Imperial Sunset

by Eric Thomson

  “Niner, this is Zero.”

  “Niner.”

  “Another ship dropped out of FTL at the hyperlimit a few minutes ago and is pouring on the gees like something that doesn’t care about the laws of physics. I make it as a Triumph class cruiser.”

  “Vanquish.” The name came out in a whisper.

  “She’s a Triumph class cruiser. According to the specs, she can take out those three reivers without reloading.”

  “How long until she’s here?”

  “Not much longer than the frigate, I figure. Triumphs aren’t nearly as old as Byzance frigates and have inertial dampeners to match. She can brake a lot harder. Shall I pass the word?”

  “No. The reivers might pick up long-range transmissions.”

  A muffled curse escaped Grimes’ lips.

  “What?”

  “The surveillance satellite is no longer talking to us. I guess they found and destroyed it.”

  “No matter,” Kayne said, eyes staring at the unrelieved gray sky above the Lannion spaceport. “We’ll know when they come through the cloud cover.”

  “In that case, good hunting.”

  Kayne grinned at his faint reflection in the control tower window. Grimes might come across as a career lieutenant with no ambitions, but she was shaping up well in an emergency.

  “Thank you. Niner, out.”

  **

  “This will be one for the books, Skipper,” Mikkel said after Chief Lettis reported. “The reivers aren’t on the ground yet. We’re four hours out, and Myrtale has to be somewhere between Lyonesse and us, running silent.”

  “As is Lyonesse itself, it seems. Unless there’s nothing left. In which case the reivers would be leaving by now. No, the colonists are imitating us, hiding from enemy sensors. I wish we could contact them, but this is not yet the time.”

  “Especially if they’ve taken measures to defend themselves,” DeCarde said. She glanced sideways at Sister Gwenneth. “What does the Void say about Lyonesse’s chances?”

  That faint yet infuriating smile briefly crossed Gwenneth’s lips. “Trust in the Almighty and in the stout hearts of those who stand against the darkness.”

  “I don’t know whether or not that’s reassuring, but since we won’t get there before those reivers wreak havoc, I guess trusting in the colonists’ stout hearts is as good as it gets for us spectators.”

  “Pretty much,” Morane said. “How did the ship fare from this latest burst, Iona?”

  “Roman’s still checking, but you might have noticed our transition back to sublight was more violent than usual. That’s never a good sign.”

  “At least we’re here and able to fight.”

  “And still four hours away. We can cheat the laws of hyperspace once or twice, but trying to cheat our inertial dampeners’ ability to keep us alive is a lot different.”

  “Sir.” Chief Lettis raised a hand to attract Morane’s attention. “I think I’ve spotted Myrtale. She’s leaking emissions like a sieve. At least to my sensors. The reivers probably won’t notice against the background radiation.”

  “Open a tight-beam connection and give Myrtale an encrypted ping, so she knows we’ve arrived.”

  **

  A wet, gray dawn blanketed Lannion when the first rumbles of artificial thunder reached Kayne’s ears. Where the south-easter brought the occasional ear-splitting drumroll, complete with jagged, piercing bursts of lightning, this rumble was not only sustained but growing. And so far without bright visuals.

  He felt Greff and Havel stiffen as the sound reached their ears and suppressed the sudden desire to call his company commanders and see if ships were landing elsewhere. But radio silence remained an essential part of this ambush. Of any ambush, really.

  “There.” Centurion Greff pointed upward. A black dot riding a column of pure energy was breaking through the low cloud cover.

  A few minutes passed while the dot grew and lengthened, but it remained stubbornly solitary. Were the other ships landing in Trevena and Carhaix? Or in one of the smaller settlements. Or even, the Almighty forbid, in the hinterland, where most of the townspeople cowered in hiding, beset both by fear and torrential rains?

  The reiver’s rumbling grew louder, more menacing, but seemed oddly muffled at the same time. Yet the sparkling light of its thrusters lent a deadly beauty to this dull morning.

