Harbinger

by Charles R Case

  Sara tried to calm down, but she was so excited, she had to take a second. “Sorry, Captain. We have been looking for someone like Reggi for a while now, and never thought we would find her out here.

  “Bok and I made a deal recently: he would stop attacking the Elif if I would do him a favor. So here I am,” she said, spreading her arms and smiling.

  “He sent you here for what, exactly?” Gerrold asked, still not clear on what she was telling him.

  “To fight, or help, or whatever needs to be done. To be honest, I don’t really care. We found a human that’s not from Earth, so as far as I’m concerned, the mission has already been a success.”

  Gerrold scooted forward and leaned an elbow on his knee. “I can’t believe Admiral Bok actually sent someone. The governor has been ignoring the Rim for several hundred years.”

  “Well, the governor is dead now,” Sara said with the slightest of smirks. “But I can tell you that Admiral Bok is trying to get you what protection he can. He’s currently off fighting the Galvox, so he sent us.”

  “The governor’s dead? How?” Gerrold asked.

  “Uh, well. It’s a pretty long story, but the ending goes something like, ‘I killed him’,” Sara said with a shrug.

  “You killed the governor, and now the grand admiral is asking you for help instead of hunting you down?” Gerrold asked, leaning back in his chair. “This is one hell of a story.”

  “Not really. It seems to me that the governor didn’t have a lot of love flowing his way. Admiral Bok was not a fan, and I’m assuming that you and your people aren’t all that broken up about it,” Sara said with another shrug. “But right now, I need to speak with Reggi. I need to get in contact with her people.”

  Reggi took a step back as if she were being asked to enter a burning building. “I don’t understand, War Mage. What could I possibly have that you would want?”

  Sara cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay? You seem to be frightened of me. Do you think I’m going to hurt you?”

  Reggi put her hands up in a surrendering pose and took another step back. “I would never make assumptions, War Mage. I apologize.”

  “Hey, it’s all right. I’m here to help,” Sara soothed, realizing just how terrified the girl was. She decided to take the focus off Reggi to give her a chance to calm down. “Captain, can you fill me in on what it is your people are expecting, here? I can see the planet is being evacuated, so I assume you are anticipating an attack?”

  Gerrold looked from Reggi to Sara and back again before clearing his throat and smoothing back his hair. “The Rim worlds have been under attack for months. It started with one system far out on the edge of the galaxy. It was a small colony; they had not started up their production facilities yet, so they were not in constant contact with the other world. We’re not exactly sure when they were attacked, but a few months ago, someone noticed that no one had heard anything from them. A ship was sent out and was able to send back word that the colony was lost, with no survivors. But then that ship never returned.

  “Then the second and third systems fell. They were able to get word out that it was a Galvox raid, but when we sent ships to help, the systems were already gone. Again, no survivors. We didn’t know why the Galvox would be out here, since they would have to come out from the core, and circle around the Teifen empire to get here, but both systems reported a fleet of Galvox. We did find some of their ships in the wreckage, but far fewer than we’d expected.

  “The planets were scorched clean, everything had bee burned to the ground. We had not seen that kind of viciousness from the Galvox before. It made us wonder if it was not some other race, using Galvox ships.”

  Sara nodded. “That’s pretty much what’s started happening in the inner systems. We do know that it is the Galvox, and not someone using their ships, however, they have a new ally: an alien race we are calling ‘the Vitas’. They are very advanced, and have given us quite a run for our money.”

  Gerrold gave a nod. “So this is happening all over the place. At least now we know we were not just being ignored.”

  “There may have been a little of that going on under the governor, but it seems Admiral Bok really does want to help,” Sara qualified, then leaned on the holo table. “How long until the planet is evacuated? And how do you know this system is next to be attacked?”

  Gerrold checked his display on the arm of his captain’s chair. “It looks like we still have a day and a half ‘til the population is fully evacuated, but the main cities will be empty in the next seven hours or so. The rest of our people are in smaller towns and villages, spread throughout the countryside.

  “As far as knowing this system is the next target? We don’t. It’s just our best guess. The line of attacks is spreading in an arc from the edge of our territory, and this is the next closest system in line.”

  Sara considered his reasoning for a second. “I think I should contact whoever is in charge and officially let them know we’re here. We can maybe help out with—–”

  An alarm on the Rizz cut her off, and Mezner called out over it, “Ma’am, we have multiple warp threads opening up. I think it’s the Galvox.”

  “You want to help, Captain Sonders? Now’s your chance,” Gerrold said, then dropped the call.

  “Connors, get us there. Hon, you are free to fire. Set PDCs to full auto. Cora, charge the Aether cannons and prepare to jump,” Sara ordered, watching the Rizz turn and accelerate toward the emerging Galvox ships.

  “Let’s see if we can tip the scale, but our first priority is making sure the Rizz survives. We need Reggi,” Sara said, stepping into the command ring and powering it up.

  Alister sat between her feet with a “Merp.”

  “That’s right, buddy,” Sara said, sending a flow of Aether into the shield form he had given her. Then she marked a location with the swipe of a finger.

  “Cora, jump.”

