Empire Burning (Emerilia Book 11)

by Michael Chatfield

“Hello, Alkao,” Anna said, her voice more formal.

  Alkao looked confused but then quickly hid it, as if remembering something. A look of pain hid deep within his eyes as his smile darkened slightly. “Bob told me that you’ve lost most of your memories from the last time you were woken up on Emerilia.” Alkao stood and towered over Anna.

  She noticed he was still wearing armor and on his hip there was a sword. Her eyes latched onto it, feeling a resonance with it.

  Alkao followed her eyes, looking to the sword. He gave out a short laugh and his hand came to rest on the sword. To anyone else it would be a great sword; to him, it was just a slightly long sword. He ran his finger over the hilt, his eyes filled with memories.

  He undid the sword belt, which was actually meant to go over a person’s back. He held the sword in his hands before he walked over to Anna, holding it out with two hands. It clearly held a special place in his heart.

  “It seems it’s about time I returned this to you.” He looked up to see whether there was any reaction before once again looking to the sword. He tried to hide the pain in his eyes, but Anna was able to see it.

  She wanted to reach out and take his hand, but her mind resisted. She didn’t want to give him false hope. She wasn’t that Anna from before.

  “Thank you,” Anna said, not able to look him in the eyes as she received the sword. She put her hand on the hilt and pulled the sword out from its scabbard.

  She looked at the oddly designed blade. It felt right holding the sword as she moved it through the air. It let out a sad note; with a flick of her hand, it was cut off and it stilled. The air in the room seemed to bow in reverence to the sword, eager to fulfill its command.

  Anna felt something odd about the sword’s aura. She studied it closer, until she found something in the blade that shouldn’t have been there. She cast out a spell to increase her perception and see through the sword. Her eyes glowed with light as information filled her mind. Not just any information—memories.

  After about five minutes, she stumbled backward, her face pale. An excited look was on Anna’s face. Damn, I’m a genius. Anna looked to Alkao. He frowned slightly, as if sensing a change within her.

  Sadly, the memories her old incarnation had imprinted into the core of the sword filled up some of the blanks and she knew with time, it would speed up her recovery. But with Alkao, there was only a glimmer of emotions.

  “Thank you for taking care of it. I’ll see you later,” Anna said, seeing how the words seemed to tear into Alkao. But still he kept a smile on his face, and the affection in his eyes didn’t dim in the slightest.

  That more than anything moved her heart, as she yearned to remember more of this man, to know the depths of their relationship.

  “Look after yourself, Anna.” Alkao made to move forward, but hesitated and pulled back, instead smiling to her.

  “Thank you, Alkao.” Anna bowed her head slightly. She placed the sword back in its scabbard and turned around, leaving.

  “I will love you now and always. If I have to fight for your love again, I would do it without hesitation.”

  Alkao’s voice was soft, barely audible. Anna only barely heard it as she was halfway out the door. Her footsteps paused for half a second as she heard the grief, pain, and longing in his voice, but also a determination and love that empowered him.

  She continued out, not looking back, her emotions even more complicated than before as she gripped her sword tightly.

  I will remember you, Alkao! Anna vowed to herself, thinking of the massive demon who could make the ground shake and the heavens bow at his commands. But in that time she had seen him, she’d seen the broken man inside who had lost his love and had nothing but hope to cling to. That hope was in the shape of Anna’s reincarnation.

  Chapter 13: Ruffling Feathers

  “What is it?” Malsour asked.

  “A bastard creation.” Dave looked at the hologram in the middle of the room. The people who had made the original portal bastion prototype were all gathered together, looking at the odd vessel in front of them.

  “Okay, so it’s a drone shuttle?” Ela-Dorn asked.

  “We need a big combat booster in this coming fight. We’ve got the first portal bastion completed. A second is nearing completion and will be ready for battle. However, that still isn’t enough. We just don’t know when we’re going to be fighting the Jukal and we don’t know if we can get many more of the massive ships of the fleet completed. So, we’re going to need to think outside of the box. These are portal relays.” Dave waved to the hologram, shared via their interfaces, as an animation started.

  “They are small enough to exit the smaller ground portals that we’ve festooned our ships with. They will also be unmanned; all of that gear will be torn out. To replace it, they will be filled with charged soul gems and have multiple soul gem construct seeds for portals. They will flood through the portals of the fleet, and the charged soul gem will pour power into the seeds. The first seed will grow into a portal that is linked by an umbilical to a massive power bank here. Power will be poured through, much like how we’ve been doing with the bastions.

  “This power and the remaining stored power will go into the remaining portals seeds which, located on the outside of the ship, will swarm and cover the ship, creating a sphere of portals. These will be controlled by sub-AIs commanded by Shard, who will move them to engage the enemy. Gunboat Isle will be given fire orders, just like with the bastion and the other portals of the fleet.”

  On the screen, the shuttle went through changes as Dave talked. A portal grew out of the hull of the ship, which was made from soul gems. Other portals started to grow around it but at a much slower rate until the interior portal was finished. Soul gems swarmed over the shuttle, encompassing it and sending out umbilicals to the portals that grew around it, turning it from a shuttle into a shuttle inside of a sphere.