  Kayne, and the other retired Imperial Marine Corps noncoms in the militia last saw shots fired in anger more than a decade ago. For the vast majority of the Lyonesse volunteers, today would be their first time shooting at anything more than a holographic target during training. But they were defending their homes, their families and their communities, everything they and the earlier generations of settlers built since Lyonesse was opened to colonization in the last century.

  The black dot, now clearly identifiable as a needle-shaped starship of unusual design, quite unlike the broader, more rounded merchantmen Kayne was used to seeing, slowed its descent until it almost seemed suspended in midair. Gun turrets, retracted for the plunge through Lyonesse’s atmosphere, seemed to sprout along both sides and the ship’s keel, removing any last doubts this could be an honest visitor.

  “They’re scanning us,” Greff said in a whisper.

  This was the moment of greatest peril. Were the militia soldiers still adequately camouflaged? Did their battlesuits still absorb a sensor’s pulses without reflecting them? Was everyone still respecting the order to keep weapons unpowered until the last minute? The smallest thing might tip the reivers off and tell them they weren’t about to hit an unwitting, defenseless colony. And that could be enough to trigger a massacre thanks to those guns pointing at the spaceport.

  It felt as if the entire town was holding its collective breath during the ship’s last few minutes of descent. Then, as predicted, its thrusters turned a night’s worth of rain puddles into super-heated steam, blanking everything out for a few heart-stopping moments. The reivers had landed.

  Little by little, tendril by tendril, the steam clouds dissipated, leaving a lean, black-hulled raider sitting on thick struts in the middle of Lannion spaceport’s tarmac. Up close, it looked worn, rough, pitted by too many atmospheric re-entries and too many fights.

  But Kayne sensed an almost feral aura of death and destruction emanating from the now silent silhouette. One part of him knew the feeling was only a flight of fancy, but somewhere, deep within, it was almost as if a genetic memory of the first Viking raids on unsuspecting villages three thousand years ago, on a world far away, was resurfacing.

  Part of the ship’s keel broke loose and dropped, forming a ramp wide enough for five humans to walk abreast. A minute passed, then dark shapes emerged, moving with caution, weapons held at the ready. As they came out of the shadows and into the watery morning light, Kayne saw they were human. But that was where any resemblance to his soldiers ended.

  Long-haired, scarred, tattooed and otherwise disfigured, the reivers appeared brutal, almost bestial, as if they were snarling hyenas in human form. They wore what looked like castoff pieces of armor from two dozen sources over leathery black tunics and trousers tucked into knee-high boots. The clothes themselves were covered with a bewildering array of metallic adornments, plates, and spikes, adding to the overall savage appearance. Their weapons appeared equally heterogeneous, with no discernible, let alone familiar pattern.

  More of them poured out as the first few cautiously walked toward the silent terminal building, their heads on a swivel, eyes searching for potential threats. Yet their strutting demeanor screamed of confidence born from overrunning helpless frontier settlements without so much as taking return fire.

  A few carried handheld sensors and were sweeping their surroundings, but if the ship’s more powerful scanners hadn’t noticed the hidden soldiers, these didn’t stand a chance. To them, the terminal and every other spaceport building appeared empty, as they would this early.

  A few tried to enter the terminal, but upon finding every doo
r locked, they simply followed their comrades around instead of forcing their way inside. By the time Kayne stopped counting, almost a hundred filled the main road leading into Lannion proper. A silent, heavily armed mob. How many more remained aboard the ship was difficult to assess.

  He heard three clicks over the battalion radio network. Then, all hell broke loose.

  — 53 —

  “All three have entered the atmosphere,” Myrtale’s sensor chief reported.

  Sirak gestured at his first officer. “Go up systems, Number One. There’s no point in hiding anymore. And put us at battle stations.”

  “Should we try calling Lyonesse?”

  “No. Not just yet. I’d rather we didn’t spook the reivers until we’re in a position to fire, but since Captain Morane was kind enough to let us know he’s here, please set up a subspace link with Vanquish.”

