Duel in the Dark: Blood on the Stars I

by Jay Allan

  Lille nodded. “Let us hope so.” A pause. “So tell me about Palatia, and about the Palatians. Are they as strange as rumors suggest?”

  “Indeed they are, Ricard. I have never seen anything like it.”

  “I have heard their culture is austere.”

  “Austere? I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat themselves with leather straps each morning. Their Patricians do live in considerable luxury…in a way. But I’d swear they manage to not enjoy any of it. However, their focus on military endeavors makes them perfect for our needs. They’re small, with ambitions that exceed their capabilities. They can hit the Confederation hard if they choose to, but they’re not fools. They’ll move slowly at first, probe the border.”

  “Anything they do is a help, Gaston.” Lille looked down at his desk, at the piles of reports stacked neatly to the side. “Planning an invasion is so much work, even for those in a supporting role like us. But I wager it can wait until morning…and I’d further bet you haven’t had a decent meal in months. Dine with me tonight? I would look forward to hearing more about the Alliance and its strange ways.”

  Villieneuve smiled and nodded. “I would consider that a mercy, Ricard. The leavings from your pantry would make a feast in the Alliance.”

  * * *

  Tom Warren ducked into a small alley, and dropped down behind a garbage bin.

  He was scared. He was scared shitless.

  He knew they were after him, but he couldn’t run any more, not without resting for a few minutes. It was summer in Liberte City, and the alley reeked, so much he had to force back a retch. But it was a place to hide, at least for a little while.

  He’d been an agent all his adult life, and he’d been in tough spots before. But all of that paled before running like a rat through the back streets of the Union’s capital city with a pack of Sector Nine agents on his tail. He’d thought he’d been afraid before, but now he knew what terror really felt like.

  He’d been in Liberte City for three months, sent there to investigate rumors that the Union was working to secure an ally in the war everyone knew was coming. He’d come with a few contacts, and massive amounts of cash for bribes, expecting it to go far with the deprived Union masses. But he’d never seen a population so effectively terrorized by its government, one that they would choose squalor and despair over any prospect of reward. He’d been there weeks before he’d managed to get anyone to talk to him, and even then the information he’d paid dearly for had been sparse, non-conclusive.

  He’d kept at it, but even as he did, he’d found his own courage failing. He knew the Union’s government was a totalitarian oligarchy, that the vast majority of its people had long been cowed into submission, but then he began hearing stories. Of Sector Nine. Of Level Zero, the maximum security section of their headquarters. Stories of small rooms with stone floors…and drains for the blood.

  He’d powered through the fear, and he’d finally gotten the evidence he needed. The Union had reached out to the Alliance, sought to bring them into the war.

  Warren had been surprised at first. He knew of the Alliance, of course, but they were far away, beyond the Unaligned Systems. And they were small, a growing power, no doubt, but not one that had registered on the Confederation’s list of plausible threats. Not until now. With everything mobilized against the Union, any other threat was deadly serious.

  His head snapped around, looking toward the street. He thought he heard footsteps. It was late, well past curfew, and that meant anyone out there was trouble. He froze, listening carefully, but there was nothing but silence.

  He felt a tiny wave of relief, and he took a deep breath. Then he heard it again. There was no doubt. Someone was out there.

  He looked down the alley. It was dark, just a single light hanging from the side of one of the buildings. He couldn’t see the end. Did it offer an escape route? Or was it a dead end?

  He heard the sound again, closer this time. There was no choice. He had to take his chances.

  He stood up, slowly, quietly, and he took one last look toward the street. He was about to turn around when he saw movement—someone was coming around the corner.

  The time for caution was over. He lunged forward, running down the alley, leaping over piles of garbage, broken crates. He passed by the light, and as he moved forward it got darker. He stared intently ahead as he ran, doing his best to avoid obstacles, but it was too dark now. He caught his foot on something, a broken piece of a chair, he thought. He tumbled to the ground, putting his arms out in front of him and feeling the pain shoot up to his shoulders as he landed hard on the pavement.

