by Evan Currie
Best way to figure out Raze is to start by asking him to his face, Steph thought as he got the location of a flight deck and started off in that direction.
Asking the man might not get him anything but would hopefully knock a few options off the table depending on how the commodore responded. Steph hoped that there was a new doctrine coming down the pipe that included fighters, but with Raze fixated on drones, he doubted it.
A morbid thought crossed his mind then, and Steph faltered in midstep.
Oh crap. He’d better not be planning on putting one of those antimatter chuckers on my fighter!
There were limits to how reckless he was willing to be, even in pursuit of the fighter-jock image, and Steph drew that line right before he’d let anyone load his fighter up with the nightmare fuel that was antimatter.
No way. No chance.
He continued to steel himself to tell Eric just where he could get off if, and when, the man made that suggestion, mumbling to himself with more and more agitation the closer he got to the flight deck. Steph didn’t notice other crewmembers steering a wide berth around him as his affable amble became more of a stalking motion with each passing moment.
After a few minutes he found the right deck, and stepped off the lift with the intention of locating Eric. He couldn’t help but throw a fond and longing glance in the direction of his fighter, mostly on reflex. What he saw wiped all thoughts of Eric from his mind . . . along with practically everything else.
His Angel. His fighter. His one and only true love was in pieces and strewn across the busy deck, looking like it had been hacked by some vengeful psycho he had unknowingly offended. Steph froze in place, staring in unadulterated horror at the scene until he finally found his voice.
“What the ever-living f—” he blew, his voice rising with each word until, by the end, every person on the deck was looking at him with varying expressions of shock, humor, or stunned confusion.
Steph started moving, hands twitching as they reflexively tried to find something to wrap themselves around, heading straight for his baby.
CHAPTER 16
AEV Bellerophon, Outer System
Jason Roberts stared grim-faced at the screens, hating that he was forced to stand and watch the scene that was unfolding.
Even if he had the forces, it would hardly have made much difference, of course, as they were looking at something that had happened hours earlier. Light-speed was painfully slow by even stellar distances to say nothing of interstellar ones, and the small task group he currently commanded was so insufficient to the current task that they hadn’t dared to break cover to approach the colonial planet.
The orbital bombardment shouldn’t have been a surprise to him, not really, but when the first kinetic strikes lanced out from the fleet, his guts had twisted. Part of him really believed that the Imperials would secure the colony and claim it as part of the Empire.
That was what was expected in his view of war.
One didn’t wage genocidal war. What was the point? War was to claim resources. There was no other sane reason for it.
Of course, these were the people who had unleashed the Drasin on the galaxy.
Genocide was mild compared to that atrocity, in his opinion.
Jason’s knuckles were blanched, glaringly so against his skin, the force of his clenched fist making his nails cut into the palm of his hand as he felt an utterly consuming rage building inside him. He didn’t know the Priminae well, and didn’t know anyone on the planet below at all, but he didn’t need to.
“Goddamn them.”
The words were a whisper, floating around the command deck. Sometimes they seemed to morph into another similar but different phrasing. Jason never recognized the voice, and didn’t really care. The sentiment was fitting.
Goddamn them indeed.
“Sir, the Imperials are launching ships to the surface,” his scanner tech announced.
“Give me the best view you can,” he ordered.
The scanners’ acuity, even at such an insane range, was impressive, the result of a widespread series of scanners on every ship in the task group all working together. For the moment he didn’t care about the technical details.
The image was good enough to make out individual hulls as they broke away from the main group and entered the atmosphere.
“Looks like they’re going to occupy the world after all,” Roberts said flatly.
“Why would they bombard the colony like that, then?” his first officer asked softly.
“Pacification, maybe just an object lesson,” Roberts said simply. “At least they left someone alive.”
He tapped a command and brought the image zoom out, enough to show the whole fleet. The swarm of ships blotted out part of the planet and the sun beyond at that zoom, sending a shiver down his spine.
“What should we do?” his first officer asked.
“Do? Nothing. There’s nothing we can do,” Roberts answered, a sickly taste in his mouth. “We watch. We wait. And when they leave, we mark their course and then . . . then we can do something.”
Lord’s Own Dreadnought, Empress Liann
Jesan stood stoically as he watched the fires burn from orbit, smoke filling enough area to be easily visible even without magnification. The fires themselves showed up through the smoke as the terminator advanced slowly, turning day to night, and the smoke took on an ominous and evil glow.
“All significant infrastructure has been eliminated, My Lord,” his adjutant said, approaching from behind.
“Excellent, and phase two?”
“A garrison structure has been launched, along with the forces to more than pacify the remaining population. With the approaching drop in local temperatures expected from the dust and smoke we’ve filled the sky with, they can be expected to have difficulty meeting their nourishment needs for the foreseeable future.”
“How many survivors?”
“Approximately eighty percent, with five to ten percent margin for error,” the adjutant said.