  Moments later, a visibly tired, but steely-eyed Morane appeared on the display. “How is Myrtale, Nate?”

  “Keeping together thanks to our hopes, our prayers and a chief engineer who doesn’t know when to quit. But after this, you might as well put us in permanent orbit around Lyonesse.”

  A small grin softened Morane’s face. “You have one of those mule-headed wrench jockeys too, eh?”

  “I think they teach them not to quit at starship engineering school, sir. That, or they select them for extreme stubbornness. But we received an object lesson in why the Fleet limits FTL travel to twice the speed of light within a heliosphere. Above two times cee, hyperspace is like molasses compared to interstellar space.”

  “We apparently received the same lesson. My chief engineer isn’t pounding on my door yet, but Iona Mikkel tells me he’s not a happy man. At least we’re not leaking emissions like you are. Not yet.”

  Sirak chuckled. “Are we that bad?”

  “A blind sensor chief could find you.”

  “But not a reiver. They entered the atmosphere like tourists without a single worry in the universe, let alone a Navy ship on their ass. A shame we didn’t make it here faster. I’m not looking forward to the aftermath.”

  “Let’s wait before writing Lyonesse’s obituary, Nate. I think they received our warning and are prepared to give these roaches a less than friendly welcome.”

  “I certainly hope so. What’s your plan?”

  “Once we’re sure they’ve landed, you can call the colony’s traffic control center on the Fleet emergency band and see if anyone answers.”

  “And if there’s no reply?”

  “The moment you’re in geosynchronous orbit over the settled area, find them and figure out what they’re doing. When we arrive, I’ll send my Marines to the surface in full combat configuration. The reivers probably landed at spaceports, which means we can’t open fire willy-nilly.”

  “Sounds good, and if the buggers come back up, I won’t hesitate. When do we expect Narwhal and Dawn Trader?”

  “I think they’re already in-system, but they still face a few more hours in FTL.”

  “Which means they’ll miss the show.”

  “As will half of Colonel DeCarde’s battalion. She tells me they’ll be inconsolable.”

  **

  The main road leading from the spaceport’s passenger terminal erupted in gunfire at the prearranged signal. Militia soldiers hidden in buildings along the thoroughfare poured a continuous stream of plasma into the massed reivers, many of whom fell into smoking heaps before they could even understand what was happening.

  Marksmanship wasn’t important, not at such close range, not with a dozen squad automatic weapons doing the bulk of the killing. A few of the reivers, with quicker wits than the rest, sprinted for the nearest cover while firing back blindly.

  Kayne, mesmerized by the sight of his ambush working as planned, a rare occurrence, jumped when Greff tapped him on the shoulder and pointed back at the tarmac. Combat Support Company’s heavy weapons platoon was unmasking its fighting positions and opening up on the grounded ship.

  Energy shields were of limited use in an atmosphere, but the reivers were so confident, they hadn’t even raised them after disgorging the raiding party. Streams of plasma spat out by six of the battalion’s twenty millimeter, four-barrel calliopes were chewing up the exposed gun turrets, turning hardened metal into molten lava.

  One of the as yet undamaged aft turrets belatedly came online and destroyed an unoccupied cargo shelter to the terminal building’s right, then another, before two calliopes put it permanently out of action.

  To Kayne’s surprise, the belly ramp rose and slammed shut. Then the roar of thrusters under emergency power filled the air while steam from the freshly accumulated rain puddles shot up in ragged tendrils, and the ship lifted.

  Someone finally remembered to switch on the shields. A bluish aurora sprang to life several meters above the hull where streams of plasma splashed off in all directions before dying out. But the Support Company’s gunners didn’t let up until the reiver vanished into the clouds.

  The barbarians who’d survived Lannion Company’s initial onslaught seemed to become suicidal at the sight of their ship leaving them behind and began a series of individual berserker attacks against the militia’s fortified emplacements. Others, taking advantage of the confusion, ran toward the center of town, intent either on escape or causing as much havoc as possible before dying in turn.

