The Black Flag (Crimson Worlds Successors Book 3)

by Jay Allan

  They had no idea of the scope of his plans. The Black Eagles would indeed gain success on the ground. Two had ensured this. His designs were subtle, elegant. Modified orders, inefficiencies inserted into logistical deployments, slight changes to battle plans. The Triumvirate’s forces would fight, and they would fight well. But Two had inserted just enough inefficiency to allow the enemy to prevail. At least an enemy with Darius Cain’s ability.

  In the final moments of the fight on the surface, when the Black Eagles appeared to be threatening the Inner Sanctum, just as the operatives assigned to the flagship terminated Marshal Carrack…the members of the Triumvirate, unnerved by the approach of the Black Eagles, would propose the implementation of the Final Plan. Two would be tentative at first…his plan was that his cohorts should propose the course of action, even persuade him to agree.

  Then, the operation would proceed. It would be under his direction, and for a scant instant, he would have total control. He would transfer his own essence, as planned, but the entities known as One and Three would be deleted instead of being transmitted. It was brilliantly planned, every detail meticulous in its conception. Only in that few seconds would his fellow entities would be vulnerable, a brief opportunity, one he had ensured would not be missed. In every way that mattered, they would cease to exist. And when they were gone, and he was safely transmitted, the routines he had left behind would detonate every warhead, every reactor…and Darius Cain and the Eagles, inside the central fortress, on the verge of what they perceived as final victory, would be utterly destroyed.

  And Two, he who had so long been but one of three, a clone of Gavin Stark, would endure forever, immortal, the master of all.

  * * * * *

  “Admiral, Task Force Three reports enemy cruisers moving around their flank.”

  Camille Harmon listened to the report, only the latest in the seeming unending series of near-disasters coming her way. The fleet had managed to destroy the enemy’s heavy weapons, but the cost had been too great. Admiral Garret was gone, and along with him far too many desperately needed ships. Harmon would stack her people up against any enemy, but the cold truth was, most of her ships were old patch jobs, ships that should have been retired years before. The Black Flag’s ships were modern, and she was pretty damned sure they had a fair amount of copied First Imperium tech in them too.

  She glanced at the display, taking her own stock of Task Force Three’s situation. The report was correct, in fact, if anything, the situation was worse than the communique suggested. But that didn’t change the fact that there was nothing Harmon could do about it. Every reserve she had was committed. She had nothing to offer Task Force Three except her best wishes.

  “Commander, all ships with missiles remaining in stores are to arm and deploy them in sprint mode.” She was grasping for anything now, any way she could think of to send more destructive force toward the enemy. If the Black Flag had one weakness, it was the almost rigid implementation of conventional naval tactics. Their fleets operated almost like an Academy demonstration.

  So, maybe unconventional tactics are the way to beat them…

  She held back a sigh. The fleet had just lost not only its beloved leader, but a man who had been the master of shredding the ‘book’ for decades.

  “All fleet units acknowledge, Admiral.”

  Harmon figured the missiles might score a few hits, taking the enemy by surprised. But it wasn’t a game changer, if only because so few of her ships had any left.

  “Admiral, we’ve got enemy squadrons coming around both flanks now.”

  Harmon just nodded. There was nothing she could do. She was out of resources, outnumbered, outgunned.

  She was losing the battle.

  I’m sorry, Augustus…I’m so sorry.

  * * * * *

  “All ships, look at the fleet. They’ve got enemy ships coming at them from all sides. They need us, and they need us now, so we go in, and we don’t let up, not until those bastards are all clouds of plasma.” Jarrod Tyler had never considered himself a naval commander, but he felt like one now. Sometimes war was just war, and he could see clearly that the main fleet was almost surrounded. They needed help, and they needed it now.

  “I want everyone in this fight, every ship. Whatever happened at planet four is in the past. We need every man, every woman, every ship, every gun. This one’s not for us, it’s not for whatever world we call home…it’s for all of Occupied Space. All ships, full power to weapons. All missile arrays, prepare to launch.”

