The Belt Loop_Book Three_End of an Empire

by Robert B. Jones

  In the back of his mind he could see the ceremony. He would be getting his first star, joining the Admiralty. Talk around the Second included rumors about a huge overhaul of the Elber Fleets up to and including abolishing the First completely and combining the Second and Third into what some were calling a “Super Fleet” that would ultimately be called the Fourth Colonial Fleet of Elber Prime. Responsibilities would increase and the new grouping would be responsible for the entire array of colonial planets and outposts. Such a realignment would necessarily demand a restructuring of the Admiralty and Curton was confident he was slated to fill one of the top combat slots.

  He looked at his operational logs and gave Captain Dryfus his standing orders. The ships headed for the boundaries of the Fringes would be under the command of Captain Nik Borde in the James River and as soon as his eighteen ships were refueled and inspected for readiness he would sail them inbound toward Bayliss and the waiting Captain Fuller. Captain Haad’s group was due to be augmented by returning elements of the Third as soon as they made the voyage from Elber. Most of them had been recalled from the Belt Loop for service around the hot zone of Bayliss and were expected to arrive at any second. One of those ships was the CNS Corpus Christi fresh from refit at the yards on Canton.

  It took two hours for the shuffling of ships and crews to be accomplished. When Curton saw the last of the bright blue plumes head out toward their rendezvous with Fuller, he breathed a sigh of relief. He had been expecting another Varson raiding party to interrupt the orderly transition of command but his group was not harassed at all. Which, in and of itself, left him with things to ponder. He couldn’t figure out the Varson strategy. Their daily raiding parties were nothing more than nuisance battles and he wondered how the Varson expected to do any real damage to the Fleet with only small attack boats and an occasional destroyer unfolding near Bayliss. The attacks were regular enough that he had grown accustomed to waiting for the engagements at about twenty-hour intervals and he was usually prepared and able to repel the incoming ships. His kill ratio was pretty high and in the months of fighting he had only lost two of his ships. It was almost as if the Varson commanders were purposefully keeping the Navy ships bottled up in endless skirmishes instead of letting them loose to pursue their attackers back into the Varson Empire’s home space. Could they be planning something bigger, something they didn’t want the Colonial Navy to get wind of? Curton was just following that train of thought when his console comm stack erupted.

  “Mayday, mayday. This is the CNS Lake Michigan, CCV-156. Mayday, mayday. . .”

  Pax Curton immediately sat forward and snapped his fingers at his comm officer. “Put that on screen, Mister Dale.”

  The forward blister flipped through ten or twelve images of the space surrounding the Pearl Harbor until it zeroed in on a lone ship coming in fast, trailing fire. The readouts on the right side of the screen identified the ship as the Lake Michigan and its operational profile, transponder codes and senior crew popped up in a separate box.

  Captain Curton instructed his comm officer to patch the distress call through to Captain Dryfus for authentication.

  “This is the CNS Pearl Harbor, Captain Curton in command. State your emergency, Michigan. Whom am I talking to?”

  “This is Commander Ric Volk, XO. CN228451. Captain Gallet is dead and we’re coming in hot!”

  Captain Dryfus joined the conversation. “Commander Volk, Captain Dryfus. State your situation. Over.”

  Static and hissing. On the blister in front of Curton he could see the Lake Michigan start to roll in a slow counter-clockwise spin. She’s lost her Higgs, he thought.

  “Bear with me, sir, things are not going well on this ship. We missed the fold and had to restart our Dyson — a burned out magnetic coil relay — and while we were recalculating the —”

  His transmission stopped mid-sentence. On Curton’s screen he saw a small flash of flame erupt from the spinning ship on her port flank near the containment ring. As the ship spun, the nearly invisible fire spiraled away in a feathery corkscrew.

  “Ahh, we just had an explosion aft and the ship is venting fuel. I’m going to abandon ship. Clear a path, Captain Curton, she’s entirely ballistic now, rifling out of control. Lost all helm control, propulsion dynamic shot, Higgs gone.”

