by Nick Cole
And as his mouth screamed this into the comm, he thought, I’m either right and we’re dead, or I’m wrong and my career is dead.
And then he ran back toward Tower Four battery. Captain Rogg Thales was not the poster boy the Republic advertised when it needed dashing naval officers. He was shorter than average, built like a beer keg, and balding. But he was an excellent officer, and he knew the Republic was in trouble.
He would save many lives this day.
Bridge of the Corvette Audacity
Kesselverks Shipyards Dry Dock
0157 Local System Time
Dry dock.
How much longer?
Captain Desaix made his way toward the bridge of the corvette. He’d drunk heavily and played cards with the junior staff officers, and he was positively sure they were crying in their bunks right about now. From losing so badly, and from the hangovers he’d imparted in order to beat them. In about six hours they’d wish they’d never sat down for a friendly drink and a game in the officers’ mess. In fact, they’d probably wish they’d never joined the navy.
But he’d won.
It wasn’t cheating… He’d merely made them incapable of making good decisions based on the cards they were dealt.
And as he liked to say, if you ain’t cheatin’… you ain’t tryin’. He’d had to learn that out in some pretty tight spots along the galaxy’s space lanes. And even on his first duty aboard a scouting corvette deep out in the Maldarras Reach.
That’ll teach ’em, thought Desaix. Even after drinking all night he was ready for duty, and looking every inch the dashing corvette captain. He liked to joke that “looking dashing” was ninety percent of the job.
A bot sheathed in white ceramic skin and roughly configured in female humanoid shape scuttled up to intercept the captain. KA8 was his new Personal Admin and Protocol bot, just picked up on this refit. His last such bot had been eaten by Jaberwotha Merchants during a trade negotiation that had gone badly. Very badly.
“Captain Desaix,” purred KA8.
It always amazed him how the Republic had over-feminized this bot to the point that its vocal programming reminded him of a Catarian showgirl he’d once… dated. Vaguely. Back when he’d been an ensign on the carrier Freedom. But hey… the galaxy was a weird place. Sometimes you just had to roll with things. It was the best way to gamble.
“Kate, you can just call me Captain. We’ve been over this. You don’t need to add Desaix. I’m the only captain on this ship. If you use the word ‘Captain’ I’m the only one who’ll respond. Sound good?”
“Probably, Captain Desaix?” queried the wide-optical sensored bot innocently.
He sighed as she deflected his attempt to reprogram her away from the Repub Navy’s boorish protocols. He didn’t know why… but it just jammed his signal.
“I am very sorry, Captain… Desaix. But Republic standards and protocols for personal administration specialists like myself indicate we must always denote name and rank in order to clarify any potential miscommunications. After all… we bots don’t have facial expressions. The litany of catastrophes that may occur aboard a state-of-the-art ship like the corvette Audacity might be fatal. That would not be optimal for our next efficiency review with regard to promotion and upgrade.”
They were almost to the bridge of the hammerhead corvette.
“I wouldn’t call the Audacity state-of-the-art…” the captain said.
“Oh, but I would, Captain Desaix. She’s got the latest in technological upgrades, and even though we are forbidden by the House of Reason to use such colloquialisms as ‘war,’ this ship is indeed perfect for high-attrition operations in wartime activities. War Studies was one of the minor elective programming subroutines I managed to secure a waiver for download during my last upgrade. This refit brings Audacity in statistical competition with the new Orion-class. And should the crew be killed, this ship—”
“She’s a twenty-year-old ship! She’d fall apart if we weren’t here to jury-rig half her systems.”
But she’s my ship, Captain Desaix thought in the same instant. And age doesn’t matter. She’s all mine.
“I am well aware of that, Captain Desaix. Budget cuts by the House of Reason have left many technological innovations off the table. But with our new multi-warhead torpedo launch system, and considering our standard opponent is often a pirate freighter that’s marginally space-worthy and sub-optimally crewed, we are one of the best ships in the galaxy… against that type of opponent… statistically speaking, Captain… Desaix.”
