Twin suns of Carrola (Starshatter Book 2)

by Dark Knight

  The dead taz’aran commander who led the ground forces invading Carrola had a son. He’d enrolled in the Imperial fleet academy instead of serving under his father, whom he respected greatly as a professional soldier, but not as a parent. There was some resentment and bad blood between father and son but not enough for either of them to try and kill the other. Young Omasa was a capable and ambitious starship captain, who had just won himself the command of this very prototype ship that was constructed inside the space docks on Pion base. The station was not under the direct command of a Fleet Lord or even a Commodore – it was in essence a rogue pirate installation. Relocating tax funds towards the construction of his pleasure villa instead, that old border Count dispensed with the whole idea of building a proper taz’aran fleet base. After all, there was one lonely colony there, populated by a hundred small Terran clients, and under the tutelage of but a handful of their patrons – how dangerous could some defective, semi-intelligent animals be?

  While reading what the Secret Navy police or Sec-Nav had confiscated from the now dead border Count mansion, young Omasa’s calm was tested many a time during his flight to Pion base. Oh, such incompetence! How could a fool such as this taz’aran be allowed to stay alive in the first place was amazing. Obviously there were reports of his brazen stupidity and failures still slowly traveling towards High Fleet Command, back on Taz’ara prime. At a snail’s pace nonetheless. The count was a fool, yes, but he didn’t forget to line the pockets of local sector Fleet commodores. Of course, the Sec-Nav traced all of them too and they were promptly wiped out together with their families, as it was customary for the taz’arans to try to avoid future continuous vendetta’s. In taz’aran law practice the family members of a failed bureaucrat or another official were also held accountable for their crimes, no matter their age. Omasa remembered that in history class he and his classmates were told this, and were assured that it was a “super effective” anti-corruption measure.

  At this point in his young life he was considered to be a promising commander and the annoying game of ass-kissing was starting to chip away at his nerves. Omasa looked through the transparent bulkhead of his staff shuttle and glimpsed the silhouette of that accursed base he was ordered to travel to and assume command of his new ship. He’d heard terrible tales of rampant incompetence, more corruption and even the outright idiocy of its assigned personnel. Omasa sighed heavily and checked his weapons – if need be he was authorized to execute people on the spot by the High Fleet Command. He just had to find a way to seize their assets beforehand. The base’s structure grew more and more until it completely obstructed his field of vision. It was a round, slowly rotating space dock. Very old. It had sections that had not been used for centuries, crumpled and bent, riddled with molten holes, reminiscent of many age long battles between various Fringe space pirate Clans for control of the installation. Though despite the way it looked, Omasa noted that the revenant base had thick armor and hundreds of seemingly slagged but probably well operating heavy turrets. The many thousands of its pirate occupants were of true pirate stock and despite their Clan differences, would fight to the last in its defense. That was a pirate base, a good pirate base and taz’arans were simply guests.

  After his staff shuttle docked on Pion base, Lord Captain Omasa carefully inspected the prototype starship that he was given command of. It stood with its bow sticking from the back of Pion’s main docks and seemingly no one cared that the new, prototype starship was exposed to space. Some half sleeping and half drunken dock foreman tried to argue:

  “You see, Lord Captain, nothing can get through Pion base patrols!”

  Omasa, disgusted beyond measure, shot him point blank in the face. He then ordered the corpse dragged out and tied up next to the docks main doors. The slowly mummifying headless body of that slacker would inspire the construction crews to do better, since Omasa still needed them living and breathing. The luxury of importing more workers from the nearest taz’aran colony wasn’t available to him, yet. Instead he kicked and pistol whipped the staggered, sleepy engineers who were “on shift” inside the newly-built starship, and ordered them to show him every little nook and cranny.

  Equipped with a top notch hand scanner, the young captain slowly and meticulously scanned everything, no matter how many times the now deathly scared engineers claimed and swore on the ’Empress’s Holy Mantle’, that nothing was wrong with its construction. The greedy bastards and bitches were lying through their teeth. Swearing on the ’Throne’ even! Sacrilege of epic proportions, that untied his considerably loose hands even more. Omasa allowed himself to shoot one of the most annoying cunts, who was desperately trying to lead him away from all of the worst and most dangerously constructed areas. He made the rest of them carry his slagged corpse around while he calmly continued to scan.

  He then quickly noted all of the glaring construction errors on his PDA, but instead of acting on impulse and severely punishing the fools responsible, he thought things through calmly, and explored all of his options. A rarity, compared to other members of his race, this part of Omasa’s character gave him an edge over his peers in everything that he did. So, instead of outright executing the lazy Pion base engineers and construction crews, he gave them a week to fix their errors. They paid for all of that out of their own pockets, of course.

  That stupid, useless outpost! He now hated it with a passion! Instead of building a proper Star base here, mainly because of that pompous fool the late Count, Imperial Fleet command was forced to share. With the pirates. Oh, their brave and dependent “allies” were always ready to help and send their ships into Terran space. Omasa was well aware of their combat prowess, and they too had suffered from constant Terran attacks. Local colonists often ambushed their drug and slave transports. No quarter was given, and then the Colonial Navy (yes, the obnoxious humans and their clients had space forces protecting each one of their colonies!), reconfigured and rearmed the captures, using them against both his people and the pirates!

