My Friend the Emperor

by William Lee Gordon

  The sensor Citizen replied, “Captain, one of the bogeys is definitely a raider, probably a pirate out of Zanzibar. The other ship though… I’ve never seen anything like it, Sir. And we don’t have a signature on file. I can tell you that it’s half again as massive as the raider yet is showing the same energy profile. If it’s struggling to boost that much mass at the same speed as its companion… well, I can’t see it.”

  “Interesting,” was all I heard the Captain say. “Lieutenant Stiles, any thoughts?”

  “The size would be about right for one of Zanzibar’s new plunder ships,” she said. “I’d heard some scuttlebutt about them from some of the freighter traffic that passed through our station, but no one ever said anything about that kind of power curve.”

  “Captain!” The sensor operator called out. “They’ve changed course. They are now on an intercept vector with us. The Halcion and the bogeys will be at zero velocity relative in two minutes 17 seconds.”

  “Well everybody,” said the Captain. “Who’s got the betting pool on what that new ship is?”

  Chapter fourteen

  ENSIGN JACOBY NICOLAY

  Ajax Delivers a Warning

  Every child in the Empire grew up watching the space action vid’s and imagining themselves captaining a ship or leading a fleet into battle. The danger, the drama…They were the type of stories that taught bravery and branded patriotism into the hearts of every viewer.

  Residents of the Empire conditioned themselves to accept inconsistencies. It was a survival trait. If the Empire told you that something was different from what you were actually seeing you learned to trust that the Empire must know what it’s doing.

  When I grew old enough to understand how fake and unbelievable all the space action vid’s really were, however, it quenched my thirst for space. I think that’s one of the reasons I moved on to dreams of civil service. Seeing how hard my mom had struggled, seeing a whole lot of other good people around me struggle to make good lives and have to work so very hard to keep them.

  Somewhere along the line I started thinking that helping them might be just as important.

  At any rate, space battles were much different than most people envisioned.

  First of all if a ship was traveling at superluminal velocities it was in a space-time bubble and therefore impervious to any attack from the outside world.

  That restricted all battles to sub light speeds.

  That still left tremendous velocities that needed to be taken into consideration. Energy weapons had the range to reach out and touch someone, but they typically lacked the power to damage a ship by themselves. Standard doctrine for making energy weapons effective was to englobe an enemy. That way you could overwhelm their defenses with massive numbers.

  At closer range old-fashioned magnetic rail guns were extremely effective. At the right velocity any inert slug of matter could become a powerful kinetic weapon. The problem here of course, was if you were too far from your target the enemy could simply move out of the way.

  That typically left just two scenarios for space battles…

  A surprise attack, where one ship is in orbit and another flashes by at .1c (one-tenth the speed of light). If the orbiting ship is hit by even a BB size pellet at that velocity the kinetic energy is enough to destroy it completely. Fortunately, for a ship to build up that kind of velocity it would take a long approach run. A ship would literally have to enter within your sensor range, chart your exact location, reverse course well out of your sensor range and then get a running head start toward you hoping you hadn’t moved in the meantime. As long as a crew was always diligent on its sensors this type of sneak attack could usually be avoided.

  Likewise, stern chases gave no satisfaction to the pursuer and actually gave an advantage to the pursued – a kinetic shot was even more powerful when your target was accelerating directly towards you.

  The most common type of space battle is when both sides wanted it to happen.

  Two ships, or two fleets, could come to rest relative to each other and decide to trade blows. As crazy as it sounds there were times when this strategy was called for.

  It usually involved defending a stationary object or planet, and an attacker that had to have it.

  So while space battles involving fleets were important and could still be decisive, most conflict was conducted warrior to warrior on a station, on a boarded ship, or on the surface of a planet.

  In space, warfare often came down to negotiation. Small amounts of ships, relatively equal in firepower, could maintain a distance from each other that precluded kinetic weapons and allowed no one a decisive advantage on energy weapons. It was, however, the perfect distance for communication. Therefore many battles were actually a war of words. Negotiation at its finest. Many a planet had been ceded by a bluff, protected by a bluff, or lost due to the calling of a bluff.

  “Captain, we’re being hailed.”

  “Put it on the screen Maria,” said the First Officer.

  There was no other way to put it. The face that appeared on the screen was just… ugly.

