by Nick Cole
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Part I
01
02
03
04
05
Part II
06
07
08
Part III
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
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ATTACK OF SHADOWS
By Nick Cole
& Jason Anspach
Copyright © 2017
by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
All rights reserved. Version 1.0
Edited by David Gatewood
Published by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC
Cover Art: Scott Flanders
Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services
For more information:
Website: GalacticOutlaws.com
Facebook: facebook.com/atgalaxysedge
Newsletter: InTheLegion.com
PART I
01
Black Fleet
Flagship Imperator
Beyond Tarrago Prime
Deep within the shadows he meditated on the coming battle. Seeing its actions. Its moments. The imminent and cataclysmic level of destruction that would signal the end of all known things. The end of the Republic. He saw it all.
And it was good to him.
Alone in a chamber on a deck to which few had authorized access—just those within his inner circle, plus the elite guard that surrounded him at all times—he watched from a simple mounted command chair, anchored to the deck of the mighty new ship beneath him, surrounded in darkness. Before him sat a matte-gray impervisteel-latticed port, staring out into the vast nepenthe of dark space beyond Tarrago Prime. A view to the coming battle.
The view to a kill.
Finally, he thought to himself, as he sat within the comfort of this darkness deeper than just the absence of mere light. Finally, the last days of a feeble and decaying Republic were at hand. Finally all would be as it ever should’ve been.
Finally.
The Black Fleet had made the jump to hyperspace two days ago from Tusca, just along the edge of the galaxy. His fleet. A fleet he had brought together out of everything the galaxy had broken, or deemed unimportant, or not realized the value of. Three massive battleships. They were utilitarian in their magnificent and terrible splendor—a stark contrast with the trim, neat, almost spindly nature of the Republic’s ships. It was as though all the Republic’s ships had a screaming need to convey a message of non-violence at all times.
That, he thought, summed up the very nature of this decrepit and dying Republic he was about to destroy. Warships that weren’t supposed to threaten. Leaders that never led. And citizens who were really slaves.
He would destroy all that.
His fleet, the Black Fleet for now, had suddenly appeared out beyond the moon at Tarrago Prime. The moon was known simply as Tarrago Moon, and it served as guardian to the mid-core worlds and the waiting heart of a dying Republic. Of course, the fleet had dropped in well out of the awesome engagement range of the sprawling Republic fortress that guarded the approach to the massive Kesselverks Shipyards on the planet below.
The three ships, ships of a size the Republic had not seen in a long, long time, heeled to starboard and took up a course that would not attract the notice of the deadly orbital defense gun. Fortress Omicron’s powerful defense system required respect.
Terror. Revenge. Imperator. Three massive, split-hulled, triangular battleships beyond the imagination of the Republic’s best ship architects. Built not just for war, but for conquest. Unlike anything the galaxy had seen in a hundred years or more. Of course the Republic hadn’t thought to build anything this massive, this deadly, or this dangerous. Or even this functional. These ships were ready for quick battle and decisive engagements.
For total warfare, in fact.
Anything that dared stand in their way was assured annihilation. These were state-of-the-art weapons systems, not discount-in-bulk cheap production corvettes meant to project the mere appearance of military business. Galactic Republic busybody business. The Black Fleet wasn’t made just to start wars, but to end them. Not to maintain some faux peace that had never been challenged.
The three battleships, in defensive formation in support of one another, slowed to flank and prepared to commence operations within the system. Sleek new state-of-the-art fighters leapt away from the massive hangars across several decks.
The first wave of the attack was underway.
Still more black flight-suited pilots scrambled from their briefing rooms into those massive hangars where ground crew swarmed and prepped their fighters for launch. Shock troopers in black-lacquered armor, splashes of arterial bleeding red denoting rank, drew weapons from their immaculately business-like armories and filed toward slate-gray bulky transports and dropships while grim-faced officers watched and made sure all was ready for what was to come next. That all was going according to plans laid long ago.
Operations had begun.
War had come to the galaxy once more.
Operation Downfall was moments from commencing. Cyclopean horns resounded across the sprawling, multi-leveled decks as more new fighters were lowered from the stores racks down into the ready five positions. Casualties would occur, and these replacements would need to be ready to move quickly. Success was dependent on this swift surprise attack that would knock out most of Fortress Omicron’s defenses.
There was nothing optimistic about the organized mayhem. Instead it might have been characterized as… coldly determined. Of one purpose. As though some die had been cast, and the results must be paid for now. Must be witnessed by all.
Goth Sullus watched all of this. Watched the sleek, soulless gray of the two sister battleships just aft of the beam of the Imperator. Internal lighting glittered across all decks. His shock troopers were moving toward their assault ships. Pilots were receiving their final briefings. Admirals looked on with a strain that tightened their jaw muscles and showed in their tired eyes as more readiness reports came in across the two storied bridges on each ship.