  “What the hell happened, Commander Volk?” a sharp question from Captain Dryfus.

  “Standby, one, stand —”

  “Get down to the hangar deck, Volk! You have to get off that boat. Looks like she’s getting ready to come apart,” Curton said, his eyes glued to the blister.

  Commander Volk keyed the mike and the sounds of sirens and klaxons filled the background before he spoke. “The enginemen are trying to jettison the antimatter bottle, but the EBs did not all fire! She’s doomed, the explosive bolts did not fire!”

  Curton watched in grim fascination as the Lake Michigan spiraled in. His battle group put a wide margin of safety around the flaming ship’s incoming trajectory and now all they could do was wait. He saw several plumes leaving the aft decks of the Michigan at full throttle, pulsing away from the burning ship in tight curls, their spin imparted by the twisting deck they had launched from. Curton counted six lifeboats. Not nearly enough to save the entire crew. Then two more boats got away, the ship’s courier boats, leaving the burning hulk at high-gee speeds.

  “All of the crew left alive are safely away, Mississippi. Suggest we self-destruct her. No telling where she’ll wind up if we let her ride this out on her own. This is Commander Volk from my LB-04. You copy?”

  “Affirmative, commander. Transmit the codes. Bring the lady down,” Captain Dryfus said.

  “Aye, aye, captain. In one mike. Need to put more distance between us and the boat. On my mark, sir, three, two, one, mark!”

  Curton switched to his tactical frequency and hailed all of the ships in his group. “Space them out, men. Plot that trajectory and get well away. Self-destruct in four five seconds.”

  He watched his screen as the Lake Michigan swept 200,000 kilometers off his forward bow. The rest of his flotilla had made safe distance and all of his captains reported in along with the new battle group headed by Dryfus. He did some rough calculations and figured maybe 150 or 160 sailors had made it off the doomed ship. He used his joystick controller and zoomed in on the passing superstructure and saw the extensive damage to the ship’s aft quarters. No simple hydrogen bottle rupture could account for what he saw. Neat, regularly-spaced slits were stitched along her aft flank with the most damage visible on her topside. Those were energy weapon strikes. She had been fired upon before she made the fold.

  “Ten seconds,” his helmsman said.

  Curton stood. In the background he heard Captain Dryfus make provisions to receive the incoming lifeboats. He kept a running countdown in his head and when the numbers made it to zero he took two steps toward the blister.

  “Code transmitted. Goodbye to the Gray Lady. . .”

  Curton gritted his teeth upon hearing the solemn voice of Commander Volk. Losing a ship, no matter what the circumstances, was not a pleasant thing to witness.

  The rear of the Lake Michigan disappeared first. A brilliant blue white light took care of her backside and tiny slashes of orange flame erupted along her flank and spit out fountains of fire at her gun ports. Once the internal oxygen started to burn and the inner pressure hulls collapsed, the ship fully exploded in a silent rush of color and light. Fifteen seconds later all that was left was sparkling debris expanding in an elliptical cloud unbound by gravity.

  “Mark the location of that debris field, Mister Prather,” he told his science officer, “we’ll need to give that area a wide berth for a while.” Curton realized the debris field could hazard unsuspecting boats in the future, even particles as small as a fingertip could pierce an outer hull if someone sailed into it fast enough. Once marked and passed down to the official hazard file, the resting place of the Lake Michigan would be avoided at speed and join the other hun
dreds of thousands of places to detour around in the Belt Loop. Thank God for computers, he thought.

  Curton summoned his quartermaster. “Chief Martin, get me a shuttle ready. I need to get over to the Mississippi and have a talk with Commander Volk soonest. Commander Downs, you have the conn,” he said to his XO.

  He had to find out what had killed the Michigan before she left Canno.

  Chapter 14

  “What I just told you is to be kept in strictest confidence, Holli,” Uri Haad said, breaking the embrace.

  She looked up at him with tearful eyes. “Will I get to see you again,” she wondered out loud.