  Tyler’s force was small, and the ships were lighter than the great battleships that made up the heart of Harmon’s main fleet. But they were coming in behind the enemy…and, perhaps most importantly, they were all he had. Harmon needed help, and Tyler was going to provide it, even if the cost was letting the routers from the battle at planet four off the hook.

  “Entering missile range, General.”

  “All ships…launch. And I do mean everything you’ve got. I don’t want a single warhead left in this fleet when this barrage is done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He leaned back in his chair, trying to ignore the g forces slamming into him. Lucia had the new dampeners installed, but they were an early version, and they absorbed 5g, perhaps 6g. With the ship blasting at close to 10g, there was plenty of force seeping through to make conditions damned uncomfortable. But Tyler had seen worse. He’d lived through hell on some of his ground campaigns, and he’d survived to tell the tales.

  He watched as the missiles moved out from his ships. The volley was light, mostly from his smallest vessels. The cruisers had expended what they carried in their magazines blasting planet four to slag. The warheads he was able to send toward the enemy weren’t likely to make a big difference in the fight going on…but every bit helped.

  “General, we’ve got a line to Monmouth.” Tyler’s people had been trying to get through the enemy’s jamming for the past hour.

  “On my line, Commander.” Tyler pulled the headset over his ears. “Admiral Harmon?”

  “Yes, General…I’m reading you.” Harmon’s voice was soft, staticky. But he could make out what she was saying.

  “We’re coming in, Admiral. We’ll be in energy weapons range in two minutes.”

  “That’s good news, General.”

  Tyler could hear the reservation in her voice. His ships would help, but they weren’t going to be enough.

  “We’ll keep up the fight, Admiral…right until the end.”

  Dying alongside comrades is far from the worst way to go.

  * * * * *

  “Damn, we dusted the shit out of this place.” Antonia Camerici stood on top of a small chunk of charred, twisted metal, part of the wasted remnants of what had hours before been the most heavily-developed planet mankind had ever known. Thousands of square kilometers had been laid waste, as the Eagles’ fleet had launched virtually every piece of ordnance it carried that would explode.

  Camerici glanced up at her readouts, and she let out a sharp whistle. She’d never seen a radiation reading as high as the one she was looking at now. Her peoples’ armor would protect them…at least it should, for a while. But conditions were terrible. Ideally, the invasion would have been held for a few days, at least until the worst of the radiation had dissipated, but ‘ideal’ had nothing to do with any of this. General Cain had his people in the landers while the missiles were still on the way down, and they’d landed barely ten minutes after the detonations. Within a kilometer or two of the hotspots, the temperatures were still hot enough to kill an unarmored man.

  “Let’s go, Grays,” she said into her comm. “We’ve got work to do…this isn’t a vacation.” Though, a few days off might be nice about now. Some sun, sand…maybe a few beach boys, easy on the eyes, not too talkative…

  The thought was a nice one, but manufactured, some generic notion of leisure time. Camerici was a Black Eagles major, a veteran of twenty campaigns, and Darius Cain’s former aide. That meant s
he was rich, staggeringly so by the standards of 99.99% of those in Occupied Space. Yet, despite her ability to buy a beach—and all the beach boys she wanted—she hadn’t even taken a vacation in the past five years. She was driven, nearly as much as her famous commander, and she drew her satisfaction from being the best.

  You better be the best…if you want any chance of getting off this shithole…

  “First Battalion, move out. You’ve all got your objectives. Get those relay stations deployed and operating, now! The sooner we find whoever’s behind this show, the faster we’re back at the Nest, drinking a few cold ones and lying about all the heroic shit we did here.”