But here, in this quiet inner sanctum where one could hear the souls of the damned howl, here in this private chamber aboard the Imperator, surrounded by ten thousand crew, was silence and the absence of life. And yet he could hear, and feel, all of them, as the three massive ships prepared for operations against Tarrago Prime.
The downfall had begun.
A long time coming. A long time in the making.
Longer than anyone alive might ever have imagined.
Goth Sullus was returning to the Republic.
Finally.
And the galaxy was now becoming what it would one day be.
After many long years lost out in the outer dark, Goth Sullus, who’d once been many other someone elses, was returning from far out beyond the galaxy’s edge where things were strange and the known laws didn’t necessarily apply. Out there, beyond the perimeter, things were far different. They were immaculate, and dark.
<
br /> Now he was returning to conquer.
Returning to restore order.
Returning to set things as they should have always ever been.
Goth Sullus didn’t need to touch the comm that lay next to his hand, embedded into his command chair. He merely whispered. A whisper from deep within the shadows of his mind, and some lost place he’d found long ago, out beyond the galaxy’s edge.
“Admiral Rommal …” he whispered. “You may commence the attack.”
House of Reason
Utopion
Delegate Orrin Kaar paced alongside the brilliant picture window in his office in the House of Reason. The view was breathtaking: a top-down view of the deep blue river Eebris and the twin waterfalls that cascaded down into a lagoon like a roaring cauldron, the vast flow of water cut in two by the massive rock called virtue. The shallow lagoon drained into separate rivers, each watering a lush path of vegetation that wrapped around the House of Reason and the Senate Building. It was a marvel of Republic engineering, a vista worthy of a planet called Utopion.
This view was one that other House of Reason delegates employed every trick in the book to obtain. To get to the lofty pinnacle that Kaar now occupied. To have an office—and prestige—like his.
A nearby park square was teeming with Republic citizens reveling in the holiday. A rainbow formed in the mists of the waterfall.
Kaar barely noticed.
The delegate’s schedule was cleared for the day. Good will visits canceled, meetings postponed, dinner plans on hiatus. Kaar’s wife knew not to expect him home tonight until late, if at all. He had announced that he must prepare for an upcoming hearing about whether or not the trykteps, a diminutive insectoid species, should be stripped of their status as galactic minorities. Though non-human, they were statistically the most populous species in the galaxy. Thousands of them could stand wing-to-wing inside a single cubic meter of space. The issue was hotly contested; groups demonstrated and counter-demonstrated. But the hive-mind tykteps themselves were likely altogether unaware of the debate. They simply followed the directives of their queen and continually expanded the surface of their home world, which had grown nearly a kilometer in diameter since it was first discovered by Republic scientists.
Kaar had promised to study the issue in detail. To uphold his reputation as a House of Reason delegate whose intellect—he held four doctorates—had been forged into a tool for galactic justice and prosperity.
In truth, of course, he would wait until the pollsters showed the most politically beneficial decision, and he would then maneuver himself into that camp.
In truth, Kaar knew this issue would be off of the holoscreens by tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning, it would dawn on the Republic that the attack on Tarrago Prime was more than another Mid-Core Rebellion terrorist strike. Combat footage junkies, and watchdog media with no following, no doubt already had eyes on amateur holovids of the nascent battle, sent over comm relays by the local population. But the big networks couldn’t be bothered. Perpetual war only made the top of the playlists when there was a scandal, atrocity, or disaster. And there hadn’t been a good one of those in quite some time.
Kaar stopped in front of a plaque proudly displayed on the wall. The Order of the Centurion. Awarded to Orrin Kaar’s most celebrated appointee, Admiral Silas Devers. The admiral gave the award to Kaar as thanks, in a showy moment for the cameras. To Kaar, a true hero of the Republic for his decades of political service. A holo of the event played in a loop next to the plaque. Something for guests to take in while waiting for the exalted public servant to meet them.
Kaar toggled the sound, and Admiral Devers’s voice crisply synced to the holo.
“I’m just a warrior who fights when I’m needed. And given the Republic’s might, those fights are few and far between.” The gathered press and dignitaries laughed in delight as Devers handed the award over, bowing deferentially. “Delegate Kaar fights every day for the citizens of the Republic. He is my mentor and dearest friend.”
The focus of the holo shifted from Devers’s handsome face to his own. He muted the audio rather than listen to his own voice.
“Then why, Admiral, do you make me wait?” Kaar spoke into the air, allowing a frustrated sigh to escape.
The battle had begun. Devers was to make contact prior to his part in this grand scheme. And he was late.
Kaar looked at the comm light on his desk. “Call, damn you. Call!”
