Imperial Sunset

by Eric Thomson

  “And what if it’s a lure? Bait for a foolish starship commander?”

  “How could the rebels know we or anyone else would come to Parth via the Yawin system, Iona? As lures go, it’s rather random, no? Unless there’s a disabled Prison Service ship near each wormhole, a notion that stretches the laws of probability.”

  “At least wait until we know what’s going on in this system before lighting up active sensors, let alone drives. That debris field proves there’s a strong naval force somewhere nearby, and they might either take us for loyalists or decide we aren’t allowed to decline participation in their rebellion. Chief Lettis, how long before we pass Tanith?”

  “We’ll pass her at the closest range in about twenty hours, if we maintain present course and speed, Commander.”

  “Considering the time it’ll take to change course and match velocities, should we want to near the ship close enough for boarding, how about we decide in twelve hours whether to light up and maneuver, Skipper?”

  “A reasonable proposition, Iona. Let’s make it so. In the meantime, we stay on our current heading and stick to silent running while we watch and wait.”

  “I thought you’d see it that way, Captain.”

  “I am the soul of caution, as you might remember. Chief, tell me we have a full data pack on Tanith.”

  “Aye, sir. Including a full interior schematic.”

  **

  “Decision time, Skipper,” Mikkel said by way of greeting as she entered Morane’s day cabin the following morning. She found him sharing a tea with DeCarde and Sister Gwenneth. “If you want a boarding party to check out Tanith, it must launch within the next two hours. Otherwise, we either miss our chance or break silent running to maneuver Vanquish.”

  Morane gave the Marine and Gwenneth sideways glances. Both kept diplomatically neutral expressions, their way of telling him it was his choice and his only. But he wasn’t about to let them shirk their responsibilities as his advisers, people who weren’t naval officers like his second in command, and therefore brought a different sensibility to problems involving ethical considerations. Such as whether to risk notice from aggressive rebel forces by checking if Tanith still carried human beings who might or might not be worthy of salvation. What if she carried criminal sociopaths instead of political dissidents?

  Gwenneth must have seen the thoughts reflected in his eyes because she gave him a commiserating smile. “There are no guarantees in this life, Jonas. Go with your conscience. I cannot speak to the safety of our little convoy, but I can worry about your soul. And to my unworldly eyes, it is the force propelling us to a safe haven.”

  “And you, Brigid?”

  “What’s life without a little risk, a little adventure? My folks will compete to join the boarding party if only to stretch their legs and see something other than the same bulkheads day after day. Tell me how many Marines you want, and they’ll be on the hangar deck in a matter of minutes.”

  Morane seemed lost in thought for almost a minute, his jaw muscles working as he chewed on the decision. Then he nodded. “For the sake of my soul and the morale of Brigid’s Marines, please prepare three shuttles, Iona. Two for the boarding party, one to provide top cover.”

  “Meaning you want two of my troops?”

  He inclined his head. “I do. Departure in one hour.”

  DeCarde stood and joined Mikkel by the door. As one, they came to attention and said, “Aye, aye, sir,” before vanishing into the corridor.

  — 28 —

  Centurion Adrienne Barca, executive officer, B Squadron, 6th Battalion, 21st Pathfinder Regiment finished briefing the command sergeants leading the two troops she was taking to board Tanith when DeCarde entered the hangar deck. Olive-skinned, with an aquiline nose, watchful dark eyes and dark hair, her angular features seemed frozen into a perpetual frown of suspicion that matched her low-pitched, almost husky voice.

  “Ready, Adri?”

  Barca snapped to attention. “Ready and eager, Colonel. It’ll make a nice break from the usual.”

  Lieutenant Peg Vietti, Vanquish’s gunnery officer, whom Morane appointed to lead the boarding party, approached the Marines, saluting DeCarde as she came to a precise halt three paces away. Vietti, like Barca and her troopers, was clad in powered armor, able to withstand small arms fire and the deadly cold of space.

  “Care to join us, Colonel?”

  DeCarde returned Vietti’s smile. “As much as I’d like to, this is a Marine centurion’s command, not a colonel’s, and Adrienne won’t thank me for breathing down her neck. Bad enough I’ll be monitoring her battle suit’s sensor feed in real time from the CIC.”