“Excellent. My compliments to the gunners,” Jesan said.
With farmland, power and transport systems, and various other vital sectors in ruins, the colony belonged to the Empire. The survivors would need to eat, and he had just made certain that if they wanted to do so and hoped to live, with their families no less, then they would soon be beholden to the Empire. Any new infrastructure would be gifts from the empress, as it should be.
“Inform the fleet that as soon as we’ve completed landing operations, we will be moving on to the next target.”
“Yes, My Lord. Will we leave any ships to secure the orbitals?”
“Why bother.”
“Of course, My Lord. I will see to it that the orders are issued.”
Jesan merely waved, his attention turning back to the burning smoke on the world below. It was a small step, of course, but an important and symbolic one. The first world the Empire had taken in this sector and the first world secured from the control of the Oathers themselves. The Empire would record it as a momentous date, but the procurement was merely the first step of many.
He gestured with his hand, clearing the screen and refocusing out beyond the reach of the local star to the black beyond. Jesan was still troubled by the weapons they’d encountered coming into the system. There had been no indications that the colony was capable of any sort of operation of that nature, and if it had been, then Jesan would have expected far more of the weapons.
The measly few they located were so insufficient to the task that it was actually amusing. Or would have been if the weapons hadn’t been placed so precisely correct as to intercept his fleet.
Someone is out there, he thought with certainty.
Those damn nigh-invisible ships that had been reported by the early probes and confirmed by the navarch’s experiences. Small pests, but able to maneuver around with near impunity due to their low power curves and adaptable camouflage systems.
Thankfully, the navarch’
s last foray had shown that the Imperial response to their most serious weapon would be effective. That was a great relief, as he had no desire to experience his ship’s interactions with negative matter.
Really, what sort of lunatics store that on board their own ship, in combat no less?
He knew that they had to be storing it, given that they showed almost no power curve and producing negative matter took no small degree of power to accomplish. It was remotely possible, of course, that they had discovered a less power-intensive method, but he doubted that.
Still, with those weapons largely neutralized, he had thought that the invisible vessels would be of little concern. Now he saw otherwise.
Four ships lost, and we never fired a shot in our defense until it was over. I begin to see what the navarch meant when she stressed that they were not to be underestimated. They have sneaky minds, these anomalies.
“My Lord,” his adjutant said, “deployment operations have concluded.”
“Very good. Issue the orders to break orbit. We have other systems to pacify.”
AEV Bellerophon
“That’s it, they’re moving out.”
Jason Roberts nodded, eyes on the plot he knew was hours old. The enemy fleet was steadily climbing up out of the star’s gravity well, heading away from where his task group was hiding out, on a vector that would bring them deeper into Priminae territory and, incidentally, closer to Earth.
“Show me the planet, best magnification,” he ordered.
There was no need to rush concerning the enemy fleet, as it would take them hours to clear the cluttered inner system. No fleet commander would be crazy enough to order a translight acceleration that deep inside a gravity well. Not outside of combat, at least, and hardly enough even then. Too much debris kicking around, waiting to be turned into ballistic threats.
The main display flickered, showing the planet as closely as their combined scanners could manage.
The smoke was obscuring the better part of a continent already, and dust from the kinetic strikes had spread the light spectrum spectacularly into the reds. The sky was lit up such that it seemed to burn in sympathy with the ground below, and he wondered just how many had survived the bombardment or would survive what was to come.
“We could go secure the world, sir.”
Jason shook his head. “No. We’d only be wasting our time. The next world is under threat too, and the one after that, and so on. As soon as the Imperials clear the system and go to warp, I want their vector calculated. We transition ahead of them and make them pay for this as best we can. Just before we jump, send a transit message to Priminae Central Command about what happened here.”
He sighed, shaking his head again before he went on.
“I’m afraid they’ll have to clean up this mess themselves.”
“Yes sir.”
There was a nearly invisible Casimir flash as the Imperial Fleet reached the outer system and went translight on their warp drives, the blue glow gone almost the instant it appeared, and with it the ships themselves.
Across the black, two hulking Heroics and their smaller Rogues silently emerged from hiding and began moving under power to the system’s edge. Already far out in the outer system, they broke the light-speed barrier with similar blue flashes almost immediately, speeding out well past the reach of the local star before they turned in the direction in which the Imperial Fleet had vanished and then were gone themselves in a puff of tachyons.
CHAPTER 17
AEV Odysseus, Ranquil System
Eric intercepted Steph in midstride, catching the angry man and lifting him right up off his feet, then swinging him about before he could make it halfway to his chopped-up fighter.
“Whoa there, partner!” Eric said, grinning as he held the angry man.
“Raze! My bird! What did she do to it?” Steph wailed, gesturing wildly over Eric’s shoulder.
“Lord I wish that was the first time I’d heard you say something like that.”
Steph shot him a betrayed look before retorting angrily, “Oh shut it! At least I’ve never looked up how to get a tattoo removed from there!”
