The Barbarian Bride (The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Aye, sir,” she said, anyway. There was no point in arguing. “Message sent.”

  The Emperor nodded curtly, then returned to following the reports from below decks. It sounded, very much, as though a small mutiny had broken out, but the Emperor didn’t seem particularly impressed. The reports made the mutineers sound incompetent or ignorant. Taking control of a ship was easy enough, provided one snatched the bridge, engineering, and life support sections before anyone realized a mutiny was underway. But he hadn’t yet realized that the mutineers had taken the hostages...

  And none of his cronies have dared to tell him the truth, Ginny thought. Thankfully, the programs she’d inserted into the starship’s datanet were making it harder for him to get a picture of the overall situation. They know their lives are at stake.

  * * *

  “The fortresses killed seventy of the ninety drones,” Lieutenant Thompson reported. “I think the remainder made it through the Asimov Point.”

  “Understood,” Roman said. Statistically, at least ten of the remaining drones would survive transit through the point and start transmitting their message. And then... he glanced at the timer, trying to estimate just how long it would take Commodore Hazelton to reprogram the missile pods. “Continue firing.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

  Roman forced himself to relax as a missile crashed against the starship’s shields, sending shockwaves running through the hull. He wasn’t blind to the dangers of trying to turn on Force Two, but if he were lucky his ace in the hole should make life interesting for the enemy personnel. Besides, it did give him the best chance of escaping through the Asimov Point, if he didn’t think he could beat Force One...

  Unless we kill him, he’ll be able to build up a whole new fleet, Roman thought. And if we do kill him, here and now, the power vacuum will plunge the remainder of the Federation into chaos.

  “Admiral,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “Missile pods are transiting the point!”

  * * *

  Commander Sven Kristopher knew it wasn’t his place to question his superiors. He’d been put in command of the New Redeye Point defenders precisely because he knew better than to question his superiors. Admiral Vincent was his sole source of patronage, after all; anyone foolish enough to question one of his orders would be lucky if they were merely assigned to a garbage scow or some isolated asteroid mining shithole. But the orders he’d received over the last week had been the oddest he’d ever seen. First, he’d been ordered to shut his fortresses down, allowing the rebels to enter the system without a fight. It had looked, very much, as though Admiral Vincent intended to switch sides.

  And then, the orders had been changed. He was still to let the rebels into the system, but then slam the door shut behind them. It just made no sense. Which side were they actually on?

  He scowled down at his display as the rebel fleet slowly made its way back to the point, right into the teeth of his fire. Which way did Admiral Vincent really want him to jump? Should he fire on the rebel ships, or not? He’d already shot at their drones, but there had been too many to guarantee their complete destruction before they plunged into the Asimov Point and vanished. Was that what he was meant to do?

  “Commander,” the tactical officer barked. “Missile pods! I say again, missile pods!”

  Sven stared in horror. Missile pods, over a thousand of them, were materializing from the Asimov Point. A number interpenetrated and exploded, of course, but the survivors were already unleashing their deadly cargo. And they were all aimed at Home Fleet’s superdreadnaughts!

  He hesitated. What was he supposed to do?

  “Switch point defense to alpha mode,” he ordered. There was just enough confusion for that to seem a reasonable order. “And then open fire.”

  “Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.

  * * *

  Roman allowed himself a moment of glee as the missile pods flickered into the system and opened fire, launching thousands of missiles directly at Force Two. The massive superdreadnaughts seemed to flinch on the display as they realized just how badly they were screwed, then their point defense opened fire with practiced efficiency. But they were too late to keep the missiles from raining havoc on their formation.

  Shouldn’t have stayed so close to the Asimov Point, he thought. Emperor Marius had clearly intended to tempt him with the prospect of crushing Force Two, then Force One, but it had been wasted effort. Even if he hadn’t had to contend with the fortresses, he’d still have been mouse-trapped by Force One. But you didn’t want to risk me escaping, either.

  “Admiral,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “There are some odd patterns appearing in the data.”

  Roman frowned. “In what way?”

  “The fortresses didn’t engage the missile pods,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “They didn’t shoot at anything that didn’t pose a threat to them.”

  That was odd, Roman admitted privately. It was possible the fortress crews had been surprised, but their electronic servants should have reacted instantly. No one in their right mind would let someone shovel a thousand missile pods through the Asimov Point without doing everything in their power to thin the herd before it was too late. His missile pods could have engaged the fortresses as easily as they’d engaged the superdreadnaughts...

  “Keep an eye on them,” he ordered. There was no way to know what it actually meant — and he was damned if he was trusting Admiral Vincent’s people any longer. “How badly did we hurt Force Two?”

  “We killed at least seventeen superdreadnaughts,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “I don’t think there’s an undamaged ship left in the formation.”

  Roman studied the display as the data rolled up in front of him. Force Two hadn’t been defeated, but it was unlikely that it could put up a fight. But the fortresses were still a dangerous unknown. Had someone on the fortresses believed the original plan was still valid? Or did they have an ally they didn’t know? Or...

  And we might still run into real trouble if we have to force our way past the fortresses, he thought. He hated not knowing which way the enemy formations would jump, when push came to shove. That only leaves us with one real option.

