by Evan Currie
Would have expected everything to be cold out this far. What do we have here?
The planet in question was in the extreme outer system of their destination, a super-Earth from the looks of it, with three moons of its own and a small ring of debris. It was dark, as it was better than fifty AU out from the star, and the local primary wasn’t the brightest bulb in the universe anyway. The fact that it was warm would have had the science division of the Odysseus clamoring for time to study the world, Steph had no doubt, but for him it was a minor curiosity at most.
“Archangel Lead, Archangel Two.”
“Go for Lead, Two,” Steph said automatically.
“Are you seeing this?” Alexandra Black asked.
“The planet? Yeah, interesting, but there’re no sign of local activity, so we can ignore it for the moment,” Steph said, shifting to the squadron-wide channel. “I’m adjusting course to come in from the shadow of the planetary system. We’ll use it to cover our approach and park in the moons while we observe the system.”
The Archangels signalled their acknowledgment and followed Steph’s adjusted course and eased back on the acceleration, bleeding velocity until they smoothly slid into planetary orbit over the super-Earth that was drifting out in the black with its three moons.
Steph glanced down at the surface as they slipped into orbit, the computer automatically enhancing and enlarging the places he focused on. The volcanoes explained the heat, and he supposed that the three moons had kept the world nicely active below the surface. His system showed plenty of water in the atmosphere, though most of what he could scan on the surface was a frozen ice sheet.
Neat, Steph thought absently as he turned his focus away from the alien world and began planning his next move.
“Archangels,” he said. “Deploy passive scanning birds. I want a VLA in place within the hour.”
“Aye Commander, Very Large Array drones launching,” Milla reported as the other fighter-gunboats acknowledged the command.
“Alright,” Steph said softly, taking a breath. “Then all we can do now . . . is wait.”
Aerin Star Kingdom Destroyer Berine Gael
Auran Kor stood on the narrow command deck of the Berine Gael, looking down on the pits where the crews were manning the primary systems of the aging destroyer. He’d been in command of the ship for only a short time before the latest round of hostilities had broken out with the Belj Empire.
It wasn’t uncommon, of course. Small border spats were to be expected among those who served in His Majesty’s Fleet.
He just wished that he had more to work with, all things considered.
Unfortunately, the Kingdom was the smallest of the local polities that had moved into a small copse of stars that contained inhabitable worlds and were close enough to the Empire for the early colony expeditions to be successful.
The Empire.
Despite the aspirations of the various other groups in the area, there was only one thing a man could be referring to when those two words came up. Even in his mind, Auran could hear the capital letters that preceded each word. The Empire. It overshadowed all else, and always had, for as far back as living memory went.
The Free Stars, as the polities referred to themselves, were bordered on the only border that mattered to the Empire. Beyond their systems, there were no other worthwhile stars for considerable range, none free at least. The Empire had taken them up and gobbled them while the Free Stars were fighting among each other, or just fighting to survive the early days of colonization.
That left valued resources scarce in the region, a travesty for a spacefaring civilization when one considered the relative glut of such things as metals and water, among others. That scarcity meant infighting as different groups scrabbled for the biggest piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
A pie that the Kingdom had been getting nothing but crumbs from for far too long.
“That’s odd.”
Auran twisted slightly, having picked up the muttered words from the scanning station. He walked across the bridge that allowed him access to any station without getting in the way of the work below and looked down.
“What is it?” he demanded softly.
“Not sure, sir,” Prator Silva Moran said as she leaned into her display. “Probably a system glitch. I’m running a scrubber to see if I can be sure.”
Auran nodded. In his experience, such glitches weren’t particularly uncommon. They were thousands of hours behind routine maintenance and likely to fall further behind long before such work would be accomplished. It was a minor miracle that the systems functioned as well as they did.
Still . . .
“What did it look like?” he asked.
“Possible contact,” the prator admitted. “Very fuzzy, though. Could easily have been background noise bouncing off a rock out there somewhere.”
He nodded. “Possibly. Still, better to be sure. Step up your efforts. Sentan.”
“Sir!”
Sentan Brai, his second, crossed the bridge over the command deck and was at his side in an instant.
“Bring us to fighting trim, if you please,” Auran ordered. “All hands to their assigned positions, ready the ship for combat.”
“Yes sir!”
The deck below erupted into activity a few moments later as the order was passed along and the destroyer shifted to a fighting stance. All the while the scanner station furiously worked to clear up the signal.
Auran waited patiently, knowing there was little else he could do in the meantime. Waiting was often about the only thing he felt he was good for, and sometimes it seemed that was also the most productive thing he was capable of.
It certainly feels that way far too often.
“Prator,” he said softly, reminding the young officer that he was waiting.
“Apologies, sir,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing. Maybe it was just noise.”
“Maybe. Very well. Stand by to scan with active systems.”
“Sir?” she turned, looking up at him.
