by Damon Alan
“Highly effective,” Dayson said. “Now what, Captain?”
“Now we go teach them some manners if they haven’t learned the truth of what we’ve told them,” Heinrich replied.
“They’ll be in complete disarray,” the admiral said. “Just guessing on my part, of course, but what they’ve just seen is all new to them. As far as they know, we’re using magic.”
“Aren’t we?” Harmeen asked.
“I don’t care what you call it,” Heinrich said. “I just care that it’s on our side. They’ve had nearly half an hour to debate. If either of the cruisers are powered when I jump in, I will destroy one and take the other.”
Dayson raised an eyebrow at her.
“You told me to run this, Admiral. This is how Inez Heinrich does business.”
That elicited a smile, raised eyebrows, and a nod.
“Emille,” Heinrich said.
“Yes?”
“Jump us to the enemy.”
On the viewscreen the stars changed once more.
Chapter 10 - Battle Proven
18 Jand 15332
Observing the process while another ran things was hard for Sarah.
Heinrich’s tactics were sound, in fact, they were extremely effective. Of course it would be hard to lose with such an overwhelming ability as the adepts brought to the table.
It pleased Sarah that Heinrich was not overconfident. It was smart to send the fighters in first, both to soften the enemy up with minimal risk, and to intimidate the two larger ships into surrendering.
The Michael Stennis appeared behind the two remaining cruisers of the syndicate fleet. The burning hulks of five destroyers listed aimlessly as debris expanded in glowing clouds. The shattered remains of the warships were lifeless and no longer a threat.
The two light cruisers were powered down. That really surprised Sarah. Usually the soldiers of a tyranny, as she understood it, feared their tyrant more than death.
“Jam their radios,” Heinrich ordered. “If they have entanglers, we’ll never know, but let’s not make their calls home easy.”
“ECM at maximum strength,” Seto replied. “I’m jamming their radios on all frequencies.”
“Get me a laser lock, I want to talk to our pompous Captain now,” Heinrich said. “Weps, put a lock on them to let them know they’re a half second from being ended.”
At this range, just under forty kilometers, there would be no lag. Even the railguns would reach the enemy in about half a second.
“You want to talk to him Admiral?” Heinrich asked.
“No, you have this, Inez. Great work.”
Heinrich was nonreactive to the praise. She simply hailed her prizes. “Kurig, you agree to an unconditional surrender on our terms?”
“For now, Stennis. There are warships on their way here. I don’t know how you’ve done what you’ve done, but you can only have so many missiles.”
“Your statements are irrelevant to us, make no more of them. Prepare to be boarded,” Heinrich said. “If you harm our people, or even make them unhappy, I will blow you into dust without hesitation. Am I clear?”
“You’re sending marines?” Hozz asked.
“You will receive one shuttle per ship,” Heinrich responded. “Expect us to launch within ten minutes.”
Her XO signaled Seto to cut the link.
“Well he’s profoundly confused right now,” Sarah said.
Heinrich called Emille. “Emille, I am launching shuttles to the enemy ships. I need you to have two adepts on each shuttle. One to help you move them to Oasis, and one to destroy any resistance if there is any.”
“Consider that done,” Emille said, “I’ll have them go to the standard shuttle bay.”
A few minutes later two small craft launched from the Stennis. Twenty minutes after that they docked in the bays of the light cruisers.
“Are they on the deck?” Heinrich asked Emille.
“They just locked their magnetic struts,” the adept replied.
“Then I don’t see any reason to stay here any longer,” Heinrich said. “Take us and our prizes home so we can interrogate our prisoners.”
The stars vanished. The Tapestry once again spanned the sky, majestic and feeling more familiar than even the skies of Mindari had.
Sarah grinned. She’d gone native. She loved this place.
Chapter 11 - Captives
18 Jand 15332
“The second light cruiser is powering up,” Harmeen said. “Their weapons systems are going active.”
