Empire Ebook Full

by B. V. Larson

  We managed to get the Worms to tell us there were no traps ahead, and we assumed that meant no mines existed. More detailed intel was harder to get out of them. It took a lot of back-forth communications with the Worms just to get them to understand what I wanted. At first, they simply reported that there were “a lot” of ships on the other side.

  Worms apparently didn’t deal well with precise numbers. After about seven units of anything, they moved to a symbol that meant “a lot”. This symbol depicted an egg chamber dotted with Worm infants. Apparently, this could mean anything from eight up to several hundred. After that, they had a bigger number concept that meant, roughly, “a whole lot”. This symbol was a pictograph of the stars in the sky. Generally, this was thought to indicate hundreds or thousands of individual objects. The only larger denomination was an image of an endless beach, representing countless grains of sand. This number indicated hundreds of thousands, millions, or even an infinity of items.

  After we’d sorted this out, we repeatedly received the answer that “a lot” of Earth forces were in the next system. I found this frustratingly vague. As I didn’t even know how old the intel was, it was almost useless. All we knew for sure is that there were more than seven Earth ships in the Alpha Centauri system.

  Working with Marvin for another hour or two, I finally got the Worms to agree to scout the other side of the ring. I was eager for fresh information. They sent through a startling force of fifty ships. Apparently, they liked to scout in force. The ships flitted into the ring and vanished. We all watched the screens, waiting for their return. I think most of my staff was barely breathing.

  An hour passed before Sandra declared the Worm scouts dead. “There simply isn’t any reason for anyone to take so long to scout a neighboring system. All they had to do was fly in there, take a look around, and fly back out. They weren’t moving very fast. They could have managed the whole thing in ten minutes. We must assume they have all been destroyed.”

  “You could be right,” Miklos said. “In which case, we should slow down as fast as possible. We don’t want to make the mistake of barreling into the Alpha Centauri system after our duped scouts and suffer the same fate they did.”

  I glowered, rejecting any suggestion we should retreat, or slow our advance. “The intel from the Worms is so vague it’s useless. We’ll keep advancing. How long do we have until we have to start decelerating in order to halt before going through the ring?”

  “We’re just about at the point of no return,” Miklos said. “You must decide now, or we’ll have to shoot past the ring and reverse course to return to it—either that, or rush right in without knowing what’s in front of us. There could be mines, sir. Some kind of defensive system…it would explain the disappearance of the Worm ships.”

  “We could fire missiles ahead to annihilate any minefield,” I said, gritting my teeth. “but if we shoot blindly we might well take out the last surviving Worm ships. I’m not going to have any blue-on-blue. We’re going to have to decelerate and tiptoe through the Alpha Centauri ring.”

  Everyone looked visibly relieved at my decision. Everyone but me, that was. I didn’t like slowing down, losing my momentum. In space battles, it was critical to keep moving forward. I’d won a number of battles that way in the past against superior forces. I didn’t want to lose the initiative now, but I couldn’t see what else to do. The enemy was a big question mark and I couldn’t take the risk.

  We’d almost reached the ring when a single Worm ship nosed out of it to greet us. It was moving slowly, almost drifting.

  “Let’s make contact with that ship,” I snapped. “Marvin, open a channel and translate, please.”

  “Channel open.”

  Worm pictographs began flashing on my screen. I frowned at them uncertainly. I didn’t know all the Worm symbols, far from it. But these seemed easy to identify. There was the symbol for “a lot” followed by the symbol for friendship.

  “What the hell does that mean? Do they love us a bunch?”

  “No sir,” Marvin said. “Worm messages are similar in nature to insect communications. They relate information that is helpful to the entire nest. For example, a terran honeybee might use pheromones and bodily movements to indicate there is an excellent batch of ripe pollen in an indicated direction. Termite and ant colonies, on the other hand—”

  “Cut the crap, Marvin. What are they saying?”

