by Evan Currie
“Revenge? For something that happened before even our recorded history? Who was so abysmally insane?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Jesan said, a rhetorical hint to his tone. “Unfortunately, even I don’t know the answer. Whoever initiated that operation did so while covering their tracks quite effectively. Everyone I’ve been in contact with reacted much the same as you. Going after the Oathers makes sense, but unleashing the Drasin the way we have does not. Certainly not on their homeworld. That is a rich world worth much to the Empire, and if any of the legendary technology the Oathers were supposed to have absconded with still exists, that planet would be the most likely location. Every analyst I’ve spoken with seemed to have been under the impression that we would offer a chance to surrender after the Drasin annihilated the Oather fleet. Unfortunately, the people who were holding the reins of those monsters had rather different orders.”
“Treason?” Misrem asked.
One word, a simple question, but not so simple in truth.
“No,” Jesan answered, his undiluted response surprising her. “The orders were authentic. I even know who issued them, but the Imperial Command structure is a web of confusion the likes of which a fleet navarch like yourself could only have nightmares about.”
“So you don’t know who originated the intent behind the orders.”
“Not at all,” Jesan said, then gestured casually, with some disinterest in his expression. “Not that it matters. It’s all academic really. No one cares if the Oathers die. Most might prefer it. Wasteful, yes I agree, but the only difference between the majority of the Empire and whoever did authorize that invasion is that most Imperial citizens do not especially care enough to make the Oathers’ end happen. Someone did. So be it.”
“So be it? Have you seen the size of the mess they’ve left us to clean up?” Misrem said.
“Yes, well, it would have been better if they’d been competent in their actions, I will agree.” Jesan sighed. “Still, that’s not relevant for the moment. What is relevant is whether we can trust the data you acquired. According to the reports your team had to transmit through jamming, they weren’t allowed to escape?”
“None of them got off that ship, My Lord,” she responded.
“Good,” Jesan said. “Then the data is more likely to be accurate. I believe we can risk acting on it, but I will have to ensure success this time.”
“My squadron stands ready, My Lord.”
“No Navarch, not this time,” Jesan answered. “This time I believe I’ll bring up the sector fleet.”
Misrem stared for a moment, rather stunned.
“That seems . . . excessive, My Lord.”
“I know, but I’ve had enough of the issues caused by this mess,” Jesan answered. “It’s time to put an end to them, for good.”
The sector fleet.
Misrem was stunned, honestly, that the lord of the Imperial Sector would authorize something that extreme. Her squadron, with some augmentation, should be enough to handle the size of the enemy forces they had been able to determine existed from the data.
The total number was stunningly small. If she had known just how minuscule the might of the enemy was, she would have pressed the fight to its conclusion at their last encounter. Certainly, she would have lost much of her squadron, but the crippling of the opposing forces would have been worth the tally.
At most she had expected a second squadron to be assigned, not the entire sector fleet.
The Empire only had seven sector fleets, including Home Fleet. Each was more than sufficient to fight a major war. Often sector fleets had been known to handle two or three such wars while putting down a couple of minor uprisings. Based on the data she’d retrieved from the Oather vessel, sending an entire sector fleet wasn’t just overkill, it was pure waste.
Her squadron consisted of between twenty-four and forty vessels, depending on how much the Empire saw fit to augment her forces for given missions. While she commanded one of the more powerful squadrons in the sector, it was only one of eighteen assigned to the sector fleet’s command structure. The fleet itself also had another twenty Dreadnought Class vessels, each massing nearly as much individual firepower as her entire squadron.
She couldn’t believe that Lord Jesan was going to uncover his sector for a pacification program like this.
No. He wouldn’t recklessly uncover his sector. It’s tactically and strategically foolish. Jesan is many things, but a fool isn’t among them. What’s his plan, then?
The Oathers were annoyingly inoffensive and hardly a threat to the Empire, and Misrem was unable to imagine what about them would cause the sector lord to commit his entire fleet to a mission. Perhaps the others were the cause, then. They were far from the inoffensive nonthreat of the Oathers . . .
Still, that didn’t track either.
The enemy just didn’t have the numbers to draw out a force like the sector fleet.
She supposed it didn’t matter. His orders were now set, but she would be bothered until she worked out his true intent.
Jesan watched as the door closed behind the withdrawing figure of the navarch, unsurprised to see her intense confusion and thoughtfulness. Misrem had a reputation for tactical excellence and skill in strategic maneuvers. If she had encountered such fierce resistance in both of her forays into the enemy sector, then the matter was serious.
Both times from the species they had only identified as the anomalies.
Now they had a name, though he supposed one name was as good as another.
Humans.
What they called their species. Unsurprisingly, it was likely what they called both Imperials and Oathers as well. They were obviously of the same initial programmed genetic drift that seemed to be a galaxy-wide phenomenon.