Halfway down the main concourse, a wall panel fell out of place and onto the deck with a sudden clang, causing the bot to jump.
“Easy there, KA8. We’re just puttin’ her back together after that run out to Garrumala. Don’t get your wires all crossed this early on. When are we scheduled to do a final check on the new torp system install?”
The bot recovered. “The system is ready to launch now. The only problem is, the torpedoes do not have warhead packages. Those won’t arrive until next week. Time to fit should take less than the two-hour minimum due to crew efficiency ratings as of 1800 hours yesterday.”
Desaix shrugged. More to himself than her. He’d wanted to get that item checked off.
“We’ve got a long day of finishing up the refit and getting space-ready, Kate. Get me the crew roster replacement schedule by oh-six. I’ll be in the engine room for most of the day supervising the portside thrust displacers.”
And that’s when general quarters began to bellow urgently across the ship.
Everyone froze exactly where they were.
Battle stations? In dry dock?
Every nearby crewmember looked at the captain. As if asking permission to treat this as yet another system malfunction. You got a lot of those in dry dock during a refit.
Desaix shrugged and raced off toward the bridge to find out what new thing had gone completely wrong in order to waste all of his time.
Black Fleet
Third Wing, First Squadron, “Pit Vipers”
Weapons Hot, Inbound on Tarrago Moon
0159 Local System Time
Tri-fighters streaked across the terminator of the tide-locked airless moon and emerged into the sudden illumination provided by the distant star.
“Set altitude at five hundred off the deck,” called out Viper Lead over the squadron comm. “Give it a little room, Vipers. Mountain ranges ahead. Outer defenses in thirty seconds.”
Lieutenant Haladis dialed in the terrain-following altitude and pre-heated the cannons. She scanned the gray and lifeless horizon of the tiny moon and saw little more than jagged leaden mountains and shallow impact craters across an unending airless sea of dust. Ahead and above loomed Tarrago Prime. Even from here, Kat Haladis could see glittering cities sparkling across the night side of the lush tropical world.
It was a beautiful planet. And it was about to fall to a new order.
One in which everyone would have a chance.
She pushed away thoughts of Tarrago Prime. That was up to Task Force N. Knocking out the defenses at Fortress Omicron was Third Wing’s mission. Her mission.
Do that, and get your next mission.
Streaking over the wasted surface of the moon at high velocity, Kat spotted the lone Republic observation tower on a ridgeline of low broken mountains ahead. It was skinned in the standard gleaming Repub white, standing out like a beacon in the unending lifeless gray regolith of the moon and the midnight drop cloth of the galaxy beyond.
“Viper Two! Contact!” alerted Nova Lead over squadron comm.
“Got it,” Kat replied matter-of-factly as she tapped the tri-fighter’s thrust rudders and aligned her angle of attack. With her gloved thumb, she flicked open the safety cover for the guns and began to spool up.
Repub Army, 231st Artillery
Fortress Omicron, Outer Perimeter Observation Tower 16
0159 Local System Time
Sergeant Durmmond Mactay liked things to run smoothly. And smoothly meant
orderly. And orderly meant by the book. The men under his watch had learned that well, and often, under his tutelage through a series of surprise inspections and Dongalore fire drills—his personal specialty. They knew he was tough, but fair. Yeah, this post was the absolute dead end of upward mobility within the Republic, for NCO and officer alike. But it was Durmmond Mactay’s post, and things would run dress right dress even if it was Unity Day in all its House of Reason silliness.
They were in the middle of a thirty-day rotation out to Observation Sixteen. By the time they got back to Omicron and down to Tarrago Prime, Unity Day would be well over. All his little gun bunnies would be so sad knowing they’d missed yet another drunken bacchanal to end all drunken bacchanals until the next state-sponsored drunken bacchanal. There’d be others. There always were. The House of Reason would provide endlessly until one day it couldn’t. Mactay had been around long enough to know the House of Reason was already queuing up some new holiday to celebrate something ridiculous and give everyone another day off from the drudgery of serving the glorious Republic. There would always be something historic to celebrate, even if they had to make something up.