  “The message indicates there is a large group of friends nearby. The meaning is always subject to context and interpretation, of course. In this instance, that message doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Sure it does,” Miklos said. “The implication is clear, Colonel. There is a large Earth fleet in Alpha Centauri.”

  “Then why are they calling them friendly?”

  “Maybe they have confused things, calling all Earth ships friendly because we’re from the same homeworld. Or perhaps Crow’s ships have used diplomatic communications, as we have, and convinced them they’re friendly.”

  No one was happy with these ideas. My staff babbled for a few minutes. Meanwhile, we were flying closer to the ring every second. It was hard to remain calm while approaching a dramatic transition point into the unknown. We were flying blind. It made the skin on my neck tingle with unease.

  “Slow down to a crawl,” I ordered. “We’ll poke our noses on the other side and see what’s going on.”

  It took another full hour to reach the ring. Under us, the engines trembled and shuddered, applying tremendous thrust in order to reduce our speed. To increase efficiency, we turned our ships around and directed their exhaust ports toward the ring. We decelerated hard, feeling the G-forces in our bones. A plume of exhaust plasma enshrouded each of my ships in a glowing fireball.

  In the end, we couldn’t get our speed down to zero. We fell through the ring, flying backwards and thrusting at full power to slow down. I didn’t know what we’d find on the far side, but I knew that flying into a battle ass-first wasn’t the best way to do it.

  -16-

  In the final moments before we hit the ring, I ordered the fleet to come about and direct their weapons systems forward. Every pilot breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Come about and prep everything you have to fire. We’re barely moving, but we don’t know what we’ll meet up with when we arrive.”

  As we took the plunge, gritting our teeth and praying, we felt the tiny familiar transitional shudder. It was such a small sensation for having traveled a hundred light years.

  “Switch all sensors into full-active mode,” I ordered. “We aren’t sneaking in, and I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on.”

  The sensor officer worked his board feverishly. Quite often in space combat, we ran with our detection equipment in passive mode. The problem with active detection systems is that they gave the enemy almost as much information about you as you were able to gather about them. Worse, it gave the enemy that information in approximately half the time it took for you to gather your tidbits of data. This was due to the vast distances involved.

  The speed of light barely seemed adequate when crossing a star system. A radar blip, for example, might take several hours to reach across space, find an enemy ship and return with an echo. Unfortunately, it took the echoing blip just as long to travel back through space to the ship that had sent the pulse in the first place. In the meantime, the enemy had recorded the blip, traced it back to its source, and knew who sent it. At that point they could fire upon the pinging ship and when your radar bounced back to you, it could come with a nasty surprise in its wake.

  Passive sensors such as optical clusters were therefore superior in timing and stealth. Unfortunately, they didn’t give you as clear a picture. You were less likely to find things that didn’t want to be noticed, things that suppressed their energy outputs and ran coldly and quietly in space. Because of this, I ordered the pinging machines turned on and turned up.

  We flew through the ring in a rush. I put my own ship in the lea
d, as we had plenty of defensive lasers. If we were charging into mines or missiles, the cruiser with her numerous small guns could shoot them down before my stubby little gunships plowed into them.

  Everyone tensed up, but there were no klaxons or shocking explosions. So far, so good.

  “Incoming data sir, the holotank should update any second now,” Miklos said.

  The brainboxes in charge of the display systems chewed on the incoming mountain of data from the moment we appeared in the tri-star system. At first, it put up a model of the system from memory as a time-saver, and to provide a point of reference for hard details it managed to detect. This amounted to the three suns and various known scraps of debris that floated in predictable orbits around the system. The two central stars were similar in composition to Sol. The dimmer third star, Proxima Centauri, was a tiny red dwarf in a far-flung orbit. Taken as a whole, there really wasn’t much else to see in the Alpha Centauri system.

  Today was an exceptional day, however. Contacts began swimming into existence as we watched with growing alarm. There were three groups of them, three distinct flocks of objects.