  Haad hugged her close one more time, inhaling the fruity apple fragrance of her hair. During the last weeks they had become more than just passing acquaintances on the Hudson River and now he valued their blossoming relationship as something he wanted to hold on to. Recently intimate, their exploratory hugs and kisses had initially proved fatal to him. He wanted her, he wanted to be a part of her life. The hours and hours they had spent talking between battles were some of the most pleasant times he had personally seen in the last fifteen years. She was his sunshine on a cloudy day, his safe harbor in the storm, his anchor in the uncontrolled turbulence of violent, nebulous space.

  “That all depends. I don’t know what lies beyond next week,” he said quietly, one part of his mind thinking about gaining the Admiralty. The cramped confines of his stateroom seemed to be closing in on him, pressuring his emotions. For a man not accustomed to regular contact with a beautiful woman, Haad was suffused with enough attacks to his nervous system now than at any time he had walked his bridge under enemy fire.

  “Oh, I get it. You get your promotion, then sail off into the sunset leaving me on some Port Authority dock with the promise of a speedy return and a souvenir from some far-off planet. I thought that shit only happened in the video reels.”

  He released his grip and took half a step back. The back of his legs were firm against the edge of his bunk. Was now the time to lower his shields or should he prepare himself to repel any and all boarders? He was due to leave for Bayliss proper at the next shift change and, after that, who knew what opportunities would present themselves?

  “No need to be melodramatic, Holli. My first responsibility is to my crew and my ship. I must do what the Navy tells me to do. It has nothing to do with the way I feel about you.”

  She turned her head to the side. “Oh, no? Just how do you feel, my dashing Captain Haad?” She reached out a hand and gently stroked the left side of his face without making eye contact.

  Answering that question would be the hardest thing Captain Haad had ever done in his adult life. He was an expert at directing men and women in battle, or settling disputes among his senior crew, or dealing with the endless rules and regulations that came with the job. His prior dalliances with women had only left him emotionless and lacking, filling physical needs only. This, he thought, was different. Only one week away from hoisting himself up another rung in the hierarchy of the Colonial Navy he was now faced with a difficult decision. Could he have both? An exciting, rewarding military career and this beautiful flower to come home to when in port?

  “I, I, that is, I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said, the words escaping his lips like a whisper from a dying man. “That’s how I feel.”

  She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Show me,” she said.

  As he bent to kiss her, his left hand reached out and slapped at the communicator control on his stateroom comm stack.

  He would need some privacy.

  * * *

  “It’s a planet called Rauud Mithie. It probably doesn’t even show up on your charts but I could supply you with right ascension and declination coordinates from Canuure if that would help.”

  Lieutenant Mols looked at Colonel Inskaap and shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt,” she said and passed over her reader. She was inside the cell with Inskaap discussing ways to defeat the Malguur Domain. The cell door was open and three substantial-looking shore patrolmen stood guard in the corrider, their holsters unsnapped but weapons still inside.

  “It is a planet that your Navy completely overlooked during the first war,” Inskaap said as he punched in the coordinates. “Small, mostly barren, orbiting a non-descript star beyond the Domain worlds. Bale Phatie’s secret military and industrial complex is buried there. All of the ship building and weapons development is conducted there in underground factories and laboratories. If you didn’t know about it, you would surely miss it. No electromagnetic radiation is permitted above ground and no traffic is permitted to land or leave the landing field unless Rauud Mithie is rotated away from prying eyes. Whenever Phatie enters the system, he sails past the planet and always lands with the sun at his back; his departing ships use the same strategy, always heading for the sun and an intermediate jump point before they head back into the core systems.”

  “How far away from your home world is this factory planet, colonel?”

  He thought for a moment, his mind converting Malguurian measurements into ones humans could understand. “Roughly 233 of your light-years. But, it is deeper into the armpit of the arm you call Orion-Cygnus. Your Second Fleet never ventured that far past Canuure and I’m certain the picket ships you had stationed around the Domain did not include Rauude Mithie.” Inskaap was playing all of his high cards now. After almost three months in human captivity he realized the only way he could boost his chances of ever getting out of this prison and bolster his personal bona fides was to start delivering the goods on Bale Phatie. He had hinted of having other information that would be useful to the Navy on several occasions but Lieutenant Mols had refused to bite. She was the only human allowed to have any contact with the Varson super-spy.

