The Glory of the Empress

by Sean Danker

  There was a long pause.

  “I had just spotted those signals,” Mao said tightly. “Lydia, get me Doyle.”

  Bjorn backed away from the fighter, then turned and sprinted for the hatch.

  “Commander Mao?”

  “Doyle, are these your beacons?”

  “What beacons?”

  “Son of a bitch,” Mao snarled. “Combat alert, all personnel.”

  “Attention,” Lydia said, her voice audible throughout the ship. “Incoming contacts. Hazardous jump site. Repeat, hazardous jumpers inbound. Impact imminent.”

  12

  BJORN burst onto the bridge, Compton and Golding just behind him.

  “Emergency evasive,” Mao ordered, and the Lydia banked sharply, coming around. “Ready weapons. Emergency sortie.”

  “We don’t even know who it is,” Woodhouse pointed out, stumbling through the hatch. “It could be anyone.”

  “Anyone who didn’t want to die would’ve called ahead,” Mao said.

  Bjorn scrambled into his seat and strapped in, reactivating his systems. It had been only minutes since the last operation. He needed a drink of water.

  “Give me details, Lydia,” Mao said, narrowing her eyes as the space ahead of the ship began to shimmer.

  “Let’s go,” Bjorn hissed into his com.

  “Ten seconds,” Kladinova gasped, and he could hear her struggling with her EV. He couldn’t blame her; he’d been the one to tell her to go shower.

  “I’m reading thirty-six contacts, Commander.”

  Bjorn felt his eyes widen and his stomach drop. That wasn’t an attack; it was an invasion.

  “Remember how I said we weren’t a warship?” Mao asked.

  “Yeah?” Woodhouse sounded hopeful.

  “Time to rethink that.”

  “Impact,” Lydia said, and emergency lights began to flash.

  A vessel slammed into existence less than a kilometer away.

  “All free,” Mao said.

  “Go,” Golding ordered, and Ibuki launched. He was the first ready, and the first out the door. Bjorn watched him streak away into the black, accelerating to build his kinetic shield.

  The first ship was joined by a second. Then they were jumping in so thickly that Bjorn couldn’t count them.

  He gazed fixedly down at his console, refusing to look at the viewport. He read and mapped the contacts as quickly as he could, building an attack grid from their patterns. They were fanning out to surround the Sunbath and the Margarita.

  They couldn’t detect the Lydia, but her disruption field had to tell them that she was close. That was assuming Cophony had shared his information with them. The nature of this trap suggested that he had.

  “They’re scanning at full output,” Woodhouse reported.

  He definitely had.

  Kladinova appeared on the cockpit camera, brushing wet bangs from her eyes and seizing her collar.

  “Relax,” Bjorn said quickly. “Don’t rush. You need a clean launch.”

  “What’s it look like out there?”

  “There’s a whole fleet of them.”

  “Pirates?”

  “Private military too.”

  “Sei’s already out,” she said.

  “He’s taking in the sights.”

  “What are we doing, Commander?” Compton asked, raising a tactical display. Blue and green readings flashed across the charts.

  “This is half of our list,” Mao said, staring at the chart. “Almost ship for ship.”

  “Then we don’t have to worry about shooting the wrong people,” Woodhouse said darkly.

  “Ma’am,” Bjorn said, looking over at Mao, “they have to try to bait us. And we know how they’re going to do it.”

  “He’s right,” Golding said.

  The last ship jumped in. No, not the last one.

  “The field’s still active,” Woodhouse called out, looking up. “There’s one more coming.”

  All four Everwings were in flight now. Bjorn watched them circle the pirates, who in turn circled the refugees.

  “They’re probably waiting for that last ship,” Mao said, folding her arms. Bjorn agreed; something like a dreadnought would take longer to plot. It made sense for it to be farther behind. This was an impressive fleet on its own, but apparently there was even more muscle behind it.

  “As soon as they feel like they’re ready, they’ll fire on the refugees,” Bjorn said. “To provoke us. They know we won’t fire first.”