  “Are they asteroids?” Sandra asked hopefully.

  Miklos shook his head, adjusting the holotank to zoom in on the nearest cluster. “Colonel, by count and individual size alone, I think the nearest grouping is the Worm fleet.”

  I nodded. There wasn’t any argument from the rest of the staff. Even with incomplete data, it had to be the Worms. They were even swinging around and shuffling formation as we watched, which was classic Worm behavior.

  “Okay, we’ve found the Worm fleet, and the good news is they haven’t been annihilated as we thought they might be. They seem to be pursuing the smallest group of ships in the region toward the far ring—the one that leads to the Solar System. I would guess that smaller group is made up of Imperial Earth ships. Anyone want to argue that?”

  No one did. Sandra was quick to point to the largest mass of ships, however. “What about these? The Earth ships are running right toward them. They have to be more Earth ships. Kyle, there are hundreds of them. We don’t stand a chance.”

  As we weren’t under immediate threat, I removed my helmet and gauntlet, then gave my face a good scratching. Sweating in a battlesuit and breathing recycled air for hours wasn’t glamorous. Around me, others took the moment to do the same. We’d been tense and ready for battle for a long time now.

  “We have fifty ships. The Worms have about a hundred. Combined, if the Earth ships all turn on us—you’re right. They will outnumber us probably four to one. But let’s get all the data in before we do anything rash.”

  “Rash?” Miklos asked. “Like turn tail and run?”

  I gave him a displeased glance.

  “Sorry sir,” he said. He quickly went back to his controls and fiddled with the focus, trying to get details on the third group of ships.

  “Let’s hear your analysis, Captain,” I asked him. “What are we missing?”

  “Well, first of all, the Imperial ships have tripled in number. Only two cruisers escaped the Worm ships back in the Helios system. Now, there seems to be six of them. They must have had four ships on our side of the ring and four ships on the far side. A garrison force, it would seem. The Worms destroyed two, but now there are a total of six. Still not enough to defeat the Worms, however.”

  I nodded. “I’m seeing something else here. Notice the position, course and speed of the Worm ships?”

  “Yes sir, I do see it. The Earth ships are moving slowly. I can only surmise that one or more of them is damaged and unable to go faster. What is more interesting is that the Worm ships are pursuing, but not overtaking the Earth cruisers. By my estimates, they should have been able to catch and destroy them by now. They would take losses in doing so, however, as there are now six Earth ships.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s how I see it. They’re chasing them out of their territory, but not engaging. They want the Earth ships to keep running, but they don’t want to lose any more of their own. The Worms are always aggressive, but they aren’t completely insane.”

  Sandra stepped up between the two of us and reached out with her long, lithe arm. She tapped at the smoky region of metallic flecks in the distance. This caused the region to zoom in, and we could see the third large cloud of ships coming our way.

  “What I’m interested in is this group here,” she said. “You guys aren’t saying much about them. They’re the big unknown. I can’t even see much detail on this display. Are these ships really shaped like big barrels, or are they just not displaying correctly?”

  “The range is too great,” Miklos explained. “The sensor systems need hours to draw a precise image of a ship from that great of a distance. That’s why they look like blobs or blips.”

  Sandra nodded seriously. “So, in other words, we’ve got no idea what we’re facing? All we know is that the Earth cruisers are heading right for them.”

  “That’s essentially correct,” Miklos said, “right now they—”

  “Colonel Riggs,” Marvin interrupted loudly. “There is an incoming message.”

  “From the Worms?” I asked.

  “No sir. It’s from the Imperial cruisers.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I heard music playing faintly. I frowned, looking at the walls around us. Marvin had tapped the audio input into our walls, so the nanites vibrated, forming speakers around us. The music was tinny, and vaguely martial in nature.

  “This is an Imperial decree, being rebroadcast for the benefit of all Earth citizens,” said a voice.