“Not like I knew it was temporary at the time,” Eric laughed. “As blitzed as we were, it could have been real.”
Steph snorted. “More than a few of us wound up with real ones that night . . .” He paused, eyes flashing angrily again. “Don’t distract me! What the hell is going on with my fighter?”
“I authorized it,” Eric said evenly, letting his friend go. “So relax and stop trying to fry Lieutenant Chans with your eyes.”
Steph glanced toward the Priminae woman, who was staring back at him with wide eyes and a shocked expression, and sighed.
“Fine. What exactly did you authorize that involves pulling the reactors?” Steph grumbled, looking at the scattered pieces of his fighter strewn around the deck. Still, he noticed sections of tech were neatly arranged in order of removal, best he could tell, and nothing looked busted at least.
“Upgrade,” Eric said, gesturing to a gantry that was holding up something Steph didn’t recognize.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s that?”
“That is a Priminae shuttle’s warp generator,” Eric replied. “We’re refitting your Angel for modern combat.”
Steph walked around the bulbous-looking warp generator, shaking his head. “Gonna look weird as hell, boss.”
“How fast will the fighter accelerate when you’re done, Milla?” Eric asked over his shoulder.
“Mass calculations indicate that, fully loaded, the craft should be able to exceed light-speed in just under eight minutes,” Milla replied as she approached.
Steph choked, clutching at his chest as he started coughing.
“The ’Disseus can barely do it in an hour!” he sputtered out, shocked.
“The Odysseus exceeds your fighter’s mass by . . .” Milla paused, eyes rolling back and to the right as she thought furiously for a moment before giving up. “By an amount that defies calculation. The singularity alone is measured in planetary masses, Stephan. Accelerating the Odysseus is more akin to doing the same to a small planet than a ship . . . though that is actually a very bad analogy for a number of reasons.”
Steph nodded slowly. “Weird isn’t so bad.”
“We have some more toys being rigged for you to play with, Stephanos,” Eric said seriously, using his call sign for the first time in a while, grabbing Steph’s attention. “It’s time to live up to your handle. So for all our sakes, I hope you’ve trained your department well.”
Priminae Central Command, Ranquil
Tanner looked over the latest report, his mood not helped even slightly by what he was reading.
It seems that the Imperials have altered their tactics this time, he thought grimly.
Bombarding a colony world should have bothered him less than the Drasin just annihilating entire planets as they did, but somehow he felt the gut-wrenching pain just as viscerally.
Tanner couldn’t help but look up the population of the colony, a number that had been hovering just over three million people. It was a small site, of course, one of the new explorations since the Drasin encounter, still years away from being ready for proper forming. The world would take decades before a full-scale occupation was possible, but three million people were still three million people.
He took some solace in the fact that the reports indicated the Empire had landed an occupational force. That would presumably mean there were survivors at least.
That was better than what they offered with the Drasin atrocities, if nothing else. Tanner’s lips drew back in a quiet snarl before he regained control of himself.
He got up and crossed the control room to where the coordinator for the Priminae forces was working.
“Have this information transmitted to our vessels, as well as the Odysseus,” Tanner ordered, handing over a data chit. “We have lost the colony on Marta Three. The Empire has made th
eir first move.”
The woman paled slightly but nodded as she shakily took the chit from him and placed it on the scanner beside her.
“The rumors say that they have hundreds of ships,” she said, looking to him while the system read the data.
Her eyes clearly said that she was hoping he would refute it, but Tanner just nodded.
“Over four hundred, some much larger than the Heroics I am afraid. The Terrans cost them four in exchange for Marta Three, but even if that were repeatable it would not be close to enough. I do not know what happens this time.”
She nodded, turning back to the task, quickly sending the data out.
“Sent,” she said, her expression dark as she did. “There must be something we can do . . .”
“Our duty.”
Tanner’s response was instinctive, with no thought of anything else.
“We do our duty. We trust our captains to do theirs, and we do everything in our power to support them. Really, what else is there?”
She had no response, so he turned and headed back to his station.
Tanner wondered at his own confident words. He couldn’t help but think that there had to be more he could be doing, but it came down to the simple truths. There were not enough ships to go around. If they needed military personnel, they had those. Millions would volunteer instantly if the hulls were there for them.
But they weren’t.
So he would do what he could in the position he was in, while everyone else did the same.
AEV Odysseus
On the bridge again, while Steph was working up to requalify on the Double A platform and Milla was hard at work on the flight deck, Eric looked over the latest communiqué from Priminae Central Command.
“So it begins.”
A smile played at Eric’s lips as he spoke the old quote with an ironic lilt to his tone. The reports from Captain Roberts and the rest of the squadron were enlightening, at least. He was both encouraged and concerned.
The enemy was occupying worlds—that was good. That put them back on a more conventional battlefield, one that Eric understood and could make far more sense of. Just annihilating planets had made no Goddamn sense to him whatsoever.
