Empire's End: Episode 2: The Outpost

by JP Raymond

  S OME PEOPLE ARE TOO DAMNED SMART. They understand things better. They make connections where others just see unrelated facts.

  This ability makes it possible for them to act in ways that seem mysterious to “normal” people. They move to the end faster. They’ll see the big twist coming a mile away, and everyone else is like, “How the hell did you know that would happen?” And they just shrug and tell you it was obvious.

  Too-Smart People cause trouble. Everyone else is just going about their daily lives, and some fucker who’s too smart for his own good figures something out he isn’t supposed to. He sees the connection everyone was supposed to miss.

  Sometimes, that’s okay. The thing they figured out doesn’t really matter. Or the Too-Smart Guy decides not to do anything with the information he has.

  But sometimes, it’s a real bad thing. They act on what they know, what they discovered. And if they’re not careful, it can change the course of people’s lives, of a whole nation.

  Of history.

  Episode 2:

  The Outpost

  G WEN CARTER STRETCHED AS SHE LEFT her sleeping compartment and wandered up to the bridge of her small, Space Ranger scout ship. She hadn’t slept well. It was probably the boredom. With no partner to talk to and no real action out here on the edge of civilization, her mind seemed to invent things to fear, things to worry about.

  She yawned and rubbed her bushy, natural hair, clearing a few kinky strands from her face. Then she dropped into the command chair and powered up the comms system. Maybe something interesting had happened while she’d slept.

  To her astonishment, it had. At the top of her messages was one marked, “Most Urgent” from the Grand Marshal of the Space Rangers himself. With a quick tap of the board, she opened it and read:

  TO ALL DEPLOYED RANGERS:

  THIS IS A PRIORITY-ONE ALERT. LANKWIN-CLASS FREIGHTER, CATAAN’S CLAW FLED IMPERIAL ARREST AT DAXAL. SUBJECT SHIP IS CARRYING ELOHIMAN HANEETA MOL, DAUGHTER OF IMPERIAL SENATOR IDRIB MOL, AGAINST HER WILL. VICTIM WAS KIDNAPPED AS PART OF TERRORIST PLOT ENGINEERED BY MANIFEST DESTINY.

  SHIP’S CAPTAIN IS BELIEVED TO BE GRAUR KITEKH GALESH. GALESH FAMILY WAS DISGRACED AND IS POLITICAL ENEMY OF SENATOR MOL. GALESH MAY BE INVOLVED WITH MANIFEST DESTINY FOR REASONS OF PERSONAL REVENGE. WELL-BEING OF HANEETA MOL IS NOT KNOWN. TERRORISTS HAVE MADE NO DEMANDS OR CLAIMS OF RESPONSIBILITY AS OF YET.

  CATAAN’S CLAW’S LAST-KNOWN DESTINATION WAS RIJAN IV, ALLEGEDLY TO SHIP GAS-MINING SUPPLIES TO MERCHANT COLONIES. SHIP HAS FAILED TO ARRIVE AND IS OFFICIALLY OVERDUE. SHIP’S HYPERDRIVE WAS STRUCK BY BEAMER FIRE AS IT ENTERED HYPERSPACE. AS A RESULT, COURSE MAY HAVE BEEN ALTERED OR ABILITY TO CONTINUE AT FTL SPEEDS MAY HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED.

  ALL RANGERS ARE ADVISED TO BE ON FULL ALERT FOR CATAAN’S CLAW. SHIP’S SPECS, REGISTRATION, AND CARGO MANIFEST ARE ATTACHED TO THIS MESSAGE, AS WELL AS AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR CONTACT WITH IMPERIAL FORCES BEFORE FLEEING DAXAL STATION. CREW AND SHIP SHOULD BE CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS – APPROACH AND ENGAGE WITH EXTREME CAUTION. CALL FOR BACKUP IF NECESSARY. UNLESS CONFIRMED OTHERWISE, TREAT ALL ENCOUNTERS AS THOUGH KIDNAP VICTIM IS ALIVE AND RESCUABLE. APPREHENSION IS HIGHLY PREFERABLE TO TERMINATION. PROCEED ACCORDINGLY.

  UPDATE CENTRAL COMMAND WITH ALL SIGHTINGS AND CONTACT. FIND THAT SHIP, PEOPLE. IMPERIAL SECURITY DEPENDS UPON IT.