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, as he struggled to get up. He had to run, it was his only chance.

  No, you have no chance…

  He could hear the sounds behind him now. Footsteps, more than one pair.

  He reached inside his jacket as he stumbled forward, ignoring the pain that wracked his entire body. His hand closed around the cool plastic of the gun, pulling it out. It was a pistol, short ranged, underpowered. Its primary utility was its ability to foil detection devices.

  He thought about the firefight that was coming, and he knew immediately it was hopeless. There were at least half a dozen agents on his tail, and it was a dead level certainty they were armed better than him. If he fought, he might be wounded, and captured. And he knew what that meant.

  Level Zero…

  No, there was no point to fighting. But the gun could still be useful. It couldn’t get him out of this, nothing could. But it could keep him out of Level Zero. He knew he was going to die. There was nothing he could do to stop that now. But he could still decide how he died.

  He heard voices now, the agents yelling at him to surrender. They weren’t shooting. That meant they wanted to take him alive. And he shuddered at the thought.

  He took a deep, ragged breath, slowly raising the gun as he did.

  How does one do this? How do you make yourself pull the trigger?

  He heard movement, his pursuers getting closer. He wanted to delay, to buy even an extra minute of life, but he knew he was out of time. If they hit him with a stunner or a tranq, his death would be slow, agonizing. He had to do it now.

  He put the barrel of the gun against his head, and he tightened his finger, slowly, struggling to finish it. His mind reeled as images filled his consciousness, old memories, strange thoughts he hadn’t had in years. He wasn’t ready to die. But ready had nothing to do with it.

  He closed his eyes, focused on his finger. He could feel tears streaming down his face, and he was trembling. But then one last thought moved through his mind, and a small smile slipped onto his lips. The enemy had caught him, tracked him down…and now they would force him to take his own life. But they hadn’t stopped him. He had succeeded. He’d sent his messenger two days before. The Confederation would get its warning. He had accomplished his mission.

  His finger tightened all the way, and he heard a loud crack. Then darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  From the Log of Commander-Princeps Katrine Rigellus

  We’re about to enter Confederation space. I know little concrete information about the Confeds, but I find myself on edge, for reasons I can’t entirely quantify. The mission is dangerous, certainly, but that’s of no account. Still, its success is my duty. I must pay heed to my instincts, my experience. I must not ignore even intuition. I must be ready for whatever lies ahead.

  Those who command have decided on war with the Confederation. My purpose is to obey. The invasion hinges on my mission. The fleet awaits our success. I’ve been granted an honor, the forward position in the next struggle. I was born to serve my homeland.

  AS Invictus

  Ishelar System

  Alliance Year 58 (307 AC)

  “Launch a spread of probes. Full stealth protocols.” Kat was taking every possible precaution. Invictus had come through seven systems, and the next jump would take the battleship into Confederation space.

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nbsp; And that will be an act of war…

  “Yes, Commander. Passive scans are still negative.”

  Invictus’s commander felt the urge to use her active scanners. The new vessel’s suite had more than twice the power of Vindictus’s, enough to pull in data from half the system. But it was also like shining a bright light in the darkness…it would alert any ships that might be lurking out there to Invictus’s presence. And one transit from Confederation space, that wasn’t a chance she was willing to take.

  The systems she had passed through so far had been mostly empty, valueless save for the presence of still-functioning transwarp lines. The technology that had allowed man to create the faster than light links between worlds had been lost during the steady decline of human civilization leading up to the Cataclysm. The amazing portals between systems seemed almost like magic now, even, she suspected, to technologically advanced powers like the Confederation. The ancient lines dominated the strategic layout of human-occupied space, and the political entities and nations were largely based on links to other systems rather than actual locations in physical space.