  “Alter course,” he ordered. “Bring us about to face Force One.”

  * * *

  Marius stared in disbelief. “What... what happened?”

  “They rammed missile pods through the point,” Ginny said. She sounded as stunned as he felt. “They destroyed over seventeen superdreadnaughts! Admiral Stockholm is among the dead.”

  “Shit,” Marius said. All of a sudden, things had changed — and changed badly. The rebels had been hurt, but the battle was suddenly a far more even contest. And Garibaldi, damn the man, knew it. “Order all ships to continue firing.”

  Ginny nodded. “Aye, sir,” she said. “And...”

  Marius glanced at his console as an emergency message appeared in front of him. “Sir,” Lieutenant Rain said. “They got away!”

  “Who got away?” Marius demanded. “And how?”

  “They snatched the courier boat, sir,” Rain said. He sounded panicked. “The brats, sir; they snatched the courier boat and fled!”

  Marius rounded on Ginny. “Find that damned boat!”

  “Aye, sir,” Ginny squeaked.

  “It’s worse, sir,” Rain said. “Sir, we recovered...”

  “Spit it out,” Marius ordered.

  “Sir, we found your wife near the courier boat’s airlock,” Rain said. “Her security team was involved in the attack!”

  Marius, just for a second, found himself utterly unable to move. The first reports hadn’t been very clear, suggesting a minor outbreak of fighting amongst the crew rather than anything more serious. And the internal sensors hadn’t reported a major incursion. He’d assumed it was minor, even if it was alarmingly close to the guest quarters. But now... if Tiffany’s security team had been involved, they could have overridden the internal sensor network. They could have taken the hosta
ges and made their way to the courier boat without being stopped...

  ... And Tiffany had been with them. She’d betrayed him.

  She’d betrayed...

  “Admiral,” Ginny said. “I...”

  “Shut up,” Marius roared, shocked out of his trance. His head was pounding so hard he thought his brain would explode. “Shut up...”

  The entire superdreadnaught rocked. Marius caught hold of his command chair, unsure if something had genuinely gone wrong or if he was imagining it. His vision was dimming, but red icons were flashing up on the display...

  “Sir,” Ginny said, “Admiral Vincent’s ships have opened fire on us!”

  Another betrayer! The wave of cold hatred, mingled with fiery rage, was enough to force Marius to pull himself back together. “Target his ship,” he growled. “Blow it apart!”

  “Sir,” Ginny said, “the rebels are altering course and...”

  “Target Admiral Vincent’s ship and kill it,” Marius ordered. His head was splitting open, but he was damned if he was letting Vincent get away with everything. There should be just enough time to kill him before they had to run. “And then...”

  He forced himself to think, despite the pain. Admiral Stockholm was dead, along with far too many ships and men. Admiral Vincent’s crews were unreliable, even if their commanding officer died. And Roman Garibaldi, the betrayer-in-chief, held an unbeatable advantage. His ships had been hurt, but not badly enough to keep him from finishing the war here and now.

  “Alter course,” he ordered. He’d lost the battle — he conceded as much — but he hadn’t lost the war. “All loyalist ships are to head for the Macaque Point.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ginny said. She sounded nervous, but still in control of herself. “Admiral Vincent’s ship is taking heavy fire...”

  Marius nodded, watching with cold glee as the superdreadnaught was blown into atoms. It wasn’t the revenge he wanted — nothing short of a year of prolonged torture would have repaid the betrayer for his crimes — but it would have to do. At least Tiffany was in his hands. If she’d been seduced into betraying him...

  “Take us to the point, best possible speed,” he ordered. Admiral Vincent’s ships would be confused, he hoped; they certainly didn’t seem to have found a new leader. They’d solve that problem eventually, but by that time the loyalists would be gone. “And send a specific message to Judgement. Condition Black. I say again, Condition Black.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ginny said.

  * * *

  Tara Prime wasn’t a bad-looking world, Captain Gilbert Cole thought. Four days of lying doggo in orbit, pretending to be an ordinary merchantman, had convinced him that Admiral Vincent understood the secret of economic success. There were none of the regulations that made visiting Earth or AlphaCent such a pain, none of the constant attempts by suppliers to screw every last credit from spacers that needed to use the planet’s facilities. Indeed, under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed his time at Tara Prime.

  But he knew his duty.

  “Activate the missile launch codes,” he ordered. Rebels could not be tolerated. And if a single large example needed to be made... well, it had to be made. “And prepare to fire.”

  “Aye, sir,” his first officer said. “Missiles ready to launch.”

  There were no objections from the rest of the crew, but only three people on the ship knew the targets. Everyone else thought their mission was to attack the planet’s orbital infrastructure. He couldn’t help wondering if some of his crewmen had actually inferred the truth, given how few questions they’d asked. Spacers were naturally curious and nothing less than threats would normally keep them from trying to work out what was going on.

  Gilbert didn’t hesitate. “Fire!”

  His ship didn’t have any real targeting systems. A military-grade sensor system on the hull would have given them away to even the most cursory of inspections. By any reasonable standards, they shouldn’t have been able to hit anything...

