by Tim C Taylor
Romulus wanted to ask whether Janna was okay. Remus too. But his senses slipped away.
When they returned, the Marine who had rescued him was strapping him into an acceleration couch on his brother’s Stork.
Janna was in front, bracing herself against his couch because the Stork was accelerating.
“Guess I needed rescuing too, Princess,” he groaned.
She punched him in the shoulder. That probably wasn’t a good idea, but he couldn’t feel any pain. “You’re such a twonk,” she said, sounding angry for some reason. “But I’m glad you’re my twonk.” She sobered and cast her gaze down. “What about the squadron, though? Who’s going to rescue them?”
— Chapter 39 —
Commander Marquez confirmed Loobie’s order without hesitation. “Jettisoning port armor, sections 251 through 311, and frame zero compartments on decks 13 through 16, aye.”
Beowulf sloughed off its outer layers, cutting them away before the cancer of the corrosive Hardit munitions spread to kill the entire ship.
Loobie winced as she felt the discarded ship sections bump against the hull, each impact like a shot to her gut. At least this time they had managed to evacuate the crew in time, but a corner of the CIC screen showed the damage this was causing to the outer cargo.
“Attack wave eliminated,” reported Charge.
“Stern armor down to 34%,” said Marquez. “They were trying to disable our engines, presumably for boarding.”
“I agree, thank you, Commander.” The XO was stating the obvious, but that was his job. The responsibility for deciding what to do about it was Loobie’s.
“More hostiles incoming,” reported Anunwe from her sensor station. “Transferring tracks to main screen.”
No one on deck spoke as the tactical update revealed the size of the new attack wave. For a moment, everyone was trapped inside a personal bubble as they registered that another 186 Hardit warboats were headed their way.
“In range within six minutes,” Charge reported.
“Message from the CAG,” added Ndiaye, the Comms officer. “Drone losses 78%. Small craft defense screen withdrawn to re-arm. Be aware that the enemy have successfully prioritized our most capable warboats. Combat effectiveness of small craft down 90%. Conclusion. Combat Space Patrol will be ineffective at repelling this new attack wave.”
Despite all the hormonal adjustments intended to keep her calm, Loobie sensed acid gnawing at her gut and a chill up her neck. The drones had been her last hope. They weren’t going to make it.
What they desperately needed was a breathing space, and that wouldn’t come cheaply.
She asked Ndiaye to hail the other two captains of the doomed squadron.
“We have no choice,” Loobie told them. “We cannot all escape this attack. Therefore Beowulf will abandon our cargo and stay behind as rearguard.” She was surprised at how calmly her voice described her command’s suicide. “You must get away with your cargo, and with luck we have imparted enough velocity to our load that it will eventually reach Khallini”
“Negative,” said Valgerd. For the first time, the Indomitable’s captain rolled her lips up to reveal serrated fangs. Loobie shivered.
“Beowulf is a third-rate troop ship. Leviathan is more modern but still a troop carrier. Only I command a true warship.”
“Redirecting all piloted small craft to Beowulf and Leviathan,” said Oleif, the Jotun CAG.
The tactical AI controlling the main CIC screen brought up a view of Indomitable. It had already detached its cradle of cryo pods and was spinning between the two clouds of sleeping legionaries to face her attackers head on. A gentle nudge from its main engine separated the destroyer from its cargo, freeing its weapons systems from the obstruction. Weapons ports flared across the Indomitable’s forward sections flinging invisible laser lines at the Hardits.
“Good luck, Indomitable. Rejoin us when you can.”
“Negative, Captain Lubricant. We took hits to the aft sections. Beyond critical. I could not jettison enough sections to remove the infection without destroying our cargo. Now it is too late. We will lose main power within a few minutes. Indomitable is doomed.”
Merde! Not only was it doomed, but if the Hardits were half the technicians the Marines claimed, they could reverse engineer some serious military technology.
