Twin suns of Carrola (Starshatter Book 2)

by Dark Knight

  Omasa noticed how Vala, who also stood beside him, tapped the thigh of her armor twice with two fingers – a sign for the Aleska warriors behind to follow her actions. His star marine commander remained quiet but he was sure that behind her faceplate, she and her warriors were gritting their teeth, trigger fingers twitching and ready. Surely the “executioners” were soon to learn the hard way why it wasn't smart to posture in such a way before his star marines.

  Omasa returned his attention to the executioner captain, straightening his posture. “I will come with you in due time, Captain, but before I do, what are you going to do with my officers, sergeants and loyal star troopers? Surely you know that we’ve gone through much strife and achieved a great victory for the Empire!” Omasa knew very well exactly what answer he'd receive in advance. The question was meant as a rallying cry, a means to bolster any wavering morale among his men. He even made sure to stress the fact that they were returning as victors.

  The link to his starship's intercom network was activated the whole time they exchanged pleasantries, allowing the crew to hear every word. Yet another heresy in the growing list that his crew had to keep secret. It appeared that their Lord Captain was a person of habit when it came to outright defying the natural order established across hundreds of years of taz'aran military tradition. But with a swarm of executioners standing at their doorstep, his crew didn't give a wozzie's ass about tradition right now!

  That ugly executioner captain smirked. “They are to be executed on the spot, of course, just like everybody else. Any victory that you and your crew had purportedly achieved will be claimed by her Ladyship. Why do you ask?”

  “Well then, this changes everything,” Omasa said. “You see, I made a promise to my loyal men, one not easily broken.” Omasa smirked and raised his hand, then took a step back from the enemy captain. Vala and Tale did so as well, and each raised their weapons.

  The red clad captain’s eyes widened with anger and disbelief. “Executioners open fire!” she spat.

  Her troops unleashed a fusillade of particle beams, their heavy weapon team spraying red hot energy bolts aimed at Omasa and his officers yet all of them vanished a step before his face, soaked by the ship deflector shields he activated when he took that step back. Eyes fixated on Omasa's calm, still smirking face, the executioner captain angrily screamed after her troopers had stopped firing.

  “How dare you!” she hissed. “Refusing to get shot by an executioner's squad is insubordination and an act of high treason against the Empire!”

  Omasa didn’t reply. Instead, still smirking, he slowly lowered his hand. Then a nearby point defense turret extended from 'Empress Throne' armored hull. Its rotating barrel swiveled and took aim at the executioners. The shockingly accurate volley of particle energy bolts it loosed burned the red armored troopers to charred husks. Amazingly, their commander was left untouched by the devastating barrage. Omasa then slowly moved out from the protection of his starship's shield, Vala and her star warriors forming a cordon around his person. Smiling, Tale turned at her Lord Captain pointing with her free hand at the now very lonely and frightened executioner.

  “What should I do with that, Lord?”

  Passing the still twitching woman, who'd soiled herself from fear by the smell of it, Lord Captain Omasa replied with an almost emotionless tone.

  “She will escort us before her Ladyship, won't she? After all, I did promise that I'll see Commodore Zarjana.”

  Tapping his command link, Omasa called Nedal and what was left of 'Empress Throne' star troopers.

  “We need to engage in aggressive negotiations Nedal,” he said. “It seems that our new Lady Commodore needs to be taught a lesson most valuable. I gather the time spent back in her Estate and the comfortable chairs of Fringe Naval command had somewhat dulled her confused perception of reality.”

  With trained speed, Tale sidestepped behind the now platoon-less captain, sticking her own sidearm in the officer's back and disarming her. Omasa again nodded, giving her a sign to shoot the officer at her own discretion as both passed by him.

  “Yes, my Lord. A demonstration you shall have, and a proper one at that.”

