emitter, and a huge docking bay, which at least made her a good pack mule for fleet supplies.

  Captain Trepp watched the latest coming in from the sensor probes, and listened to the sensors crackle with radiation left over from the birth of the universe.

  She looked out her forward viewport, at the three Ascendancy sub-capital ships moving directly towards them. They must have done a scan and knew that Miss Persephone’s Pacifier was inoperable, else they would not have dared to come within its range.

  “They look like they mean business, skipper,” said her ship’s TAO.

  “Let’s show them we do, too. All ahead full. Extend all forward ablative shields, put us on a collision course.”

  Waterson, her XO, looked at her. “Ma’am, you’re going to ram them?”

  “I’m going to let them know that we can.” She gave an unconscious pat of the armrest, on the chair she had sat in for forty years. “This girl can’t fight like she used to, so she fights however she can.”

  As they advanced, the Ascendancy ships faltered. Slowed. Started to veer off.

  “Conn, sensor room. We’ve got two new ships entering our vicinity. They’re rounding Dutimeyer now.”

  “I see it on my display now, sensors. Mr. Waterson, alert all squadron commanders. Have Gamma and Theta move to intercept our new arrivals. And deploy anti-ship buoys.”

  “Deploying anti-ship buoys, aye, ma’am.”

  “Weapons, plot solutions.”

  “Plotting solutions, aye, ma’am.”

  “Helm, let me see your hand on that attenuator, and don’t move it again until I say.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Another great thing about Miss Persephone was that her large space allowed for larger masticators, and a larger fab room, meaning she could produce far more drones, sensor probes, and anti-ship buoys than any other ship in Second Fleet.

  The Ascendancy ships started to read the lay of the land. The three ships that had started veering off were now going full burn for a small moon called Boriagulik, while the newcomers were making for another moon that LOG identified as “the temple moon,” and had once been called Zorialist but had been rename
d Mahl’s Chosen. Mahl’s Chosen was a black moon, with a population of just eighteen people, apparently all monks that had been charged with the duty of directing thousands of construction bots to erect monuments to someone named Mahl. There were no satellites around Mahl’s Chosen, and no radio signals going in or out. If the monks were still toiling away down there, they likely had no notion of the war happening all across their star system.

  XO Waterson looked at the captain, a grin starting to appear on his face. “They’re all finding a hiding place, skipper.”

  She nodded. “This old girl is still good for something. She can intimidate even the meanest sons o’ bitches out there.”

  An alarm went off.

  “We’ve got incoming torpedoes, skipper!” Waterson shouted.

  “Where?” she asked, calmly sipping her coffee.

  “Portside. Looks like they dropped them with thrusters dormant, just before they went into hiding. Thrusters have activated and they are coming right for us.”

  “Helm, hard to port. Put our nose right at them.”

  The helmsman hesitated only a second before saying, “Hard to port, aye, ma’am.”

  Waterson looked at her. He was new to all this; he had only recently come into her service eight months ago and was not yet used to her bullying methods. In truth, it wasn’t Captain Trepp’s preferred methods, but she had been trained to work with the tools she was given, and the tool she had been given was a giant Scythe-class ship that was barely held together by tape and spit and hope. “Captain…you’re going into the oncoming torpedoes?”

  “Let them hit our ablative shields,” she said. “Let them see that Miss Persephone doesn’t give two farts about a bunch of torpedoes. Let them see we’re ready to die.” She looked at the cup in her hand, and handed it to him. “And while they’re doing that, get me some more coffee. Two sugars.”

  LYOKH MOVED IN a low crouch, cover to cover, checking on the groups of soldiers huddled there, checking with the med bots and medics, seeing about the wounded. He did this on the way to check with Meiks about whatever it was had him so alarmed. When he got to the front line, Lyokh saw what it was without having to be told.

  There was fighting going on elsewhere. Somewhere far ahead of them, far beyond the haze of dust and smoke, near the Dexannonhold itself. Gunfire. Lots of it. But also missiles flying through the sky, rising high up over the buildings before running out of steam and arcing back down to the ground, vanishing behind pyramids. It looked as though someone had fired the missiles wildly—they weren’t meant to be surface-to-air missiles, yet had been launched at unseen targets in the sky.

  “They’re going up against something, doyen,” Meiks said. “Something that scares them more than we do, because they’re putting all their resources there. That’s why the fighting died down over here, they’re all headed to the Dexannonhold.”

  Lyokh said over an open channel, “Actual to Takirovanen. We’re seeing some kind of exchange happening several miles up. Looks like a real fracas. You got eyes on that?”

  “Takirovanen to Actual, I see it,” came the cool, measured voice. “Not sure what I’m looking at, though. I see lots of plumes from multiple detonations.” There was a giant percussive hit, felt by Lyokh and everyone. “There goes one now. Our Novas and wyrms have pulled far back from it, but the Ascendancy carriers are focusing more firepower in that area than elsewhere. It’s almost like they’ve forgotten about us and are worried about something else.”

  “Copy that. Keep me apprised.” He looked over at Ziir. “You got another EyeSpy?”

  “Just one.”

  “Toss it up, see what happens. Maybe they’ll be so preoccupied with the other thing they’ll miss it.”

  “Copy.” Ziir reached into his pouch and produced the baseball-sized silver orb, then activated its repulsors and tossed it into the air.

  Lyokh watched it climb higher and higher, and started looking at the data reads. Infrared scans showed massive heat signatures that were not conducive with with any Ascendancy profiles they had seen yet.