  --ELOCUM HOORNN, GRAND MARSHAL

  Gwen blinked twice after reading the message. She read it again. In her seven months in the Space Rangers, she’d never seen anything like it. Partly, it was her assignment way out in the boonies. Partly, it was because Manifest Destiny hadn’t tried anything so bold as kidnapping a senator’s daughter before. A Priority-One Alert? Holy shit.

  Fucking Manifest Destiny. Leave it to a bunch of white guys to appropriate that term for a terrorist group. Even way the fuck out here in space, millions of lightyears from Earth in someone else’s empire, white men thought the universe belonged to them. Most of the human race was just trying to get along, trying to prove it belonged in the Empire, and a bunch of self-aggrandizing, assholes who thought they were too good to have to play by someone else’s rules was out there fucking it up for everyone. White people always overinflated their own sense of grandeur and suffering. Try four hundred years of slavery and institutional racism and then talk to her about oppression.

  They’d kidnapped a senator’s daughter? Did they really think that was going to make things better? With the Emperor dead and no quorum on the Council of Nine to choose a successor, the whole damned galaxy was one bad decision away from descending into chaos and war. Manifest Destiny seemed determined to hasten that process.

  Cursing them silently, Gwen called up her astrogation charts. She examined them carefully, searching for clues to where Cataan’s Claw might have gone.

  She shook her head at the name of the ship. She was utterly unsurprised the captain was a disgraced Graur. This Kitekh Galesh had named her ship after the greatest hero in Graur history. She clearly saw herself as some sort of mythic figure waiting to seize an opportunity for redemption. That she had allied herself with Manifest Destiny was a sign she had both poor judgment and an inflated sense of her own importance.

  Daxal was nowhere near anything important. It was a waystation, a hub for routing goods to and from the better locales of the Empire to parts less civilized. Gwen examined the route from Daxal to Rijan, looking for somewhere else Cataan’s Claw might have headed. There was nothing – no stars, no planetoids, not a thing between Daxal and Rijan or beyond on their last-known heading.

  Was it possible the beamer shot that had hit the hyperdrive had resulted in their destruction? If the drive had been damaged, navigating hyperspace was, at best, a fool’s errand. It was entirely possible – indeed, it was likely – they had been ripped apart by the physics-defying nature of hyperspace.

  If that was the case, all this was for naught. They would never be found.

  But that wasn’t the point. At the moment, they had not been presumed dead. So it was her job to find them if she could.

  She examined the charts again. If there was nothing along their last-known heading, and they had not arrived at Rijan, and they had not been lost in hyperspace, then the only logical explanation was that they went somewhere else. But where?

  There was no way to know. If they’d altered course or jumped to a different location and then set off for a new destination, they could be anywhere in the galaxy.

  That didn’t make sense either. Assuming they were alive, they had to be somewhere. Gwen considered what they knew: Cataan’s Claw had filed a flight plan for Rijan IV. They had mining supplies aboard, which gave them the perfect cover to travel there. Had they been attempting to jump to Rijan when the arrest attempt was made?

  Gwen tapped keys on her board and called up the report from the Imperial commander. She skimmed it until she got to the relevant information.

  Yes. Cataan’s Claw had been on a trajectory that would have taken them to Rijan IV. They were hit with a plasma beam as they entered hyperspace.

  So. If they were attempting to journey to Rijan, then it stood to reason the mining supplies were indeed a cover, and their Manifest Destiny contact was there. But they hadn’t arrived and were, in fact, overdue. Therefore, it was logical to assume that something had gone wrong when they entered hyperspace.

  Gwen closed her eyes and listened to the quiet hum of the ship’s generators. She let her mind expand, gathering in possibilities.

  A functional hyperdrive was necessary not only to enter and travel but also to successfully navigate hyperspace. If Cataan’s Claw’s had been damaged and she hadn’t been destroyed . . . she might have been blown off-course!

  Gwen op
ened her eyes and examined the astrogation charts again. What was near Daxal or Rijan in some other direction?

  Her eyes fell on the Horari Belt. It wasn’t even close to Rijan. But it wasn’t too far from Daxal, cosmically speaking. Cataan’s Claw would be considerably off-course if that’s where she’d ended up. But in relation to Daxal, it wasn’t unreasonable to think that’s where she could have landed.