***
The chiming comm had an almost apologetic tone, Delegate Orrin Kaar mused. This was Devers calling. It had to be. No one else could reach him on this comm station.
Kaar had sponsored a billion-credit program designed to provide the Republic with its own version of the Legion’s proprietary L-comm. If the Legion deemed it necessary to have its own ultra-secure comm system, and was too self-important to share it, then the Republic Armed Forces should have the same, he’d argued. He’d secured the funding needed. Most of it went to build a grotto on Kaar’s personal moon, with a tidy amount held in reserve to grease the cogs of the Republic political machine.
For the greater good.
But a prototype did emerge before the project was shut down due to budget overruns. And it was declared unsliceable. Kaar kept it as a means of communicating the things best left unheard. Even the Republic had limits as to what it would permit. In the open, at least.
Kaar opened the comm channel. “Silas, m’boy. How goes the battle?”
“Delegate Kaar,” Devers answered, his bearing rigid—every bit the picturesque Republic admiral. “It is a pleasure to speak with you again.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Orrin? We’re friends, Silas.”
“As always, at least once more, Delegate Kaar.”
Kaar smiled. Devers was a man who knew his place. It was something he’d seen when the admiral was a promising lad seeking an appointment by virtue of his family’s place in the Republic. It was why he would be the perfect figurehead of the new Republic. “I’ll not argue with you, Admiral. But I will repeat myself. How goes the battle?”
Devers’s face fell. “It hasn’t yet begun. And I’m afraid I won’t be in a position to say, Delegate Kaar.”
Kaar leaned forward, looking at the comm with concern. “Why not?”
“Goth Sullus is withholding my fleet. My orders are to jump into the system, send out a comm signal announcing this as a jump evasion training leg, deliver shuttles of Sullus’s shock troopers, and jump out of the system.”
“But… the plan! With your entire fleet arriving unchallenged, a strike team could land on Tarrago Prime and capture the planetary governor before they knew what hit them.”
Devers nodded. “Yes, Delegate Kaar. I relayed the plan exactly as you devised. Sullus disagreed. He said the Legion would not surrender the orbital gun even if the entirety of the planet were under subjugation.”
“So Sullus intends to conquer Omicron as a first step?”
“Yes, Delegate Kaar.”
Kaar rubbed his chin. “I suppose the point is moot at this venture?”
“The plans could not be altered at this late hour.”
Kaar scowled. “I would have appreciated your informing me of this sooner, Admiral.”
“I called as soon as I was able.” Devers paused, as if deliberating.
“You… have something more to say, I take it?”
“Goth Sullus’s army, as best I can tell, is well-trained. They remind me of the Legion. His fleet…”
“Yes! Tell me about the fleet. I’m eager to know what has become of all the credits I siphoned in his direction. Men like Scarpia deliver, but at such great expense.”
Devers nodded. “The fleet is three ships, Delegate Kaar.”
“Three?”
“But they’re massive. Larger than a super-destroyer. He calls it his Black Fleet.”
Kaar didn’t like this. Sullus had always shown a defiant, independent streak. That Sullus’s
shock troopers were loyal only to him, Kaar already knew. But the credits given him were to be used to procure an updated design on the modern Republic fleet, not create something new out of whole cloth. This was a fluid situation. One that would require all of Kaar’s political finesse if he was going to end up on the top of the new Republic’s pecking order.
“Admiral, it seems to me that Sullus is intent on doing this his own way. We need to be sure that he feels we’re owed a sense of gratitude when this victory is won. I want you to commit your forces to the complete destruction of Tarrago Prime’s defense fleet. And then Admiral Landoo’s fleet, should she respond. Draw her out and destroy her. She’s no commander. Never served on the edge. She’s only a political favorite that breezed through academy.”
Kaar left it unstated that Devers was cut from the same cloth.
“You want me to disobey orders?” Devers asked. He appeared nervous at the very thought.
Kaar gave Devers a patronizing look that he hoped would carry over the comm relay. “We both know this is hardly the first time you disobeyed orders. You gambled your entire career on a lie while serving on Kublar, counting on that old legionnaire major to die before he had the opportunity to set the record straight. I still wonder if you fully appreciate the strings I pulled to get you out the Legion—where questions would be asked—and into the navy.”
“Delegate Kaar, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” Kaar, satisfied with Devers’s swift apology, waived the issue away. “Goth Sullus is not your commander. He is your equal. You are fighting alongside him, not for him. Win us the victory, Silas. I have complete confidence in you.”
“Thank you, Delegate Kaar.” Devers looked about his quarters. “I should return to the bridge. I’ll forward all Black Fleet general orders and updates through this channel.”
Kaar nodded. “Yes, but before you go… is there any truth to the rumor that Tyrus Rechs is dead?”