  “Ajax,” the Captain said. “How nice to see you again. Something’s different… Did you change your hair?”

  “Acamar, you’re alive! I thought sure your crew would’ve slit your throat by now.”

  “No, it’s not the hair… I know, you brushed your teeth.”

  “As much as I enjoy this exchange of pleasantries Captain my bridge crew is getting sick at the sight of you, so I need to pass on some information.”

  After a moment the Captain said, “Go ahead.”

  “You’re going to take your leave of this system and let me conduct my business here.”

  “Ajax, have you been munching on those funny brownies again?”

  When he didn’t respond the Captain continued, “Ok, I’ll bite. Why would I leave and let you rape and pillage this planet?”

  “Because Mount Sinai is going down.”

  Suddenly our bridge got very silent. Only Monica and I were looking around like we didn’t understand.

  “Why are you saying that?” asked the Captain. “What do you know?”

  “Nothing firsthand, but it’s solid. And before you ask, I don’t have a timeline.”

  The Captain’s eyes were cold and hard. He said, “And what are your intentions here, Ajax?”

  He grinned. “My only purpose, Captain, is to warn you.”

  “Ajax, hear me on this. You work out a ransom tribute here – and keep it reasonable.”

  “A tribute!” he bellowed. “You know that witch won’t negotiate! The only thing Raving Red understands is the back of my hand and the firepower of my troops.”

  That’s not my problem, Ajax. But I promise, if things get out of hand here, if I find out there was major loss of life or if people I care about get hurt, I will hunt you down and feed your kidneys to you for breakfast. Do we understand each other?”

  “Do you still care about Crazy Candice?” he suddenly asked.

  “I care about all of them.”

  Ajax lost his smile and leaned into the camera, “Then tell your people to stay out of my way, Acamar. Now run along and do what you have to do… Leave this system to me.”

  “One other thing Ajax, and I want your entire bridge crew to hear this… If what you’re telling me about Mount Sinai isn’t true, if this is some kind of ruse, I will make it my sworn mission to destroy your ship and everyone on her. Remember what I said, Ajax, or you’ll never have to remember anything again.”

  The Captain turned to Maria and said, “Close the connection.”

  He said to the rest of the bridge, “Astrogation, plot a course to Mount Sinai.”

  “Already plotted,” said Felix.

  “Maria, get a message down to Candace, or if she won’t take your call find someone that will. Let them know that trouble is headed their way and to buy them off – we can’t assist.”

  “Helm, take us out of the system at maximum acceleration. Go F
TL at the first possible moment.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  Monica voiced what I was thinking, “Captain, are we really going to abandon the people below? Can you even trust anything this ugly turd is saying?”

  “We don’t have a choice, Monica. Ajax is ugly but not stupid; he knows that I don’t bluff about vengeance.”

  I could tell that Monica was thinking the same thing I was; there had to be a story behind that…

  She said, “What’s so important about Mount Sinai that we have to take a chance?”

  The other Citizens made a point of refocusing on their consoles. There was an uncomfortable silence on the bridge.

  “Monica,” he said as he stood up and headed for the hatch, join me in my cabin as soon as we go superluminal.”

  I sat at my station trying to figure out what this was all about. When I queried the database for Mount Sinai nothing came up. Why was the Captain abandoning this planet to pirates?

  What the hell was going on?

  Chapter fifteen

  ENSIGN JACOBY NICOLAY

  Researching the Captain

  Since no one was telling me anything I went back to my research of the Captain. This time I wanted to focus on what had happened since he’d taken command of the Halcyon.

  It wasn’t a pretty record.

  Ship’s physical performance specs always graded out well so there was no sign of dereliction there. The Halcion had even begun her history with good performance ratings on her various assignments along the frontier; it was whenever she had interaction with the rest of the fleet that the challenges had started popping up.

  Her performance reviews in fleet exercises were always poor.

  Something in the back of my mind caused me to take a tangent in my research. Sure enough, I was right. It was coincidentally about the same time the Captain had taken command of the Halcyon when his brother, Eridanus Acamar IV, first in line for the throne, was appointed Grand Admiral of the Space Fleet.