  Barca chuckled. “Ain’t it the truth? Good thing basic training purges us of any inhibitions.”

  “Any?” Vietti asked with the hint of a smirk on her thin lips.

  Barca gave the pale, freckled redhead with watery green eyes a knowing wink. “Buy me a drink after this mission, and I’ll give you chapter and verse.”

  “Is Bowdoin not seeing you off?” DeCarde asked, to forestall any further bantering.

  “He imparted his wisdom in the barracks and left me to it, Colonel.” Barca’s grin softened her harsh features. “I think he’s miffed at this being a centurion’s mission rather than a major’s.”

  DeCarde snorted in disbelief. Major Bowdoin Pohlitz was well known for giving his officers and command noncoms plenty of independent operations to develop their tactical abilities and allow them to shine.

  “Take care, Adri. You too, Lieutenant.” Both junior officers saluted. DeCarde returned the compliment and then left the hangar deck. She lingered in the control room and watched Vietti lead her flight of three armed shuttles through the energy barrier keeping the compartment pressurized until they vanished from sight. Then she returned to Morane’s day cabin.

  Upon entering DeCarde found Vanquish’s captain and Sister Gwenneth engaged in a discussion that trailed off while she served herself another cup of tea and joined them.

  “I was just telling Jonas that it would be unwise to take the crew’s equanimous acceptance of our fate for a sign they’re reconciled to the idea of permanent exile, Brigid. The same goes for your Marines. Military personnel are trained to keep a stoic facade in the face of adversity. But as Katarin and I discovered since joining you aboard Vanquish, many of your people are dealing with considerable inner turmoil, the sort that builds until it trips an emotional overpressure valve. Sadly their training and the social conditioning of military service prevents most from releasing some of the buildup before it goes critical and leaves permanent scars. Katarin and I are discussing how we can best help, but it is as much a leadership problem for you and yours as it is a counseling challenge for us.”

  DeCarde nodded. “I’m not surprised. But thankfully so far I’ve seen none of the signs pointing to morale issues. At least not the usual ones — like arguments over trivial matters, silent insolence toward superiors, or withdrawal from the group, to mention the more prominent indicators.”

  “They will no doubt appear in due course. The more we near our destination and therefore the further we get from the life they’ve known, the more overt their turmoil will become. Consider that unlike the Navy personnel, your troopers were not given a choice whether to follow Jonas’ quest for sanctuary or find their way home through the flames of civil war, no matter the risks involved. A few may come to resent the decision you made on their behalf even though it saved their lives. We will try to ease the distress of those we can identify as suffering and who are willing to accept our help. Not everyone welcomes our presence as you well know. And before you ask, any intervention we make comes under the seal of confidentiality so we cannot discuss individual cases. Except if the person involved presents an imminent danger to him or herself, or to others.”

  “Then at least let me know who you think is struggling but unwilling to speak with you. Sergeant Major Bayn may not be a psychologist or a Friar of the Void, but there’s little he doesn�
��t know about Marines and their problems.”

  Gwenneth inclined her head. “Of course. I’ve spoken with Cazimir already and know he will prove an invaluable ally. But the issues we’re seeing won’t be confined to Vanquish.” She turned to Morane. “May I suggest you ask Rinne that a few of us be sent to Narwhal and Myrtale, Jonas? Now that I have an appreciation of the situation, I think making counselors available on every one of your vessels would be salutary for both Marines and crew.”

  “Of course. There will be plenty of time for inter-ship transfers while the boarding party investigates Tanith.” He climbed to his feet. “Let me arrange it right away.”

  **

  “Fascinating.” Lieutenant Vietti stared at the shuttle’s sensor readout as her flight neared Tanith. “Are you getting this, Vanquish?”

  “Aye,” Chief Lettis replied over the tight-beam comlink joining Vietti’s craft to its mother ship.

  “She’s on a stable trajectory. No tumbling or yawing. Her power emissions are minimal, congruent with a ship running silent. Sensors show she’s still pressurized and seems undamaged.”