  “The hell we won’t. All units, by the numbers, targets free.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Only one member of the Lydia’s crew did not splutter in shock or question the order.

  Diana Kladinova.

  She struck so quickly that Bjorn’s tracking system couldn’t keep up. One moment she was there, circling with the rest; the next she was in the midst of the fleet, accelerating out as a massive Trigan battleship began to wheel, jetting flame from the stitches in its side, cut by Kladinova’s rail gun.

  Kladinova hadn’t destroyed the ship because there was a battle ahead, not a slaughter. A wounded ally was more of a burden than one who was atomized. The Trigan battleship was now out of control, venting gases and coolant, probably desperately calling for help.

  Precisely the sort of element you didn’t want in your fleet when it had to focus on defending itself from an unseen adversary.

  “Get in there,” Mao said, voice calm. “Kill them all.”

  “What about us, ma’am?” Woodhouse asked.

  “Run dark. Wait for the right moment. You got that, Lydia? Stay sneaky.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Bjorn watched the fighters take action, but there was no time to pay attention to anyone else.

  Kladinova had revealed herself by opening fire. Now she spun downward, putting distance between herself and the blind fire coming from the core pirate gunships. She was getting ready for her next run, which Bjorn struggled to plot for her. He was about to target the largest pirate vessel, but Woodhouse had already marked it for Dayal.

  The Lydia went into a sudden roll, but Bjorn’s chair and the ship’s gravity core kept him from feeling it at all. It used to bother him, seeing something so different from the gravity he felt, but hundreds of hours in VR had desensitized him to it.

  “Dive,” he ordered, watching the field of fire shift.

  Kladinova obeyed, accelerating in on the pack.

  Lucas swore loudly over the com, and Kladinova veered off before crossing her target.

  “What is it?” Mao asked, swiping through her feeds faster than Bjorn could follow.

  Dayal strafed several of the ships, causing them to scatter. A spray of plasma fire flew past just off the Lydia’s bow, and the ship adjusted. If they could avoid this fire, they could stay hidden. If their shields were struck, their position would be revealed. Mao and the AI were working together to keep the ship out of harm’s way.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lucas said, sounding breathless. Bjorn saw him curve out, around the outside of the formation. “My triangle was good, but no impact,” he gasped, “no penetration.”

  “What?” Mao wheeled around, watching Lucas’ fighter on her grid.

  “The same,” General Dayal reported coolly. “My mine was deflected. Target intact.”

  “Why aren’t we landing?” Mao demanded.

  “Shields,” Ibuki suggested.

  “Impossible,” Woodhouse said, and Bjorn clearly saw him boost Harbinger output on Dayal.

  “What’s going on out there?” he hissed to Kladinova.

  “Let’s find out,” she replied, and began her dive again. She streaked down, passing two frigates and careening wildly past a Luna cruiser outfitted with some truly outlandish trimmings.

  There w
as a visible shock wave, and the cruiser vanished in a cloud of plasma and debris.

  “Got him,” Kladinova reported. So her mines weren’t having any trouble getting through. Bjorn checked the counter and had to look a second time. Her speed was pushing the limits of the fighter’s capabilities. Even the best pilot could handle an Everwing at only about three-quarters of its full potential. The brain could do only so much.

  “It’s Cophony,” Bjorn said, surprising himself. “He’s fighting back.”

  “How?” Mao demanded, giving him a fierce look.

  “How would you defend against us? You need your shields up to deflect the mines,” Bjorn said. “You have to guarantee that they’re up when we attack. So they’re just leaving them down. It takes less time to raise them than it does to restart the system after we shake it.”

  Realization dawned on Major Compton’s face. “And they’re tracking the buildup before we dive. That’s how they know when to raise their shields.”

  “But how do they know who we’re going to hit?” Bjorn asked.

  “They don’t,” Sergeant Golding said, eyes wide. “They’ve all got their shields down. What if they’re just raising them every time they sense a buildup?”