  The portals activated and weapon fire poured out from them.

  “That’s a whole lot of firepower,” Malsour said.

  “That they are but they’re not going to stand up to much of a pounding,” a shield tech said.

  “We can use the Mana barrier spell, projected through the portals like with the bastion, to allow it to stay online for longer. Also, if we can build even a few dozen of these, then they’re going to be causing chaos in the Jukal fleets. This time, we’ll be the ones swarming them with numbers,” Dave said.

  “I can get Gunboat Isle to increase the rate at which they’re developing. How long would these ships take to build?” Malsour asked.

  “Well, we can get them started here and now, but I think with the right assembly line, maybe one every few days.” Dave shrugged.

  “Okay, then, shall we get started?” Ela-Dorn asked.

  They broke down into groups, and once again started to go through the portal relays, looking over the rough ideas that Dave had come up with and putting it together. He had asked a number of them for their thoughts already and relied on them to see what was possible.

  After a few hours, another meeting was called. They’d been able to work through a number of solutions and find a number of issues with the plan.

  “Dave, as much as taking the hull from a shuttle would be nice, if we were to make it out of soul gem completely, then we would have more power, allowing us to activate it faster,” Kol, who was on the development team, said.

  “Also, having the form of a shuttle, while it will mean that we can get our hands on it faster, it’s not going to be what we need. If we had a twelve-faced base, then it would be much faster to make the portals from that. The problem would be propulsion as we don’t have a drive anymore,” another tech said.

  “Well, we can make that easier by putting them in something similar to a needle launcher,” Malsour said. “Use gravity-assisting runes along the walls and shoot out these relays through portals. As they reach the other side, they start growing, create the main portal within the dodecahedron soul gem, which then shoot
s out umbilicals and builds connected portals that are connected to shield generators. The whole thing powers up and then can start unleashing hell on the enemy,” Malsour said.

  “Also, with it being a soul gem base, we can add in some magical coding to make them harder to detect and more likely to get to the portal deployment stage,” another member of the development team said.

  “We’re going to have to beef up the power relays. We were running deployment times. It will take two minutes for them to get fully deployed. We talked to some of the fire controllers and weapons techs. In a battle, two minutes is way too long, so we’re going to need to somehow reduce that down,” a magical coding master said.

  “We’ve also said that we need to send them through portals. However, what if we strapped them to the ships? They’ve got room around them when they go through a portal and we can alter their jump drive profile so that it will cover them. When they come under fire, the ships can pour power into them, get the first portal going much faster, reducing their deployment time astronomically and then use a spell formation to shoot them off into space,” someone else proposed.

  Dave sat back as people came up with more and more ideas, connecting them together as he smiled. He had merely lit a match, but they had taken it and turned it into a full-fledged project.

  ***

  The command center was not a physical place but rather a Mirror of Communication conference room. This made it so that even if the physical locations received damage or were destroyed, the command center wouldn’t fail. It also made it faster to access information as they were directly tapped into the Mirror of Communication network and didn’t have to build anything extra.

  Admiral Adams was in command, with Admiral Forsyth getting some downtime. As most people had been off, they had been working constantly to watch over the fleets that were on operation, being repaired, and new ships that were getting crews.

  In the six weeks since the Jukal invasion fleet had been defeated, things were calmer in some aspects. There was still fierce fighting between the Deq’ual fleets and the Jukal defenses. On the other hand, the fighting on the ground had changed. The forces defending the Jukal were more likely to put on a show, to allow themselves to be defeated and captured by the Emerilians, than actually dig in and fight for the Jukal against the Emerilians.

  More and more systems were freed from the Jukal Empire’s influence over the last several weeks. Many of them were using the items that were left by the Emerilians. Some had even started to build their own technology to supply their needs.

  To do this, they were going to the Mirror of Communication schools, coming to know the people of Emerilia, sitting in the same classrooms and learning how to use magic, how to build, how to farm—skills that they would need in order to become self-sufficient.

  If they had enough time, this war would not be won through fighting, but rather subverting the races that were part of the Jukal Empire. Giving them their freedom would disperse the Jukal Empire’s power.

  Adams was reviewing the reports on the development of the portal relay ships, before switching to the updates on warships being repaired. Five ships had been cleared for action; they had been moved out of the asteroid base and were now moving around Emerilia. With the portals on board, they didn’t need to have their full crew when they left their slips or bases. Simply walking through a connected portal at one of the hubs would allow the crew who were on leave to switch with those who were onboard the ships.

  An alarm tore through the command center. The sound made her heart lurch and her stomach twist as a priority message came in from scout ships that were well outside of the Jukal system.

  Nearly a hundred Jukal ships were moving toward a jump point from all different directions.

  The image was resolved with a spell activating. They were able to see the power signatures of the ships and a massive ring that they were towing with them.

