Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6)

by Timothy Ellis

  “Confirmed.”

  I waited for the ship to be reconnected to the shipyard, picked up Nut, and headed down to my suite to freshen up.

  Instead, I flaked out on the bed, and went to sleep.

  The girls were still celebrating when I went in for a late lunch, and I had another nap during the afternoon.

  Now all we needed was some idea of where George was.

  Twenty Three

  We feasted.

  The food was all fresh, and hand cooked, which was a novelty for me, being used to processed food and butlers delivering on demand. The flavours were different, but mostly pleasant.

  The local beer though. If this planet needed export income, the beer alone would make them wealthy. Assuming they made it in big enough quantities. Curious to find out what other taste sensations they had to offer, I found the local brandy was also going to be a big hit, and to my surprise, they did a more than passable Irish Mist. I made a note to pass that onto Dreamwalker when I got back home, to pass onto Rockmonster, one of his pilots. Young she might be, but her plea for a decent Irish Mist had made it round the fleet faster than normal gossip did.

  By the time the feast wound down, I was quite happily drunk, but I’d also learned a lot about this planet. There was no central government here, just a set of far apart kingdoms, who traded with each other. The locals did the brandy, and they imported the beer and whiskey. They had tech, but didn’t let it impact the planet. They didn’t, however, want to tell me how their shields worked.

  As far as I could determine, only this city was under attack so far, but reports had started to come in of encounters with the plants elsewhere on the planet. The word had gone out about how lethal they were, but too late to stop casualties. Needless to say, the entire planet was now aware of the fleet in orbit, and the danger they now faced.

  I also learned there were two distinct types of people here. The short ones were in the majority, but the tall ones had a much larger percentage of warriors, and they accounted for the majority of the knights. The short ones in the military did more guard work and were regarded more as infantry, who rarely went beyond the walls. The knights ranged far afield, keeping threats as far from the cities as possible.

  While I didn’t see a class structure, I had to wonder if there was one. There were tall infantry, but I hadn't seen any short knights, although I was told they existed. Although it could be as simple as the short knights having their own units, and mixing them was a bad idea if the shorts couldn’t keep up. Short legs would have to run to keep up with tall strides. It had been damned hard for me, and I wasn’t that much shorter.

  As far as they knew, or were telling, I couldn’t say which, they were the same species, but at some point in their past, there had been a splitting of the population. One group grew taller, the other shorter. It sounded like rubbish to me, but then, genetics isn’t my thing. Sim sat frowning through the whole discussion, and I suspect she’d spotted exactly what didn’t seem right to me, but hadn't yet said anything. And it certainly wasn’t the time or place to ask questions about such things. And of course, me getting drunk wasn’t helping.

  Gor put me to bed.

  I woke in the morning with a massive, if not particularly unexpected, hangover. Fortunately, hangovers were something my medical monitor could handle, and within minutes of waking, I was fully sober and clear headed. Sim had to demonstrate how the plumbing in the bathroom worked, and after a long hot shower, I started feeling normal again.

  The suite had three bedrooms with en-suites, and a sitting room. Sim and Gor had mussed their beds up to look like they’d slept in them, run the showers to simulate having had one each, but had sat in the sitting room all night. Whatever repairs had been completed back at the ship had allowed them to reconnect at this distance. The wing was back on Gorilla, but the ship wasn’t ready for flight yet, let alone battle.

  We did however now know what was in orbit. Sim had managed to get a comnavsat up there without it being detected. As I’d suspected, there was but a single fleet, minus one cruiser, and it was mainly destroyers, so essentially recon. They were firing down on multiple places on this continent, but were not being any more successful anywhere else. The good thing now was, when an invasion fleet arrived, we’d get a good five hours warning. While the comnavsat was in a geostationary orbit, it wasn’t able to see the whole planet, but it was good for seeing past the planet in all directions, with only a minor blind spot, and it moved discreetly periodically to cover it as well. Knowing the plants, I was expecting the next fleet anytime now.

  The door chimed, and I waved away the screen I’d been using for the comnavsat feed. Sim opened the door to find a knight on the other side, come to escort us to breakfast. Sim and Gor declined, but I followed along. Not eating breakfast was Jon’s thing, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon, so them begging off wasn’t an eyebrow raiser. And given the internal mess they had to deal with after having eaten the night before, I knew they preferred not to. I mean, when you didn’t need to shit, why would you deliberately force yourself to have to? No brainer. I wish.

  I was led to a barracks mess very typical of any barracks mess, and was seated next to Willow. She grinned at me.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Not a good way to wake up, but back to normal already. How’s yours?”

  “Never better. While our shorter brethren seem to react the same way you do to alcohol, my people seem to have a tolerance for it. So I can drink you under the table any time I choose.”

  “Only if I allow it. My people have the ability to neutralize alcohol if we want to.”

  “So last night you didn’t want to?”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve felt comfortable enough to let myself get drunk. So yes, I let myself enjoy it. On that subject, if your people decide to trade with the Imperium, I can tell you your alcoholic goods will be well received. Each of the members does their own, and I’ve sampled a lot of them, but yours are something else.”