  “Except for this.” Centurion Barca pointed an armored finger at the visual display. Tanith’s sleek black hull, framed by long, narrow hyperdrive nacelles, showed signs of many atmospheric re-entries but, with her gun turrets retracted, little else other than a small divot that escaped Vietti’s attention until now.

  “Someone’s boarded her. They forced the outer airlock door and didn’t bother shutting it. Since there’s still internal pressure, they must have turned the adjacent compartment into an inner airlock. I’ll bet we’ll see the same on her starboard side. We Marines like to come at our targets from several directions.”

  “Any life signs?” Morane asked over the comlink.

  “None we can detect so far, sir. But the Prison Service usually puts prisoners in stasis during transport, meaning we wouldn’t pick them up anyway.”

  “If there are any,” Barca said. “It doesn’t look like the ship’s crew or the Prison Service bulls are aboard.”

  Vietti nodded. “Or they’re aboard but no longer alive.”

  “Possibly. I can’t see rebels greeting bulls with open arms. On the contrary. Especially bulls guarding politicals.”

  “What would you prefer, Adri?”

  “Make one low-level pass around the ship, scan every part of the hull and check if the boarders forced any other airlocks. When we’re happy, we choose an airlock and match velocities a few dozen meters away. Then, I send an EVA team across to give it the once-over and make sure no one left little presents behind to blow up unwary scavengers. If it’s clean, we board. One shuttle, one troop. If there’s no one awake or even alive, we don’t need more. The others can stay in reserve.”

  “You want our shuttle to be the one that docks?”

  Barca gave the Navy officer a hungry smile. “Of course.” Then she glanced over her shoulder at Command Sergeant Rand Tejko, riding behind her with the rest of B Squadron’s Number Five Troop. “Am I right, Sergeant Tejko?”

  He nodded. “Abso-fucking-lutely, sir.”

  “All right, then. How about we button up our suits so I can depressurize the shuttle while we run a low-level survey?”

  “It’s your spacecraft, Peg.” Barca slammed her helmet shut and motioned for the others to follow her example. When Tejko gave her the okay signal after verifying that everyone’s armor was airtight, she nudged the lieutenant. “Clear.”

  “Here we go.”

  — 29 —

  “Nothing,” the EVA team sergeant reported. “Someone forced the hatch, but there’s no sign of booby traps or other uglies.” He and his four troopers had jumped across the void between Vietti’s shuttle and Tanith’s hull several minutes earlier, landing near the open port. They now stood around the gaping hole, magnetic soles affixed to the hull. “I figure you can still mate airlocks. Just let us climb inside before you do so.”

  Barca glanced at Vietti. “We good, Peg? My troopers don’t make mistakes with spotting nasty stuff.”

  The Navy officer glanced at the open airlock through the shuttle’s thick cockpit window one last time, then nodded. “I’m good. Move your team out of the way.”

  “In you go, Sergeant. But stay within the depressurized zone. I’d rather we tackle the first functioning airlock at the troop level.”

  “Acknowledged. We’ll keep checking for presents inside.” Moments later, the five Pathfinders swung through the opening, landing on their feet as they entered the artificial gravity envelope and disappeared.

  Shortly after that, Vietti mated the shuttle to the prison ship with a muffled clang. “Final stop, the Imperial Prison transport Tanith. All Marines off my ship.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Someone needs to mind your ride and keep an eye on the rest of the expedition. Enjoy.” The shuttle’s aft airlock iris reopened to reveal the darkened inside of Tanith’s entry port. The advance team was gone.

  Barca let Sergeant Tejko’s troopers lead the way. Though she could exercise her privilege and be part of a reduced boarding party, she knew better than to interfere. Her place was behind the lead troop, not on point.

  The Pathfinders fanned out, one half under Tejko which joined the advance team by a set of airtight doors that led forward, where the ship’s bridge could be found. The rest moved aft under the orders of Sergeant First Class Eddy Craddoc, Tejko’s troop sergeant, toward another set of airtight doors. Their job was checking out engineering and the compartments where prisoners if any still remained, would be held in individual stasis pods.

