Havoc of War
Warp Marine Corps, Book Five
By C.J. Carella
Copyright @ 2017 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact [email protected]
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This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Prologue: Paint It Black
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
GLOSSARY
Prologue: Paint It Black
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
- The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
Star System Sokolov, 168 AFC
Sixty-three ships emerged from warp space into the cold darkness of space, prepared for the worst.
And expecting the best, although it always pays off to be prepared. More than expecting: we know good things await us here.
Nicholas Kerensky chuckled at the errant thought. Moments later, everyone in the CIC read his mind and laughed with him.
The augurs had been good, after all. The entities that had guided Kerensky’s Black Ships to this uncharted system had promised as much, and everyone aboard the rogue fleet trusted them, inasmuch as one could trust unknown and likely forever unknowable beings with truly alien goals and desires. Dealing with Warplings wasn’t easy, but so far they appeared to keep their promises. Kerensky had an obscure suspicion that their new guides and advisors would stick to the letter of any agreement, but like the demons and fairies of myth and legend would seek to pervert their spirit.
Spirits! Next thing I know I’ll be spitting for good luck and avoiding ladders and black cats!
No chuckles this time. Kerensky had taken the trouble to hide that thought from the group gestalt. Some things were not to be shared.
An atheistic materialist for all his adult life, the former Commander in Chief of Seventh Sector was convinced there was a mundane explanation for everything, including the bizarre warp phenomena that had first led his fleet to victory and ultimately to mutiny. Warplings appeared to crave something the superstitious might call souls but the more pragmatic could define simply as information. A sophont’s mind contained a great deal of information and it appeared the natives of null-space could make use of it even after the death of said sophont. That made Warplings something less sinister than devils: one might call them Psychovores, Thought-Eaters. By allowing those entities to feed on tens of thousands of aliens during the Battle of New Texas, Kerensky’s and his followers had been rewarded handsomely.
Among other things, they’d been led to this system, via a warp connection nobody had discovered before, providing his fleet – a rather fanciful name for a force composed of nine warships and fifty-five logistics, repair and support ships – with a hiding place where it would make preparations for the war to come. The Warplings had guided the Black Ships, and predicted no danger awaited them there.
“We have concluded an initial survey of the system, sir.”
Kerensky dismissed his fanciful thoughts. “Proceed.”
The system he had named after his grandmother consisted of a standard K-type orange dwarf star and seven planets. The CIC’s main holotank provided visuals: two gas giants, three airless rocky midgets, a near-miss planet that could have held life if it had been able to retain a slightly-thicker atmosphere, and one life-bearing world. One radiating in a multitude of electromagnetic wavelengths that were a sure sign of technological life.
“It appears we may be about to make First Contact,” the admiral commented as his communications specialists analyzed the streams of information emanating from the second world from the local sun.
“Radio signals. Sound and audiovisual. They appear to be fully industrialized, but haven’t developed graviton technologies of any kind.”
Little surprise there. The knowledge that allowed Starfarers to manipulate the very stuff of spacetime for myriad purposes had been discovered only a handful of times and then handed down from one civilization to the next. The fundamental theories behind gravitonic science were beyond the grasp of every Starfarer civilization in the known galaxy; they knew it worked, and how to use it, but not why it did. Humanity could have spent its entire existence blissfully unaware of such technologies if no Starfarers had come to visit.
“I believe we will implement a policy of benign neglect towards the natives,” Kerensky said, images from Earth’s own First Contact flashing through his mind. Over half of humanity had died on that day. He had no interest in inflicting such horrors on innocent primitives.
Hungry.
Warplings could communicate in complete sentences when they so wished – one of them had assumed the form of Kerensky’s grandmother to speak with the admiral – but most of the time they simply expressed their feelings in the crudest and simplest terms. Perhaps every time they conveyed information in more detail they lost some of what they stole from their victims.
“We will not sacrifice those sophonts to you,” Kerensky replied, his mental voice loud enough to be ‘heard’ by everyone in the fleet. Most of the men and women under his command – slightly over sixty thousand all told – agreed with his statement, but a sizable minority grumbled about it. The idea of killing innocent aliens didn’t hold much revulsion for the dissenters; to them, all nonhumans were potential enemies at best, and threats to be destroyed on sight at worst. They would obey his orders, but didn’t like them.
The Psychovore didn’t reply, but Kerensky felt the entity’s acquiescence to his pledge. For now.
We are riding a tiger. Dismounting is not an option.