Auran gestured casually. “Small threat here and now, most likely we’ll just confirm that you’re right about it being nothing. Detection is low risk.”
She nodded. “As you command.”
Auran waited while she charged the system, an act which took some time to complete, then nodded when she turned to confirm the order.
The young prator opened a link across the command deck. “All crew, active pulse.”
Nothing happened on the bridge. It was all terribly anticlimactic, really—until the prator bolted upright with wide eyes.
“Belj destroyers inbound on the capital!”
“Fire up the engines,” Auran ordered instantly. “Charge weapons! Plot an interception trajectory, consult with engineering for best course and speed!”
Men and women were talking over one another, each following one or more of his orders depending on their station. Auran stepped back to the command display where he could follow the basics from each of the stations below him.
The Belj destroyers were ahead of them, already well into the system’s gravity pit. They were accelerating hard, and now they knew they’d been detected, straining to push on ahead so they would have more uninterrupted time at their target.
Damn it. Why didn’t the passive systems give us better than just noise?
The rumble of the ship’s drive shook the bridge around him until the vibrations eased, leaving Auran to wince slightly as he recognized that they were in dire need of an alignment. But the Kingdom was always so short of vessels that pulling one for maintenance was a major affair.
He pushed those complaints aside. They’d do him no good for the moment.
For now, the Berine Gael was under power and charging down toward the capital world of the Kingdom.
Archangel One, Outer System
The pong sound echoed through the ship, causing Steph to damn near slam his head into the bulkhead as he jumped out of his bunk. They’d been parked in syst
em for over a month, the days were starting to blur into one another, and, like most of the crew, he had found himself sleeping more than he probably should.
The alarm blew that fatigue right out of his system, though, and he hit the ground running, only taking a moment to snag his uniform jacket on the way out the door as he raced through the fighter-gunboat. He burst into the flight deck in his sock feet, a pair of boxers, and his jacket half-buttoned with all the buttons off by one.
“Report,” he said, spotting Tyke in the driver’s seat.
“FTL Pulse scan, according to the computer,” Tyke said casually. “Too far out and aimed the wrong way to spot us, at least according to Noire.”
Steph nodded, glad that Alex had been on duty in her Archangel Two. There were few enough pilots with deep-space time, and really, he only trusted her and Jennifer “Cardsharp” Samuels in the third fighter to really know their stuff at this point.
He padded up behind Tyke, looking over the man’s shoulder, checking the telemetry before whistling.
“Destroyer squadron heading for the capital planet,” he said. “Looks like one of the pickets caught wind of them somehow, but were way out of position to intercept. They’re making a play for it anyway, though.”
“Not going to make it?” Tyke asked, frowning as he read the numbers.
Like most fighter jocks, he could do some pretty serious math in his head without half thinking about it, but relativistic closing rates were a little over his head at the moment.
Steph just shook his head. “Not without pushing FTL, and from what we’ve seen these boys aren’t geared up for warping space that deep inside a gravity well. They’re running antiquated tech by Imperial and Priminae standards at least.”
“This what you were waiting for?”
Steph nodded slowly. “Yeah . . . yeah, I think it is.”
Berine Gael
The Gael was screaming as it powered down the gravity pit, trying to catch up to the destroyer squadron, never mind the fact that she was outnumbered five to one. If the destroyers made planetary approach, they’d tear the living abyss out of the orbital defenses at the very least and likely take out strategic assets on the surface.
And that is even forgetting civilian casualties, which are certain to be severe, Auran thought grimly.
He knew that the attack was a feint. Likely the main force was readying to take out one of the automated asteroid farms, but there was no choice left to him despite the knowledge. Hopefully one of the other pickets would be able to hinder them and salvage something.
“Time to orbit?” he demanded tersely.
“Eight minutes,” his second said flatly, emotions buried deep under a calm, cold facade. “Interception in twelve.”
Auran winced.
Four minutes was an eternity for five destroyers to tear through what remained of the orbital defense network, to say nothing of what they might launch on the planet.
He didn’t know how much longer the Kingdom could maintain its autonomy, frankly. Auran was aware that they had offers from at least two polities, including the Belj themselves, to accept “protection” in exchange for surrendering control of their system and charts to some of the richer deep-space rocks in the region.
The only thing that had kept them independent as long as they’d managed was the secret deep-space farms that produced some of the unique, highly refined processing crystals in the Free Stars. The crystals were their one commodity, and the secret of the farms’ location the only thing that kept the beasts from their throats.
Looks like the beasts have finally decided it’s not worth trading any longer, Auran realized with grim humor.
“New contact!” Prator Moran called out, her voice sounding odd.
Auran crossed the bridge and looked down at the pit that contained the scanning station. “More Belj?”
“I . . . I don’t believe so, sir?”
“Are you asking me, Prator?”
“No sir, I’m just . . .” She paused, clearly confused. “I’ve never seen signals like this.”
“Put on the main display.”