There was one thing the Indomitable could still do. Damn! Honor demanded she first explain to Captain Valgerd that the Indomitable held a self-destruct device, a powerful nova bomb secreted there as a failsafe in case her Jotun crew’s loyalties turned against the Legion.
The thought of admitting to the device filled Loobie’s mouth with an ashen taste. Doubly so since it had been her idea in the first place.
“You hesitate, Captain,” said Valgerd. “Let me assist you. We have known for years about the nova bomb. I urge you to remote detonate the device.”
“I shall,” said Loobie, “but tell me, please, Valgerd. Why didn’t you disable it?”
“To do so would be a trivial technical matter but would prove our disloyalty and so vindicate your reasons for installing the mechanism in the first place. We have left well alone. It would be best that the Hardits do not board and claim this ship, even in its disintegrating state. I do not like the little creatures. They are the most dishonorable race I know, but under the right kind of pressure can shift from laziness into great acts of innovation. I do not wish for them to capture this ship.”
“Understood.”
“Excuse me a moment, please,” said Valgerd, and then turned to issue commands to her crew in the plosive whistles of the Jotun tongue.
Indomitable was too massive to outmaneuver the little Hardit warboats. It didn’t need to be, it was a Type-71 destroyer – a battleline warship.
The Jotun-crewed destroyer picked up pace as it closed the distance to the hostiles. At 2,000 klicks her missile batteries erupted in frantic volleys, expending all their ordnance in less than a minute. The first wave of missiles emerged like a shockwave of death, ship killers followed closely by EMP nukes. The second wave detonated short of the enemy boats, a curved shield of defensive munitions.
Indomitable’s laser batteries sliced through anything coming through her defensive cloud.
And for the few Hardit boats still coming after that, her ferocious point defense awaited. The Jotun and their ship had performed magnificently.
The breath caught in Loobie’s throat, choked with regret and pride. In her final moments of life, the dying ship’s final actions were magnificent.
And her crew… Loobie’s mind started whirling. Only the warship needed to die. Her brave crew could still evacuate. She started emergency calculations – how could they accommodate the destroyer’s crew in the other two ships that were already overcrowded?
Those thoughts withered and died.
Indomitable’s laser batteries went cool, her point defense never came on line. She had held on bravely for one last act, but hadn’t clung to life long enough to see it through.
Valgerd came back on view. “We have eliminated the ships in the enemy attack wave.” The Jotun captain was barely visible – even the emergency lighting was failing in the Jotun CIC. “Regrettably some managed to exfil Marines first. Your cause is good, Captain Lubricant. It is… strange for me to say this, but we believe in the Human Legion. Freedom must be won, and only you can win it. We are drifting and boarded. Activate self-destruct now.”
“Very well. Farewell, Captain …. We thank you and your brave crew. Lubricant out.” She saluted the Jotun, who saluted back.
“Self-destruct signal ready,” said Lieutenant Charge.
“Do not initiate,” said Loobie suddenly. “The responsibility is for my shoulders alone. Give remote detonation to my console.”
“Transferring control, aye.”
The activation control appeared on her command station screen.
You die with honor, she mouthed, thinking that would be the appropriate Jotun battlefield farewe
ll. Then she activated the control.
Nothing happened.
Valgerd come back on screen. “Captain Lubricant, have you activated the remote detonation?”
“Yes. It is ineffective.”
The Jotun rolled a deep growl around her throat. “As I feared. We have been boarded. Hundreds of them. I have lost communication with all sections outside of CIC. All systems are down.” Her head jerked up in response to something, but Loobie couldn’t see or hear what. The Jotun issued orders in her native tongue. The translation came through as: “Activate citadel mode. Salvage what honor you can. We have failed in our duty.”
White noise attacked the comm link, which soon succumbed, dying altogether.
Tactical display showed Indomitable disintegrating, and the Hardit attack craft destroyed. Beowulf and Leviathan were on their own.
Actually, she corrected herself, there was one more key participant in this drama. All the time that they were accelerating away from the combat zone, the 40,000-klick elevator tether was looping around to lash them.
