Imperial Sunset

by Eric Thomson

  “Maybe they heard Captain Morane’s message and took the system relay and their satellite constellation offline to keep the reivers from shooting it up,” Myrtale’s first officer suggested. “Meaning they’re prepared to resist in one way or another.”

  “Let’s hope that’s the case. The alternative would mean Lyonesse already suffered a raid that took out its orbitals and this new one will do little more than bounce the rubble. Who knows how many raiders slipped through Arietis between the time Zahar withdrew his ships and our arrival.”

  “Should we try sending a message anyway?”

  Sirak shook his head. “If their orbitals are dormant or gone, I’m not sure they’ll hear anything.” He tapped the screen embedded in the command chair’s arm. “Engineering, this is the captain. Please tell me we can jump soon.”

  A few seconds later, Collin Partlow’s rough voice replied, “Aye. Whenever the fancy strikes you, but stay at one point five cee. The wormhole transit hasn’t done our hull integrity any favors. And the drives themselves aren’t doing any better than they did before we crossed over. I tried, but too many parts are suffering premature end-of-life.”

  “So long as we reach Lyonesse in condition to fight.”

  “I’ll get us there, Captain. Just don’t overshoot the regulation hyperlimit by too much. As for fighting, that’s in your wheelhouse, not mine.”

  “Fair enough. Navigation, if you’re happy with the plotted jump, let’s punch out of here.”

  **

  Major Kayne climbed out of his air car and returned the Trevena District company commander’s salute. “How are you, Devin?”

  “On edge more than anything else, sir.” Centurion Devin Hamm stiffened when he spotted the car’s second passenger as she climbed out the other side. “I’m sorry, sir. If I’d known the governor was coming, I’d have organized something more suitable.”

  “Her Excellency is here as Colonel of the Colonial Militia, Devin, and not as the empress’ representative on Lyonesse. Treat her like you would any senior officer.”

  “Yes, sir.” When Yakin came around the car, Hamm saluted again. “Welcome, Your Excellency.”

  She inclined her head in greeting. “Centurion.”

  “How are your troops?”

  “Equally on edge. Good thing we moved the families out, otherwise half of them would be mad with worry instead of doing their jobs. Did you want to see anything in particular?”

  “Nothing specific. The governor and I are making what you could call a morale-boosting tour of the militia companies. The reivers won’t be here until the early hours of tomorrow morning at best, so there’s time to show the flag.”

  “Good idea.”

  Hamm gestured toward the Trevena spaceport, a rammed earth strip bordered by a low-slung passenger terminal, little more than a few old containers knocked together, and a half-dozen high-domed transshipment shelters. Though rudimentary compared to the Lannion civilian spaceport, let alone Lannion Base, it could easily accommodate a sloop-sized starship.

  And since Trevena was Lyonesse’s second largest settlement, it would almost certainly be a target. “We set up fighting positions surrounding the strip and along the main road leading into town. Those extra platoons from Caffrey and High Bend will come in handy to give the ambush some depth.”

  Kayne chuckled. “Tyra said almost the same thing when we visited Carhaix.”

  “We studied under the same teacher.”

  “Who’s about to find out if the lessons stuck. Walk the governor and me through your plan and around the site. We’d like to speak with as many of your people as possible.”

  **

  The angry sun painted Lannion’s somber western horizon with an ominous riot of colors when Kayne brought his aircar into the Lannion Base motor pool. It was carved out of the cliff beneath the barracks that housed the 77th Marine Regiment, his old unit, years earlier.

  When it left, he and a handful of other noncoms with thirty years of service in the Corps elected to stay on Lyonesse rather than say farewell to a place they considered their adopted home. Not long after, a newly arrived Elenia Yakin asked him to form a militia under her auspices.

  Once Kayne turned off the car’s power plant, Yakin laid a gentle hand on his right forearm. “Thank you for taking me along, Matti. I feel better now I’ve seen how determined your soldiers are, how well they hide their fear beneath masks of defiance. We may actually live for another day.”

  “Our soldiers, Elenia. Remember, you’re their colonel. And I could tell it pleased them to see and speak with you. As a morale-boosting tour, it was a success. If it were just me visiting, not so much.”