  Gwen called up data on the system. An asteroid belt so thick her scout ship was about the largest thing that could safely navigate it, the Horari Belt was on the rim of the Empire. And it was a haven for pirates and other illegals.

  As soon as she read the information, Gwen was sure that was where Cataan’s Claw had gone. If they’d been blown off-course in hyperspace, they had a damaged drive. Horari would provide them the means to repair it and possibly do something with their hostage. Better yet, it was a no-questions-asked type of place where no one would be looking for them.

  She checked the belt against her current position. She wasn’t far.

  As the first human Space Ranger, no one in the command structure trusted or respected her. She’d made it through the academy and received her commission, but they had given her a shit detail. They’d sent her out to the edge of civilized space with no partner – either to guarantee her a quick death or keep her out of anything important. It was the same kind of discrimination she’d faced her whole life as a black woman back on Earth.

  Now, though, she was in perfect position to nail a gang of asshole terrorists. Perhaps this rotten assignment was about to prove beneficial.

  In fact, it would likely be critical to the entire human race. If the first human Space Ranger brought in these terrorists, it would prove that Manifest Destiny was a fringe group, that most of the race were decent people worthy of citizenship.

  And Gwen wouldn’t mind raising a metaphorical middle finger to her superiors who tried to bury her with a shitty post.

  She instructed the nav system to lay in a course for the Horari Belt. Then she strapped herself into the command seat.

  When the coordinates came up, she set the ship in motion, bringing the hyperdrive online and plotting a jump point. Twenty seconds later, she had one. With a few more taps of her board, the thrusters opened up to full, and her ship accelerated towards .3C.

  Gwen entered the final commands, automating the process. A minute later, she had achieved .3C. The hyperdrive engaged and flung her through the jump point and into hyperspace.

  She checked her instruments. At her current speed, she would be due at the Horari Belt in twenty hours. She prayed that would be enough time.

  JAQUAN FIRED THE BRAKING THRUSTERS AS Cataan’s Claw approached the massive asteroid belt. In the ten years he’d been in the Empire, he’d never seen one so thick and large. It was hundreds of miles long and at least fifty miles wide. The rock and space debris was bunched together so tightly, it looked almost impenetrable. Navigating the Horari Belt was going to be an even bigger challenge than he’d been led to believe.

  Kitekh arrived on the bridge just as JaQuan got their speed down to a safe .05C. Rorgun got up from the command chair and went to the tactical station.

  “Status,” Kitekh said as she dropped into her seat.

  “At present speed, we should penetrate the belt . . .” JaQuan consulted his instruments. “. . . in twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Captain,” Cooressa said from the comms station, “given our present vulnerabilities, I recommend we not actually enter the asteroid field.”

  “What do you mean?” Kitekh asked. “Coming here was your idea. We need to locate one of the mining stations so we can buy a new Myollnar Crystal.”

  “Yes,” Cooressa replied. “But we were able to repair the hull to only eighty-four percent integrity before traveling. As you know, the Horari Belt is difficult to navigate under the best of circumstances. With our hull partially compromised, piloting the ship through that maelstrom is, at best, imprudent.

  “Furthermore, we have a terrorist and a kidnap victim aboard. It does not seem wise to bring either so close to a station in the Horari Belt, given that we know them all to be criminal havens. We should determine a destination and then send the lander in with select personnel to acquire the crystal and bring it back here.”

  JaQuan sighed. He didn’t like the idea of splitting up the crew. They were vulnerable enough as it was without dividing their forces.

  But Cooressa had two good points. Maybe he could fly the ship through that asteroid belt. But it would be bad to find out he couldn’t. And Brody’s little kidnapping stunt was sure to cause serious trouble if anyone found out about it.

  “Where then?” Kitekh asked.

  “Sigba,” Rorgun said, sounding grim.

  “Are you sure?” Kitekh asked.

  JaQuan turned in his seat and stared at the captain and first mate. What was going on here?

  “It’ll be our best bet to find what we need,” Rorgun said.

  “What’s Sigba?” JaQuan asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  “Sigba Station,” Rorgun said. “Colloquially known as ‘The Outpost.’ It floats between three large asteroids. Ostensibly, it’s a supply station for ore miners. But it’s basically a criminal hub. It’s the place out here where everything is for sale.