  As all taz’arans, he hated the Terrans and their stubborn resistance of his Empire’s conquest. His own grandmother was part of pirate lord Mahimm’s invasion fleet. Counted as “missing in action”, her body was never recovered and no information available telling what happened to her. Deep in his heart of hearts he knew that she was dead, probably by the hands of some lucky Terran. If he even needed more reasons to revile them...

  But first, Omasa had to address his starship engine troubles. The ship’s vector thrust module was overheating too quickly, and in 87% of the tactical simulations that Omasa ordered, led to the ship’s main engines shutting down during battle. Rushing construction, the Pion base engineers aimed for the platinum taz’aran decat bonuses that the Navy gave for finishing a vessel before the dead line, instead of a quality job. These very coins he would later confiscate from all of their bank accounts to further finance the “War effort”. Nobody used their oh-so-superior engineering brains to deduct that this ship had to stay in combat for longer periods of time, and actually move. Greedy fools! The Chief star-drive specialist of Pion base he tied behind his ship’s engine plasma exhaust, after he and his team installed the missing engine heat-sinks. Omasa had his suit’s PDA linked directly to the ship comms and all crewmates could hear his agonizing screams. The useless idiot actually had the gall to beg for mercy...

  As for the “new” torpedo launchers and those “rapid” turning main turrets – Omasa was again disgusted by the way they were constructed. Instead of actually building automated torpedo loading systems, the armory engineers took an effin’ vacation. His main heavy weapon system had two large artillery crews, wearing exoskeleton EVA suits, who had to load new torps manually after each shot! He stuffed those engineers in the ship’s mag-rail torpedo launchers and shot them naked in outer space. Of course, only after they’d built proper auto-loaders for both torpedo armories. The main particle beam turrets had their plasma power lines hanging all over the place, so to speak. Power distribution engine
ers used old, scrapped plasma lines, which they took from a slagged and obsolete transport ship. The reason, they claimed, was economy and recycling of valuable resources.

  More like inept thinking, laziness and greed! Because those power lines were small, they had to install a lot more of them so that the guns could receive enough power. That immediately led to power line energy overdraw, tasking the main reactor core above its safety limits! Omasa made them disassemble their own station reactor lab and fix the power lines with these parts. He did not replace the smaller lines though, but ordered the engineers to reinforce all of his main systems power distribution with them. Now his ship’s systems were doubly secure and he could shift power from one to another, or even overcharge the main guns if he needed. The unfortunate engineers he took care of by testing his new plasma power lines. Their charred remains were then spaced, and put into close orbit around Pion base for all to see. To serve as a reminder that someday, the long arm of Taz’aran High Command will choke to death everyone who abused their positions for personal gains. Not that corruption and embezzlement was something unheard of, but it had to be done with measure, and most importantly one mustn’t get caught.

  Omasa wanted to be ready for everything after facing such incompetence and foolishness. He, and a proper security detail of veteran space troopers, prowled around the base. While spending the time needed to fix his ship, he explored the base’s endless number of seedy bars and drug ridden canteens, discovering in one of them the now ex-captain of another lost taz’aran ship. The unlucky fellow was named Nedal and he force-conscripted him to be his second in command. The guy was a slimy, craven coward, who, after facing just ONE Terran star marine lost his entire command and ship. Nedal ranted for hours on end about how this human was some sort of magically empowered monster, able to evade thick point defense fire and slaughter all of his crew single-handedly. He also mentioned the presence of a Terran witch, who shot to pieces more than half of his boarding teams. It was evident for Omasa that this fool was suffering from extreme delusions caused by combat induced mental trauma. Nevertheless, knowing that arrogance always led to defeat, Omasa had prepared his ship and crew accordingly. If not capable of anything else, and in the extremely unlikely case of a failure, that cowardly idiot could be used as a scapegoat by Omasa.

  To further bolster his chances of success, and instead of relying solely on cheaply purchased, weak willed and force-conscripted star troopers, Omasa hired one pirate Star marine company. They were properly equipped, and as far as he knew an elite unit. Their commander’s name was Vala and she had never been defeated in battle. Her troopers were clad in heavily armored exosuits, sported deadly melee weapons, and even looted human laser rifles. They had faced Terran colonial militia troops and defeated them in battle every single time. That was more than enough for Omasa, and he spent his father’s entire pension fund to hire them – paying for a year in advance.

  He was assigned a group of spiritless, force-conscripted idiots and had to quickly change them into a functional starship crew. Omasa hired survivors from yet another destroyed taz’aran ship. After a week spent roaming around that accursed shithole of a base, he found out what the most common characteristic of all veterans here was – they were, without any exception, survivors of lost battles against the Terrans! These veterans claimed, and later proved to be, crewmates who’d served on a command frigate destroyed during an unfortunate salvage operation. Lucky enough to be stationed in the ship’s hangar, they saw one space bomb slowly drifting inside.