  She smiled. “Thank you for saying so. Perhaps later we can discuss ways of turning our militia into a regular defense force. I fear the days of relying on volunteers to deal with whatever the Navy doesn’t catch are over for good.”

  “It’ll be a long night. We can talk about it while we wait for the reivers to arrive. Unless you’d rather try sleeping.”

  Yakin’s peal of laughter sounded just a little forced to Kayne’s ears. “I doubt I’ll be able to lie still, but if you don’t mind company, I’ll gladly sit with you until the battle is joined.”

  “That would be lovely.” He glanced at the time. “We can expect our unwanted visitors to drop out of FTL at the hyperlimit any time now. Then it will be a matter of how hard they’re willing to accelerate and decelerate.”

  They left Kayne’s car sitting alongside those belonging to Yakin, Logran, and Hecht, amidst the two dozen ground vehicles owned by the militia and took a lift to the operations center’s aerie high above the tarmac.

  Lieutenant Grimes turned the duty officer’s chair around at their entry and made to stand until both Kayne and Yakin waved her down.

  “No need for formalities, Hetty, not when we’re about to call battle stations. Anything new?”

  “Nothing, sir. The heavens are as quiet as can be, and with both the subspace relay and the wormhole traffic control buoy dormant, we won’t know if help is coming until a day after it arrives in-system.”

  “By which time we’ll have seen the reivers off ourselves,” Yakin said with a confident smile that Kayne knew to be just a little counterfeit.

  “Absolutely, Your Excellency.”

  “We’ll be in my office, Hetty.”

  — 51 —

  “Checkmate, I believe.” Yakin released her chess piece and looked up at Kayne with a sly expression.

  Kayne studied the board, then tipped his king over with an extended index finger. “That gives you five victories out of seven games, and I will gladly concede you’re the better player.”

  His communicator chimed, and he grinned at her. “Saved by the operations center. Kayne.”

  “Grimes, sir. Three emergence traces at the hyperlimit. Visuals confirm they’re the same ones spotted by the wormhole traffic control buoy.”

  “Finally.” An eerie sense of relief washed over the militia commander. “The bastards took their sweet time getting here.”

  “Probably loitered at the wormhole or dropped out of FTL along the way to make sure no surprises waited for them in Lyonesse orbit.”

  “How long do you think?”

  Grimes didn’t immediately reply. Then, “Around dawn, I’d say, but they’ll take a few hours to scan the surface before landing, in case we’re a tougher nut than we look.”

  “A good thing we don’t look like a nut.”

  “Not so we could fool a psychiatrist, but reivers? Sure. Would you like to see the visuals?”

  “Yes. Pipe them to my office display.”

  Moments later the elongated shape of a dark, vaguely menacing spacecraft nestled against a sea of stars replaced the Lyonesse Colonial Militia’s double-headed condor. “This one is the lead ship. The others are almost exact duplicates.”

  “Any sense of crew numbers?”

  Grimes hesitated before answering. “Based on apparent size, each could easily carry
a hundred humans.”

  “So three hundred in total?” Yakin’s tone betrayed puzzlement. “That’s not much to threaten a colony of our size.”

  “It’s amply sufficient if the colony has no defenses and doesn’t expect a raid, Madame,” Kayne replied. “These are people who will use surprise and unrestrained violence to terrorize civilians into submission while they rape, pillage and plunder. I expect them to be well armed and highly aggressive, capable of defeating a population that has only a lightly equipped police force at the ready. Without enough warning, deploying a volunteer militia such as ours takes too long, and it would get chewed up piecemeal as it tried to organize while fighting off the raiders.”

  “Oh.” The puzzlement gave way to an expression of concern. “Unrestrained violence means what, exactly?”

  “Reivers will kill anyone they come across unless they’re looking for slaves. To them, we’re prey, something they kill for sport, nothing more. Three hundred can cause havoc even on a planet with half a million colonists. But we can manage, provided they don’t bombard us from orbit.”