  On the port side of 'Empress Throne', Nedal's troop transport unlocked its landing struts and made for Pion base’s main hangar. While Omasa calmly strolled towards the base command center, the veteran troopers, lead by Nedal in his power armor, attacked in full force. The executioners, so used to others being scared of them, had corralled much of the base's security and even disarmed a couple of clan Aleska star warriors. In the shock of Nedal's sudden, swift strike, they simply stood there, unmoving, unable to accept the fact that other taz'aran troops were attacking them. Executioners were also used to their targets not firing back. They either begged or peddled for their lives. Now they were on the receiving end of an assaulted by a small team of hardened veteran star troopers. They may have been few, but the attack allowed the savage Aleska star marines the executioners corralled to strengthen their numbers.

  Nedal's hastily repaired power armor lead the charge, and the hurdled masses of terrified taz'aran soldiers who were about to be executed witnessed something that their commanders wouldn’t even dream of doing. An officer lead a battle line of star troopers from the front and placed his machine directly into enemy fire. Didn't take long for them to attack their would-be executioners, taking them by surprise with their backs turned in typical taz'aran fashion. With that, Nedal's forces suddenly increased ten fold, but instead of turning into a disorganized, vengeful mob, his veterans assumed direct control. Together with the Aleska star warriors they quickly formed new companies and battalions of freshly rescued, highly motivated taz'arans armed with their executioners' weapons. Nedal then ordered the re-organized force deeper into Pion base's ravaged interior, mercilessly wiping every executioner unit they encountered on the way. Yet after meeting with the soul-hacked, Nedal instead ordered them corralled or disabled by use of stunners if possible. The he stuffed the safely secured husks into large stasis containers and left some of his veteran sergeants to guard. Whatever was that Nedal had planned, he hadn’t told Omasa any of it.

  Meanwhile, on the station's command deck, with the now useless “escort” officer shot dead at his feet, Omasa faced off against the screaming, saliva spitting Lady Zarjana and her personal retinue's guns. As he properly deduced, (and as was consistent with the high nobles ways) that inbred woman had no skill, tact, or control over herself whatsoever. Sitting in her command throne, her “Ladyship” stomped both of her tiny feet on the floor and waved her hands in the air like a petulant child.

  “How dare you!” she shrieked. “This is mutiny! I will have you eviscerated for this!”

  Omasa couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “Really, Ladyship? Eviscerated? How about you calm down and order whatever 'troops' you still have left alive to stand down? So long as they remove their armor and relinquish them together with their weapons to my soldiers, they won’t be harmed.”

  Lady Zarjana’s fury roiled and she looked ready to burst every blood vessel in her body. “You... how dare you give orders to me?! I am your commanding officer, a Commodore of the Frontier's Navy and a Marquise! Do you know what my family could do to yours?!”

  Omasa sighed again and snapped with his fingers. Next to him Vala, her star marines and Adjutant Tale immediately opened fire. In but a few short seconds, all of Zarjana's handpicked and “elite” executioners themselves collapsed to the floor, all of them dead or dying in pools of their own blood. The Lord captain then pulled his own sidearm. For one long second he took aim at the Commodore’s head, but instead fired through the backrest of her command throne. He stared Zarjana in the eye with an unflinching gaze while energy bolts blasted molten chunks off the chair, each shot skillfully missing her body as the sitting marquise trembled in disbelief. After he stopped there was an uncomfortable silence on the command deck, broken only by the executioner commander's frantic, high pitch voice. The commander begged for orders
and immediate assistance over the comms. Her team was being surrounded and picked off by Nedal's personal squad. Omasa purposely kept quiet for a little while longer before pushing a lever on his sidearm. The slagged power pack then loudly rattled on the floor, startling her Ladyship out of her stupor.

  “It’s time, Commodore,” he said. “Give the order.”

  The stunned Marquise mumbled the surrender order into her headset. Then she slipped off her now smoldering command throne and onto the blood-spattered floor. Unable to stand up, Zarjana slumped before Lord Captain Omasa, her limbs still shaking, eyes darting around as she inspected the corpses that littered the room. Her executioners, the pets she hand-picked, reduced to heaps of meat and blood and ash. No matter how much she'd hoped for her minions to burst in and save her, there was no help coming from them, nor her other underlings.