  “Devastator Actual to Gold Actual,” came Tsuyoshi’s deep voice in his ear.

  “This is Gold Actual, go ahead.”

  “We’re seeing lots of movement. Forces getting mobilized, repositioning one street over.”

  Lyokh fanned the air, bringing up the vid feed from a few of Devastator Wing’s helmets. He saw lots of Ascendancy vehicles pulling back, and could hear the grumbling of many engines even from where he sat.

  Meiks was apparently watching the same footage. “They’re pulling back?” he said.

  “The rest of their platoons appear to be having some trouble near the Dexannonhold,” he told Tsuyoshi. “They’re probably going to reinforce.”

  “Think it’s Vastill’s guard?” Meiks asked.

  “If it is, I don’t know why the High Priestess called for our help. Whoever’s fighting them seems to be thrashing them.”

  “Doyen,” said Ziir. “EyeSpy’s picking up more drop pods falling planetward. About two hundred miles away, in the dead center of the city.”

  It was easy to forget just how big Vastill was. While they were trying to hold this area, there were hundreds of other sectors, super-sectors, districts, and super-districts that were being invaded, as well. For hundreds of miles around, this scene was repeating everywhere, only probably not as intense, since Lyokh and his people were so close to the Dexannonhold. He looked up at that huge spire, a monument to power if there ever was one, built as a fortress by the High Priestess’s ancestors, apparently, when they first overtook the race of people known as the uk’tek as masters of Widden.

  “Fierce Actual, do you copy?”

  A bit of static came through his ears, but he thought he heard Fierce Wing’s commander speaking through it.

  “What’s the status on our drop ships?”

  The static cleared up a little. “—looking good…landing now…see…can’t tell…clear for liftoff.”

  Lyokh thought he got the gist of that. He looked up, and saw the Nova shuttles taking off, having dumped their load of troops a couple streets back.

  “This is Gold Wing Actual to all new ground wings, sound off. Over.”

  While fifteen new wings called out their names, conditions, and locations, Lyokh monitored the Novas through the footage coming from Ziir’s EyeSpy, and saw them form a wide patrolling arc around their vicinity. One of them engaged with an Ascendancy carrier, but it did not seem interested in continuing the fight, for it took off south, headed for the fracas they could all still see and hear going on.

  “Abethik?” Lyokh called out. “Any word from the War Council about the situation in orbit?

  Communications Sergeant Abethik called out from somewhere. “They’re saying the situation is fluid, doyen.”

  “I’d like a little more detail than that, Sergeant. Ask for clarification. I need to know some specifics.”

  Lyokh was taking care of dozens of command problems each second, trying to keep himself apprised of the battlefield and its constant shifting. One new problem that had arisen, according to the squad reports displayed on his HUD, was ammunition and supplies. Throughout every wing, the soldiers’ rifles and pistols kept track of ammo, and their computers fed that information to all squad leaders. If it reached a critical low point, an alarm flashed in the wing commander’s visor, like now in Lyokh’s periphery.

  Lyokh checked the ammo feeds from all other wing commanders.

  “Paupau, Jerenik, you still alive?”

  “Here, doyen,” said Paupau.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jerenik.

  “I need you two to make a supply run. Spare mags and grenades from the wings at our back, the ones who haven’t seen much action and have plenty to go around. Those should be outlined on your HUDs now. Bring it all back to resupply the people on the front lines. Spread the word throughout the units that they are free to use enemy tinzers if they’ve got them, just long enough until we get resupply.”


  “Copy, doyen,” said Paupau. Adding, “Paupau!”

  That still left the warhulks. They needed some reloading, too.

  Lyokh opened a channel to the Novas. “Gold Wing Actual to any Novas in the area, we need a resupply of ammo hoppers for our hulks. Repeat, we need hopper resupply for the mechs. Sooner is better than later.”

  He got what he thought was a confirmation. Six minutes later, a Nova swept overhead, hovered just above one of the alleys they had cleared, and dropped two large steel crates. Wordlessly, Lyokh sent the coordinates of those crates to the other wing leaders, telling them to assign one warhulk from each of their groups to retrieve the hoppers and distribute them among their growing occupation force.

  He switched to a private channel, which only included the three people in his primary command coterie. “Heeten, any movement from our people up front?”

  “Negative, handsome. They may be pulling away from the other streets, but the large group of platoons ahead of us is staying put.”

  “What do you think, doyen?” Meiks said.

  “I think they’re blocking us from going and helping whoever it is that’s giving their friends hell near the Dexannonhold,” he said. “Which means whoever it is is a friendly. Which is nothing but good news for us. But, if the people they’re fighting are friendly, then they’re going to need our help eventually and we can’t let these platoons block our progress forever.”

  They sat there for a while, everyone listening to the distant pop-pop-pop! of gunfire and the occasional explosion. Once, they saw a particle-beam slice through the air, going as wide as the missiles they had seen misfired before.

  Lyokh thought for a bit, tapping the hilt of the field sword on his back.

  With an eye-flick, Lyokh pulled up a 3D map of the surrounding districts, and overlaid the intel feed streaming from the EyeSpy. “Listen up! This is Gold Wing Actual! All fresh wing commanders, I’m sending you new coords for advancement around our flanks. Terra Wing, Sumo Wing, head straight east, where there’s no resistance. Once you’ve tracked two miles, cut sharply southwest, approaching the east flanks of our enemies. Tulsa Wing, Dire Wing, you’ll do the exact opposite, head west for two klicks then cut southeast. Copy?”