Imperium: Betrayal: Book One in the Imperium Trilogy

by Paul M Calvert

  The information was also being shared amongst all the other pilots and the chatter from her squadron began to increase as the nervous flyers began to share their anxieties with each other.

  “Keep it down and focus, team. If we watch out for each other’s back then we will do fine,” she instructed, noting the chatter rapidly begin to subside.

  “That went well, maybe they do trust me,” she thought, allowing herself a self-satisfied grin inside the privacy of her helmet.

  Shortly afterwards the one hundred and fifty Marines and Pilots, making up the section Harris was assigned to, were thundering down a wide corridor linking the muster station to the closest entry point where the boarders had broken through. Nearing the closest hot-spot, her helmet began relaying the not too distant sounds of fighting and displayed tactical information setting out the enemy’s disposition. Ahead, a number of Marines were controlling their mobile shield generators, evidenced by a slight shimmering as the already firmed shields reacted with fine dust particles in the air. The deck underneath Harris’s feet trembled as the ships internal defences began firing at a large number of heavily armoured enemy Marines who quickly rounded the corner with their own mobile shields and began firing at the Imperial troops.

  The screens on both sides blazed brightly as they sought to dissipate the furious energies generated by the onslaught of both flechettes and particle weapons being discharged at each other. The standoff held for thirty seconds until it became obvious that neither side was going to have an advantage, at which point, almost as if the same order had been given to each side, both opposing forces began closing with each other, keeping the flaming and now pulsating shields ahead of them.

  For a few seconds, before the instruction for close combat configuration registered with her, Harris was transfixed by the display of raw energy being released within the confines of the corridor. She was acutely aware of how weak and light her legs felt, almost certainly due to the adrenaline surging through her body but knew this would pass once she began fighting. As if on cue, the feelings began to lessen as her suit reconfigured itself for close combat, forming a small shield and a long blade.

  Between the two opposing forces, pictures and displays in the corridor literally exploded off the walls from the intense heat generated by the energies clawing and chewing at the shields and as the space between them closed, the energies increased, charring the walls and ceiling until the shields met and neutralised each other in a blinding explosion which blew several Marines from both sides off their feet.

  Without thinking, and as if from a distance, Harris heard herself shout out her home planet’s traditional battle cry, then rushed forward with the rest of her fellow Marines and pilots to engage the enemy. Quigley and Coleman suddenly took positions to her left and right and within moments battle was engaged in a clash of arms and shields, swords rising and falling in the press of armoured bodies.

  With bodies surging and pressing around her, to Harris it seemed as if an age had passed, yet her suit showed only five minutes had elapsed since the fighting began. Breathing heavily, Christine could feel her arms ache from wielding her sword and shield, yet she daren’t lower her guard for an instant in the press of bodies. Distracted for an instant by a shout from Hinchin behind her, she sensed, but didn’t see the blow to her helmet that sent her crashing down into darkness.

  Alexander joined Admiral Frith at her command station and continued to follow the battles progress on its multiple displays. The situation remained grave and unless Frith could work a miracle, she knew the task forces fate would probably be decided before they had decelerated enough to make the Jump point.

  Fortunately, much-needed respite had been afforded to the defensive screens now the smart-missiles ability to co-ordinate their attack was being jammed. The number and frequency of missiles getting through to impact on the ships hulls had been significantly reduced, offering Dauntless and the remaining ships a slim chance of making the Jump point intact and under their own power. Both the carriers had been boarded by enemy troops and whilst INS Courageous appeared to have everything under control, for INS Glorious the situation was grave. Alexander had been watching the battles progress carefully, and now he was on the Bridge as requested, was curious to see what Admiral Frith wanted to show him.

  “Well, Janice. I’m here as requested. What was it you wanted me to see?” he asked quietly, not wishing to disturb the Bridge crew’s concentration by announcing his presence other than to the Cyber Warfare team.

  Frith turned and as she started speaking Alexander couldn’t help but notice a hopeful look on his Admirals face, which in turn brought an immediate flutter of anticipation to his belly.

  “Keep watching the two enemy carriers and their screen of escorting battleships, Sire. It won’t be long now. At first, I didn’t know if my gamble would pay off, but as the enemy Fleet has shown no obvious attempts at taking counter-measures, I might have just got lucky.”

  She paused, waiting for him to ask a question. When he didn’t she continued.

  “For the last forty-five minutes, Dauntless’s AI has been accelerating the fighters from Glorious away from the task force at an acceleration of 30-g. Any faster and too many of them would have suffered engine or structural failure. Stealthed and running silently without any active sensors, it would be difficult for such small masses to be picked up by the enemy unless they were very close, especially as I’ve dispersed them quite widely to mask their mass footprint.”

  Alexander thought he could see where this was going and for the first time since the engagement began allowed himself a glimmer of real hope. Not wishing to spoil her moment, he remained silent and let her continue without interruption, the only sign of his anticipation being the creaking of the command desk as his armoured left hand began to grip it tightly.

  “They’ve been on a long, looping trajectory back to the fleet and will be impacting on the enemy ships in a few moments.”