Always.
His favorite attempt at unity through diversity had been Revision Day. A weeklong celebration of history, as the House of Reason wanted everyone to view it. It had been full of massive floats redefining the Savage Wars. Floats that had verged on the ridiculous with respect to historical authenticity. Mactay had traveled to as many of the old battlefields as he could from the dozens of duty stations he’d served at over the last twenty years, so he knew full well the zhee had never fought in any major Savage War battle. Yet to look at the prismatic digital-display floats on Revision Day, one would have thought they’d won the wars singlehandedly, all by themselves.
Like the stupid donk savages could do anything other than blow themselves up for their gods.
Ridiculous, he thought as he took another sip of his black coffee and watched the rest of the men sleep blissfully in their bunks. He’d been up for two hours to take over the watch. Done PT. Filled out all the necessary reports. Scheduled a day in full armor as a reward for the two privates he’d caught sleeping on watch a few minutes ago in the observation tower. They wouldn’t be doing that again.
He’d dust-drilled them into the Stone Age.
“What the hell!” he’d screamed at them just after midnight. “This is an observation post. We observe. We observe in order to defend the main gun. We do not sleep. Sleeping is the opposite of what we do when we are on duty observing. Then it would be called a sleeping post and it would be useless to the Republic!”
He screamed, and growled, all this and much, much more, with the two men in what some called the pushup position, and what the Repub and the Legion chose to call the front-leaning rest position. He alternated this with dust drills. For upwards of twenty minutes he had their full focus in order to draw their attention to their many deficiencies as gunners and living beings. He watched their muscles shake while pools of sweat gathered beneath their trembling frames, and it warmed the cockles of his heart.
Exposed vacuum training for the whole day just after first chow was what was needed now. That would get everyone’s mind right about what exactly went on at a forward observation post surrounding the most state-of-the-art gun system ever designed by the galaxy. What, exactly, did they think this was all about? And when he opened the airlocks, they’d find out that any of their gear that wasn’t locked down—as it should be according to Standard Operating Procedure—would be vented all over the place, and… probably, and hopefully, be sucked out into deep space.
He delighted in the expectation of this moment of chaos and loss of their personal possessions.
That’ll get their minds right.
Sure, thought Mactay, it was the worst post in the system. But it was his post, and things would run dress right dress until the time clocks reached 0600. He’d done lots of cruddy, boring gunnery and observation duty all across the Republic. He’d received his checks, he was assured of a pension someday, and he would do his damned best until it was time to clear post. That—
In the half second of life remaining to Sergeant Mactay, he watched the mug in his hand suddenly explode. He may also have heard the heavy glass in the observation tower above shattering into a thousand pieces. He may have. It was all so sudden and violent. Perhaps he might even have heard the distant hollow thrum of two heavy-duty chain guns spitting out over four thousand 30mm rounds that laced the superstructure of the observation tower along the lunar ridge, tearing through armor plating, gunners, the two observers who’d gone back to sleep, and finally the mug and coffee… and Sergeant Mactay.
Sound does travel in space and low atmosphere. That’s the myth you have to constantly dispel when you work for the Repub Navy. The stars even sing if you know how to listen.
But a second later all was a howling venting of oxygen rushing into an airless void beyond walls suddenly turned to holed cheese by an automated rail gun system. Mactay was at once pulled off his feet and hit by three supersonic rounds moving at well over a thousand miles an hour. It was a sudden and horrible way to die.
But it was quick.
03
Black Fleet
Third Wing, First Squadron, “Pit Vipers”
Tarrago Moon
0200 Local System Time
Lieutenant Kat Haladis caught her breath while the tri-fighter beneath her bucked and pulled, spitting out supersonic high-velocity 30mm rounds. Slugs. Old-school Savage Wars rounds that left little whole, and did devastating work on vessels and equipment that needed to maintain atmospheric integrity in vacuum-exposed environments.