  ... But then, a planet was a very big target.

  * * *

  “Admiral,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “We just picked up... my God!”

  “Report,” Roman snapped. He’d never heard that note of horror in her voice, even when they’d been trapped. “What happened?”

  “Antimatter detonations, multiple antimatter detonations,” Lieutenant Thompson said, her voice shaking in horror. “The Emperor just scorched Tara Prime!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It is no exaggeration to say that the destruction of Tara Prime, with an estimated death toll of well over four billion lives, was the act that finally shattered Emperor Marius’s government beyond repair.

  —The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Tara Prime, 4102

  Roman was speechless.

  The horror before him was almost beyond his ability to grasp. Tara Prime was a blackened wasteland. The ground had been scorched clean of life by the firestorms, which had in turn faded away as the atmosphere was burnt to nothingness. Dead ground surrounded them; there was no proof, ever, that there had been a city where they were standing. And yet, Roman only had to check his hardsuit’s HUD to confirm that they were standing in the middle of Willow City, center of administration for an entire sector. The city was completely gone.

  He swallowed hard, feeling his body start to shake. It was hard, so hard, to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the devastation. He’d been told, years ago, that one death was a tragedy while one million was a statistic, yet he hadn’t really understood what it meant until he’d watched Tara Prime die. Four billion humans — men, women and children — had lived on the now-lifeless rock, living their lives as if what happened in the galaxy beyond didn’t matter in the slightest. And now they were dead, wiped from existence so completely that there was no proof they’d ever existed. It was impossible for him to grasp just how vile a crime had been committed.

  Four billion? He couldn’t imagine that many people.

  “The radioactivity is picking up,” Elf said, softly. “And the planet itself is unstable.”

  Roman nodded, tears prickling at the corner of his eyes. In all of human history, antimatter had been used once, only once, to scorch a planet clean of life. And the inhabitants of that world hadn’t been human. Few had mourned for the Snakes after they’d butchered millions of humans during the First Interstellar War, but humanity — common humanity — had insisted on a taboo against using antimatter warheads against planetary surfaces. Emperor Marius had broken that taboo and condemned billions of people to death.

  He tried to do it to Nova Athena, he reminded himself, sharply. Why wouldn’t he do it here?

  In hindsight, it was obvious. Nova Athena was — had been — an enemy world. Roman had never considered the attempted genocide as anything other than a desperation measure, even though he’d refused to sit back and allow it to take place. But Tara Prime had been friendly... Roman still had no idea what Admiral Vincent had been plotting, yet he had allied himself with the Emperor to lure Roman’s fleet into a trap. There should have been no reason to exterminate an entire world. And yet it had been done.

  He caught his footing as the ground trembled below his feet. The hammer blows that had struck the planet had triggered off earthquakes and worse, threatening to complete the destruction of human civilization. Not that it really mattered, Roman suspected; if there were any survivors, they were in underground bunkers deep below the surface. The screech of static that had greeted the fleet’s hails, when they’d finally entered orbit, suggested that no one had survived. Even the deepest of bunkers might not be able to survive earthquakes on a global scale. All the old certainties about which areas were safe and which weren’t no longer applied.

  “Roman,” Elf said. “We can’t stay here.”

  “I know,” Roman said. “I’m coming.”

  He took one last look at the devastation and then turned to follow her back to the shuttle. His hardsuit blinked up more alerts, warning
him that the wind — what little wind there was, now that most of the atmosphere was gone — was blowing radioactive fallout towards him. If any survivors, by some miracle, managed to emerge from hidden bunkers, they’d be poisoned before they realized it was already too late. Four billion people...

  “The hatch is opening,” Elf told him, as they reached the shuttle. “The shuttle can take off while we decontaminate.”

  Roman didn’t argue as they stepped through the hatch. Water cascaded down, sweeping radioactive particles off the hardsuits; he watched, grimly, as the radiation counters continued to tick upwards. They were in no danger — the hardsuits were meant for even worse environments — but he still felt a shiver of fear running down his back. He was a brave man — he’d proved it often enough — yet the thought of being killed by invisible dangers was terrifying. One couldn’t fight back against radiation poisoning.

  He felt the shuttle take off as they entered the next compartment, where they removed the suits and scurried into the decontamination chamber. Elf picked up a portable scanner and waved it over his body, then did the same for herself while Roman showered, keeping his eyes closed against the chemicals in the water. He’d made fun of the whole process as an immature cadet — jokes about decontamination chambers had run through the whole installation — but he knew it wasn’t funny. And there was nothing sexual about worrying if they were going to die of poisoning.

  “Clean, sir,” the doctor said, once he stepped out of the shower and into the final compartment. “You shouldn’t be in any danger, I think.”

  “Thank you,” Roman said. He removed his sodden shipsuit and dumped it down the recycler, where it would be broken down to its component atoms. Normally, it would be washed and returned to him, but there was no point in taking chances. “And Elf?”

  “The Brigadier should be fine too, I think,” the doctor said, as Elf followed him into the final compartment. “But neither of you would have lasted five minutes on the surface without hardsuits, sir.”