  “Then why’s Kladinova getting through?” Woodhouse demanded.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Mao said, slamming a hand down on the console. “All units, direct attack. Ignore their shields. Use rail guns. We need impact on this force now.”

  Bjorn saw Kladinova’s eyes light up, and her mouth curl into a grin. He stared at her, watching the blue-green light of the cockpit flickering over her features.

  Then the Lydia was being struck by missiles; it had been found. Bjorn felt the shaking only distantly. His readings told him it was nothing their shields couldn’t handle, but now they were visible.

  As Mao sent the ship spiraling into an evasion pattern, all four fighters converged on the pirate formation.

  Even through the wildly spinning viewport, Bjorn could see the flashes and explosions of weapons fire. His mind seemed to spin along with the ship.

  Pirates waiting. Cophony’s shield trick.

  A third, then a fourth pirate vessel imploded, struck down by direct hits from strafing fighters. A fifth went up, victim to one of Dayal’s mines. Another managed to deflect Major Lucas’ fire, but the mine struck another ship, blowing it wide open.

  The battlefield, such as it was, was already becoming clouded with coolant, released gases, and debris.

  So far all fighters were still green, darting in and out too quickly for the pirates to deal with.

  But there was no question that the pirates knew what they were up against. Bjorn was seeing some highly unconventional evasion, and the pirates and mercenaries were doing an excellent job trying to concentrate their fire on the Lydia. But that wasn’t so easy.

  The Lydia was too fast, too nimble to be simply picked off by ships already under the harassment of four aggressive Everwings.

  Another vessel was destroyed. There would be no moments of silence for these people. An Everwing fighter weighed roughly twelve hundred kilograms. It was small, almost small enough to fit in an ordinary room. But it could destroy a six-hundred-meter vessel in the blink of an eye, and bigger ships with equal ease.

  Pirates and mercenaries were dying by the hundreds, possibly the thousands.

  These pirates weren’t men; they were chess pieces, Tenbrook’s pieces, and Bjorn realized he was using them to stall for time.

  “Incoming contact,” the AI announced, and Bjorn looked up to see a dark shape nearly the size of Burton Station itself come rushing out of the black.

  “All units, clear and reengage,” Mao shouted as the mammoth ship abruptly filled the space ahead of them. “Get underneath her,” she ordered the Lydia.

  “That’s no ship,” Woodhouse said tightly, widening his tactical feed. “It’s him.”

  “Tenbrook,” Mao said.

  “It’s over a kilometer to a side,” Major Compton observed, and there was something in his voice that Bjorn didn’t like.

  “Keep your distance from that thing,” he told Kladinova. “Hit the outer ships on the opposite side of the ring. Stay away from the Lydia.”

  “Copy,” Kladinova replied, and he wondered if she’d heard him at all. She was already streaking toward her next victim, arming her weapons.

  The AI was rattling off facts about Tenbrook’s newly arrived battle station, Perdita. Bjorn wasn’t listening.

  Another pirate ship vanished, Dayal’s handiwork. And only moments later Kladinova scratched off another.

  But there were still over twenty left, and the Lydia was under heavy fire.

  General Dayal strafed Perdita at top speed, unloading her entire cache of nanomines across its hull. It was an astonishing concentration of firepower, but the cataclysmic explosions looked like tiny points of light on the side of the massive black rectangle.

  Perdita made the refugee ships appear small.

  “Impact?” Dayal asked, spinning away with a cloud of missiles behind her.

  “Negligible,” Mao said. “You didn’t get through his shields. We’ve got energy concentration coming from Perdita. He’s diverting power.”

  “What for?” Woodhouse asked as yet another pirate vessel shattered under fire from both Kladinova and Ibuki. “Is he jumping out?”

  “Why would he?” Golding asked. “We can barely scratch him.”

  “Lydia, find out what he’s doing,” Mao ordered, inputting data manually to shift the Lydia’s shields to port to block an incoming barrage from Perdita. “All units,” she said into the com, “concentrate fire on the battle station with rail guns. Use all your ordnance. We can’t sink it, but we can do to it what those pirates did to the refugees. We can’t destroy the station, but we can kill some of the people inside.”

