Starbound

by Dave Bara

  “Almost all military space platforms have been destroyed, sir, along with most of the civilian satellite communications array. The atomic weapons used by the dreadnoughts have matched their yields with Union specs, sir, likely in order to blame the attacks on us by masking their Imperial origin. Vixis remains stationed over the capital, broadcasting on emergency channels, the only source of information for the populace, claiming she is defending Carinthia from us, sir,” she concluded.

  “Bastard,” said Babayan. “Why hasn’t he attacked New Vienna?”

  “Likely because he plans on ruling from there, at some point,” I said to my XO without turning.

  “But three dreadnoughts and one Lightship can’t hold off the entire Union fleet, sir, not with our new weaponry,” she said. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were rimmed with red but she otherwise maintained outward composure.

  “Then it seems likely he doesn’t plan to hold Carinthia for now, but abandon her to us and return later, likely with an overwhelming force,” I said.

  “But where would he go?” she asked. I shook my head.

  “That we don’t know, but what we do know is that this was well planned in advance, as I’m sure is his escape,” I said.

  I sat back down in my captain’s chair.

  “We can’t wait for the rest of the fleet to arrive. They don’t have the added benefit of the hybrid drive, so they’re too far out to help. We have to act now, try to save what’s left of Carinthia.” Babayan took her station next to me. “Status of the closing dreadnoughts, XO,” I said.

  She looked to her screen. “They’re tracking between us and Vixis now. We’ll have to go through them to get to her. We’ll be within firing range of the gravity weapons in nine minutes, coil cannon in twelve, missiles and torpedoes in fifteen,” she said.

  “Distance to Vixis?”

  “Twenty-two minutes max at flank speed, Captain.”

  “Mr. Longer,” I looked down at my propulsion officer. “Flank speed. Everything we’ve got.” I ordered.

  “Aye, sir!” replied Longer.

  I looked down at George Layton at the helm. “Mr. Layton, plot best course to intercept the Vixis,” I said.

  He hesitated, then said, “It will have to be through those dreadnoughts, Captain.”

  “I’m aware of that. As I’ve ordered, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. A few seconds later and the optimal course was up on our tactical display. I turned to my longscope officer.

  “Ensign Layton, prepare the enveloping gravity plasma weapon. Signal me when she’s ready. I’ll take the longscope station at that time,” I ordered.

  “Aye, sir,” she said, and made for the ’scope.

  “I’ll be relying on you to command the deck while I’m under the hood, XO,” I said, turning to Babayan. “As soon as we’re free of the dreadnoughts, I want Starbound to make straight for Vixis.”

  She nodded assent. “Understood, sir. Will we have the Historian’s support for this attack?” I looked to his dark and empty bridge station.

  “Unlikely.”

  “And if he tries to block the attack from his quarters?” she asked. I looked at her dead on.

  “Then eject the yacht from the primary hull, XO,” I said.

  She didn’t waver. “Understood, sir.”

  Then I got the signal from Ensign Layton at the longscope, and took her place there.

  The scale of the attack I was planning was unprecedented. I had gauged up the gravity projector to envelop all three dreadnoughts at once with a plasma field almost ten kilometers across. I could see from my display that Serosian was monitoring my station, watching as I calculated the needed power outputs, but he hadn’t communicated with me and I didn’t expect him to.

  The dreadnoughts maintained a close stack formation. This made no sense to me as it made them vulnerable to a multiship attack. My only thought was either they had a secret attack plan that I couldn’t begin to guess at, or they were under orders from Arin. The latter scenario seemed most likely: protect Vixis at all costs.

  Using the power curve I was planning on would drain the ship for several minutes, even with the replenishing power of our hyperdimensional systems. We would be vulnerable for as much as two minutes, but we’d be out of range of Vixis’s weapons during that time. At least the ones we knew of. I forwarded the battle plan to the XO.

  “This consumes all of our system power, even reserves. Everything but the emergency batteries,” she said to me through the command com channel.

  “We’ll only be vulnerable for two minutes, Commander. An acceptable risk. And Vixis is out of range to attack us,” I replied.

  “What if we don’t get all the dreadnoughts?”

  I hesitated a second before answering. “We will,” I said. “Call battle stations, XO.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  My longscope tactical display showed an eighty-seven percent predicted success rate, and that was good enough for me. Babayan announced to the crew that they were to stand by battle stations, and that the attack would be only my responsibility. I waited as she counted down precious seconds to the minimum range of the gravity plasma. When she reached zero, I didn’t hesitate.

  “Firing the gravity plasma weapon,” I said to her over the command com. I watched as Starbound’s coil cannon arrays rose to firing position and ejected the glittering silver plasma from their gun ports. The drain on the ship’s systems was immediate. When I came out from under the hood, the bridge was dark and dim with the blue emergency lights the only illumination. I watched as system displays slowly came back up one by one as we replenished our power reserves. Then the main tactical display lit up.

  The gravity plasma was enveloping the helpless dreadnoughts. They were almost completely enclosed when . . .

  “Sir, I’m reading a weakening of the gravity plasma field,” said Babayan.

  “Weakening? How?” I watched her scan her station monitor quickly.