“How long before they fire?” Sarah asked.
“Thirty seconds, best guess. Their reactors take time to come online.”
“Lock the target, relay the data to weapons,” Sarah ordered.
“Wilco,” Harmeen replied.
“And the Kurig?” Sarah wondered.
“Still at minimums,” Harmeen answered.
“Then target the first ship only,” she ordered.
The situation wasn’t to be taken lightly. A light cruiser could do a lot of damage very quickly, particularly at forty kilometers distance. There wasn’t time to hesitate.
Sarah keyed her microphone. “Laser crews, open fire on the cruiser we’re pushing to your gun stations now,” she said as she pointed at Harmeen to complete that task for her. “Make sure it doesn’t get a single shot off.”
Before Sarah had even finished her last sentence the laser weapons of the Stennis were firing. Violet beams lanced out and smashed turret domes and railgun stations. The hull of the cruiser was opened to space in dozens of places along its length.
It pained her to see it. She’d thought Inez had brought two fully functional ships to the Oasis system. Now, instead, they were at least partially wrecking one of them.
“Kurig?” Sarah asked.
“Still cold,” was the answer.
She sighed. The second ship still wasn’t powering down. “Emille, what’s the status of our people?”
“The two adepts on the hostile ship are preparing to melt an opening into space so their shuttle can flee,” Emille said. “The pilot is in complete agreement with them. They already killed a few dozen soldiers inside the hangar bay.”
“I bet that was ugly,” Heinrich muttered.
“Tell them to get out now,” Sarah ordered Emille. “We’re about to demonstrate our resolve to Hozz.”
Sarah watched her sensor readouts as part of the resisting cruiser lit up orange and one of its fusion reactors stuttered as it struggled to produce power. The adepts were stealing heat from it, she was certain. Seconds later the hull surrounding the shuttle bay slagged away and explosive decompression pushed orange-yellow hot metal into space in a spray of sparks.
Then a shuttle darted from the debris, racing away from the stricken vessel in a straight line.
“The Kurig is contacting the other vessel on an open frequency, Admiral,” Seto said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“— Commander Ty, you are to power down immediately. You cannot win. You are ordered to comply.”
The reply was quick, and filled with a hateful tone. “Traitor, Hozz. You commoner trash. I will not disgrace my family.”
“Fanatics. End their ability to do anything,” Sarah ordered. She keyed her mic. “Ship to ship railguns, open fire. Incapacitate the marked target.”
The Stennis shuddered as his big guns opened up. The result was brutal. A brilliant flare of energy sparkled on the hull of the cruiser with each impact. The large projectiles burst through the ship and exited the far side, spraying red hot debris into space in a rapidly cooling cone of destruction.
Precisely three seconds after her order, the cruiser blew in half as one of its two fusion reactors lost containment.
“We are not firing,” the Kurig transmitted. Captain Hozz’s voice had a twinge of desperation. He wanted to live. “That was an insubordinate act.”
Sarah gestured at Seto, who immediately opened comms.
“We understand. It was
not our intention to destroy the other cruiser, but with any engagement that risk exists. You are to set course for the third planet, a large class IV gas giant we’ve designated Ember. Once there, you’ll enter orbit around the fourth moon,” Sarah ordered. “Geosynchronous orbit, at coordinates we will provide you shortly. You surely understand something your subordinate did not, Captain Hozz. You are twenty-thousand light-years from home, and you are brutally outclassed. Do as I say, and you may go back to your people if you like. But not until we’ve talked.”
It took half a minute for Hozz to reply. “We will comply. Even if we could resist, we have supplies for only a few months. It would be pointless.”
“Wise choice. We’ll talk again once we’ve both turned off our motors at planet three.”
“Until then, Admiral,” Hozz responded. “We await coordinates.”
“Mister Algiss, calculate and execute our burn to put us in orbit around Halvi. Send the data points to Hozz as soon as you have them.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Algiss said.