  Frith looked away from the screens and at her Emperor, pleased he’d not interrupted and gratified to see from his tense smile that he had grasped what would happen next.

  “The fighters are now travelling at just under thirty thousand miles per second, and with a mass of twenty tonnes apiece, on impact they will go through the enemy shields and point defences with little problem.”

  She finished speaking just as the first wave of fighters began impacting on the enemy capital ships, taking them completely by surprise. Their attack had been staggered, with each enemy ship being targeted with waves of fighters following closely behind each other. As the lead fighters struck, the enemies shields were sufficiently weakened to allow the following fighters to pass straight through and impact directly onto the hulls. In many cases, the overloaded shields failed completely. Clearly displayed on their screens, Frith and Alexander watched both enemy carriers visibly stagger under the attack, with one suddenly vanishing in an enormous explosion as its power plants catastrophically failed, surprising them both.

  The remaining carrier began to pull ahead of its screening battleships as its engines stopped decelerating, bringing it ever closer to Friths own diminished force where it could be finished off. In rapid succession, the enemies fleet began to come apart, with the majority of their remaining thirty-six ships all either demonstrating severe damage or catastrophic systems failures from the impact strikes. Two of the enemy Captains, either through luck or good judgement, had managed to divert their point defences towards the hyper-accelerated fighters in time to avoid serious damage to their ships, but already, Dauntless and the task force began concentrating their firepower on them, for now ignoring the other, more seriously damaged enemy. Once these two were destroyed, the remaining enemy ships would be re-targeted and finished off without quarter.

  To their credit, the Bridge crew remained silent, with little outward expression at their sudden change of fortune, yet the uplift in atmosphere around the huge room was palpable to everyone. Officers sat or stood a little mor
e upright at their stations, and even reports and instructions coming in from the ship’s AI sounded more confident.

  To her left Frith heard the Emperor exhale a deep breath, releasing the tension she too had been feeling. “It was a long-shot, Sire, and a very expensive one at that, but it had the desired effect, didn’t it?” Frith asked, her eyes bright with pent-up tension and emotion.

  “Twenty-eight billion credits well spent, Janice,” Alexander replied with a shine in his eyes that mirrored her own. “Although I can appreciate why this gambit hasn’t been tried before on such a scale. Using missiles is far, far cheaper than state of the art fighters and at seventy million credits apiece and a three-month replacement cycle, it’s thankfully not something we want to do on a regular basis.” He smiled broadly, years lifting from his face in a matter of moments, “But I think we’re worth it, however.”

  “In fairness, Captain Woods gave me the idea when he sent his fighters on suicide runs at the start of this engagement. I simply ran with it and added my own twist. I hope he and his remaining crew manage to save their ship.”

  With that, they both checked on the progress of Captain Woods carrier. Remarkably, it had almost managed to rejoin the main fleet, along with its last remaining interdiction frigate, INS Daring. Two of its accompanying hangers remained relatively intact and were in the process of docking. A number of boarding craft had rammed through into various points along both the main hull and into one of the hangers, and fighting was still ongoing as Marines fought off the attackers in the corridors and areas close to the entry points.

  The volume of missiles and slugs lessened sharply from what remained of the enemy fleet, enabling Frith to order Dauntless’s own fighter wings to be launched to assist in destroying the remaining ships. With no desire to capture or salvage any of them, each fighter would be armed with two powerful torpedoes which, when fired together, were capable of destroying an already crippled capital ship once its point defences were either destroyed or ineffective and unable to stop the torpedoes from reaching their hulls. The two relatively undamaged enemy battleships, that had avoided being struck earlier by the suiciding fighters, would be left to the rail guns and missiles of Dauntless and her two remaining serviceable Battleships, INS Warspite and Vanguard. Already their shields were softening under the combined assault and it would only be a matter of time before they would either have to try and flee or face destruction.

  Frith and Alexander began discussing whether or not to try and take one of the crippled enemy ships for examination, possibly enabling them to question any surviving crew or command staff. They knew valuable intelligence might be obtained as to who or what was behind the ambush, but the risk of sending Marines to board them would be immense. The ship’s AI might have been instructed to self-destruct in such an eventuality and both Frith and Alexander were loath to risk more Imperial lives at this point.

  While they talked the risks through, a report from Navigation came in, advising them of a disturbance in the Jump Point ahead. Breaking off their debate, both reviewed the incoming message, with Frith immediately requesting additional information from both the Helm and Science stations as to what it might mean. Almost immediately a report came back confirming that Sensor data indicated the Jump Point had become unstable sometime during the last few minutes. Asked what this meant, they responded by confirming the disruption would make it impossible to generate Quantum Attraction until it had subsided.

  “Timescales,” asked Frith of her staff, “Are we looking at minutes, hours, what?”

  “Unknown, Admiral,” came the reply from Science, “We’ve nothing in our database regarding this stellar phenomenon. It’s not been seen before and we have no idea how long before it stabilises enough for us to obtain QA between here and Imperial space.”

  “What happened to destabilise it?” asked Alexander, walking towards the Science station situated between Navigation and Engineering.

  “Sensors identified a small EM pulse of an unknown type originating within the QA point a few moments after our fighters struck, Sire,” replied the senior Science Officer.

