by Ivan Kal
“This is Hasre patrol vessel Jughhnao. Identify yourselves and state your business in our territory,” the Hasre managed to say in a high-pitched voice.
Adrian smiled inwardly. The poor Hasre probably never even heard of the Empire, and if he had it was probably just in passing.
“I am Lord Sentinel Adrian Farkas-Reiss of the Empire,” he replied coolly. “I am here to speak with the person in control of this system. We are expected.”
“I will need to verify that. Keep your position until further notice,” he said, and Adrian could see a glimmer of relief in his expression.
“Of course.”
***
Several hours later, Adrian sat across from the person he had come to meet with—Administrator Jassail, she was the person in charge with the entire Hasre-Krashin border. A telepath, as his senses told him, though not particularly powerful—but Adrian assumed that she had other psionics as well. It had been agreed that she would be the one to deal with Adrian. The Hasre were willing to provide information and passage through their territory, but of course they wanted something in return. And Adrian was fairly certain that he knew what they wanted.
“My superiors have granted me the authority to make a deal with you, Lord Sentinel,” she told him.
“I’m glad to hear that. I was worried that we would be forced to wait here for someone who had the authority.”
“Well, since you didn’t give us an exact timeline of your arrival, they were forced to place someone here who could make such decisions. We, too, care little for wasted time.”
“That is great to hear. I am very anxious to get in contact with the Krashin,” Adrian said, and he saw her face twitch at his words. “You don’t believe that we will be successful?” he asked.
“I shall leave my thoughts for after we make a deal. Information such as you seek is not something that we are willing to give for nothing.”
Adrian’s lip curled up in a half smile. “Very well, since your people seem to value directness—tell me, what is it that you want in return?”
She blinked her large eyes several times. “We want an access point.”
Adrian nodded—as he had expected. “Done.”
The Hasre looked at him in surprise. “Just like that? No additional negotiations or attempts to give us something else?”
“Yes, an access point would benefit you greatly, but it would benefit us as well by opening trade between us. I have several locations of access points that we will be willing to open for you. Here.” Adrian put a small holo-device on the table in front of him and a map of several systems appeared. He allowed the Administrator to study them, and after several minutes she pointed to one.
“That one.”
“As you wish. My ship has a support vessel capable of giving you access to this point. It can leave for that system immediately—if you provide an escort, of course.”
“A moment,” she said, and she activated a small comm device that she pulled out from her belt. She relayed her orders.
“If you will notify your ship, they can leave as soon as your support vessel is ready.”
“I’ve already notified them,” Adrian said. He had used his implant to speak with the Herald of War while she had talked with her people.
Her comm chimed and she listened closely. “Good,” she said as she returned her comm device to her belt.
“Do you wish for us to wait for confirmation?” Adrian asked.
“I think not. I believe you are trustworthy. Let’s speak of the Krashin.”
Adrian leaned forward, looking her in the eye. “I need to know everything that you know about them. How are you interacting with them? How you manage to have a peaceful border with them?”
“There isn’t as much to tell, I’m afraid. The Krashin are mysterious. They are not like other life we have encountered. Our arm of the galaxy is far less populated than the others, at least according to what we have learned through our interactions with the Vurta. So during our explorations we have rarely encountered other life, but always we have had peaceful interactions. Until the Krashin.” She paused for a moment, looking uncomfortable.
“What happened when you encountered them?”
“We couldn’t communicate with them. They didn’t use any of the means of communication that we did. We tried everything, but never got any response. The first encounter ended with our ship destroyed, a single scouting vessel. Of course we were alarmed, so we sent more ships, both scientific that could try to communicate with them and military that could defend them. We found the Krashin ship that destroyed ours and attempted to communicate. We failed again, and we were forced to destroy it. Afterward we found out that another Krashin ship had been in the system and upon seeing the destruction of its kin, it turned away. Our fleet was frightened. We knew nothing about these species, and their ships were strange and powerful, although not much more so than ours.
“Our fleet followed, still trying to figure out a way for us to communicate. Eventually they were met with a Krashin fleet, one that had the exact number of our own. By then, however, our scientists had devised a way for us to communicate that they thought was worth attempting.”
“What was it?”
“Telepathy,” she said simply. “They built amplifiers that allowed them to speak across large distances.”
Adrian nodded. He assumed that it would be something like that. They couldn’t have known that it was one way for them to understand themselves without knowing each other’s languages. The People had made sure to design telepathy for every life form they altered, so that no matter how different two races were, they would be able to understand each other.
“We managed to make contact, but we were not able to reach a peaceful resolution. Even with a means of communication, understanding was very difficult. We met their fleet in battle. Our fleet won, just barely—most of our ships were destroyed, and the rest were severely damaged. Then another Krashin fleet arrived in system, and our people prepared to die. Instead, the Krashin contacted them, and after many days of our people trying to discern their communications, they managed to understand. The Krashin told them that the trial of the confrontation was satisfied, and asked our people for their terms.”