  45

  By the time Cora jumped them into the fray, several hundred Galvox ships had flooded into the system. The small, fast Galvox ships were heavily armed, but had no shields to speak of. They relied on their ability to overwhelm the enemy and keep them off guard with swarming tactics. They lost as many ships as they took out, but there were far more Galvox than defenders.

  Sara noted that the Rim worlders ships were difficult to see on the holo display. Their signatures were small and flickered in and out. She reasoned they must have some sort of stealth coating, and made a note to ask them about it when this was over. Nothing the Raven had come across so far even came close to the effectiveness of the Rim’s method, except Cora’s ability to use the gravitic drives to mask them.

  The Galvox were having trouble hitting their targets, but they made up for their inaccuracy by saturating the area with hundreds of gauss rounds. The defenders were a mix of armed freighters and personal yachts, with the occasional warship thrown into the mix. The rag tag fleet was surprisingly effective, despite their lack of firepower. When one ship fired, the Galvox would swarm and launch everything they had at the offending ship, more often than not hitting the target by sheer volume of ordnance.

  The Rim Worlders had been spread throughout the system, not knowing where the attack would hit, and the unlucky dozen ships that happened to be close to the Galvox warp terminus were quickly being overwhelmed, as the rest of the defenders warped across the system to join their fellows.

  The Raven arrived on the scene before the Rizz, despite leaving after the pirate ship; it had jumped the several AU in the blink of an eye, rather than taken the long way around in warp.

  As soon as the Raven appeared, her PDCs began to rumble and spit fire at every Galvox ship in range. A dozen or more of the lightly armored ships were torn to ragged pieces before the enemy even knew they were there.

  Hon targeted individual ships with each of the gauss cannon slugs, before sending the turrets spinning to acquire new targets. He was tearing through the enemy with vicious accuracy, not even needing the
explosive warheads.

  The Galvox seemed to make a collective decision, and all focused on the human warship in their midst at once. They fired several hundred large slugs, but to their great surprise, the Raven did not stick around. Instead, in a flash of Aetheric light, it vanished. The slugs crossed the now empty space and slammed into Galvox ships on the other side, sending several craft down in flaming explosions of friendly fire.

  Meanwhile, the Raven had reappeared insystem of the battle and let loose with her Aetheric cannons. Instead of focusing on punching through the shields of one ship, Cora swept the beam across the battlefield in short bursts that ripped chunks from the exposed Galvox ships.

  As the enemy swung their ships around and began to fire, Sara formed a long spike of a shield around the Raven and accelerated into the clustered ships like a lance, ripping several open as they slammed through the Galvox formation.

  The entire time the battle raged, more and more Galvox were warping in. A large portion of them peeled off to fight the Raven’s deadly joust, but some pressed on to the planet and the other defenders.

  The Rizz completed its warp to find the enemy being ripped to shreds by the Raven, and opted to leave that battle to the professionals. Instead, they angled to intercept the Galvox that were headed for the planet. Using their exceptional engines, they caught up to engage the Galvox from behind, taking out several ships before they began to take heat themselves. The Rizz juked and dodged, keeping out of the line of fire, but several of the defenders that had joined the battle with her were not so lucky.

  Despite the beating the Raven was dealing out, the Galvox numbers kept growing, and soon the system was swarmed with thousands of the small, agile ships, which were raining down hell in groups of fifty or more.

  The defenders were being overwhelmed, and soon, the transports were being targeted.

  The Rizz was highlighted on Sara’s display as the only green icon in the system. She kept an eye on them, while coordinating the destruction she and her crew were performing on the Galvox and their endless horde of ships.

  “Cora, can you widen the beam on the Aetheric cannons? Maybe we can hit more of them at once,” she suggested, trying to come up with a more effective way of dealing with the lightly armored enemy.

  “That would be nice, but the focusing apparatus is not that broad. I can maybe get a few more meters of width at most, but nothing like you’re hoping,” she reported.

  Mezner spoke up. “Ma’am, I’m getting several incoming communications. It appears the Catagain is attempting to contact us.”

  Sara actually stopped and looked at the junior officer. “Are you serious? They must know we know they tried to kill us.”

  Mezner shrugged. “They keep trying. They are using the core and sending Aetheric comms packages.”

  Grimms cleared his throat. “We should give them our coordinates, ma’am.”

  “Are you serious?” she repeated, spinning around to see a nodding Grimms.

  “We can’t take enough of these Galvox out fast enough; the system is being overwhelmed. Even if the Catagain is coming to try and finish the job, they will have to fight off the Galvox first. We need the help,” he stated simply.

  Sara thought about it for a half a second before nodding. “Mezner, send the coordinates and warn them it’s a battlefield. Share the friendlies’ ship IDs we have. We don’t want them attacking the wrong people.”

  “Aye, ma’am. Sending the information now.”

  “Cap, I don’t know what the hell that ship is powered with, but it doesn’t seem to obey our understanding of physics or Aetheric law,” Bestin said excitedly.

  They were doing a fair bit of damage themselves, but they needed to warp away now and again to recharge the capacitors for the two main cannons. Currently, they had warped out a few AU and were watching the battle unfold while their small reactors worked overtime.