Truly bizarre intelligences did exist, he knew. The Empire had annihilated more than a few, species so different that communication was effectively impossible. Ending them was really the only acceptable outcome. The Imperial Standard, however, seemed the most common form in the galaxy . . . and the most successful.
With good reason.
It was the height of foolishness to allow a species one couldn’t converse with to have even the possibility of space travel. There were far too many ways to commit genocide once you could leave your own world and travel the stars. No sane species would leave another alive as long as the slightest chance existed of such an outcome.
It would be immoral beyond the most perverse depths of depravity to risk your own in such a way. The Empire learned that difficult lesson a long time ago. Kill those who might become the enemy lest they do the same to you first.
These self-named humans, however, were an interesting dilemma. They could communicate, and they were clearly willing to make treaties and alliances. Unfortunately for them they elected to side with the Oathers, but the humans might still have some things worth acquiring before the war was ended.
Obviously, they had new takes on technical advances. The sorts of things that would be of inestimable value within the Empire. Clearly, however, if they could fight off the Drasin, then taking their world would be difficult.
One world, however, could not possibly defend itself against the might of a sector fleet. Even if some of the intelligence returned by the navarch’s squadron was fabricated, he intended to be certain that he brought enough force to the confrontation to end this farce once and for all.
Once they had everything they wanted from the Oather and human homeworlds, then he would have the firepower he needed to ensure that this dragon was put back to sleep.
Once, and for all time to follow.
Captain Aymes glowered as he strode down the corridors of his vessel, frustrated beyond belief by the nonsense he’d been dealing with since orders had come down for mandatory refits of all ships in the region. Considering the massive weapons and armor refit they were undergoing that appeared to be based on the systems they believed the anomalous species used, his forces were seemingly
shifting from an exploratory stance to one of full-scale war.
He shouldn’t have been surprised.
He’d had access to the intelligence captured from the boarding of the Oather vessel, and the information was rather explosive.
Even forgetting about the actual intelligence they’d gathered—items that could be proven—Aymes was well aware the idea that a single world had caused them as much trouble as it had wouldn’t sit well with the upper echelon of the fleet, nor would the nobles receive such news particularly well.
He knew that. He accepted that.
War was his business, after all, and he’d never been found wanting for places to conduct his affairs.
The fact that they were tearing his damn ship apart without so much as a little advance warning, that was pissing him off.
Aymes schooled his expression into a more neutral mask as he approached the bridge. He knew of two political informants on his command staff, and likely was missing at least one other unless Fleet Intelligence had gotten sloppy, so he saw no reason to give any of them munition to use against him.
Actual political officers wouldn’t be so bad. They were already in their assigned spot and not technically in the chain of command. When dealing with one of those, in Aymes’ experience, you just worked out where they stood and learned to convey what they expected of an officer. All but the most unhinged and, frankly, stupid ones generally understood that even captains were occasionally prone to emotions.
The stupid ones usually didn’t last too long before suffering an accident.
He’d arranged two of those in a row once before Fleet Intelligence sent him someone with a polite request to be more subtle about his machinations in the future. Since the person issuing the request was his new political officer at the time, Aymes thought that the message had been amusingly clever. The new man decided not to be too much of a pain about things, however, so Aymes decided that Fleet Intelligence wasn’t so bad.
At least they had a sense of humor, dark though it might be.
Unfortunately, when they suborned his staff, that was a whole other problem. His staff were in his chain of command, which meant that if he were suddenly removed from command for, oh, treason as an example, everyone below him was possibly positioned for a bump in rank.
Aymes hated having to tread lightly around spies in his chain of command, but some weren’t smart enough to work out that a bump in rank gained via subterfuge was as likely to end with them in an interrogation cell as behind a better desk.
Smart spies he could handle, but the stupid ones were dangerous.
His crew, while down to minimum staffing, were working efficiently as Aymes stepped onto the command deck and looked around briefly. He expected no less, but was still gratified to see them in action.
Most of the internal systems were down for refit, which blacked out three-quarters of the displays and stations, and being in a refit slip meant that they were getting basically nothing on any of their external equipment, which blacked out almost all of what remained.
Masking a frustrated sigh, Aymes settled into his station and called up his personal files.
With refits continuing apace, he had to assume that the vessel would be deploying for action just as soon as the work was done. If the system lord intended them to have time to properly work up to a reasonable fitness level, he would have broken up the refits into more manageable chunks.
So Aymes put aside as many of his frustrations as he could and set to work building simulations that would allow his teams to practice with the new equipment.
It was a bad way to conduct a war, frankly, but he had little choice, so he would work with what he was given.
CHAPTER 3
AEV (Allied Earth Vessel) Odysseus, Forge Facility, Ranquil
The deck was quiet as the commodore and admiral walked across the expanse, the lights dim, as most of the lines to the reactor were cut and the reactor itself was being held on the edge of stability for safety reasons. Gracen felt a chill that she knew had to be psychosomatic. The idea of intentionally keeping a ship’s reactor on the edge of stability bothered her on a deeply instinctual level despite her academic understanding of the process.