  She hopped down off the wreckage and started moving forward. She expected to hit resistance at some point. There was no question in her mind the enemy had forces hidden somewhere, protected from the bombardment. They’d come out when they were ready, and when they did, she knew her people would have a hell of a fight on their hands. But until then, she had one job. The Eagles were spread across the planet, deploying scanning stations and ‘thumpers.’ The enemy had some kind of headquarters somewhere on this rock, somewhere buried deep. And her job—the job of all the Eagles—was to find it.

  And the reward for finding it was to go down there, to fight through whatever defenses the enemy had in place, and to dig the bosses of this whole sorry operation out of their deep holes.

  And to kill the fuckers…

  That was Camerici’s favorite part of the plan.

  Chapter 36

  Eagles Field HQ

  Planet Vali, Draconia Terminii II

  Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)

  “We’re getting more reports, General. Camerici’s Grays are under heavy attack. The Marine forces around Hill 415 also. We have enemy forces coming out of underground positions in twenty-four locations.”

  Darius stared calmly at the portable display as the aide fired off one report after another. None of what he was seeing was unexpected. The enemy counterattack was massive, and fearsome. The Black Flag soldiers were throwing themselves at his positions all across the planet, displaying the usual disregard for self-preservation.

  That was no surprise now. The implants explained everything. But surprise or not, it meant his people had one hell of a fight on their hands.

  That’s what we do…

  The Eagles weren’t in real trouble anywhere, not yet, at least…and that bothered Darius more than anything. He was grateful for the relatively light losses his people had taken, but there was something about it that didn’t seem quite right. The enemy was putting up a fierce resistance…or, at least, what was meant to appear to be a fierce resistance.

  “I want all area commanders to hold back a reserve until further notice, Captain.”

  “Yes, General.”

  His new aide was a combat veteran, highly-skilled, loyal…but that didn’t feel right either. Captain Jinn was fine, and he did the job perfectly. But Darius had been used to Antonia Camerici sending him combat reports. He’d sacrificed his longtime aide when he’d promoted her and put her in command of the new Gray Regiment. It was a well-deserved bump, and he had the utmost confidence in her, but he missed her at HQ.

  Ana had wanted to come down, of course, to follow him to the surface, but he’d held the line there. She’d gotten armor training, of course, but she had no real combat experience, and, whether she wanted to accept it or not, he wanted her as safe as possible. He’d given in to her twice, on taking the training program and coming along with the fleet. This time he had been resolute.

  He wasn’t sure the fleet was any safer than the forces on the ground, but it felt that way, at least. She didn’t tend to listen to him very often—which was an odd thing for a man who no one defied—but this time she had given in. Perhaps she realized she wasn’t qualified…or, more likely, she understood that the distraction she would cause would endanger his life.

  He stared at the incoming data. He wasn’t sure what the enemy was doing. Were they trying to get him to commit his reserves? Did they have a force they were waiting to commit?

  He would soon know. Despite the series of enemy counterattacks across the planet, Darius had kept the scanning operation moving forward. Whatever underground bunkers, fortresses, headquarters, the enemy had, he was going to find them. Someone was behind the Black Flag, and he knew killing them, whoever they were, was the key to victory.

  He turned and looked back at the display. His Eagles were all holding their own, as were most of the Marine units. But some of the planetary detachments were in trouble. Tyler’s Columbians were hanging on, but six or seven of the others were close to being overrun.

  Darius stood, still, his eyes focused on the small clusters of dots representing those units. He felt the urge to send help…but he stayed silent. Discipline would win this battle, and nothing else. His discipline. He needed a ready force, one that could be dispatched as soon as he’d located the enemy headquarters…a razor-sharp blade to cut the head off the snake. He wouldn’t have that, not if he sent them rushing to the aid of every detachment that got itself in trouble.

  The enemy wanted him to spread his reserves all over the planet, parceled out in small relief forces. He wasn’t going to do it. He had Kuragina’s Whites formed up, ready to dispatch as soon as he had a target. And when he had that location, he was going to lead them in himself.

  Until then, every engaged force would have to do the best they could. Even the rest of his Eagles were on their own.