  “It’s powered by a War Mage,” Reggi said, her eyes transfixed on the green icon jumping around the battlefield. “The most terrible form of energy in the universe.”

  “I thought War Mages were humanities leaders? Why all the hate?” Gerrold asked, knowing next to nothing about his human crew member’s past or culture, besides what the stories said.

  “Oh, they rule us, all right. With an iron fist. I don’t know why this one is helping us, but you need to be wary; they are a ruthless bunch,” Reggi said, baring her teeth.

  “She seemed nice to me,” Restin said, checking the capacitor readout.

  “Yeah, I have to agree with Restin. She was hot,” Bestin said with a grin.

  Reggi looked at him, deadpan. “I’ve heard of War Mages peeling the skin off someone for disrespecting them. They would keep healing the victim, just to make it last longer. Does that sound like the action of a ‘nice’ person?”

  Restin gulped and shook his head. “Damn, Reggi, what kind of fucked up society are you people living in? Why not just overthrow the War Mages?”

  The woman barked a laugh. “Why don’t you go piss on a sun and put it out? That would be more effective than a rebellion against the War Mages. They are literally more powerful than entire armies.”

  Gerrold watched the Raven jump around and destroy another dozen Galvox attackers before he commented, “She’s good, but still having trouble. I don’t see an all-powerful being; all I see is an exceptional captain with a few tricks up her sleeve.”

  Reggi frowned. “To be honest, I thought she was holding back. But I don’t understand why… War Mage Carnayan would have ripped them from the sky the moment they showed up.”

  “Who’s that?” Gerrold asked, glancing over at her.

  Her eyes flashed with fear. “He’s the leader of my world. First Mage of Hestus, my home planet.”

  “Bad guy?”

  “Very bad guy,” she said with a shiver.

  46

  “Ma’am, they just keep coming,” Mezner reported. “Their count is close to two thousand already. We have taken out nearly two hundred ourselves, and the defenders have taken out an additional five hundred, but I estimate it has cost them nearly a hundred ships to do so.”

  Hon cut in. “Ma’am, we are beginning to run low on PDC rounds. We will need to switch over to the warhead-equipped slugs soon, the standard slugs are down to twenty percent reserves. And the PDCs are down to forty percent.”

  “How is the Rizz doing? Are they still holding their own?” Sara asked, swiping new coordinates for Cora.

  “They appear to be outside the battlefield, probably recharging systems. Those small ships are not built for sustained engagements,” Grimms said, eying the flashing green icon.

  “Ma’am, I’m picking up one, no, make that two, now three Vitas ships. They just warped in, I’ve highlighted them in yellow,” Mezner shouted to ensure she was heard.

  Sara quickly found the clustered ships and marked a spot directly on the starboard side of the closest ship. “Connors, give me the full hundred gs acceleration,” she said while requesting a spellform from Alister.

  The black cat gave a nod, and the form appeared in her mind. She poured Aether into it while the Raven jumped forward at incredible speeds.

  The spellform was one she and Alister had worked on; it was for a modified spike shield, like she had used to punch into the Vitas dreadnought in the first engagement. The problem with ramming the Vitas was that whatever they were made of or coated in absorbed the Aetheric energy at an unbelievable rate.

  Sara decided she needed to do the maximum amount of damage in the quickest fashion she could, so she designed a double shield. It was still a cone-shaped spike, but the edge of the cone was wavy, like the letter ‘W’ repeated over and over, resulting in an outer edge that was a series of raised ridges. Sara hoped the shape would keep a large portion of the shields surface area clear of the Vitas’s Aether-absorbing material. It was going to cost her a large amount of Aether, but hopefully it would be devastating to the Vitas. Just in case it didn’t work quite as well as she ho
ped, she dumped a huge amount of her well into the second form.

  The second shield was the standard one she kept up on the ship the entire battle. Normally she would not spend the power to keep both shields going, but she was afraid that even if the ship was split in half, it would still be able to get a few shots off, so she wanted to protect their asses as they passed through.

  “Cora, jump!”

  The Raven flashed through the Aether, spilling out into normal space only fifty meters from the Vitas ship’s starboard side. Having accelerated for nearly five seconds before the jump, they were traveling at close to 5000 meters per second.

  The shield pierced the Vitas’ hull, the pressure of the collision converting most of its mass to gas and plasma and plunging into the now soft material faster than anyone onboard could track. Within a second, they were five kilometers off the disintegrated ship’s port side.

  Sara found herself on her knees, Alister ‘Merow’ing at her in panic from her shoulder. She shook her head and realized she had passed out for a second; the drain on her Aether well was far more than she had anticipated. She felt like she had used at least half of the Aether available to her.

  “I don’t think I can do that again,” she admitted to Grimms as he helped her up.

  The ship bucked, and she felt her well drain even more as the aft shields were pummeled with dozens of particle beams.

  “The other two Vitas ships are firing on us, ma’am,” Hon reported, opening fire with the Raven’s large cannons in response.

  Sara leaned on the command ring, shaking her head, but was able to mark a jump location, “Cora!”

  The ship jumped, saving them from continued hammering.