Harbinger

by Charles R Case

  He gave a nod and looked down to the fennec fox at his feet. “I will do my best, Nyx. Just let me know if you need anything special.”

  Nyx gave him a nod, and Sara could see that it caught him by surprise. He obviously had no idea how smart she was.

  “Thanks,” Cora said, leaning in and kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Okay, it’s time to make the donuts.”

  She climbed the steep set of stairs that led to the top of the tank. The top was already open, and she stood looking down into the blue liquid for a few breaths. She looked up and met Sara’s gaze. Sara smiled and blew her a kiss, which made Cora smile.

  “I hate this part,” she admitted, then stepped off the edge, plunging into the tank.

  The liquid being thicker than water, the splash wasn’t nearly as big as it seemed like it should have been, and the bubbles around Cora dissipated slowly. She gave a wink to Grimms, then opened her mouth to take a deep pull of the fluid. Immediately, she began to cough, sending a torrent of bubbles out as her lungs filled with the oxygen-rich substance.

  After what felt like forever to Sara—but was less than a minute, in reality—Cora’s body went limp and curled into a natural fetal position. The gravity field in the tank held her in place, and her hair spread out in a halo around her.

  “Ugh, that’s the worst,” Cora’s voice said over the ship’s speakers.

  “Everything is showing okay on our end, ma’am,” Teichek announced.

  “All right, let’s see what this pony can do!” Cora said.

  “Where do you come up with these sayings?” Sara asked, shaking her head.

  “Old TV and movies, mostly. I have a lot of free time in here.”

  17

  The Raven dropped out of warp only a few hours after disembarking from Xanadu. They had followed the rendezvous coordinates provided by the Elif, and Sara was surprised to see so many ships begin to appear on the holo display.

  “I thought the bulk of the Elif forces were taken out during the attack on Effrit? There must be thousands of ships here,” she said, gesturing to the tiny pinpricks of green light that were scattered throughout the area.

  They were staging the attack a short jump from Effrit itself, only a few light years out in the blackness of space. The reports said that the Elif had been amassing their forces there since the initial attack nearly three weeks before; in that time, an impressive armada had formed.

  “The Elif empire is quite vast, even if it is small in comparison to the Teifen’s. They have many more ships still out, protecting other interests; these are just the ones they could spare,” Cora said over the bridge speakers.

  “Still, even with these numbers, I’m not sure the Elif will be able to drive out the Teifen without significant losses,” Grimms added.

  “Do we have any updates on the Teifen ship movements in the system?” Sara asked.

  Mezner answered without looking up from her console. “We have just received an updated attack plan along with the most up to date ship positions, ma’am. I’m sending it to the display now.”

  The holo projection table fuzzed and reformed, showing a close-up of Effrit and the surrounding traffic. Thousands of Teifen ships swarmed around the planet in all different planes of orbit, but a significant number of them were peeling away to warp out of system. They would gather in groups of ten or so, and then jump together.

  “Are all the ships jumping on the same trajectory? It seems like they are going somewhere, not just leaving,” Sara observed, squinting at the small shapes.

  “They do seem to be following a similar path. Give me a minute, and I’ll see if I can find a likely destination point,” Mezner said, getting to work.

  “How old is this data?” Grimms asked the ensign.

  “About an hour,” she replied after a quick check.

  “It looks like they’re abandoning the system. At this rate, I don’t even think an attack will be necessary,” Grimms said to Sara.

  She reached up and gave Alister a scratch under his chin, and looked over her shoulder to find Nyx sitting in Grimms’ chair, regarding them with her golden eyes. She gave the fox a smile, and turned back to her XO.

  “You think the Elif are just going to wait this one out?”

  He shook his head. “I doubt it. I think this is as much about payback as it is about liberating their home world,” he said, then looked down at his tablet. “I think we’re about to find out what they want to do; Admiral Zett just sent out a message.”

  He slid the file off his tablet, and it began to play on the main view screen. The Elif admiral was handsome in a very severe way, with the blonde hair that was common among Elif cut short in a military style that showed off his long, pointed ears.

  Sara thought there was something slightly disturbing about him, and it took her a second to realize it was his eyes. They were so dark, she wasn’t sure they were not just black.

  “The battle will commence in a little less than thirty minutes. Every ship has been sent their orders for the initial attack, and I expect everyone to perform their duties to the letter. This is the day we strike back at our sworn enemies; they will pay for the transgressions they have enacted upon us with their lives.

  “Each of the two battle groups will engage and destroy the air support above Effrit or Suttri, allowing our troops already engaged with the enemy to push forward. Without fresh troops and supplies, the Teifen armies will be engaged in a war of attrition that will quickly swallow them whole.

  “We have enlisted the help of a special division that the emperor commissioned before his death; however, after review of the Teifen’s movements over the last day and a half, the battle for Suttri looks like it will be particularly light, so the special forces unit, Raven, will be held in reserve.

  “This is the hour of our victory. The Teifen have shown their cowardice, and are fleeing in droves. We will dominate the skies above our beloved core worlds by the end of the day.