“You all know why we are here,” he said, his mental voice reaching everyone in the renegade fleet. “We need time. Time to refit our ships and enhance them with new systems. Time to learn how to use them. Time to prepare. We will keep our distance from the locals – they haven’t left their native planet’s gravity well – and gather whatever resources we need from the asteroid belt, as well as the gas giants and their moons. We will be ready to resume combat operations in four months, six months at the outside.”
More grumbles followed, and among a larger percentage of the ships’ crew. His unruly children were growing impatient.
“We have the time. Neither the Gimps nor the Lampreys are in any shape to attack America again, not anytime soon. Even if the Galactic Alliance garners new members, it will take them months to launch a new offensive. We saved America at New Texas. Remember that in the dark days to come. Our job now is to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.”
Unanimous support from everyone washed over him: it had the intoxicating effect of being cheered by a full stadium, but on a far deeper and personal level. He could feel their approval enveloping him, empowering him. Kerensky waited until the mental ch
orus subsided and went on:
“We are no longer part of the United Stars Navy. We made that sacrifice willingly, forsaking our careers and the chance to return home. I called our vessels the Black Ships; there is a reason for that.
“That was the name given to the vessels that, under the command of Commodore Perry of the old US Navy, sailed to Japan and forced that reclusive country to open its borders. I find the term fitting, for my intention is to sail into the Imperium’s heartland and force it to surrender. The Gimps believe they are the center of the universe. We will teach them they are gravely mistaken.”
Anger and hatred from his crews blazed forth like a solar flare, but instead of burning him the emotions filled him with even more strength than before. They wanted revenge for dead shipmates, murdered friends and relatives, the unprovoked genocidal attack that followed First Contact, and the oppressive threat of genocide that had hung over all of humanity for far too long.
“So we will paint our warships black, and sail under the black flag.”
That borrowed from a different, earlier tradition. When old Terran pirates hoisted the black flag, it meant no quarter would be offered to the enemy. It would be war to the knife. To the death.
Sixty thousand minds roared in wrathful resolve, and they were joined by other, more alien voices, from the hundreds of Warplings that hovered around the Black Ships like vultures circling high above a battlefield, knowing that soon they would be fed.
Soon they would be very well fed.
New Washington, Sol System, 169 AFC
“Where the hell are they?”
The President of the United Stars of America didn’t raise his voice very often, but when he did most people cringed in response. Chief of Staff Tyson Keller had been on the receiving end of POTUS’ wrath a few times, however, and he wasn’t impressed.
Al isn’t tracking too well, Tyson thought. Unfairly, perhaps, but times like these required a steady hand, and losing one’s temper wasn’t a good idea, not even in the privacy of the Oval Room, where only the Secret Service, Tyson and the National Security Advisor could witness the spectacle.
Albert P. Hewer had never been called handsome even by the most fervent sycophants; the kindest thing one could say about his features was that they had a lot of character. In the last couple of years, the man had aged visibly, despite having the best anti-agathics money and power could procure. The prospect of presiding over the extinction not only of the country but of the entire species was affecting him in ways that medical tech couldn’t cope with.
“Everyone’s doing all that can be done, Al,” Tyson told the Commander-in-Chief.
POTUS composed himself with a visible effort and sat back down.
“We all have the same information you do, Mister President,” Geoff Chapelle said as if the President wasn’t on the edge of a total meltdown. “All we know so far is that the mutineers and their ships made transit somewhere in Paulus System, in full view of the Wyrashat’s sensors, and failed to emerge at any of its warp termini. The most plausible explanation is that the entire formation – sixty-four ships – was lost in warp space.”
“We should be so lucky,” Hewer said. “Having those traitors eaten by warp goblins would be outstanding. But we all know that didn’t happen.”
“The second most likely possibility is that Kerensky’s ships discovered a new ley line somewhere in the system. Now that Second Fleet is stationed at Paulus, we have survey teams searching for it, but those things take time.”
Tyson wasn’t an expert in FTL travel – a concept he still found ridiculous despite having lived with it for a century and a half – but he knew that finding new warp gates was the work of decades or centuries. The weak graviton emanations that betrayed the presence of a crack in the fabric of spacetime could only be detected at minute ranges – meters rather than kilometers – and even the likely search areas, somewhere within the closest planetary orbits around a system’s star, were impossibly large. God only knew how the original Starfarers had discovered the first conduits, millions of years ago. Whatever they’d used back then, it was a lot more effective than the current state of the art.
And maybe Kerensky has figured it out.
“We need to bring that crazy bastard to heel,” Hewer said.
“He did save our collective ass, Al,” Tyson reminded him. “Twice. The last time after the second enemy fleet our analysts swore would take ‘a minimum of fifteen months’ to build up showed up unexpectedly. That doesn’t excuse the mutiny, but maybe we should worry about the fleets that are coming to kill us, rather than one that, even if it’s still around, is aiming to kill our enemies.”