  “Wait for my scan,” Bjorn cut in. “I can isolate personnel density.”

  Mao shot him a look, but didn’t countermand him. She was busy trying to keep the Lydia in one piece.

  “There’s a shield,” Lucas reported. “There’s a shield on Perdita’s upper launch bay. It’s opening.”

  “Stay clear,” Ibuki said tightly. Bjorn saw his kinetic shield drop several levels; someone had landed a lucky hit, but it hadn’t been enough to break through. Ibuki was still all right.

  “They’re getting pretty lucky with these blind shield pops,” Woodhouse said.

  “Cophony’s timing them,” Major Compton said.

  Bjorn finished his scan and sent out the data; the fighters acted as one, opening fire on Perdita.

  “He’s got a fusion cannon,” Bjorn reported. “That’s where he’s diverting his power.”

  “Can’t be. You can’t mount that on a ship,” Woodhouse said, glancing over. “You could never power it. He’s going to jump out—we’re hitting him harder than we thought.”

  “It’s not a ship,” Compton countered. “He’s getting ready to fire. If we’re going to hit them, we have to do it now, while they don’t have the power for shields.”

  “It’d take an hour of all five of us pounding that thing to bring it down,” Mao said. “After you use your rail-gun ordnance, don’t waste your fire on the battle station—keep trimming those ships.”

  “More jumping in,” Bjorn called out, picking up the signal. “Kladinova, get in there and try to land a mine where that shield’s opening. If he has got a fusion cannon in there, our best chance is to make it inoperable.”

  “What would be the point?” Sergeant Golding asked. “He can’t hit us with it. He sure as hell can’t hit a fighter.”

  “We aren’t the only target,” Mao bit out. “Let them through!”

  Doyle and Mara had been hailing the Lydia since the battle broke loose. The massive ships were angling to get out of the worst of the combat, but Bjo
rn had seen both of them take hits. The pirates weren’t paying them any attention at the moment, but the mammoth cruisers were simply too large and too slow to just slip away.

  “Commander,” Doyle said, sweating again.

  “Get out of here,” Mao snapped. “Both of you. We’ll hold him.”

  “I can’t,” Mara protested. “I can’t even crawl without my stabilizer. And if I activate shields, I’ll kill thousands of my people.”

  Mao cut the connection, and Bjorn didn’t blame her. The Ganraens couldn’t help; all they could do was sit and watch. They had nothing to contribute.

  Bjorn knew what he was seeing on his feed: Tenbrook knew he was vulnerable with his power diverted from his shields, and he was compensating with a stupendous barrage of missiles. It was enough to keep Kladinova from striking at the fusion cannon.

  “Drones,” Ibuki called out.

  Two of the larger remaining pirate ships were bleeding dark shapes into space.

  The fire had gotten lighter. The pirate fleet was spacing itself out, repositioning to give Perdita more space.

  “Perdita is readying the weapon,” the ship’s AI warned.

  “I can see that,” Mao said as the ship shuddered under another hit. “Take out those drone ships.”

  “This was planned,” Compton said. “We’ve got jumpers from three vectors, thirty more contacts at least.”

  A flash lit up the ships ahead of the Lydia. Kladinova had destroyed yet another vessel. It was one of the ships that had launched the drones, but they had their own systems. They weren’t relying on a central AI; taking down the host vessel wouldn’t stop them.

  “Weapons low,” Kladinova reported. Bjorn wasn’t surprised; Kladinova had twice the kill count of General Dayal, who was leading Lucas and Ibuki noticeably.

  “We’ll have to rearm,” Bjorn said, plotting her a course. This was precisely the situation he’d hoped to avoid. Ideally the third member of Team Three would be waiting in the bay for just this situation, but he would have to go down there himself to oversee the robotics that would resupply the fighter, then recheck it before it could deploy again. At its best, the process would take around three minutes. In a classroom that didn’t sound like much. Here and now, things were different.