  “And, you’re sure that he has been pumping out ships and weapons for the last six of our years?”

  “Yes. Warrantied, lieutenant.”

  She looked at him and a thin smile worked the corner of her mouth. “You mean ‘guaranteed’ I’m sure. The two words are similar in meaning, but different in the usage you intended,” she said.

  He shook his head. The Elberese language was the most confusing language he had ever attempted to learn. With its many synonyms and homonyms, the nuances of its metaphors and similes, it took all he could muster to master it. Add to that the speed of delivery by human speakers and the whole guttural mess was as confusing as it was intriguing. Lieutenant Mols was an excellent linguist and she had the patience to help him with his rough spots. “Yes, then, it is guaranteed. I would estimate he had as many as one thousand ships erected on Rauud Mithie after he took control of the military. He used the stolen plans from the captured Mobile Bay ship and turned his engineers loose on its specifications. He merged your fold technology with our jump engines and he also integrated some of your laser weaponry with our purely electrical discharge guns. I know for a fact that the new ships coming out of his yards now have the capability of shooting in any given direction and he has maintained a lot of the old-fashioned projectile rockets and ship-to-ship missiles, too.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, colonel, why haven’t we seen any of these new ships and weapons out here near Bayliss? This planet is the thrust of his attack so far, correct?”

  He cast his eyes down to the floor. “That is correct. But eventually, he plans to strike at all of your colonial worlds. He wants to ‘decimate’ these worlds one by one and march his ships down the steps, so to speak, and ultimately strike against your home base.”

  Mols stood. “By home base you mean Elber itself?”

  He shook his head. “No, lieutenant, not Elber. He plans to destroy Elber in due course, as his new fleet comes to full strength. These skirmishes around Bayliss are just a ruse to keep you busy until he has amassed his 2,000 ships — some of them new, some of them retrofitted with the hybrid technology.”

  Her heart began to pound. Was he getting ready to say what her mind told her was not possible? “Go on, colon
el,” she urged.

  “Right before I escaped Canuure, I delivered to him the details on my assessment of your colonial military structure and included my assessment of your Navy and Marine Corps. Phatie wanted more so I showed him the extent of your Human Empire, not only here in the region you call the Fringes, but in the other direction as well.”

  Mols pulled out her portable communicator. “And?”

  Inskaap looked up at her and grimaced. “I showed him every system between Elber Prime and your home world. The one you call Earth.”

  Mols ran from the cell and thumbed in the codes for her uncle. Admiral Paine had to know this, he had to be made aware of what was going on in the head of that Varson madman.

  She had just reached Uncle Vinny’s yeoman when disaster struck.

  PART THREE: The Domino Effect

  Chapter 15

  Coni Berger didn’t know what had happened. She was sitting on the side of her bunk reading one minute and the next she was flat on her back looking up at smoky daylight. Part of the block wall at the back of her cell had been blown away near the overhead and cracks in the side bulkheads were starting to widen. She heard yelling and screaming coming from the corridor beyond her locked door.

  Was it some kind of quake? Someone lose a grenade outside? It took her a few seconds to shake off her bewilderment and scrabble toward the opening in her cubicle. Sirens and klaxons sounded from every direction and in the crackling distance she heard the doppler wail of a F&R truck. She climbed up the broken bits of cinderblock and debris and took a quick look out of the hole. It was just barely man-sized and parts of broken re-bar reinforcing rods were bent away at different angles. Not more than ten meters away from her a Colonial Navy shuttle was buried nose-deep into the berm surrounding the destroyed north wall of the blockhouse. Oily black smoke and snapping electrical sparks danced away from the point of impact. Evidently the pilot had been trying to make an emergency landing on the air operations runway when something made him lose control.