  “The Outpost is the hardest place to reach in the entire belt. The approach is shifting and deadly. Only an agile ship can make it without suffering at least one collision. For this reason, even the Space Rangers don’t bother to patrol it.

  “And that means the harrowing task of getting there is the easiest part. No police, no Empire means it is utterly lawless. We can probably find a crystal there, but we will struggle to get out alive with it.”

  JaQuan blinked at him. Was he serious?

  “If it’s that dangerous, then why would we shop there? Why not look somewhere else?” he asked.

  “I can virtually guarantee we will find a Myollnar Crystal for sale at The Outpost,” Rorgun said. “I cannot be certain we would be so fortunate elsewhere.”

  “And if we have to jump from place to place to place, looking, word will get around the belt that there is a vulnerable freighter out there with an inoperative hyperdrive,” Kitekh said. “That will draw pirates. Or worse.”

  JaQuan wanted to vomit. Ever since he’d run into Brody on Daxal Station, his life had been swirling out of control. Everyone’s had. Working on Cataan’s Claw had been a good, stable job. Now, it was sounding more and more like a death sentence.

  No one spoke for several seconds. They all contemplated the risks and ramifications of journeying to The Outpost.

  “All right,” Kitekh said at last. “JaQuan, find Sigba on the charts and plot a course that gets us close. Rorgun, you know The Outpost best. Organize a landing party. No more than half the crew.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  JaQuan sighed. He tapped commands into his board, asking the nav system for a heading. Shaking his head, he hoped the solution wasn’t worse than the problem.

  THERE WERE A DOZEN STATIONS FLOATING among the asteroids of the Horari Belt. None of them had a good reputation as a safe place to travel or where the rule of law extended more than a few feet from the people in charge.

  But if Gwen had learned anything out here in the backwoods of the Empire, it was that The Outpost was just about the most anarchic, ruthless place in the galaxy.

  The Space Rangers took a casual approach to patrolling the Horari Belt as it was. They kept an eye on it. They put in a few appearances to remind the outlaws working there that the Empire could do something about their activity. If it wanted to.

  It wasn’t the same for Sigba Station. Nestled in the thickest part of the belt, it was hard to reach under the best of circumstances. And the difficult approach and utter lawlessness of the place contributed to an unofficial policy of looking the other way. Even the officers in her command who didn’t like Gwen – which were most of them – warned her against messing with The Outpos
t.

  Don’t go there, they’d said. If you value your life, leave The Outpost alone.

  Gwen couldn’t think of a more logical place to take a kidnapped senator’s daughter. The Imperial Star Force couldn’t reach it, and the Space Rangers refused to even approach it. Whether they would go because they had a damaged hyperdrive or because this was their prearranged plan, Gwen was certain The Outpost was Cataan’s Claw’s destination.

  Getting here had taken some tricky flying. The asteroids swirled and bounced as though they were programmed to attack invading ships. Gwen had weaved in and out of the rocky maelstrom and had been unable to avoid two separate collisions. Fortunately, they were both with small asteroids, and the damage to her ship had been minimal. Her diagnostics programs indicated a small dent on one of her aft panels was the worst that had been done.

  She’d parked herself behind a large asteroid where she could stay reasonably hidden and still give her scanners a view of Sigba. Eight ships were currently docked at the facility. Only one of them was a Lankwin-class freighter, but it wasn’t Cataan’s Claw. Gwen had surreptitiously hacked its comms system, and it was registered as Cosmic Joke, an ore-hauler owned by an Elohiman named Guralian Tur.

  Gwen had beaten Cataan’s Claw here. That was good. She could wait and observe. Once the ship arrived, she could assess the situation and decide what to do next.

  For the time being, staying put seemed the best strategy. A cop landing on The Outpost would cause a huge stir. She didn’t need the terrorists getting wind that the station had been compromised before they arrived. If she revealed her presence too soon, they might alter course.

  But they would come. Gwen could feel it in her gut. And when they did, she would be ready.

  JAQUAN TOOK THE BEAMER PISTOL SHINZAA handed him and strapped it on. The Levi’s, t-shirt, and leather jacket he wore felt much more comfortable than the ship suit he typically had on during space flights. The latter was infinitely more practical with its auto-heating and –cooling, depending on his body’s needs, and its vast array of pockets and tools.