  Kat leaned back in the command chair, still surprised after two weeks at how comfortable it was. Alliance culture tended to be hard, and excessive luxuries were usually frowned upon. But whoever had been in charge of Invictus’s final specs had ignored that tradition. The chair was upholstered in jet black Dhurallian leather, and it was plush and overstuffed. And the luxury went far beyond the bridge. The commander had a full office just off the control center, also luxuriously outfitted, and her quarters were downright palatial for a spaceship, four full rooms, richly-appointed.

  Kat had to admit, on some level she enjoyed the comfort, but on another it bothered her. Her family was enormously wealthy, but she’d been raised to be tough, to be a warrior. When she’d gone on camping trips, first with her father, and after that with Yuricus, they had hunted or fished for their own food, and if they’d come up empty, they went hungry. They’d slept under the stars, on the hard, cold ground, not in tents erected by servants. It was normal for wealthy children of the Alliance to be pushed in this way, and though it was often hard, it was the way. Soft chairs and plush, luxurious quarters seemed wrong…and the fact that someone involved in the design process believed otherwise suggested an erosion of Alliance values that made her uncomfortable.

  If Alliance discipline waned, if those who followed her failed to meet the demands of the way, her people would fall again, the shame of the past repeated. She imagined her children, grown but not warriors, soft instead, enslaved, tormented, as the people of Palatia had been. Her son, crucified, nailed to a large tree as an example to the other workers of the cost of rebelliousness. And her daughter, beautiful, but the fire in her sparkling eyes extinguished by the servitude and brutality of that was her life.

  She didn’t like the mission, not at all. She hated the idea of war with the Confederation, and the thought of allying with the Union, even for a short time, turned her stomach. But the way didn’t require her to like her duty, it only required her to do it.

  “Commander, we’re getting probe data. No contacts yet.”

  “Very well, Optiomagis. Continue probe sweeps and passive scanners. And prepare to initiate thrust at twenty percent.”

  “Probes continuing into the system, Commander.” A short pause. “Engine room reports ready for thrust on your command.”

  She stared at the main display for a few seconds. She didn’t really expect to find anything in this system. The primary was a massive blue star, an O type, she recalled from the mandatory astrophysics training she gotten in the Academy. Ishelar was a stellar curiosity, a rare hypergiant, but that was the extent of its utility. A young star, it was doomed to an early death as its enormous mass and high core temperatures caused it to exhaust its nuclear fuel at a rapid rate. There were three planets orbiting the star, Kat didn’t need her probes to tell her that…the system had been charted centuries, even millennia before. But none of the hot, rocky worlds had ever been deemed suitable for colonization or mining, and so Ishelar remained a system whose only utility was the ancient transwarp lines ran through it.

  “Initiate thrust at twenty percent, Optiomagis. Let us be cautious until the probe data is more complete.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Kat stared straight ahead, trying to ignore the knot in her gut. She wasn’t thinking about the Ishelar system and the vast emptiness she knew she’d find there. She was worried about the next jump…and whatever awaited Invictus beyond the border, in Confederation space.

  * * *

  “I’m definitely getting a reading from the transwarp gate, sir. Looks like a ship coming through.” Stan Poole paused, staring at his instruments. There was surprise in his voice, and on his face as he turned toward the ship’s commander. “And from the readings, I’d say it’s a big sucker.”

  Lieutenant Higgins shook his head, surprise pushing away the boredom he’d felt a few seconds earlier. “Check the schedule. Did we miss a freight shipment due from the Rim? Look ahead a few days. Maybe we’ve got one running early or something.” Higgins snapped out the questions because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he knew damned well there was no scheduled traffic, and certainly nothing as big as the ship that seemed to be coming.

  He’d been Stingray’s skipper for over a year now, patrolling the Rim border and monitoring incoming ships, what few there were. The Confederation maintained a trickle of trade with several of the Unaligned Worlds, but traffic was always slow, usually no more than one or two ships a month. And mostly free traders, small operator-owned vessels that risked the deep space journey to bring back exotic luxuries from the systems beyond the Rim. Certainly nothing that would qualify as “big.”