Adrian frowned. There wasn’t supposed to be any difficulty in them understanding each other—the People had designed telepathy as a type of universal communication.
“My people didn’t understand what they were asking,” she continued. “But still, they told them—they asked the Krashin to respect our borders and never bother us again. The Krashin agreed, and left. Since then no Krashin ship has ever crossed into our territory and no Hasre ship has entered theirs. We have never seen what they look like, only their ships, which look like giant life forms in space.”
Adrian thought about what he had just heard. Obviously the Krashin were very strange beings; but then again, he had known that already.
“You still plan on getting in contact with them?” she asked.
“Yes. This is informative, but it changes little.”
“Do you have the telepathic amplifiers? You will not be able to speak with them otherwise.”
“We do,” Adrian said. The Sowir had used the amplifiers to control their genetically engineered armies during their wars with the Empire and the Consortium. And the Empire had improved on them since then.
“You will not have a peaceful meeting with them,” she told him.
“Nevertheless, I will meet with them. You managed to make a deal with them. I shall do the same, no matter the cost.”
“Here,” she said, putting a small cube on the table, “this is all the data we have on the Krashin. Hopefully it will make a difference.”
“Thank you, I’m sure that it will,” Adrian said absentmindedly, but already he was thinking on the challenge in front of him.
Chapter Sixteen
November; Year 563 of the Empire—Erebus—Nauira territory
Ryaana stood next to the Ship Master in t
he Erebus command room as the ship exited the skim. They had spent the last several months slowly making their way to the location of the pirate base in Nauira territory. Their need for stealth prevented them from using trans-lanes—those were almost certainly watched, and an exit from trans-space was unmistakable. They had been forced to use slower hyperspace travel and to exit it far enough away from the system in order to remain undetected, and then use the skim drives to enter the system.
The first versions of the skim drives that the Empire developed had a large flaw: not only would the entrance or exit from skim light up every sensor in half the system, but the exit also released a very powerful electromagnetic pulse. The Empire had used it offensively before, but it had been another issue that had prevented stealth ships from using it actively. The current generation, on the other hand, had no such side effect.
As the Erebus left the skim, the holo in the middle of the room updated with sensory data. They were in their target system, a double-star system with a red dwarf star and a B-type main-sequence star. The system had only three planets, one of which was a large gas giant—that was their target. The gas giant had almost sixty moons and three extremely thick rings, which included several minor planets. There was nothing else of interest in the system. Not a single ship was being detected by the Erebus’s passive scans.
“Release six probes, and focus on the rings,” Ship Master Quas ordered, then turned to look at Ryaana at his side. “The coordinates are right in the middle of the ring.”
“Are we getting anything?” Inquisitor Jok asked as he stepped up to the holo.
“No, but we can’t risk going active with the scanners. We should wait and see if the probes find something before we take the ship there. My people assure me that the composition of the ring won’t affect our stealth, but I would not risk it yet.”
The inquisitor nodded in agreement. “I shall inform the platoons that we should be ready to go at the moment’s notice.” He glanced at Ryaana. “I assume that you will command the assault from the ground?”
“Yes,” Ryaana answered. She turned to the Ship Master. “Let me know as soon as you have something.”
“Of course, Sentinel.”
***
Aranis waited patiently with the rest of the soldiers in a large hangar area, taking great care to study their arms and armor. There were four groups—platoons, as they called them, each with twenty-eight people, with various races included. Most of the soldiers wore the same type of armor, a battle suit. He had received one as well. The memories that Vasily had of using something similar were not very clear, but with some help, he managed. A few soldiers in every group wore something that he had heard referred to as heavy battle armor, a large hulking suit that encased its wearer completely. Aranis guessed that it allowed for a greater protection.
The weapons they carried were various. Some carried plasma rifles like what he was familiar with, and others carried large weapons that required harnesses attached to their shoulders in order to be carried. Aranis was allowed to keep his own rifle, as it was deemed suitable, but he was given an additional pistol and plasma cartridges. The inquisitors had different armor than the suits they used previously—these ones seemed to have extra plates attached to important areas.
And then there was Sentinel Ryaana.
Her armor was the strangest. It had several hard pieces of plates, on her chest, back, forearms and shins. The rest looked like some kind of overlapping scales. She had no weapons in her hands, but there were things molded to both of her shoulders that Aranis assumed were weapons—he had seen them move in several directions. He had waited to see if she would take any additional weapons, but then he realized that she probably didn’t even need them. Their training sessions had been…illuminating.
He had held back, of course, keeping his true capabilities a secret, ‘“improving” himself as quickly as he thought was reasonable. But even so, she had surprised him, enough that he had started worrying about the future and the inevitable conflict between the Enlightened and his friend’s progeny. But later he had learned from the crew of the ship that she was one of the most powerful Sha users in the Empire and the Shara Daim—she was far above the rest. A few anomalies could be handled without problems; it would’ve been more a problem if they had hundreds of thousands of people like her.