  “Amongst all the communication chatter we identified a triggering signal coming from one of the undamaged enemy battleships. Our current hypothesis is a device was left at the Jump point as a fail-safe to keep us here in case the attack failed for any reason.”

  Alexander nodded, then turned back to look at Frith. “They could have triggered it at any point. So, even if by some miracle we’d managed to reach the Jump point, they would have had us trapped and effectively dead in the water?” he asked rhetorically.

  “It looks likely,” Frith replied, “we’ll work on that hypothesis and bear it in mind next time we Jump through into an unknown system. Now we know what to look for, our advance drones can be calibrated accordingly.”

  She turned to the Science station. “Keep monitoring and look for ways we can stabilise the Jump Point from here or find a workaround the interference.”

  Frith stopped talking and thought hard for a moment before continuing, “Will this stop incoming travel and outgoing communications as well?” she asked.

  “Unknown, Admiral, but the hypothesis is valid. We are stuck here until it clears but how long that will take is unknown.”

  Alexander remained outwardly silent but was having an internal debate with Vimes. “Anything in our private files, old friend? Something Josef might have turned up and filed away for future reference or perhaps information linked to the secret QA Drive that has been kept hidden?

  “I’m checking, Alex…there, I’ve found something. It’s here in his private notes into alternative Drives. He says, “An EMP of a particular frequency can upset the natural resonance of the Jump Point, resulting in a period of disturbance in proportion to the gravity field of the system.” Using his theory, I’ve calculated that, based on the mass of this system, it will take a minimum of four days to settle. Until then nothing comes in or out, including transmissions. I’ve checked the sensor logs and a resonant EMP of the required frequency was set off just after our fighters hit home. Had your quarters not been severely damaged and the IQA communicator destroyed, I could have used it to communicate with Capital and check the original database there for more information, as it’s not affected by what’s happened to the Jump Point.”

  Turning his attention back to the Bridge, Alexander sent a series of messages to the Helm and Science stations, telling them what to look for and the likely effect. Both sets of Officers quickly perused the data and exchanged looks, wondering how and where the Emperor obtained this information, before turning back to finding a possible solution.

  Reading the information herself, Frith turned to Alexander with a quizzical look, inviting him to respond. Moving close and leaning forward he quickly explained it was from Josef’s original work on QA. “Let them think their Emperor’s a genius, Janice. It’s good for moral.”

  Leaning closer still, Janice returned the whisper, “It’s a good job I know the truth then, isn’t it?” At which point Alexander burst out laughing and against all protocol, put his right arm around her and gave a hug, much to the surprise and delight of the Bridge staff.

  A little taken aback herself at Alexander’s show of affection on the Bridge, Frith quickly brought things back to the matter at hand.

  “If we are going to be stuck here for several days we have time to recover our escape pods and then see what we can salvage. I’m going to bring what’s left of the fleet together so we can harvest usable smart-metal from the crippled ones and repair the damage to our hulls”

  Back to his normal self, Alexander nodded in agreement. “I’m taking a battalion of Marines and heading over to INS Glorious to help repel those boarders. No arguments.” He hesitated for a moment before speaking again. “Well done, Janice,” and with that he turned away and headed for the exit, giving mustering instructions to Vimes as his suit began assuming combat mode.

  Damage reports from the remaining ships were being
collated by the flagships AI and presented to the screens and the tank in a rolling fashion, updating on the fly with estimated recovery times. To Frith’s eyes the news was mixed. Rodney and Repulse were both effectively space hulks unable to move closer to the Jump point and were venting atmosphere despite their repair crew’s best efforts. Shuttles were already being despatched to them and across to the remaining fleet to ferry survivors and bring them to Dauntless, where the injured could be triaged and treated. Turning her attention to her surviving carrier, acting Captain Cooke and what remained of her crew on INS Glorious, were fighting a battle of attrition against the boarders who, with nothing now to lose, were fighting with the desperation of warriors with nothing to lose, knowing their mother ships were gone.

  By the time Alexander reached the main hanger bay, three heavily armoured and unpressurized boarding shuttles had been prepped and each loaded with three hundred Marines, of which fifty on each ship were from his personal bodyguard. The last to board, he soundlessly raced across the flight deck, oblivious to salutes from the numerous ground crew. On reaching his designated shuttle, he launched himself up the steps three at a time before letting his suit finish its transformation at the docking station assigned to him at the front of the craft. Seconds later, the three shuttles lifted soundlessly from their cradles and accelerated away at three-G, making nearly everyone on board groan at the sudden pressure on their chests.

  With interior lights dimmed, the transition was marked from brightly lit hanger to the darkness of space far from the warming sun. An instant later they felt a slight shudder as the shuttle passed through the hardened shields. The exterior displays showed nothing apart from distant stars and a small bright dot that rapidly grew in size as the shuttle travelled the one hundred miles to INS Glorious in under three minutes. Heavily cloaked and stealthed, any danger from the few remaining smart-missiles was negligible, so the first part of the short flight passed without incident. Seventy seconds into the journey, the midpoint switchover warning sounded, alerting everyone to a few moments of normality before deceleration began.