Auran turned forward, eyes rising to the large display that overlaid the armored port that looked out over the foredeck of his vessel. The imaging shifted, showing the capital planet and the orange of the star beyond.
“Prator,” he growled.
“Watch the curve of the planet, sir,” she said quickly. “Just a few more instants . . .”
He frowned, eyes on the screen as he leaned in. He abruptly pulled back, eyes widening as he spotted what she was talking about and a tight formation of a half dozen small, fast-moving ships swept around the curve of the planet. Briefly eclipsing the star behind them, the vessels slung out of planetary orbit. Auran could see some of the orbital guns firing, but the ships just ignored them.
He was hardly surprised. They were moving fast enough to outrun the mass driver launchers by a fair clip, and there was no chance any of the orbital beam stations would be able to lock on to something that fast and close.
“They’ve settled into an intercept course for the Belj, sir,” Prator Moran said, surprised.
He didn’t blame her.
What in the living abyss is going on?
“Sir!” The communication officer interrupted his thoughts. “Signal from the unknown ships—they’re on our frequencies, but . . .”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” the man admitted. “It almost looks like Imperial encoding, but it isn’t. They’re in the open, though, and the signal is compatible with our protocols.”
“Put it up.”
Archangel One
“Are you sure you don’t want this?”
“Relax,” Steph said, patting Tyke on the shoulder. “You’re doing fine. Go ahead and take her tactical.”
“You got it,” Tyke said as Steph stepped back, waving off the hard-light displays and engaging the NICS interface along with all of the small ship’s tactical controls.
Steph backed away as the room changed, becoming deep space around the two of them, opening a single command-and-control, hard-light display so he could take strategic command of the squadron and the communications system.
“Fighting form,” he ordered casually. “Check fire until I clear it.”
“Locals are firing on us,” Alex said casually over the channel from her own fighter-gunboat.
“Ignore them. They can’t track this fast, and I think it’s panic fire anyway,” Steph said. “Nothing is coming anywhere near us.”
“Roger that. What’s the plan?”
“Weston Special,” Steph said.
“Mind filling that in for those of us who never served with that lunatic?” Alex asked.
Chuckles floated over the squadron channel as Steph did a few quick calculations.
“Easy enough. I give the bad guys one chance to turn off, then when they don’t, we get to play hero.”
“Oh that definition of special. Got it.”
Steph grinned, opening a communications channel on the frequencies they’d monitored the locals using. He hoped that the aggressors would be monitoring them as part of the operation, but if not—well, he’d tried at least.
“Aggressor squadron.” He spoke in Imperial Standard, using his best imitation of Eric’s casual, calm, yet somehow firm and no-nonsense tone. “You are ordered to break off your assault on the world ahead and quit the system. Failure to comply will result in my squadron engaging you. This is your only warning.”
Steph closed the channel, nodding over to Tyke.
“Tyke, paint ’em like Tijuana on payday.”
“You got it, boss.”
Berine Gael
Auran stared at the communications station in consternation.
“What in the abyss was that?”
The poor officer at the station looked more lost than he felt, and that was saying something.
“That sounded like Imperial speech,” the communications officer said, “but
I’ve never heard that accent before.”
“The Empire couldn’t care less if the Belj decided to drop singularity bombs on our world,” Auran growled. “But you’re right: definitely Imperial speech, but not any Imperial I’ve heard before.”
“Do you think they’ll listen?” Brai asked softly, eyes as wide as Auran knew his own to be.
Auran shook his head. “I have no idea. They have to be as confused as we are.”
He broke from Brai and walked over to the scanner pit once more. “Prator, do we have anything that matches those ships in our computer?”
She shook her head. “Nothing even close. And before you ask, they’re definitely not any Imperial design we’ve encountered before.”
Auran turned his focus back to the display as he walked to the rail that was there to keep him from falling into the pits that held the crew below. He gripped the railing with both hands.
Who are these people?
Chapter 11
Belj Destroyer Berkan Fal
“What in the name of the eternal was that?”
No one seemed to have an answer, not that Commander Hirik blamed any of them. He didn’t even know who’d asked the question, and wasn’t completely certain that he hadn’t been the one to utter it.
“Are they Imperial?” he asked, thinking of the language the speaker had used on the communication.
The comm officer shrugged in confusion. “Not any profile in our system.”
“What do you read on them?” Hirik asked.
“Very little, Commander. They don’t scan as Imperials at all. They barely even scan as ships.”
“What? Explain that!”
“Power curve is too low. They register, but only as a few times more mass than they appear.”
Hirik scowled, confused. For a power curve to be that low, they’d have to be running their systems right on the ragged edge. Pushing into a fight with power levels that low was suicide, or at least it was asking for a total singularity failure and winding up dead in space—and shortly thereafter, just plain dead.
“They’re bluffing,” he yelled. “Probably something the Kingdom threw together in a rush to try and scare us off.”