  At the time, their ship’s systems were hacked. They hastily boarded whatever ships were available and quickly darted out of the hangar, just before the ordinance slagged their ship. Smart, very smart. And Omasa greatly valued taz’arans who had a heightened sense of self preservation. Just a dozen shifty men and women, nevertheless their experience and mere presence would improve the overall quality of his crew. They too claimed that their starship, together with its full fighter complement was destroyed by one, single pilot. Again Omasa was at a loss of words. Even more so, after one of the new crewmen had mentioned that pilot was one of those small Terran clients called ’humpstors’ or something. That taz’aran in command simply had to be mentally deficient, and his command crew a bunch of incompetent morons, for that tiny critter to take out one entire command frigate by himself! He ordered his armory officer to perform hourly crew point defense drills... just in case.

  The new crewmates understandingly occupied lower-enlisted command positions. Flight deck command and control. They suspiciously pulled decats out of nowhere, modifying the ship with double the escape pods that should’ve been per original design specs. He didn’t know whether to scold or reward them, but then they surprised him by installing one single hidden personal escape pod. Just for him! They were certainly thinking ahead and together with them Omasa planned “special” evacuation protocols. It was certainly a praised and honored tradition, for higher-level command staff to ditch their ship with their “officer pets”. That being highly unlikely but certainly possible and Omasa did want to continue living, even if branded as a deserter.

  His ship’s hangar was capable of housing one full squadron of starfighters. High command instead had assigned him only one, but for that he was provided with a brand new space mecha squad. The size of standard interceptors, or close to sixty feet long and twenty feet wide, taz’aran tactical mecha (TA) were perhaps not of the same high quality as their Terran counterparts, but his people were learning. Pilots were also fresh out of the Fleet academy and Omasa, using his connections as a valedictorian got to pick those of them with the highest scores. The TA were all of stock quality and fresh off the assembly lines, but in stark contrast to his ship – designed and built by properly motivated engineers. The space mecha were all issued one large version of that prototype taz’aran laser rifle he’d recently heard of. They also had a shield and power-axe melee set. Omasa made sure to order heavy missile launchers for them – a weapon based upon the best taz’aran RPG’s. Those fired standard fighter sized dumb fire rockets and sophisticated lock on missiles, of which he could purchase multiple crates and stack them in the ship’s armory. The launchers themselves being cheap could be discarded during combat, if need be, and then picked up after the battle. That gave his mecha versatility, a lot of long range heavy offensive punch, and his pilots loved him for it.

  After he’d won the Carrola engagement, of course, Omasa envisioned acquiring another two wings of starfighters to build his spaceships’ fighter screen up to proper strength. The salvage he’d collect there would be more than enough to pay for some quality machinery. One look at the horrid creations coming out of Pion base stardock was enough to give him, and most of his pilots nightmares for the rest of their careers. Clanners had pretty decent ships though, and despite their rough looks some of them were slightly better than his own fleet’s starfighters. And there was another thing to consider – he was here, stuck on the border for the foreseeable future. It was Clan territory, and Omasa very much wanted to have good relations with if not all, then at least most of them. Trading spaceships and tech would go a long way towards building a stable working relation with one or more of the Clans.

  During the cold, lonely nights, Omasa sifted through the horror stories that his father had managed to link back to the Pion base’s mainframe. Troopers suffering heat strokes in the sweltering heat of the Jungle, their armor plating all but useless against Terran railguns, and their rifles malfunctioning. Omasa wisely decided to have his ground troops equipped with lighter field armor and added heat resistant underlays, which would ensure greater comfort against the murderous rays of those local suns. Then he replaced their armor plating with a custom design, made from looted polysteel Terran alloy. This way, his soldiers would not get shredded instantly by the deadly railguns. Omasa quickly sold the disastrously designed taz’aran “prototype” infantry laser rifles, giving back the soldiers their tried and tested particle beam weapons. His troopers were ecstatic.
With one smart investment Omasa had redoubled morale, and increased their loyalty... somewhat. With the additional field medics he’d hired using the money that he got from selling those rifles on Pion base’s black market, he’d assured their willingness to fight longer.

  However, this was not the taz’aran way, and Omasa had to instruct his troops to keep their mouths shut, and not to spread this particular piece of information by posting about it all over the G-net either. Anyone caught sending unfiltered messages by the ship’s Sysop was then summarily executed by spacing. Speaking of sysops, Omasa “hired” two of the best he could find on Pion base. Both were deranged maniacs serving time in their jail for a series of murders. He of course fitted them with slave collars, and promised to free both but only IF they behaved and protected his starship from cyber attacks. He didn’t like the “all of our ship’s systems were hacked” line that the surviving frigate crewmates gave him. Not one bit.

  In tactics school, Omasa was regarded as an “unconventional thinker” by his classmates and teachers. He often disputed that, even IF you buy the soldiers themselves, to achieve total, complete, and glorious victory, you had to take better care of them. Of course they were, and always would be, nothing else but meat for the grinder. One could not lose much if more resources were spent on them, improving the overall quality of your cannon fodder. Taz’arans rarely showed loyalty, and even amongst those who did so, it was probably faked in order to lull their officers into a false sense of security. Before shooting them in the back that is.