“Anunwe, give me an update. Are we going to get clear in time?”
— Chapter 40 —
Ever since they had escaped the lash of the elevator tether by a hair’s breadth, Loobie’s mind had been a battlefield where Colonel Nhlappo’s orders to ‘not look back’ fought it out with the Marine maxim to leave no one behind. She wasn’t an impulsive action hero, such as McEwan, Loobie’s mind craved data. But they were running blind and she would have to decide on gut alone.
“Still no message from New Detroit?” she asked the Comms officer.
“Negative,” Ndiaye replied. “Contact with surface lost. Picking up energy readings aplenty. There’s a war going on down there all right but we’re being jammed. We’ve reported our status back to the defenders, but whether they’re listening is impossible to say.”
“Draft a report to the main fleet at Khallini. Keep to the bare facts. I’ll add my conclusions and send via Hummer once we’re safely away.”
“Drafting communication, and preparing an emergency lightspeed send, aye.”
There isn’t much in the way of analysis I can add, thought Loobie. We’re heading for Khallini before we know the results of the battle there. If the Legion loses, we’ll just have to hope the survivors can rendezvous with us.
“Picking up a new signal,” said Ndiaye. “It’s a shuttle, sir. Pilot ID registered as Flight Private Remus. He’s made it home!”
A cheer rang out, but it felt forced. There was still no sign of the other Stork. Where was Romulus?
Let them cheer this miniature victory, thought Loobie. I wish I could.
They’d left behind Indomitable and several hundred thousand Marine pods. Some of them could be salvaged. Don’t look back, Colonel Nhlappo had ordered. But many of the pods could be retrieved so long as Loobie got to them quickly enough before they disappeared into the vastness of space. Should they send their surviving small craft back?
When the signal came on screen, it wasn’t Remus, but his adopted half-brother, Romulus, who appeared.
“Welcome back,” said Loobie. “What took you so long?”
For once, she would have welcomed his habitual cheeky rejoinder. Instead, Romulus looked battered and exhausted. Dried blood streaked from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth – signs that he had flown at gees that would have killed most of Beowulf’s crew. When Romulus eventually found his voice, the words emerged in a monotone. “We ran into a dark fleet of Hardits. Our sensors didn’t pick them up until we nearly bumped into them. Mind you, it’s not all bad. Whatever stealth tech they’re using seems to prevent them from seeing us either. Also, I know it sounds crazy, but the farther they get from Tranquility the slower they become. Captain, the reason we stumbled across them is because they were following the same path as us back to the squadron. They were pursuing you. Like rabid snails. Not fast, but you can’t afford to stop. God knows how many more are on their way.”
Loobie’s spirits sank. She had her orders and the responsibility of making hard command decisions, but until now she had clung to the hope that she could send small craft back to retrieve survivors not just of the Hardit attack, but of their sudden exit. Hundreds of cryo pods were still in orbital parks or had been abandoned in the process of being attached to the harness.
Loobie tightened her heart and abandoned thoughts of rescuing more pods. The Colonel had been right. She owed it to the Indomitable and those left on Tranquility to survive. But her gut didn’t agree, knotting so suddenly that she had to fight from retching.
“Anunwe, anything?”
“No sign of pursuers,” replied the Sensor lead.
Wixering Hardits! Where were they? Beowulf and Leviathan were traveling along a laser-straight course at barely more than walking pace. Why were the Hardits not swarming all over them? An auxiliary process in her mind popped up the suggestion that the Hardit vessels were being powered from Tranquility’s surface. Maybe they were slowing? It sounded strange, but they knew nothing about the capability of these Hardit craft other than their capabilities were wildly different from any craft they’d ever seen.
“There’s a bright side to the Hardit pursuit,” said Romulus, though even the perpetually upbeat orphan only sounded half convinced. “They’re so single minded that they abandoned Tranquility orbit to come after you. All of them, best we could tell. My brother was ready to contest the space with the ugly monkeys to buy time for the Antilles garrison to send boats to pick up the pods we left behind. But the Hardits were gone.”