  “I’ll pass that along.”

  Breakfast was slid in front of me, and I looked at it suspiciously. It looked like scrambled eggs, but the colour was a light purple. I tentatively tasted some, and it was scrambled eggs. I looked around for salt, and Willow passed me what turned out to be a salt shaker. I shook some on, and a screen popped up telling me it wasn’t plain salt, but was in fact a form of mono sodium glutamate.

  “Is that your normal salt, or just a preference?”

  “Normal salt, why?”

  “It’s a form of flavour enhancer for my people, used very sparingly these days, since a lot of people are either allergic to it, or intolerant. There’s probably an export market for your version, since this is a lot more tasty with than without, but it’ll need a warning label on the packaging, at least for my people. I can’t speak for the rest of the Imperium on this one, though.”

  “Again, I’ll pass that on. So you really are interested in trade?”

  “Personally, no. I’m a warrior, not a shop keeper. The Imperium prefers to trade with whoever we can. But where beer is concerned, I prefer to drink the best. Where it comes from is not relevant. Yours is good enough for me to want to lay in pallets of the stuff just for my own ship crew’s consumption. Before I go I’ll want to figure out how I can buy some takeaway. And while the Imperator isn’t much of a beer man, I can see him wanting to keep some around as well.”

  “You know your Imperator personally?”

  “Sure do. He saved my life and those of my team on the day we met him. Never seen anything like it. His first day in space, he wasn’t even the pilot, and even though seriously hurt, he killed the pirate who’d been about to kill all of us, and towed our ship and others with his own ship seriously damaged, to the nearest station before he collapsed. We made a lot of effort to recruit him, but in the end, he recruited us instead. Another time, the team managed to get themselves buried, and he dug them out the only way he could at extreme risk to himself. He’s a close person
al friend, as well as being my boss.”

  “So he’ll be looking for you?”

  “Personally? Probably not. There is a war on, and he has skills no-one else has, which will be keeping him busy. But someone will be looking. Probably my team, depending on if they’re needed elsewhere. The main problem is, they have no way of finding me unless I can get a ship out to find a way back to our space.”

  She looked at me speculatively.

  “And what if we refused to allow you to send the ship?”

  I looked at her.

  “I’d be narked.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Seriously pissed off.”

  “So you’d react badly?”

  “Me? Probably. Depends on why. Sim and Gor on the other hand, you really don’t want to upset them.”

  “Why not?”

  I thought about how to respond. She waited for me.

  “Let’s just say Sim has a family who will never stop looking for her. And Gor has major reasons for wanting to go home. And both of them are significantly more lethal than I am.”

  “And you?”

  “My team are coming for me. Have no doubts about it. I’d hope to find my way home on my own, but if I don’t, they will find me sooner or later.”

  “You seem sure of that.”

  “I am. But let me put it another way. If enough time goes by without me being found or finding my way back, the Imperator himself will come looking for me. And if he finds you stopped me from leaving, he’s going to be pissed.”

  “And why would I be concerned about that?”

  “Because what’s in orbit now, is nothing at all compared to what we can put in orbit. And my friend is lethal in one on one combat. I haven’t figured out what sort of knight code you have yet, but if you joust, or otherwise fight for honours, you don’t want to face Jon. Even your best would lose. Put him outside these walls with your whole company between him and me, and he’ll cut a hole in your wall over the bodies of your dead.”

  “You make him sound like a tyrant. Or a monster.”

  “He’s not. He’s a very reluctant leader, who we forced to be one because he’s so very good at it. He’s the sort of person intelligent people want as an ally. Everyone who has stood against him, has died, or ended up incarcerated. He’s one of the nicest people I know, but he does what has to be done, and resolves his karma about it after.”

  “Karma?”

  “What you put out is what comes back to you. Actions have consequences. I’m not a good person to talk to about this. But if you meet Jon, he’ll be happy to enlighten you.”

  “I think I know what you mean. Some of our people have a ritual for after combat, where they forgive both sides of the conflict.”

  “Along those lines, yes.”

  “So we better let you leave?”

  “Yep.” I grinned at her. “But why would you want to stop me?”

  “We like our isolation. As I told you before, we moved here a long time ago to get away from the tigers who wanted to enslave us, and when we objected, started hunting us for sport. It took us years to find this place, and many are not at all happy it has been discovered by not one species, but two. Arthur we learned to trust, so we let him leave.”

  “Isolation tends to be fatal in the long run. The galaxy continues to evolve, and even if you do find an isolated place, someone is going to move in nearby if enough time goes by. And it appears it has.”

  “Perhaps. But we do not need to allow contact.”

  “True, but you’re going to need a good space fleet to stop it.”

  “We have the means of building such. But we’d prefer to be left alone without needing to kill.”

  Knights who didn’t want to kill? Who were these people?

  “There is a way. We can link you to the Imperium for trading, and at the same time stop ships from being able to enter this system. Only three people can do the former, and only the Imperator can do the latter.”

  “So we should make nice to you in order to curry his favour?”