Unlike most reactors, when working with a singularity system, the last thing you wanted was an out-of-control stable reactor. Being stable was incredibly bad, because it meant that the singularity had sufficient mass to be self-sustaining and couldn’t be shut down. While under way, keeping the system somewhat stable was necessary, if only barely, but the last thing anyone wanted in orbit of a habited world—or, worse in this case, within a stellar primary—was a stable singularity.
My ship ate the sun would be a lousy epitaph for a civilization.
“If you’re right, Commodore, this is going to turn bad on us much quicker than we feared,” Gracen said as she considered what Eric had unveiled concerning the intelligence coup the Empire had likely pulled off.
Eric nodded, his expression grim. “I can’t really find a way to put a shine on this one, Admiral. If they did get the intel we think they got, then they know that we’ve just been pulling the interstellar equivalent of a stone-cold bluff. My read on the Empire says that if they work that out, if they even think that’s what’s been happening, then they’ll call us on it.”
Gracen grunted in disgust but had to agree.
The Imperials were a confrontational sort. Even the few prisoners Terran and Prim forces had managed to gather showed that, right down to the lowest ranked among the enemy. They challenged on everything, and not just once either. If they thought circumstances might have changed, they challenged again, even though they had to know that the odds weren’t in their favor.
She supposed it might have something to do with them being held by the Priminae, who were notoriously soft by most standards, but Gracen didn’t really think that was the case. Despite the Priminae being a lot nicer about things than she knew Terran guards were, Gracen couldn’t fault the discipline the Priminae brought to the job. They didn’t just take crap and smile but followed their protocol every time, no matter the provocation or how many times they’d repeated certain tasks.
No, the Imperial prisoners were just programmed to challenge near constantly, she suspected, and if that was a social aspect of their culture, then there was no question in her mind that Weston was right. If they suspected a bluff, even for a moment, they would call it without any hesitance. Social programming was rather difficult to evaluate, at least without a decent understanding of the society in question. Unfortunately, while Gracen’s people had been progressing quite well in understanding just how the Priminae and Imperial genomes varied from solar humans, their cultures were still largely mysterious. Even the Priminae, who were open about theirs, had too much social history to quickly parse and break down.
For the moment, all they knew was that the Imperials were incredibly confrontational and didn’t like to back down. Not until they’d been made to back down, and even then their submission might not hold for long.
“We’ll have to increase patrols,” she said finally.
“It’ll stress our people,” Eric offered. “We don’t have enough ships to properly schedule them.”
“Can’t be helped. I’ll write up the orders as soon as I get back.”
Eric nodded, agreeing with her despite the issues involved with upping their patrol schedules. As it was, he didn’t expect his people to see a home port for quite some time; that was the way of things when you were in the military, more so when there was a real conflict looming.
Months away from home at a given time were bread and butter for a military man, but it could be hard all the same.
He just accepted the orders, however, knowing that his people would suck it up and deal with new realities. They were professionals.
“I’ll have to put the Big E back on the rotations,” Gracen said hesitantly.
“Do it,” Eric told her, no hesitation.
“That ship isn’t up to moder
n standards, Eric,” she said sternly. “If I’d had my way we’d have scrapped that hull, not given her a legacy name.”
Eric sighed, knowing that she had a point. The Enterprise had sacrificed herself during the last battle that pushed the Drasin off Earth and out of the solar system, and she’d done so spectacularly. There would always be a Big E in the fleet after that, but he agreed that they should have waited and given the name to one of the new Heroics coming along, rather than slapping it on a near-finished hull from pre-invasion.
After what Captain Carrow had done, and what the Enterprise sacrificed, it deserved better than to be obsolete before it was even commissioned.
Still, he believed that she was underestimating just what that ship could do.
“The Odyssey Class isn’t far off the Rogues, Admiral,” Eric responded finally. “And the Big E packs how many squadrons of the Vorpals now? Four?”
“Five actually, but the enemy has been soaking up ship-to-ship missiles with little effort,” Gracen said as they continued to walk. “I don’t want to set our pilots up against targets like that. It’s suicide.”
“Admiral, pilots want to fly. Fighter pilots want to fight. If you’re in doubt, just ask them. Not only will they all stand up and volunteer, they’ll start ripping into every bit of intelligence we have on enemy formations, looking for holes. If nothing else, they’ll be able to harass and tear into the enemy Parasite ships and destroyers, freeing up shipboard missiles for the big boys.”
Gracen grimaced but didn’t feel like she had any other choice. They needed every ship they could get out on patrol, and putting the Enterprise on the line would let her keep one more Heroic in Sol as a part of the Home Defense shield. Ideally, she would prefer to put most of that shield out on patrol as well, but that was a politically impossible option.
“I may do just that, Commodore . . .” Gracen’s voice trailed off slowly as she spotted a figure sitting in the center of the deck up ahead of them.