  “Which they shouldn’t if they’re looking for tech, precious metals and other portable valuables to steal,” Grimes said. “And definitely not if they’re looking for slave market meat.”

  Yakin suppressed a shiver. “You make it sound so — clinical.”

  Instead of replying, Kayne stood, walked over to the narrow window and stared out at a moonless, starless night. Rain-laden clouds had swept in from the Middle Sea during the evening, promising an almost tropical downpour at daybreak. The sort of weather that gave defenders an advantage. Not by much, but little things could tip the balance as he knew from going through a self-study version of the Imperial Marine Corps staff officer course. It was a far from perfect education, but in eight years, Kayne read a lot of manuals, histories, and commentaries. And he spent a lot of time thinking about how to best defend his adopted home.

  But at heart, he was still a Marine Corps command sergeant, a non-commissioned platoon leader. And now that his first engagement as head of the Colonial Militia loomed, Kayne longed to be a platoon leader again and do what the infantry does best: find and destroy the enemy.

  His outlying company commanders didn’t need him now that everything was in place and the final orders were given. They would fight their own battles in Trevena and Carhaix, or if the reivers targeted the smaller settlements: Caffrey, High Bend, Arran or North Wall.

  Names that had become achingly familiar over the years. The inhabitants, many of whom served under his orders a few days a month and a few weeks a year, were now almost a part of his extended family.

  His fight was here in Lannion, and the idea of leading it from the operations center suddenly felt wrong. Like he was shirking his duty. Oh, sure, the manual said a battalion commander whose unit was dispersed should stay where he could best keep in communications with his subunits. But Lannion Company and most of the Militia Combat Support Company were out there, in the darkness, surrounding the planet’s main spaceport. Waiting for the reivers to land and come out of their ship, intent on rapine.

  Reivers who wouldn’t realize their every move was being watched; that every one of them wore an invisible target marker on their chest or back, and that well-hidden heavy weapons detachments were preparing to damage the grounded ships.

  No, he belonged with them, not here. Lannion would be the enemy’s focus, his center of gravity — his schwerpunkt, as the staff officer manuals called it. This was where the clan chief would land and where they would win or lose the battle. It was why he’d brought in platoons from the outlying companies, from Arran and North Wall, to round out Combat Support Company and put over two hundred soldiers on the ground. He would see the enemy with his own eyes here, in Lannion.

  “Hetty, please warn Centurion Greff and Sergeant Major Havel that I’m activating my tactical command post and shifting it to the spaceport.” Greff and Havel, another pair of retired Marine noncoms from the 77th, would understand. They would even welcome the idea.

  Elenia Yakin’s eyes widened when Kayne’s words registered. “You’re leaving?”

  He gave her a confident grin. “Only until I’ve dealt with the current unpleasantness. Once we’ve cleared Lyonesse of vermin, I’ll be back.”

  “I warned Greff,” Grimes said. “His reply, which he asked I pass on verbatim was, quote, it’s about fucking time, unquote. And begging your pardon, Madame.”

  “No matter, Lieutenant. I’ve heard worse at court. Much worse.”

  “Keep an eye on the old homestead, Hetty. Don’t power up the pods too early and if one of the buggers decides to land in our front yard, enjoy the fun.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  Kayne grunted. “We don’t wish each other luck in the ground pounders. We wish each other good hunting.”

  **

  Driving through Lannion in the dead of night under a heavy sky felt eerie. Kayne saw nothing but unrelieved darkness where in normal times, a few lights would shine. Yet he knew hundreds, if not thousands of die-hards waited in their homes and businesses with hunting weapons or old souvenirs from a tour in the Corps, lovingly maintained and ready to fire.

  Kayne, like Centurion Greff, Sergeant Major Havel and the rest of his tactical command post platoon wore militia issue light armor and carried militia issue side arms. Both came from old Fleet stocks shipped to Lyonesse at Yakin’s request. Though classified as light, meaning unpowered, their battlesuits had the same chameleon coating as those worn by regular troopers, and similar, if less sophisticated built-in electronics.