  “Shit, confirm that’s a ship-sized portal!” Adams started to press buttons on her interface, sending out messages and linking what she was seeing with those other people.

  “It’s confirmed as a Jukal ship portal!” a sensors officer called out.

  “Where can they jump to from that jump point? Alert all ships and captains—get them up to speed on what’s happening,” Adams said. “How old is the feed?”

  “Ten minutes,” a sensor officer called out.

  The closer that the scout ships got to the Jukal home system, the more likely it was that they would be picked up. As such, they had been hiding far outside the system, using powerful spells in order to gather information on the Jukal system. Even though these spells were as fast as light, over such massive distances, even light took time to reach the ships again.

  Adams watched as the Jukal continued on for the jump point without a care in the world.

  “There are three systems that they can reach with that jump point. We’ve freed two of the systems,” one of the aides said.

  “Any ships that are ready in the Emerilia system I want on standby. Deq’ual fleets that are moving between systems or not currently tasked are to move to the nearest portal. We need to be ready to move in and reinforce whatever system the Jukal go for,” Adams said.

  Once again the combined forces started to move, ready to deal with the Jukal threat.

  The asteroid base was sent scrambling as people were pulled from their leave and they rushed through portals, teleport pads, and onos to reach their ships. In the shipyards that lined the asteroid base, spell formations unleashed arcane fire as vessels detached from their umbilicals and headed into the main thoroughfare; the asteroid base connected to the moonbase as the forces in the asteroid base moved out.

  It took some time for them to get out of their slips and leave the asteroid base. The patrolling forces teleported until they were just outside of the moonbase. The different fleets organized themselves, all facing the portal that was pushing out Pandora and Deq’ual ships that were coming from across the Jukal Empire and various bases.

  Deq’ual ships that were holding at the Deq’ual outpost just outside of the asteroid base left their own slips and headed for the massive ship portal that the portal bastion had moved through. They formed up and passed through, the number of ships outside the moonbase rally point increasing every few minutes.

  The thirty ships quickly turned into a hundred and forty, a mixture of Deq’ual and Pandora. All of the ships arranged themselves into fleets around the portal bastion that pushed out of its holding pattern near the space station Terra. They were feeding the Jukal ships into the refineries. There were only a few in good enough condition to fly and they needed to be renovated to suit the Pandora and Deq’ual crews.

  As forces gathered, more and more people who had been away from the command center returned to it. Forsyth, who’d been doing paperwork, quickly connected and joined Adams.

  There was nothing to do but wait for several hours. They watched the Jukal fleet still heading for the jump point. It seemed to travel so slowly since it took time to cross such vast distances.

  The Jukal’s travel time gave the combined fleets and forces the time they needed to gather at the moonbase, charging up their soul gems, and priming their fusion reactors and making sure that their armories were fully stocked.

  Eventually the first Jukal ship used their jump drive. Adams looked to sensors that were looking at the three systems that the jump point would connect to and also looking at the small tell-tales that might make it easier to tell which system they went to.

  “We’ve got it!” one of the sensor officers said.

  On the main screen, a system appeared with markers for where the Jukal ships were supposed to exit.

  “How much time delay do we have on that jump point?” Adams asked.

  “We’ll see what’s happening there five minutes afterward,” the sensor officer said.

  “Prep the fleet. I want two Pandora fleets and one Deq’ual in support, moving to the system,” Adams said.
Orders were passed on as she continued. “The rest of our ships are to hold, ready to assist the first defense fleet if necessary.”

  The portal in-system activated just minutes later, with the defense forces moving through in force, ready to defend the system against the Jukal Empire.

  If they let the Jukal attack the system, then the people of the empire might start pulling away from them.

  It was sometime later before they got the first readings from the Jukal fleet. It arrived in force; a group of about ten or so Jukal ships headed deeper into the system before turning around.

  “What the hell?” Forsyth muttered to himself as they watched something detach from one of the larger ships using the inertia built up from the ships. The object quickly separated from the ship and carried on.

  “Shit,” Adams hissed as a ship portal was tossed out from behind the ship. It moved through the fleet and headed into the system.

  The Jukal fleet started to break apart and headed in different directions for different jump points. There were ten or so ships in each group, making a total of ten smaller fleets.

  “I want arcane sensing spells on those ships. We need to know which ones are holding portals and how many. Shoot out a missile with a detection spell grand working at that portal. I want to know everything about it. We need to know if it just has new codes or if it’s been built entirely different to try to keep us out,” Adams said.

  Forsyth and Adams looked to each other, entering a private chat.

  “Looks like they’re rebuilding their network,” Forsyth said.

  “We still don’t have their numbers and if they can reach any system and attack us there while we’re still trying to clear other systems of the Jukal Empire’s influence, we’re going to have our people hunted down,” Adams said.

  “We need to stop them from putting down these portals.” Forsyth frowned.

  “If they just jump in and drop them off, there’s not much we can do to stop them. We have to figure out where they’re going, send our people through the portals and then they’ve got to try to make it for the jump point.” Adams shook her head.