  “Uncertain, sir, but they appear to be punching holes in the plasma. Currently five percent dissipation, sir,” she said.

  I went to my display station and pulled up the tactical telemetry. She was right. The dreadnoughts were piercing the plasma. I checked the power wave signatures.

  “They’re using the frequency modulation weapon to punch holes in the plasma,” I stated. I watched for a few more seconds.

  “Can they disperse the field?” asked Babayan. I looked at the rate of penetration. Then I sat back down in my chair.

  “They don’t have enough time,” I said simply. Babayan joined me in sitting. We watched in near-silence, only the quiet hum of our operating systems as ambient sound. The gravity plasma made contact with the first of the dreadnoughts. In quick succession all three of the behemoths warped and imploded under the massive gravity field, then a quick succession of three bright white explosions, like fireworks, filled the screen.

  Three dreadnoughts destroyed. Thirty thousand men and women. Human beings.

  I found myself devoid of feeling for them. They were just the enemy now, an obstacle in a greater, much larger battle.

  “Mr. Layton,” I said. “Recalculate and optimize our course for Vixis.” He responded immediately.

  “Done and done, sir,” he replied. “Seventeen minutes to intercept, sir.”

  “Good,” I said, then silently resumed monitoring my personal tactical panel.

  We were nine minutes away from engaging Vixis, which was busy spooling up her Hoagland hyperdimensional drives to jump, when Duane Longer at Propulsion called me down to his station.

  “I think I have an option, sir,” he said to me and Babayan as we leaned on the railing looking down on his station.

  “Explain,” I answered.

  “I think we can use the hybrid drive, a controlled intermix detonation like the one at the Jenarus
jump space tunnel, to jump ahead and engage Vixis early. Surprise her, sir,” he said.

  “You think?” questioned Babayan. I held up my hand to allow Longer to finish.

  “It will be hard to calculate exactly, and we’re much closer to Vixis than we were to normal space at Jenarus, but if I can use that detonation to calculate how much of an intermix we need, it could jump us into firing range early,” said Longer.

  “Or blast us completely out of range.” The voice came from behind us. We all turned to find Serosian had returned to the bridge.

  “I’d be glad to have your help, Historian,” I said formally.

  “And I’ve come to offer it,” he replied. “The odds are slim we can control the intermix that precisely, but if you are willing to turn the process over to me . . .” He trailed off. I looked to George Layton.

  “How long until Vixis is ready to jump, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “Looks like seven minutes, sir. They’re not rushing,” he said.

  “Prince Arin has a flair for the dramatic. He wants us to get close before he jumps out. Show us his superiority,” I said. I nodded to Serosian.

  “Go,” I said. “Everyone prepare for the intermix jump. Lock down the ship, XO,” I ordered.

  “Aye, sir,” she replied, a skeptical look on her face.

  I took my seat and commed in to Serosian at his station, speaking quietly. “Can our inertial dampers handle this kind of force?” I asked.

  “Likely,” he said. “They are designed for much greater stresses than this. I can’t guarantee that you won’t be thrown around your bridge a bit like in those popular Tri-Vee dramas you liked so much growing up, but Starbound should hold together.”

  “That’s comforting,” I said. Then I asked the real question on my mind.

  “Why are you back on my bridge?”

  He didn’t break from his preparations while answering. “Your use of the gravity weapons on the battlefield has been a great escalation and marked a moral compromise against other human beings which I could not condone. I have no such moral compunctions where Prince Arin is concerned.”

  I took his answer as an honest one.

  “Seven minutes to attack range. Five until Vixis can jump,” announced Babayan.

  “It’s now or never, Historian,” I said into the com. A few seconds passed until he said, “Ready,” then stood down from his station. He came and took the third chair next to me.

  “Mr. Longer?” I asked.

  “Intermix calculated and fed into the impellers, sir,” he reported.

  “Status, XO.”

  “Locked as tight as she’ll go, Captain,” she said.

  I pulled up the gravity plasma projector weapon on my station panel. It was still warm and ready.

  “You’ll only get one chance at this,” said Serosian. I nodded.

  “Understood. Commander Layton, as soon as we complete the intermix jump, I’ll need firing coordinates on Vixis,” I said.

  “You’ll have them in five seconds, Captain,” he said. I looked back down at Longer.

  “Count us down from ten,” I ordered.

  He did.

  There was a good deal of thrashing about the cabin as the inertial dampening system tried to compensate for our violent acceleration. After a few seconds we were stable again and Layton quickly fed me Vixis’s location.

  “We’re less than a hundred clicks from her!” said Babayan.

  “Understood, XO,” I plugged in Layton’s calculations and fired the gravity plasma. Then I stood up, watching the tactical display with the rest of the crew as the plasma expanded.

  “Are you sure this will work through an active Hoagland Field?” I asked Serosian.

  “There is no greater force in the universe than gravity,” he said by way of answering.

  “Report, Commander Layton,” I demanded.

  “Vixis is running, on full impellers, sir, straining to keep her distance from the plasma,” Layton said.

  “He’ll lose,” said Serosian. Something, my intuition, told me that wasn’t so sure a thing.