  The ground car, a civilian truck donated by Speaker Hecht’s corporation — or rather that of his children, since he surrendered control so he could stand for elected office — pulled up to the spaceport’s main administrative building. Centurion Yao Algava, who commanded the Combat Support Company, emerged from a darkened doorway and waved them over to where he stood.

  “I figure you might want to use the control tower, boss,” Algava said the moment Kayne was within earshot. “I’ve taken the spaceport administrator’s suite as my CP. It has a great view of the entire spaceport. But the tower lets you see every egress point and more importantly Tony’s company.”

  “And makes the boss vulnerable to enemy fire,” Havel growled.

  “Only if the buggers suspect someone’s there. I doubt they carry the sort of sensors that can spot a human body wearing a chameleon tin suit if said human sticks to radio silence. I’ll take it for now.” Kayne turned to Greff. “But the sergeant major is right. Look for an alternate, will you?”

  A drop of rain splashed on Kayne’s helmet, then another and he reflexively looked up at the sky.

  “That’s a south-easter,” Algava remarked. “It’ll dump enough rain on the tarmac that the fucking reivers will be blind from steam when they land.”

  Sergeant Major Havel’s brief outburst of laughter sounded like a wildebeest’s dying gasp. “Never thought I’d bless a south-easter. They’re the one thing I can’t stand about living here. That damned rain when the wind blows off the Middle Sea.”

  Kayne’s helmet radio clicked for attention. “Niner here.”

  “This is Zero,” Hetty Grimes’ voice replied, using the Imperial Marine Corps designator for a unit operations center. “Another ship dropped out of FTL at the hyperlimit. A Byzance class frigate. No transponder. She gave herself a massive boost, more than I would think prudent, then shut her systems, so her emissions don’t show up on sensors. We only saw her because the surveillance satellite is still looking in the wormhole’s direction.”

  “Hot damn! The cavalry. They’re only a few hours behind the reivers. Looks like this Morane fellow who sent the warning was on the level about everything.”

  “I thought you might enjoy the news.”

  “And our unwanted visitors?”

  “Decelerating hard. They’ll pass Gwaelod’s orbit within the hour.” Gwaelod, the outer of Lyonesse’s three moons was overh
ead tonight and would shine brightly but for thick clouds propelled by the sea-borne gale.

  “Pass the word to all units. It’ll give them a shot in the arm.”

  “Will do. Zero, out.”

  “The Navy is here,” Kayne told the others. “Probably not close enough to keep them from landing, but we’re no longer alone. Now, where do we hide this thing?” He nodded at the truck.

  **

  “Three assholes decelerating hard.” Myrtale’s sensor chief sounded jubilant. “Three hours ahead of us, about to pass the outer moon’s orbit.”

  Sirak’s fist slammed his command chair’s arm. So close. “Anything from Lyonesse?”

  “Nothing. It’s like nobody’s home. No radio waves, no satellites. Hang on.” The sensor chief squinted at his readout. “Correction. One active satellite on low power.”

  “Hah. The rest of their constellation is dormant. They received Captain Morane’s transmission. Let’s hope whoever thought of shuttering the orbitals is also smart enough to clear out the likely targets. Nav, give us the hardest boost our strained dampeners can manage. Number One, as soon as the drives shut off, we go silent until it’s time to fire the braking thrusters. Maybe we can shave another hour off the buggers’ lead without them knowing we’re here.”

  “With any luck, they’ll spend a few hours scanning likely target areas before trying to land. If they don’t realize the colonists took everything above the atmosphere offline, they might count on the element of surprise and try to pass themselves off as legitimate traders before running rampant.”

  Sirak grinned at his first officer. “Let’s hope their leader is a prudent being and spends at least four hours looking at the target area from on high.”

  “Indeed. But somehow, I think those people down there aren’t going to simply fold in the face of what? Three hundred scum. Or at least they won’t fold until we can give the reivers a choice between dying in space and dying on the ground.”

  — 52 —

  Major Matti Kayne, commanding officer of the Lyonesse Colonial Militia, was about to comment on the rain-drenched sky gradually shedding the unrelieved darkness of night when he heard his helmet radio click. With the defense network under radio silence, it could only be important news.