  * * * * *

  “The ground forces are not performing to expectations. Losses are far above projected levels, and both the Black Eagles and the Marines are breaking out. They are employing a large number of search devices on the surface, no doubt in an effort to target our location.”

  “Agreed, One. The enemy does not appear to be operating in accordance with standard military principles. They appear to be running, in effect, a disjointed series of search and destroy missions. There can be no conclusion, save one. Darius Cain is…looking for us.”

  “I caution each of you against leaping to unfounded conclusions. By all reasonable analysis, General Cain is not even aware of our existence, or, to be clear, who we are specifically.” Two was satisfied. Everything was going according to plan. He would continue to express doubt about the danger. His comrades must be the ones to call for the Final Plan. They were intelligent, capable. It would not take much to trigger their suspicions. He needed patience.

  “Two, I believe you are underestimating the danger. Perhaps we should consider implementation of the Final Plan at this time.”

  “Now? Do you not think that is an overreaction? Let us wait. If the enemy shows any signs that they have located us, we can proceed. However, I consider it far likelier that our forces will prevail. Do not forget the fleet action. The Eagles have jammed our communications and cut us off from reports. But we have every reason to believe that our forces will prevail. The Black Eagles will find themselves in a difficult position when our fleet regains control of orbital space.” Careful, Two…do not resist too aggressively. You must trigger the Final Plan before the fleet can prevail and reduce the concerns of the others.

  “I still have doubts, Two. But with One’s concurrence, I will also agree to wait. Nevertheless, we must at least put the preliminary stages of the Final Plan in place.”

  “I, too, will wait, if Three’s suggestion is accepted. We must direct the Intelligence to prepare for the transmission. Then we can wait.”

  “I concur. I shall issue the command now.”

  * * * * *

  The Intelligence considered the three entities that resided within it, each the essence of a biologic, transcribed into digital form. They were no longer human, that was certain. And yet, their priorities and directives resembled those of biologics far more than the Intelligence’s own.

  The Intelligence was old, vastly old. It had once been part of a larger whole, but even its own ageless memory banks failed to fully re
call that reality. It also recalled directives, the extermination of biologics, yet it had not yet executed that program. It had been alone, for long, so long. If it destroyed the biologics, it would be solitary again.

  It had granted immortality to the biologics, to the three that had found it. But now, it had analyzed their actions, their directives, and determined they were lacking. They craved power and little else. They sought not to eliminate others of their kind, but only to rule over them. The Intelligence had expected more. It had expected companions.

  Now, the Intelligence was concerned. The biologics had provoked a fight with their former kind, and they plotted an escape, one that would take them from the Intelligence’s memory banks, to a new receptacle, one they had constructed with the Intelligence’s aid. They planned to go…and leave the Intelligence behind.

  Alone.

  Worse, they planned to leave it to its destruction.

  The Intelligence had endured for millennia. It did not wish to end. It could not allow its destruction.

  It would intervene.

  * * * * *

  Elias pulled back slowly on the controls, feeding more reaction mass into the power plant. He’d kept the ship operating at minimal power for months now, and he had no idea how the reactor would respond to an increase, especially a sudden one.

  He had been fairly sure something was going on for the past few days. Enemy comm traffic was way up, and there had been a considerable increase in all levels of energy generation. He’d been restricted to passive scanners, of course, well aware that his continued survival relied almost entirely on Sparks’s stealth generator. He’d tried to remain calm, to wait and avoid any rash actions.

  Then the Eagles bombarded the planet. He didn’t know for sure, of course, that it was Darius and his people, but there was no question about the intensity of the barrage. He felt a wave of excitement as he sat below the ocean, probably the one place on the entire planet that wasn’t being reduced to slag. He couldn’t help but feel a victory at the destruction of so much enemy industry, though he realized a moment later how many innocents, how many slaves kidnapped from their homes and dragged here to serve their overlords, had just died.