  “Fight with honor. Show our enemies the true cost of attacking our great empire.”

  Sara looked at Grimms when the communication went dark. “Well, that was pretty aggressive for an Elif.”

  “He does have the attitude of a zealot, from the transmissions I’ve seen. I think he is feeling the pressure of taking over the old admiral’s command. He was pushed to the top, not because he deserved the post, but because everyone above him died in the first battle for Effrit,” Grimms related, scratching at his chin.

  “You think he’s overcompensating?” Cora asked through their comms.

  He smiled at her attendance. “I don’t know that he is overcompensating, but he is perhaps a little more dedicated than the average Elif. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily; The Elif need a little more aggression in their campaign against the Teifen, if they want to come out on top.”

  “Ma’am, I have those calculations on the departing Teifen,” Mezner reported, looking up from her station.

  “Put it on the holo projector, please,” Sara requested with a nod of appreciation.

  The image of the Elif home system zoomed out until it was just another speck of light, and other stars began to appear at the edges of the projection, and quickly fall toward the center. Soon the view showed local space, and a blue line began to spear outward from Effrit, following a straight trajectory through the blackness of space to intersect with a system several light years away.

  “How accurate is this model?” Grimms asked, leaning in and selecting the destination system with a finger. The point of light expanded, showing a binary star system with very little detail.

  “The fleeing ships could be meeting at a point and changing course, but the number of ships leaving and taking the exact same course tells me that they are more than likely flying directly to their target. The computer puts the probability of that target being in this particular system at ninety percent, sir,” Mezner said.

  “What do we know about the system? The projection isn’t giving me much detail,” Sara said,
scrolling through the limited data on the small display set into the side of the table.

  “Not a lot, ma’am,” Mezner admitted. “The Elif network marks this as a long-time Teifen system. They have not been able to send in probes and regularly retrieve the information. At the time of their last assessment, there was one habitable planet, and several moons with atmosphere thick enough to make ground bases possible without a complicated dome structure,” she reported. “The Teifen had a strong military presence a few years ago, but this was mainly a colony world.”

  She looked back down at her console. “Ma’am, we have a call coming in from the Catagain.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow and said, “Put it onscreen, Mezner.”

  The image changed to a view of a bridge much like the Raven’s, though it was much larger in number of stations. The captain was older than Sara first imagined him to be—maybe in his mid-thirties—with black hair and intense blue eyes. His mouth was smiling, but the rest of his face was not playing along.

  Sara immediately disliked him.

  “Captain Sonders. It is so good to finally meet you. I am Captain Rodgers of the Catagain,” he said, raising an eyebrow with a pompous air.

  “I know who you are, Captain. I’m glad you could join us on the mission,” she greeted, giving a dead smile of her own.

  Why do I not like this guy? I’ve only just seen him, and I want to punch him in the face.

  “Yes. It is unfortunate that you will be sitting this one out. Looks like they only want us to participate.” He smiled a little larger. “I suppose that’s what happens when you rough up a prince, am I right?”

  Was that supposed to be a joke? Sara cocked her head to the side. “As I remember it, ‘roughing up’ the prince saved the human race; I feel like it was a fair trade.”

  “I suppose some good came of it,” he allowed. “The UHFC was not very happy with you, though. Sometimes the politics are just as important as the actions.” He smirked just a little. “Next time you find yourself in trouble, give us a call before you act; the Admiralty wants us to take the lead. Now that the Elif would like you to sit this one out as well, it would be best if you just let us take care of it. There are a few admirals back home that are hoping we don’t have to clean up any more messes after today.”

  Motherfucker. That little shit thinks he’s so hot… Sara took a calming breath before answering. “Sounds good, Captain. Happy hunting,” she said, pressing the button on the holo table to end the call before he could piss her off anymore.

  “Well, that was a little hostile,” Cora noted.

  “Yeah. I think we might better serve this mission by finding out where the Teifen are going, and staying out of everyone’s hair. Mezner, get me Admiral Zett,” she ordered, tapping her lip.

  After a few moments of silence, the ensign spoke up. “Ma’am, they are saying he is unavailable, and resent the orders for us to wait on the outskirts to provide backup.”

  I hate politics. What a waste of time and effort. They want us to play by the rules? Fine. We’ll play by the rules.

  “Very well. Everyone, prepare for battle. Or at least, prepare to watch a battle,” Sara qualified before walking over to her command chair and flopping down into it.

  Alister hopped up on her lap, and curled into a ball to wait. She gave him a few absent pets, then propped her elbow on the armrest and dropped her chin into her hand.

  They want to push us to the sidelines? That’s fine by me, she lied.

  18

  Sara and the bridge crew watched as Elif ships started departing the staging area in droves. The slower Elif ship design meant that they had a fifteen to twenty-minute warp time to Effrit and Suttri, but the Catagain could make the trip in a little less than three minutes, so they sat and waited along with the Raven until the entire Elif fleet was on its way.