  And that’s when the die-hards, the armed colonists who stayed behind, came out of their hiding places and picked the remaining reivers off one by one.

  Kayne, stunned by the violence and the militia ambush’s success could do nothing more than stare until Sergeant Major Havel nudged him.

  “Zero is calling, Major.”

  “What? Oh. Right. Zero this is Niner. What’s up?”

  “We’re receiving a call from the Navy frigate Myrtale on the Fleet emergency channel via Lyonesse traffic control. She’s in geosynchronous orbit above us.”

  “Tell them the reiver that landed in Lannion just lifted off without its raiding party, which is now mostly dead. They might try bombarding us from higher up out of spite. Ask if Myrtale could deal with it.”

  “Wilco.”

  He waited until Grimes passed his instructions to whichever of her chiefs was manning the signals station, then asked, “What’s happening elsewhere?”

  “No idea. None of the outlying companies have called in yet.”

  “Break radio silence and try to raise anyone who can hear you. I need to know what the reivers are doing elsewhere. We caught them completely by surprise here, but our success may be a fluke.”

  “Wilco.”

  “Niner, out.”

  Kayne took a last look at the carnage. A few shots still rang out as troopers fired on twitching bodies, to make sure the berserkers were indeed dead. Then he gestured at the stairs leading down from the control tower. “Shall we?”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, that ambush was a thing of beauty. Colonel Hertog would have cried with pride.”

  Kayne gave his sergeant major an ironic grin. Hertog was the 77th Regiment’s last commanding officer before it left Lyonesse. “He would have bawled me out at the sheer waste of ammunition, not sobbed with glee.”

  “Meh.” Greff shrugged. “Hertog understood that weekend warriors are more prone to heavy triggers in high-stress situations than hardened Marines. Besides, there’s still plenty of ammo in the warehouse.”

  **

  The round-faced logistics lieutenant who called Myrtale from the surface might have a manic gleam in her eyes, but Sirak thought her high-pitched voice was commendably calm.

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that, Lieutenant. And your commanding officer is right. I wouldn’t put it past one of those bastards to toss a few kinetic rounds at your Lannion spaceport just because. If he lifted in a panic, he’s written off his landing party. What about the others?”

  “I’m trying to reach them, but without our satellite constellation, our communications are limited i
n range.”

  “Where did you expect the other two ships to land?”

  “Major Kayne figured Trevena and Carhaix, the second and third largest towns after Lannion.”

  Sirak turned to his navigation officer. “Find their location, then put eyes on them. CIC, you caught that about the reiver heading for orbit?”

  “Yes, sir,” the frigate’s combat systems officer replied. “We’re searching for him.”

  “Once you get a targeting lock and he’s high enough that neither the shock wave of his antimatter fuel exploding nor the resulting debris will strike the settled area, take him out. No need to wait for my orders.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The navigation officer raised a hand, then pointed at a side display, which showed an aerial view of a small spaceport labeled Trevena. Because of the thick cloud cover and the rain, it was a reconstruction from sensors picking up infrared and other traces rather than an actual visual.

  “Lieutenant Grimes, a reiver ship appears to be on the ground in Trevena. We see a lot of tiny hot spots, which means sustained gunfire. Unfortunately, the reiver is so close to the town, I can’t risk shooting from geosynchronous.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “But I’ll act as a communications relay if you can’t wake your constellation quickly.”

  “That would be fantastic, sir. It’ll take a good hour to rouse every satellite.”

  “Consider it done. We’re aiming a transmitter at Trevena. Your commanding officer will be able to speak with his people. Now for the third bastard.” A pause while Sirak studied yet another side display. “Looks like Major Kayne called it, Lieutenant. He’s in Carhaix alright. And it looks like he’s lifting off, but there’s still an awful lot of gunfire being exchanged, some of it seems to be large caliber, from the ship’s guns. We’ll aim a transmitter at Carhaix as well. CIC, do you see the second ship lifting?”