  Careful scans confirmed the presence of an almost perfect one hundred and one kilopascal of atmospheric pressure on the other side of both sets of airtight doors. And they indicated the absence of anything dangerous. Therefore, Barca gave permission for the first teams to pass through the small secondary airlocks separating the ship into sections. Seconds after the point trooper passed through into the pressurized compartment, he swore volubly in several human languages.

  “It’s a fucking charnel house in here, and the environmental systems haven’t been keeping up if you know what I mean. The stiffs are days old.”

  Barca followed the last of Tejko’s Pathfinders through the inner airlock and was immediately grateful she wore fully pressurized battle armor. The stench of decomposing bodies must be horrific, based on the state of the half-dozen Prison Service bulls who were slaughtered by what was presumably a rebel boarding party.

  Thankfully, the clinical detachment afforded by her helmet’s visor with its heads-up display allowed her to study the scene with little more than mild disgust. It quickly became clear, based on their poses in death, that the boarders massacred them after they surrendered.

  “Whoever killed those men and women did so with a deep hatred rather than a soldier’s clinical detachment,” an unfamiliar voice said over the comlink joining Barca to Vanquish’s CIC. “It’s as if something unleashed a great evil aboard that ship.”

  “Merely part and parcel of the evil washing over Dendera’s dying empire, I should think, Sister,” Morane replied. Barca nodded to herself. Gwenneth. The Sister of the Void enjoyed CIC privileges.

  “Perhaps, Captain. But even though we may be at a distance and seeing it second hand through Centurion Barca’s eyes, I can sense darkness in Tanith. Something that transcends the wickedness of civil war.”

  Barca mentally shook her head at the sister’s mysticism, but she couldn’t fault her verdict that opponents who took pleasure in their handiwork slew the bulls.

  Sergeant Tejko’s voice pulled Barca from her morose contemplation of the scene. “We’ve secured the bridge and found eight dead crew members. They also look like they were executed by psychopaths intent on causing exquisite agony.”

  “Same in engineering,” Sergeant Craddoc reported. “Five bodies. Their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them.”

  Morane’s voice came over the comlink again. “See if you can
access the ship’s log, Centurion Barca. Perhaps we’ll find out what happened here, and why.”

  “Will do. Sergeant Tejko, keep your troop moving. I’m coming to the bridge.”

  Barca felt a brief stab of nausea born from disgust when she entered Tanith’s command center. The duty watch had been killed at its stations. Black crusts of congealed blood surrounded the base of each chair. Some were barely identifiable as humanoid, let alone human. She found an unoccupied console and began to interrogate the ship’s AI.

  “The attack happened five days ago,” she finally said aloud. “I’ll send you a copy of their database for further analysis, but someone ambushed them as they come out of Wormhole Parth One.”

  “Makes sense,” Morane replied. “It leads to the most direct set of junctions to and from the Wyvern Sector.”

  “A rebel task force numbering more than twenty starships destroyed half of the 12th Battle Group. The rest fled across the system in FTL, hoping to make for Wormhole Parth Two and a series of transits through unoccupied systems. Unfortunately, the rebels caught up with them shortly after they dropped out of hyperspace and put paid to the remaining warships. They ordered Tanith to stand down and let herself be boarded. Her captain was disinclined to obey, but the rebels knocked out his shields with, and I quote, incredible precision. The last log entry states that rebel Marines forced their way through four of the main airlocks and weren’t taking any captives.”

  “Those weren’t Marines.” DeCarde’s voice held a depth of anger the likes of which Barca had never heard before. “Imperial Guards who changed sides, perhaps, but not Marines.”

  “Imperial Guards going over to the rebellion?” Morane sounded skeptical. “I suppose in this topsy-turvy universe, everything is possible. The real question is why they bothered to board Tanith when they showed no hesitation in destroying the battle group.”

  “I think I can answer that, sir,” Sergeant Craddoc said. “I’m in the main prisoner transport compartment. Eight of the stasis pods are hanging open as if they’d been decanted recently. The rest are shut, with someone inside, except for a few that were shot up. Maybe they boarded to take someone important off.”