  There was no more communications between the two War Mage ships, which suited Sara just fine.

  At T-minus three minutes to contact, the Catagain sent a message that it was time to go, and warped away. Cora waited another two minutes before engaging warp for the Raven.

  “Are we really that much faster than even another ship controlled by War Mages?” Sara asked no one in particular.

  She was surprised when Connors answered her instead of Cora.

  “Yes, ma’am. The Catagain has much more mass than we do, being a battleship, so it requires more power to get moving, even when using Aether to do so. Because the Raven is a corvette class, she can slip through the warp thread much easier—and Captain Cora has at least as much power as the other War Mage, so she can convert that power into more speed.”

  Sara smiled at the animated, red-haired man. “I didn’t know you were so versed in warp physics, Connors. Your explanation makes a lot of sense. Thank you.”

  “No problem, ma’am. I took quite a few classes on warp mechanics at the academy; I had thought I might be an engineer. But it turned out I was pretty good at flying, so my advisors steered me that way,” he said conversationally before adding, “We will be dropping out of warp in ten seconds.”

  Sara held her breath. The slightly compressed image onscreen grew until it finally flashed with blue, Aetheric light, and then the Effrit system sprawled out before them. Space was so expansive, though, that what they saw didn’t really look much different from where they had just been, except now, the right bottom corner of the screen displayed a small, green and blue planet.

  “We are in position, one light second from Suttri. I have confirmation that the battle has commenced,” Mezner reported, reading her scans.

  “Cora can you give me an Aetheric sensor sweep? I want to see what is happening closer to the planet.” Sara placed Alister on the floor, and stood up from her command chair.

  Instead of approaching the table where Grimms was, she stepped into her control ring, and shot a small amount of Aether into the spellform to activate it. A shimmering, golden bubble appeared around her top half, giving her a 360-degree view from the ship.

  She zoomed in on the planet, and thousands of icons began to appear around it. A large number of them were red, signifying the Teifen forces, but it was obvious that the green-marked Elif ships outnumbered them at least three to one.

  “Looks like this will be an easy battle,” Grimms commented.

  “It might be easier than they think,” Cora said to the bridge in general. “The Teifen are continuing to evacuate. Some of the ships are fighting back, but it looks like they are just trying to give the rest of the ships time to escape.”

  As Sara watched the battle, she saw what Cora meant; more and more of the Teifen ships were warping out of the system. The defending Teifen had been quickly overwhelmed, and bright flashes of light indicated a few that had experienced catastrophic reactor ruptures in the onslaught.

  “Why are they not fighting? I know they’re outnumbered, and it’s a losing battle, but I’ve never heard of Teifen running from a fight. Just in the last two or three minutes, nearly half of what was remaining has jumped away,” Sara pondered.

  “Maybe they know the score, and are planning on coming back at a later time. They could be regrouping out of system for a counterattack,” Grimms reasoned.

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they counterattack when they could have just reinforced what they already had here? The governor is gone, but there has to be a replacement on the way,” Cora said.

  “Maybe there’s a bigger threat somewhere else,” Grimms theorized. “From what I’ve gathered, the Elif are not really a threat to the Teifen; they are not aggressive, and do not take out Teifen resources. They were really just a conquest for the governor of this region, a bid for him to become the new emperor.”

  He brought up a ship counter on the holo table that showed the number of active ships on each side. The Teifen counter was spinning down rather quickly, but the Elif counter dropped only a few ticks every couple of seconds.

  “Hon, give me a scan of the surface. What are the ground
troops doing?” Sara asked, trying to put it all together.

  They watched the battle unfold for a few more seconds before Hon answered.

  “Ma’am, it looks like the Teifen forces are evacuating. If I had to guess, I would say they have been doing so for quite some time. Most of their troops are off the field, and waiting at staging areas, where troop transports are picking them up.”

  “Interesting. How long would you say it would take them to completely evacuate?” Sara asked the ensign.

  At the rate they are going, I would estimate between half a day and a full day,” Hon said, checking the numbers.

  “Can you tell if they are taking prisoners?”

  “It doesn’t appear that they are, ma’am. But they could have taken them on earlier transports,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. This is a total one-eighty in the Teifen’s actions; they pushed so hard to take this system, and now they can’t get out of it fast enough.” Sara mused, pulling on her lip. She looked through the translucent viewing bubble, and saw Grimms regarding her with a raised eyebrow. “What do you think, Commander?” she asked him.

  Grimms turned back to the holo table, and the battle taking place in miniature in front of him, while he considered. Eventually, he crossed his arms.

  “I think we should find out what they are running to, not what they are running from. I believe our answers are at their warp destination.”

  “Get me Zett on the line,” Sara requested again, making a decision.

  “They are ignoring our hail, ma’am,” Mezner said with a frown.

  “Then send them a message that we are following the Teifen, and determining the new threat. Tell them we will return in…” she shrugged and looked to Grimms for an estimate, but he just shrugged back. She took a breath. “Tell them we will be back when we know something,” she finished.