“The problem is, Kerensky’s renegades may turn the entire galaxy against us,” Chapelle said.
“Geoff, the galaxy’s already against us. The only thing holding them back is the noticeable lack of balls among most Starfarer polities. They ‘lent’ entire flotillas to the Imperium. They did that because they’re too chickenshit to commit to a full war, but they want us gone. Everybody does, pretty much. Even the Puppies have turned on us.”
Hewer and Chapelle grimaced in unison. The Hrauwah Kingdom was cutting back their shipments of war materiel, despite the fact that they were getting paid for them, cash on the barrel, for the first time since the war started. The accidental conquest of Xanadu System the year before had left the US flush with hard galactic currency. At first, the Puppies had been ecstatic about it. After the Battle of New Texas, things had changed; the flood of goods had slowed down again, replaced instead by a growing litany of lame excuses. They also recalled all the volunteer formations that had been fighting alongside America; while the loss of fighting power had been relatively small, the statement that withdrawal made wasn’t small at all.
“That is my point, Tyson. Everybody’s scared of us now. If Kerensky’s Black Ships start performing more allegedly-supernatural tricks, or burning down neutral cities, all bets are off. We cannot defeat a unified galaxy.”
“I want to go after them,” Hewer said. “Problem is, they are somewhere in Imperium space, and we can’t get to them. Not until we finish off the Lampreys.”
“There is that,” Tyson said.
The Lhan Arkh Congress was reeling after a series of defeats, and it had far fewer core systems than the Imperium. One swift offensive could knock them out once and for all, destroying their industrial base and reducing them to a few dozen minor colonies that could be picked off at leisure. Concentrating on the smaller of the two threats made sense.
“Third Fleet is getting some of the new toys that survey ship found. The Lampreys will finally get what’s coming to them.”
“And when we are done, they will call us the Warp Marauders of America,” Chapelle warned. He’d been strongly opposed to using the ancient weapons of the Kraxan civilization. “We are toying with forces beyond our understanding and very likely beyond our control. The prudent thing to do at this point is cease fighter operations until we have a better grasp on the effect they have on their pilots.”
“In other words, abandon the only weapon system that’s kept us alive.”
“Secretary Goftalu is confident we can secure a cease-fire. Neither the Imperium nor the Lampreys are eager to continue fighting, not after losing over fifty percent of their war fleets – in the Imperium’s case, over a hundred percent of its prewar forces. The Imperium spent years building up, effectively tripling its naval strength, and lost most of it in two fleet actions.”
“So we get a cease-fire, and as soon as they’re done building up, they’ll come back for a rematch. We can’t afford to give them time to come up with countermeasures. They have three orders of magnitude more R&D resources than we do. Eventually they will figure out some way to neutralize our advantages.”
“Save it for the meeting with the JCs,” Hewer said. “The final dispositions will be determined there, but one thing is set: we’re going after the Lampreys next. We’ll refrain from conducting offensive operations agai
nst the Imperium for the time being – and the Sec-State will try to talk them into a negotiated peace. We’ll ground our fighters for the time being while we reevaluate things. Third Fleet has no fighters, so that won’t affect the offensive against the Lampreys. And after we’ve dealt with the Lhan Arkh once and for all, we’ll figure out a way to run Kerensky to the ground. If we’re lucky, the Gimps will settle his hash for us. Then we can try for a negotiated peace.”
Chapelle looked slightly mollified. POTUS went on:
“But if the Gimps come at us again, the fighters will get back to work. I can’t ask the Navy to take losses because we’re scared of using our most effective weapon system.”
“I suppose not,” the National Security Advisor said. “I only hope we don’t go past a point of no return. We might already have done just that.”
“You always were a hard sci-fi guy, Geoff,” the President said, trying to lighten the conversation a bit. “Are you turning mystic on us?”
“SF, not sci-fi, please. And I believe I can develop a properly materialistic hypothesis that explains everything we know and suspect so far. Warplings could simply be some sort of energy beings that derive sustenance from the sophonts they kill. The important thing is that they are trying to use us for their own purposes. If the testimony of Commander Genovisi is to be believed, those entities are largely inimical to us. Except for another faction that might be on the side of the angels. We have no way to verify her account, unfortunately.”
“I spoke with her, before we shipped her off to Xanadu,” Tyson said. “She didn’t seem crazy, but I wouldn’t set policy based on a junior officer’s report.”
“Of course, but we can’t discount it completely, either. In any case, our reputation as ‘warp demons’ is going to be set in stone after this war is over.”
Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5) Page 1