  “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Zarjana’s fear-filled gaze darted back up to Omasa, who stood looming over her as if he belonged there all along. “Now, you realize that all of this has to remain between us and my staff, of course,” he continued. “High Command need not become aware that their newly appointed Commodore had haphazardly ordered the execution of heroes of the Taz'aran Empire, who brought back the single most important piece of intelligence of this decade. And all of that without even giving them a chance to negotiate bribes and buy back their lives.”

  Zarjana's lip trembled. Within her small mind thousands of never before used neurons now fired up, working overtime as she tried to fathom the reality unfolding before her very eyes. Nobody had ever dared threaten her, let alone trained a loaded weapon at her before. The very realization that this could've been her last day placed even heavier weight upon the deadly reality. One entirely new for her universe, outside the protected, shielded existence the Marquise had so-far experienced. Difficult though it was to believe, Omasa's words had forcefully elicited an intelligent reaction. The long unused brain of Marquise Zarjana had finally started working.

  “I will be...” She gulped, tried to choke out the next word. “Ex... ex... executed for incompetence!?”

  “Precisely your Ladyship, unless we keep this little squabble between us.” Omasa stepped past her, brushed away some of the cooled slag from her throne, and place a hand upon it. Once more, he looked as if he should’ve been there all along. “Now my wonderful adjutant will show you some holo-files and give you orders that need authorizing. You will sign all of them. I presume I don’t have to remind you that this is an offer you cannot refuse?”

  The commodore nodded slowly, her eyes full of confusion, fear and hatred. Omasa smiled and clapped his hands together in elation. “Excellent!” he said. Then, still smiling, he crouched in front of her and placed both hands upon her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. She would see the threat of death behind that smile. “I know that this will be the beginning of a wonderful and long lasting friendship!”

  With the deal done, Omasa exchanged looks with his officers and inspected the Marquise's stamp on those blank holo-orders Tale linked to his PDA. Then left the corpse littered command deck, but not before he gave a mocking bow to Zarjana. And when the doors slid close before him, his face returned to that malevolent, happy smile.

  ________________________________________________________________________________

  Starshatter slowly descended through the atmosphere of Vasilisa's home planet, piloted by a happy spacer woman who sported an ever widening, shining smile. The vessel's charged shields protected it from the damage atmospheric friction would otherwise cause to its wounded hull. Anit'za was already counting the exchange rate of those decats he swindled from the Cartel boss back on Pion base into proper Terran credits. It didn't look good, and even though he knew exactly how “expensive” the Minarchy's money was it still came as a shock. Forty thousand decats only exchanged into fifteen thousand credits!? It was still more than enough for what he'd been planning to do, but he’d at least hoped for something a little more substantial than that!

  Still, the idea of spending blood money on something this noble was more than poetic. The fact that he himself was a noble was but an amusing coincidence, and connecting one's title with their ambitions was something of an oxymoron for a dzenta'rii. The slaves that they rescued had nothing left; neither family, nor other possessions except the clothes on their backs and even those were gifted to them by their rescuers. The noble in him desired to do something, anything to aid them. It wasn't enough to simply be called by your title. In his culture, it had real tangible meaning, something that few understood completely and only his people implemented fully, despite the continuous plot-a-thlon and boring social interactions that tradition dictated they take part in. It meant responsibilities to those whom you could help. It meant protecting people, changing their lives for the better. Not by showering the people with money like an idiot and creating dependent groups of self-loathing, lazy individuals, but by actually doing something real for them. Giving them a chance to make a life, to thrive and prosper of their own volition. Captain Anit'za had a long chat in his cargo hold with those freed slaves about this. Then, after speaking with his crew, they decided to help them pool their skills and abilities to give them a chance for a new beginning.