  All of us were looking at one another in bemusement by now. The voice changed, becoming rougher and deeper. I now recognized the tones and the down-under accent. It was none other than Jack Crow.

  “This is your duly elected leader speaking,” Crow said. “You’re ships are carrying contraband, and are traveling in restricted space. The crews have been tried in absentia. Unfortunately, they have all been found guilty as charged. You are hereby ordered to halt your ships and set them adrift. All hands will then abandon ship to be picked up by the approaching cruisers. Any vessel not complying will be destroyed. Only complete cooperation will ensure your survival. Emperor Crow out.”

  “What the hell is that about?” Sandra asked.

  “I think we’ve flown into something we weren’t supposed to witness,” Miklos said.

  I stared at the globular tank, trying to make sense of it all. Two groups of Earth ships converging in the middle of the star system. The cruisers making this threatening announcement—could it be?

  “Marvin, the Worms said there were a lot of friendlies in this system, correct? Hundreds of them?”

  “The symbol used and confirmed repeatedly indicated a whole lot. Allies numbering between eight and several hundred thousand, yes sir.”

  I turned to Miklos. “What if they were talking about that huge flotilla of ships out there?”

  “I suppose they could be. But if they’re allies, who are they?”

  “Let’s look at the configurations. More data should be in by now.”

  We examined the data defining the ships, and found it increasingly mysterious. The design of these ships was unknown to us—if you could even all them “designed” at all. Just as Sandra had first noted, they looked like a mass of barrel-shaped ships.

  “Transports,” Sandra said aloud.

  We all looked at her.

  “Big cylindrical transports, like the ones the Macros build. But they aren’t as large as that. All they have is some life support, enough power to fly and primitive navigational equipment. They look like transports to me.”

  I peered at the scopes and read the numbers carefully. I pulled up a yellow wireframe schematic of the distant vessels and flicked at the image, spinning it around to examine it. I nodded slowly. “Yes. You could be right, Sandra. But what is going on here? Why are the cruisers telling them to abandon ship?”

  “Is it even possible, what the
y promised?” Sandra asked. “If the people on those transports halt and bail out, can the cruisers even carry them all?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “if the crews are small. They would have to abandon their cargo, however, whatever it is.”

  Everyone puzzled over the situation for some minutes. As far as we could tell, nothing changed during that time. The two groups of Earth ships were still on a collision course, while the Worms followed the cruisers and we followed the Worms.

  “What are your orders, Colonel?” Miklos asked.

  “Let’s get into this game,” I said. “I’m not sure which side we’re on, or even who all the players are, but I’m not going to sit here and let Crow dictate terms to the people on those ships. I have a feeling they are disaffected Star Force personnel trying to make it to Eden. Who the hell else would come out here all the way into dangerous space on makeshift transports? In any case, we must intervene before something horrible happens.”

  “Besides, we could use more supplies and reinforcements, eh?” Miklos said, smiling with half his mouth.

  “Never even crossed my mind,” I said. “All engines go to full burn. Let’s catch up if we can. Marvin, try to give me a tightly-beamed channel to the refugee fleet.”

  “I’ll try Colonel, but the beam will have to pass directly by the Earth cruisers. We will probably be overheard.”

  I nodded. “Fine. Let’s put our cards on the table.”

  The ship lurched and we all strapped in to endure heavy G-forces. At least I was in good shape for taking this kind of punishment. The combined treatment of nanites and Microbes had left my flesh dense and unfeeling. The crushing sensation that would have left me breathless on the floor of the ship years ago now just made me wince and grunt. I stood my ground and braced myself against the central console. I grimaced, but the discomfort was minor.

  Marvin opened the channel, and I thought for another minute or two before sending my message. “People of Earth, we’re members of Star Force. We’ve taken an oath to defend the lives of all humanity. If you need help, ask for it, and explain your situation honestly. Colonel Kyle Riggs, out.”