On the way home the Kurig was in sight of the Stennis the entire time. If Hozz had wanted to deviate from Sarah’s orders, during their decel phase would have been the time, as the two ships reached their widest separation then.
But he didn’t.
There was some risk in Sarah’s next move, but she at least had the marines to back her up if the crew of the Kurig didn’t cooperate.
At Halvi, she docked the Stennis to the Kurig via a gangway extension. The ships were separated by nearly five hundred meters, purely to keep Hozz from destroying the Stennis by detonating his own vessel. Even at that range there was serious risk. But the weapons of the Stennis were at the ready throughout the encounter.
The Entalia stood by a few hundred kilometers off and the grapplers from the Yascurra flooded the area the best that one squadron of grapplers and G-Ks could.
It was the most overwhelming show of force she could muster, and should suffice for a light cruiser.
She met Captian Hozz in the middle of the gangway. Two dozen marines stood behind Sarah, he came with only one officer, as he’d been ordered to do.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, but Sarah had to work to keep her eyes off the man standing behind Hozz, to his left.
The man next to Hozz was black as midnight with hair that cascaded past his shoulders in golden locks. Sarah’s first thought was that he wasn’t handsome. He was pretty.
But the look on his face was fierce.
“You must be Sarah Dayson,” Hozz said, smirking, probably because she’d stared at his companion too long. “I’m Sten Hozz, this is my executive officer, Adriat Markus. He’s from Shingald.” He leaned forward and whispered. “Everyone on his world looks like that. It’s an anti-cancer adaptation to their type A star.”
Sarah hadn’t expected to be flustered in any way, but Hozz had succeeded in doing so. Her own skin was relatively dark, but she’d never seen someone who was literally the color of night before. Now she knew how the Refugians had felt meeting her. And she was embarrassed that such a feature would startle her. In the diaspora of human migration, there were surely even far more strange adaptations to worlds different than the one she came from.
She turned to business to regain control. “Captain Hozz, under authority of the Oasian military, I take possession of your vessel.”
“And I give it,” Hozz said, surprising her. No negotiation at all.
“Just like that?” Sarah asked.
“Just like that,” Hozz replied. “I have no love for the Komi Syndicate. Neither does my first officer.”
“So the captain of your other ship was right…” Sarah mused. “You’re not loyal.”
“The Komi conquered my world eighty years ago. Adriat’s world a dozen years before that. They expand relentlessly, often hitting places that have suffered with a dramatic military loss to the Hive. At least with the lull in the Hive War they’ve had a harder time using that tactic.”
Sarah stared at him a moment. What had he just said? “Lull in the Hive War? What do you mean?”
Hozz laughed, and gestured through the transparent walls of the gangway toward the Tapestry. “The view is beautiful here, but you really should get back to the galaxy more often if you want to keep up.”
That made her bristle a bit. He was in no position to be patronizing. “I asked you a question,” she said, ice in her voice.
Putting up his hands, palms out in a gesture of submission, Hozz apologized. “Hold on now, I thought we were just talking. I’ve surrendered the ship. We, and much of our crew, will gladly tell you everything we know. A few years ago the Hive quit invading human space. They pulled all of their frontline attack ships and headed somewhere else. They left plenty of defensive vessels in their systems to keep us from making much of a counterattack, but they are no longer advancing.”
“Are you kidding me?” Sarah said. Her tone was of disbelief, she was well aware.
“Not kidding you,” Hozz said. “You don’t seem like a woman to be trifled with.”
The truth of it would be determined under interrogation. “Leave your ship in minimal power mode. My people will board it and determine if you’ve acted in good will. You will come with me, your XO will take charge of your crew and see to the demands I am making now. Your crew will be transferred to the surface. Anyone determined by our mind scanners to bear us no ill will can expect an offer of citizenship. Anyone with loyalty to the Komi will be returned to Mindari or another Komi occupied system as quickly as possible. If anyone commits an act of violence, I will have them spaced or shot immediately as summary judgment during time of war.”