  Vasilisa's home colony of Ileana, or “The Pond” as it was also known, was visible now. The small, shining metallic buildings were spread over a large area that formed their capital. It more than earned its nickname, too, as it was built around a large, and evidently very deep, crystal clear karst lake. Big as his starship, Anit'za couldn't fathom why would the spacers call it a pond. But then again, those were spacers for you. Anything they named had some secret, dodgy meaning that only they or their friends could possibly discern. The captain sighed while watching how Ileana's sunlight chased his ship's descent and bounced off Starshatter's light filters. If only the dzent'a of his age had even half the spirit of those people! At this rate, the very future of his race would be bored to death, smothered in ordinariness.

  His plan didn't allow for mediocrity.

  Anit'za allowed himself a cautiously happy smile when Snark purred in his ear. The cat sat atop his command chair, eyes squinting, evidently enjoying the warm sunbath coming over the horizon. Snark was calm and this time the dzenta'rii saw no sadness in her eyes. As Cat had attested, the feline no longer cried herself to sleep. The captain casually scratched Ort's ear, who's head was towering on the same level as his own even while sitting next to his command chair. That calm interaction provoked a smile from Kera, who glanced at both creatures with the look of a mother content that her children were no longer as ill as they as they had been and would soon heal completely. A minute later the ship's landing struts rested gently upon The Pond's largest landing pad and Vasilisa clapped her hands.

  “Welcome to my home people! Cap, whad'ya think?”

  Anit'za, like everybody else, was captivated by the incredible sight and glued to the transparent bulkheads, soaking up the beauty of that tropical paradise.

  “Ahem... looks pleasant enough to me. Shame that we lack sufficient time for a longer shore leave, because By my Ancestors' Glorious Hair we all deserve one.”

  The captain looked around and waved his hand at the still stunned crew of Starshatter.

  “Why are you all still looking cooked up from behind the bulkheads? What, you need a permission to disembark or something? Come on, let’s all meet with our gracious hosts!”

  He was the first in and out of their bridge's elevator. Already having changed into a more plain uniform, Anit'za could at last safely wear his fancy and sadly non-matching hat. The colony was a peripheral settlement, so the presence of any real fashionistas was highly doubtful. It was the sort of place a dzenta'rii could dress mildly inappropriately. If this were a larger system he'd have to stroll around in his other, heavier uniform. Anit'za wandered if he could find something else on Earth as they evidently had some wonderfully designed, old fashioned uniforms that he was just itching
to try. But that would have to wait for some other day. For now shore leave awaited him and his crew! Soon all of his people, including the slaves they’d rescued, disembarked and were walking around the somewhat empty landing pad. The air was crisp and clean, and from trees nearby one could hear birds chirp, see them fly between the branches and into their nests. Some were humping. And others laying eggs.

  Captain Anit'za noticed somebody in the distance shouting and waving in their direction. A moment later, a grav-car approached piloted by a muscular looking human man. Beside him sat a blond woman who was the spitting image of an older Vasilisa. They leaped from the car before it fully stopped and ran toward the crew. Vasilisa stood nervously, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. Alric's frame towered behind her he wore his old 'Bremen' star marine uniform. Vasilisa stepped forward and hugged her parents gently, then pulled her man forward to finally meet them. The tall marine had all but forgotten how to interact with people outside his military surroundings. He almost raised his hand in salute, but then stretched it to shake their hands.

  “Alric Von Englebert,” he said, more nervously than he expected, “commander of the first star marine battalion, formerly of INS 'Bremen', and currently chief gunnery officer and armorer of CNS 'Starshatter'. Honored to meet you sir, ma'am.”

  After introducing himself Vasilisa's mother, all teary-eyed, threw herself into a hug with her new son in law while her father, Alexi, shook Alric's hand, his steely muscles testing the soldier's strength. Soon their faces stretched in uneasy but happy smiles as both men were silently crushing each other's fingers. Chuckling, Vasilisa's mother slapped both their shoulders then turned to the rest of the crew.

  “We should get back home, everyone’s to see you! Vasq, you didn't forget your little brothers and sisters didn't you?”

  “But mooom, I was in deep space for so long and –”

  Valeria threw a devastatingly intimidating look, inspecting her daughter's reaction and then smiled again.