  She was grinning again.

  “Damn right.”

  Twenty Four

  Talk turned towards defenses.

  She seemed to accept the Trixone were coming in force as given. Their shields had already been changed to burn up anything solid coming down on the top of the city, and over the area behind the walls. If the plants tried parachuting troops in again, they were going to regret it.

  The bad news was they couldn’t shield the top of the walls themselves. Why wasn’t offered, but obviously it was something to do with the nature of the shield generators. It meant the walls had to be defended the old fashioned way, like everyone else. I made it quite clear the plants could climb the walls without needing ladders, siege engines, or tech help. Willow gave orders to mobilize the entire garrison.

  Now didn’t appear to be the time to ask why they needed a garrison at all. The kingdoms were at peace with each other, were way too far away to even grind against each other, and garrisons appeared to be redundant. But apparently they all had them.

  The word had gone out to all outlying areas already, and farming communities were either heading for cities as fast as they could, or somewhere they could both hide, and defend easily. Again, I wondered why defensive positions were readily available on such a peaceful world. Could just be paranoia held over from centuries before, being hunted by tigers, but my gut said this wasn’t the only reason. But now wasn’t the time to ask.

  Willow led me to the city’s armoury, where I was surprised to see only swords, spears, and a kind of transparent shield. Since her knights only carried swords, I guess this wasn’t surprising, but unless they were going to field more troops than they had swords for, the city was doomed.

  My expression must have said as much, as she burst out laughing, and led me into another much larger room. They didn’t have laser weapons, but they did have large gatling gun like slug throwers, too big to be carried by any one person. And while these seemed out of place with their actual level of tech, when I was shown a demonstration of one, it was very obviously more in the way of rail gun tech, than machine gun tech. Once again, I wondered why their arms development had gone this way, when these things were completely unsuitable. Although, for shooting at fast running tigers, it would give the tiger a run for its life.

  Actually, they weren’t very suitable for shooting plants either, but as I was then shown, a single slug went a long way, and anything solid, like tree trunks, was shredded by the impact of many fired rapidly. Hose them across a mass of Trixone like they tended to attack with, and they’d be just as effective as my own guns were. And according to the armoury master, the solids would bounce when they hit the ground, and continue like a flat stone skipping across water.

  Orders went out to distribute as many as possible along the top of the walls, which already had a number in permanent positions, but plenty of space for more of them. While we’d never seen a Trixone in water, I wasn’t going to categorically rule out them landing over the water, and wading in. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the damned plants could swim. So even the water side was receiving an upgrade.

  By lunch time the walls were ready for a siege. They had a truly unbelievable amount of ammo for the rail guns, which was still being distributed, but my feeling of impending doom was only getting worse.

  “Best guess,” I asked Willow, “for how many plants you can stand off, and how long you can hold them off the walls?”

  “Two thousand at a time, and indefinitely.”

  I sighed.

  “What?”

  “How many major cities?”

  “Ten really big ones like ours. Another twenty smaller ones. When we came here, we deliberately spread our people out. Why?”

  “Because we’ve seen planets with fifty thousand on a single continent. And they washed over everything but the kind of defenses you have here, and some of them didn’t hold either. We know one tiger planet that lost most
of its population in a few days, with the exception of one small city who ran for caves, and fortified them enough to be still alive when we arrived. And even they wouldn’t have lasted more than another day, if we hadn't arrived when we did.”

  She was starting to look concerned for the first time.

  “And those were mainly colonists,” I went on. “Not soldiers. We might get colonists if we’re lucky. But that lot we came across the other day were definitely soldiers. Might have been a recon team, or might indicate what’s coming. Either way, that entire open area in front of the walls is going to be a solid mass of plants when they hit the walls. Are you going to have enough firepower to repel them?”

  She sighed.

  “Probably not. What else works against them? Fire?”

  “Well obviously, but only a massive amount of it is effective. We have mages who can throw fireballs, but they move in groups of ten to be effective. Some of the locals we’ve supported used hand held flame throwers, but it took platoon numbers to be effective.”

  “Has anyone won using swords?”

  “We did early on. But not facing those kinds of numbers. It’s why we developed the guns we did. We tend to find large numbers of the plants with us in small groups. If you have the troops, and they’re protected from the stingers fully, swords will do the job, but not quickly. But that’s assuming they don’t bring heavy weapons, and we’ve been seeing some of them lately.”

  “How heavy?”

  “Enough to put down a tiger in one hit. Enough to drill a head sized hole in a rock. Maybe enough to take out the guns you put on the walls. But what we’ve seen so far have been short range, so as long as you can keep them out of range of the guns, or figure out how to sniper shoot those with them, you should be fine.”

  Unless they sent a lot of them, and I wasn’t going to even think about that.

  “Hmmm.”

  She started giving more orders.

  By midafternoon, the walls were supplied with accelerants in easy smash containers, which could be pushed over the walls by short soldiers with long halberds. The base of the walls for a hundred meters out was now covered in similar containers. On top of the walls, there were now firepots already lit, along with racks of bows and arrows.