“The garrison… they succeeded?” asked Loobie.
“All they could find, yes. And there’s more. We’re carrying a load ourselves.” Romulus had recovered slightly, sounding pleased with himself. “We’re towing a Hardit fighter craft we had an argument with on the way back to the ranch. Figured someone would like a look at it.”
Another cheer rang through CIC. Loobie only half joined in. Romulus was the most charismatic person on either ship, and the most unpredictable too. The crew would rest their hopes on him until, one day, he would inevitably let them down catastrophically. But that wasn’t today.
“CAG,” she told Dock, “get every combat-capable craft re-armed, refueled, and back into space to fly a tight CSP. I’ll instruct Captain Phuong to do the same.”
“Already underway, sir.”
“Good. And while you’re out there, start organizing long-term rosters. Until someone proves to me that we have shaken the monkeys on our tail, I want a permanent CSP.”
“Understood, sir.”
She sighed. “Keep focused, everybody. It’s going to be a long road home.”
—— PART VI ——
AN EMPIRE
FORGED
IN BLOOD
Human Legion
— INFOPEDIA —
HISTORY OF THE LEGION
– Second Battle of Khallini
The Human Legion had initially come to Khallini intending to establish a forward base to conduct a reconnaissance of the local area, not expecting a fight on their arrival. But fight they did, and by capturing or recruiting the defeated imperial forces, the Legion acquired more than hard assets and personnel: they gained a more comprehensive strategic intelligence update than their initial plan would have delivered.
They also acquired a tsunami of rumor…
Earth has declared independence…
The Muranyi and the Amilxi are in alliance, and have already annexed half of the old White Knight Empire…
Earth has been given over to the Hardits to use human slaves to mine out the planet…
Some of the new recruits even suggested the civil war was a lie, a story told by the White Knights to justify a program of change and renewal forged in the flames of a fabricated war.
The only information acted upon by the Legion immediately was the consensus belief that the Old Empire defenses in this sector were collapsing before the rebel 3rd Fleet’s advance, an unstoppable progress that would
lead all the way to the White Knight homeworld. After all, the secret mines, the bio weapons and technical advances that had been conceived as a last-ditch defense against this 3rd Fleet showed that the imperials had taken the threat very seriously.
What to do? Captured frigates stiffened with Legion loyalists were dispatched to five of the nine nearby systems that were considered potential allies in light of the updated intelligence.
Meanwhile the bulk of the Legion forces would inherit the Old Empire plan and prepare a defense against the rebel fleet.
Scarce quantum-entangled resources were used to build FTL comm links connecting the five reconnaissance frigates to the Khallini fleet. By the time the frigates reached their destinations, they would either carry news of a stunning victory for this rising power called the Human Legion, or know the Legion’s main force had been exterminated and consequently seek sanctuary.
The hopes for freedom in the galaxy – the very existence of the Human Legion and perhaps humanity itself – all depended upon the outcome of the Second Battle of Khallini.
— Chapter 41 —
“I admit you perplex us,” said the onscreen image of the enemy ensign. “We are far superior in numbers, armament, technology, and the recent memories of crushing every pitiful attempt to slow the 3rd Fleet’s progress.” She gave a contemptuous sneer. “Why did you not flee the moment we reached the outer system? Were you unaware of our presence?”
“Gotcha!” said Xin in a private channel. “This little squit has given away that they’re rattled. From what they can see of our strength, we should have run at the first sight of them. They’re wondering what’s making us so confident.”
Del-Marie Sandure answered the enemy negotiator from within a privacy shroud. The ensign sitting in a 3rd Fleet warship could only hear Del-Marie and see him in his smart ambassador’s uniform. To guard against cyber-attack from the New Empire ship, the privacy shroud encased the incoming signal in firewalls. The image seen on the Ops room main screen by the Legion command staff was a cleaned interpretation created by the privacy shroud.