Aranis believed that he had gauged her power accurately, but now he would have a chance to see her in action, and see what she could truly do in a combat setting. That was exactly the kind of information he had come here to find. Inwardly, he smiled to himself. Knowing one’s enemy is the first step to wiping them out entirely.
***
Jacob sat in silence and went over his equipment as they waited. The ship was slowly creeping toward the rings, as the probes explored and searched for the pirate base. They would need to act fast once they found it. He went over his comms with his implant, making sure that he was connected with Nkiruka, the platoon leaders, and the Sentinel. The overall command would be the Sentinel’s, of course, as she was the one person that had trained extensively for these kind of things, although she would depend heavily on the platoon leaders. Jacob himself had led several raids using local enforcement teams, but nothing like this. They had limited people, but theirs had equipment, training, and experience superior to anything the pirates could have. Yet they didn’t know exactly how big this base was, nor how many of the pirates there were.
“Inquisitor,” the Sentinel said as she walked up to him, startling him. He hadn’t noticed her approach.
“Sentinel,” he said.
“They’ve got something. Come,” she said, and walked over to the small briefing room attached to the hangar, followed by Nkiruka and the four platoon leaders.
Once inside he saw the hologram of the Ship Master sitting in one of the chairs, and the holo-table showing scans of a large rock, a minor planet. They all took their seats, and the Sentinel gestured toward the Ship Master for him to speak.
“There it is,” the Ship Master said. “The scans show it embedded deep into the rock, and the power scans indicate a fairly large facility. There are four open yards, and two closed. Two of the four are occupied by pirate ships undergoing repairs, and we know that there are ships in the closed ones, but we can’t tell what they are. As you can see here”—his hand went to the screen attached to his armrest—“there are three ships in positions above the base. Two are obviously pirate ships, converted merchants, nothing that should prove to be a problem, but the third is a Nauira heavy cruiser.”
Jacob looked at the holo. The two converts were rectangular ships, with turrets and armor plates welded to the hull. But as the Ship Master had indicated, the third one was a large ship, one about the size of the Erebus, though it was pointed in the front with wide, crescent-shaped wings at the back.
“So they know about the base,” Jacob said to the room.
“We can’t assume that just yet, as the pirates could’ve stolen the ship,” the Sentinel said.
“That is a modern Nauira cruiser. If the pirates had anything that could take that ship, we would’ve had much more trouble against them,” the Ship Master said.
Jacob agreed silently. “We might be right, but as the Sentinel said we can’t assume anything without more proof. What kind of a threat does that ship pose?”
“Nauira technology is some way behind ours. We should have no problems,” the Ship Master said.
“What’s the plan?” Jacob asked, turning to the Sentinel.
“We will need cover as we assault the base, and that means putting Erebus as close as possible to keep those ships off our backs. Their weapons might be inferior but they are capable of taking down an assault shuttle all the same,” she said. “I think that our best option is to breach the base through the open yards, and through here.” She pointed at a large stretch of hull. “If our scans are correct, there are several hallways running through there on the other side.”
“I agree. Two platoons sho
uld take the yards and two should infiltrate through there,” one of the Platoon Leaders said. “The platoons in the yards will probably draw the majority of their response. The other two should make as to penetrate as deep as possible inside the base. A priority should be their command center.”
“Agreed,” the Sentinel said. “Ship Master, we leave as soon as you get us in position.”
Chapter Seventeen
Erebus
Ship Master Quas sat nervously in the command chair of his ship cracking the knuckles of his lower arms. He had been in battles before—he was one of the first Trivaxians that had joined the Empire’s Fleet, and had seen the end of the Erasi war. But today he was going to take this new kind of ship to battle for the first time. His actions today would reflect on the feasibility of nano-ships in the future. He couldn’t fail.
“We are in position, sir,” the pilot reported.
“Weapons are ready, sir,” the weapons officer reported.
Quas turned to look at his second in command. “Is the system ready?”
“Cyber-warfare systems are ready, and we have tentative connections to the enemy systems,” Hassal reported.
“Engage the control systems,” Quas said, and used his imp to activate the system. A needle made the connection with his implant through the access port on the back of his head, and a moment later he felt himself make the connection to his ship. He could feel its systems, and all the information he needed flowed through his implant and was processed and passed on to his brain. He raised his arms and put them on the two orbs that rose on his armrest, and the second part of the system activated. Making the connection to his telepathy, he and the rest of his crew gained a link.
“Weapons target the two pirate ships, proton beams only, full spread,” Quas ordered with his thoughts. He would’ve liked to take the Nauira ship first, but it was awkwardly positioned behind the two pirate ships, and the Erebus’s priority was to cover the assault. Afterward, he could deal with the Nauira cruiser.