“Which war would that be?” Hozz asked.
“The one the Komi Syndicate declared on the planets of my origin,” Sarah replied. “They don’t know it, but the price for peace will be withdrawal from Alliance space… in addition to that they’re going to give me more ships.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Hozz said, shrugging. “But technically that war is over. Mindari lost.”
“Until all of the warriors decide it’s over, it’s not over,” Sarah growled at him.
“Do you always take things so personal?”
“Great men taught me there was no better reason to fight than a personal cause,” she replied, thinking of her mentors, Admiral Heyden and Captain Sheffaris.
Her eyes snapped to Markus. “You have your orders,” she said, gesturing back down the gangway. “Go to it.”
XO Markus saluted her, she returned it, and he strode away, his magnetic books clacking on the walkway. Hozz and his officer had respected her well enough. They deserved the same.
“Come with me, Captain,” Sarah said. “I’d like to show you Jerna City and introduce you to a few friends of mine.”
Hozz nodded his agreement and fell into step behind her as she walked back to the Stennis.
Too bad the other captain hadn’t been so accommodating. She’d have two more cruisers now instead of only one.
Chapter 12 - Admiral’s Personal Log
AI Lucy82A recording, Admiral's personal log, personal archive: Galactic Standard Date 21:25:41 18 JAND 15332
Personal log entry #1788, Admiral Sarah Dayson, origin Korvand, Pallus Sector.
Current Location: Asdahar, Zeffult, Refuge, Oasis System
Fate has made it that I can get all the ships I want, reasonably guilt free. The Komi Syndicate, an empire of star systems I was unfamiliar with until these last hours, has attacked and subdued the Alliance, or at least the part of it that matters to me.
It turns out that I can do my duty as a citizen of Refuge and a former officer of the Alliance. Fighting Komi, taking their ships, it’s all a positive for any side that matters to me.
This first raid only resulted in a net gain of one ship. First, I wasn’t expecting to fight, I was expecting to speak to Alliance leadership. Second, these Komi are interspersed with fanatics who’d rather die than surrender. Fortunately, it seems, there
are others who are willing to choose life over reputation.
Like Captain Sten Hozz.
[A stifled laugh]
He’s not exactly the figure I expected to reach ship’s captain in a despotic government. He’s got no loyalty for the Komi at all, from what I can tell. Further proof that when an organization gets too large, it makes bad choices for its own well being.
[A twelve second pause]
Now we interrogate the crew of the Kurig, and find out what we need to know about this syndicate. How do they fight? Where are their forces stationed? How is their leadership structured?
Important questions that will determine how we fight. Where we strike. And how many ships we can steal at one time.
[Twenty-six seconds of silence]
The Kurig is a pretty ship, at least. I’ve never seen the design before, but it’s elegant. How functional it is, I don’t know, but it does have the air of threat to it.
Not that the Hive care about that one bit.
[A snort, AI estimates 94% likely to be an observation of irony]
It will certainly make the Komi wonder if the time comes I’m using their own ships against them, although I don’t know if that will happen. I need to sit down with my experts and work out a plan of attack.
More importantly, I should probably wrap my brain around some ideas for such an attack. I can’t ask others to do what I am not prepared to do myself. Fortunately, I find when I’m prepared, the people who work for me often supersede anything I come up with.
First we interrogate Hozz and Markus. Fully.
[A nine second pause]
End the log, Lucy.
Chapter 13 - Questions
19 Jand 15332
Bannick Komi stood at the window of his office, staring out over Kildare, the capital of Mindari. He’d just received the strangest communique from his military staff.
Normally a planetary governor would use an AI as a military liaison, but the Komi family frowned on that practice. AI’s were potential security risks. For other matters, they were fine. But they had no families to think of when they were hacked to divulge secrets. Families, which every officer was encouraged to have, provided a reason for loyalty.