  “Okay, let’s get moving toward the gate and get a closer look. Three g’s. Active scanners on full.” Higgins held back a sigh. He’d managed to get himself assigned to the remotest corner of the Confederation, as far as possible from the looming war. Dealing with things like unknown ships was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid when he’d taken the posting.

  It’s nothing. Just a some kind of mix up.

  After all, what else could it be out here on the edge of nowhere?

  Still, there was no reason to be careless. Or to ignore procedure. “Send a flash com to Condor. Give them an update, and inform Lieutenant Childress we are moving to investigate.” Higgins wasn’t the bravest spacer in the Confederation fleet, he knew that much about himself. He hadn’t been above trying to find a quiet posting before the start of a war everyone knew was likely to be a holocaust. But he wasn’t a coward either, nor was he incompetent. And whatever was coming through the transwarp link, he knew it was his duty to check it out.

  He didn’t really think the ship would be a problem, more than likely just a foul up in the shipping schedules, or at worst someone trying to smuggle some embargoed shipment from one Rim system or another. But he understood the safeguards border protocols demanded too.

  “Yes, sir. Sending flash com now.”

  The bridge was silent, save for the faint sounds of the engines in the background. There were only three crew members present, and only eighteen on all of Stingray. Higgins’s ship was technically navy, but he knew his customs boat was far from a true warship. If it was something hostile coming through…

  “Approaching the transwarp portal, sir. Ship exiting now…”

  Higgins sat quietly, trying to ignore the fear building in his gut, despite all his self-assurances about what was coming.

  “Lieutenant, it’s through. Scanning now.” Then: “Lieutenant, it’s…”

  Poole’s voice told Higgins all he need to know. Trouble.

  “It’s huge, sir. Scanners are still chewing on it, but I’d estimate four klicks in length at least. And the power readings…they’re massive.” Poole turned and stared over at Higgins. “It’s got to be a warship, sir. A damned big one too.”

  Higgins froze for a few seconds.
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  A warship? But whose?

  Then he snapped out of his shock. It didn’t matter whose ship it was. It was here…and he was the Confederation commander on the scene. “Reverse thrust, Ensign Poole. Full power away from the contact.”

  “Yes, sir. Full thrust.”

  “Flash com to Condor…tell them we have an unidentified vessel coming through the transwarp portal. Include all scanner data. Com status Omega-Two.”

  “Yes, sir. Omega-Two protocols.”

  Omega-Two was the Confederation’s signal for a possible invasion. Higgins knew Lieutenant Childress would pass the warning through the transwarp com system.

  Higgins slumped in his chair, struggling to maintain his calm as panic began to creep over him.

  I didn’t put all that effort into this transfer to the Rim to end up staring down some mysterious battleship. Or to get blasted to atoms before a shot is fired on the real battle front.

  He shook his head, staring at the small, locked control panel on his workstation, the one that activated the Omega-One call.

  He moved his fingers over the smooth metal. He unlocked the small door, flipping it open. There was a button below, not red or yellow or any other color that spoke of war and strife and danger. It was black, the same as every other control on the bridge. But this one was special. If he pressed it, Stingray’s com system would send out a communications blast, one that had a single meaning.

  Omega-One. War.

  * * *

  “Contact confirmed, Commander. Small vessel, roughly five thousand tons, on a direct course toward us…no, scratch that. They appear to be decelerating. My guess is they’re trying to reverse their vector and run.”

  “I want their com jammed, Optiomagis. Now!” Kat stared at the display. The data was still coming in, but she was going on the assumption it was a Confederation patrol ship. It was no real threat to Invictus, at least not in a fight. But it could cause trouble with its com units. She had hoped to get much deeper into Confederation space before the incursion was detected. Running into a patrol as her ship transited was just bad luck. “Engage active scanners—I want to know what else is in this system. Full thrust as soon as possible. I don’t want them getting away to send any warning.”