  “Sir,” cut in Babayan, urgency in her voice. “Vixis is raising her HD frequency modulation much faster than she should be able to. She’s almost ready to—”

  “Jump,” I cut her off. And with that Vixis was gone from our dimension, her destination unknown. The plasma field intersected with her last known position a few seconds later, heading out into open space, there to harmlessly dissipate.

  I sat back down. “He was playing with us,” I said.

  “But, sir,” insisted Longer, “I swear he didn’t have time to spool the HD drive enough to create a working torsion field!”

  “I’ll take you at your word, Lieutenant. Apparently the empire’s new jump technology has more features than we anticipated,” I said.

  And with that, I ordered us into geostationary orbit above New Vienna. There was much to do there, first and foremost to convince the survivors of the atomic holocaust that the Union was not their enemy.

  Prince Arin would have to wait for another day.

  Dénouement

  Once we established orbit, we began to see the damage done to Carinthia firsthand. High Station One was completely destroyed. Almost every usable low-orbit military platform or station had been ripped apart. Three major cities had been destroyed by atomic attack.

  New Vienna was spared, perhaps for only the reason that Arin intended to return there one day to rule. Radiation levels were too high on the planet, and there was a dense cloud of debris in the lower atmosphere, obscuring many of the major cities. The prime agricultural areas of the planet had been scorched by coil cannon fire and small-yield atomics. Casualties would undoubtedly be in the millions.

  Carinthia had been devastated.

  We had boots on the ground inside an hour, targeting major infrastructure hubs around the remaining cities, staring with New Vee. Power, water, food, it was all about the basics now.

  At first the military and police resisted us, and there were a good number of skirmishes. But we began broadcasting the truth to the Carinthian people over low-band frequencies, and slowly they began to accept our help. It was in our favor that many of the voices telling people the truth were Carinthian, including Prince Benn, Karina, and their sovereign, the grand duke.

  Admiral Wesley had the Union fleet mobilize all the forces at their disposal to help Carinthia. Four worlds, Earth, Quantar, Pendax, and Levant, reached out to help their brothers and sisters in need. It did not go unnoticed by the people, or their rulers. Indeed, Arin’s plan seemed to have had the opposite effect on the morale of his planet than what he had intended. But it was clear to me that his first aim had been to cripple Carinthia, the industrial giant of the Union, and he had achieved that. His political goals were secondary, and I suspected he believed achieving them in the near future with the help of the empire was a foregone conclusion.

  Within a week, Admar Harrington had antiparticle ships from Pendax scooping the atmosphere clean of contaminated debris. It was something they had to do regularly on their own world, with its frequent volcanic eruptions. It went on this way for weeks, the Union worlds rallying to aid Carinthia, and it made a difference. My time was consumed in humanitarian efforts. I coordinated Quantar’s aid program to Carinthia at my father’s request, focusing on rebuilding critical infrastructure such as salvageable utility and industrial plants. It was daunting and exhausting work.

  Then one day I was called back to the capital, to the New Hofburg palace. I washed and slept, something none of us had done much of in weeks, all under orders of the Admiralty. The next morning I was escorted downstairs into the palace’s huge drawing room, and there found it full of dignitaries.

  The Grand Duke Henrik, my father, Prince Benn, Wesley, Karina, Dobrina, Serosian, Harrington, Zander. . . .

  They all
greeted me and thanked me for what I had done. I had been through so much though that I felt completely disassociated from them and from my royal responsibilities. I was first and foremost in my mind a Lightship captain. Everything else came second.

  After a few minutes of idle chatter I found myself drifting into a corner chair by a fireplace, drinking tea in the cold morning sun and staring out the window.

  Then Dobrina came up and joined me, tapping me on the shoulder before sitting in an adjacent chair.

  “How are you, Peter?” she asked.

  “Numb, I think,” I replied with a weak smile. Numb was a good word, but underneath that numbness was a searing pain. I felt deeply depressed at what had happened. I’d lost thirty-three marines under my command and taken fifty thousand lives destroying the dreadnoughts. Enemy or not, that was a heavy burden, and not what I’d thought would happen in my navy career.

  Dobrina took my hand and rubbed at my wedding band, bringing me back to reality.

  “I’d almost hoped it wasn’t true, these stories of your wedding to the princess. But I understand. It’s my folly for believing the daughter of a soldier could ever marry a prince.”

  I sat up. “It was no folly,” I said. Dobrina smiled bravely.

  “We both know that it is. And right now both our worlds need you and Princess Karina to inspire hope again,” she said, “and they need me in command of Impulse II. No regrets, Peter. We had our time.”

  “We did,” I agreed. I focused hard on her, this brave woman who had touched my heart, who I would never be able to be with again except on the battlefield. Those emotions were all raw and right on the surface. I couldn’t hide them anymore. I didn’t want to.

  “I love you, Dobrina,” I said. She squeezed my hand.

  “I know. And I love you. But that’s not enough in this world, this Union. Not now,” she said. “In a different reality, perhaps . . .”

  “Nothing will ever change how I feel about you,” I said. And that was true. If I’d been born a navy brat, instead of in a royal house, we could have been together.