The results were brutal.
Blasters were cheaper to outfit, but they also had a slower rate of fire. They also often sealed any damage they did by fusing internal systems and armor plating. Damage control teams had a much easier time with that class of destruction. They’d trained for it almost exclusively.
But four thousand rounds on target could not be patched by even the most diligent of specialized bot-assisted damage control teams. Too many tiny holes in too many places. Not to mention explosive decompression sucking everyone—along with all that precious oxygen needed to sustain life—out into the unforgiving void of space.
In the aftermath of the apocalyptic Savage Wars, the House of Reason had classified slug throwers as weapons of mass destruction and outlawed their use, production, and ownership. Twenty-year gas mining sentence on the nearest giant if caught with any form of that type of weapon system. A mandatorily enforced living hell.
As the black and gray tri-fighter streaked past the ruined observation tower, just a few hundred feet from its exploding octagonal observation windows, with bodies, debris, and burning oxygen shooting up and outward across the dead moon’s surface, Kat understood why the Black Fleet eschewed such restrictions.
One pass with these guns on full auto had done the trick easily.
The standard twin blasters the tri-fighter carried would’ve only managed a few hits in such a fast flyby. Instead she’d literally sprayed the tower with target-assist active. The tower was now venting into vacuum from a thousand places. There was no amount of damage control that would fix that. Especially if it was lightly armored. Everyone down there in that tower, she thought as the rest of the squadron two-clicked their congratulations over the comm, was dead.
Just fly the ship, Kat.
Just fly it.
“Good shooting, Viper Two,” murmured Viper Lead across the static-washed ether.
Behind them the rest of the wing, hundreds of tri-fighters skinned like black and gray demons, leapt the ridgeline above the ruined tower and broke formation, peeling off to knock out as many outlying observation towers and auxiliary power supply facilities as they could. Up ahead across the long lunar valley in which this particular gun tube of Fortress Omicron lay, they saw the beginnings of the outer defenses that guarded the fabled orbital defense gun.
Best-case scenario, thought Kat as she switched to her secondary target waypoint, was that they got in a few passes before the turret defenses surrounding the main bore automated. Right now some tech was getting a check systems alert from the observation tower she’d just killed. They’d do a system malfunction check, cross-check, and verbal confirmation comm. But by then it would be over.
Worst case… someone was doing their job, and the defenses were online with turret guns charged and ranged to repel the strike. And if that was the case… they were flying into a shooting gallery.
Bridge of the Corvette Audacity
Kesselverks Shipyards
0201 Local System Time
“Captain… we’re getting an emergency alert order from Admiral Bula. Stand by.”
Desaix leaned over the helmsman’s station and tapped the comm. Both the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats were empty—a clear violation of shipyard SOP, which stated that at least one pilot needed to be on duty at all times. The comm officer was one deck up and the only one doing her job at present.
Still, Desaix was not totally unconvinced that something was wrong. Yes, everybody was slacking for Unity Day. Everyone knew it would be a half shift, followed by a wild drunken party in the afternoon and evening. But the alert wasn’t internal. It wasn’t coming from the Audacity. It had been ordered by the shipyard commander in charge of refits and construction.
“Patch me through to the OIC on duty,” Desaix asked the comm officer.
He began to boot up the flight controls. According to orders, the ship had to be ready to depart within three minutes of receiving a general alert. His fingers swam across the engine panels, flicking master switches to get the cold start sequence going. He muttered when he came to the portside thrusters. They were still disabled and needed a balance test before they could be cleared for operation.
“Can’t get through, Captain!” came the comm officer’s emphatic reply. Engine sequence to main startup climbed into the green. Desaix twisted back to find his command chair, and then remembered it hadn’t been installed yet. So he leaned forward over the flight controls and tapped the pilot’s comm for ship-wide broadcast.