  As a matter of fact, it wasn’t long after that event that the Halcyon really started gaining a reputation. She was cited on several occasions for breaking or misunderstanding orders in fleet exercises; on one occasion she even showed up to a battle… 24 hours late.

  Not long after the ship’s performance reports started to deteriorate so did, apparently, the behavior of our very own Captain Acamar.

  Of course I didn’t have access to his full personnel records, but as a part of the Imperial Family the news vid’s never passed up an opportunity to report on his antics. Public insubordination, lewd behavior unbecoming of a Citizen, even misappropriation of Imperial equipment were all implied transgressions that never seemed to take the form of actual charges. The implications, though, were clear; the Captain was a spoiled brat and the Imperial Family was covering up for him.

  Five years ago the Halcyon had been assigned to this sector and accordingly the bad press suddenly stopped. I guess the Imperial Family’s strategy of exiling the family troublemaker had worked.

  Just out of fairness I decided to check the criminal activity statistics in the Halcyon’s assigned sector over those same years. I was… surprised.

  Interplanetary conflict had taken a huge nosedive until about two years ago where it had leveled off to some of the lowest numbers per capita in the Empire. Piracy was also down accordingly. In addition, local economic growth had increased dramatically. Since that was an area of special interest to me I delved further.

  Sure enough, many of the planets in the sector showed steadily increasing credit worthiness with the Central Bank of the Empire. In addition, I was surprised to see that a number of new industries had been prompted to relocate or expand here.

  Why wasn’t this getting any news coverage?

  When facing Ajax, the Captain seemed to think that his threat of retaliation would be enough to stay or at least reduce the violence. At the time I had just assumed this was part of his arrogant insanity, but what if there was something to it? What if the Captain’s reputation on the fringe was far different than how the rest of the Empire knew him?

  As usual, I’m doing this research in my cabin right before I retire for the night. As tired as I was I decided to make one more search before bed.

  What I found would keep me awake all night.

  Chapter sixteen

  ENSIGN JACOBY NICOLAY

  The Mount Sinai Massacre

  Could it possibly be true?

  Was Captain Alyster Acamar a traitor to the Empire?

  There was a reason I couldn’t find Mount Sinai in the Imperial star charts. There was no such city or planet in the Imperium. But there was in the Hades forest.

  When I had expanded my search I’d discovered it listed in the Outlander section. It was a foreign, possibly hostile, star system located beyond our border and relatively deep into the next sector. It was also considered to be a myth; the experts of the Empire didn’t believe it really existed.

  Yet we were headed there at maximum speed.

  The Captain obviously knew something that the rest of the Empire didn’t, and that did not bode well.

  My pulse was racing as I paced my cabin trying to think up explanations. I found myself wanting to make excuses for why my ship would abandon its patrol and run to the aid of a potential enemy.

  Over the last 24 hours everybody had been extremely tightlipped about our destination. No one would talk to me about it. We still had five days of travel left and if I didn’t get some answers soon I thought I’d go crazy.

  In my current agitated state, sleep was out of the question. So I decided to head over to the commissary and grab a late night snack.

  It was well past midnight and the graveyard, or D Watch, would be in effect. It was typically a skeleton crew and I didn’t expect the Citizen’s Mess to be busy. I also didn’t expect to see the Captain and Monica leaving as I was entering.

  “Um, Captain, what are you doing here?”

  “This happens to be my ship, Ensign,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Yes sir, I mean… I didn’t expect you up at this hour.”

  “Well, I guess I couldn’t sleep.”

  I looked at Monica but her only answer was a close lipped smile.

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” I said. “I thought I’d get a snack.”

  “Well, I hope it helps, Ensign. Try to get as much sleep as you can, tomorrow will be a big day.”

  Before I could say anything else they both left the mess and walked off down the corridor.

  I grabbed a sandwich and a piece of fruit and headed back to my cabin. I had a lot of thinking to do.

  ΔΔΔ

  The next afternoon when I entered the bridge the Captain and First Officer were already there.

  “No, I don’t think exercise is a good substitute for meditation. The human body requires both,” the Captain was saying.

  Monica responded, “The body requires exercise, it’s the mind that requires meditation, Alys.”

  Mine wasn’t the only head that turned at that last comment. I had never heard anyone shorten the captain’s first name to ‘Alys.’ Judging from the flush that appeared on the back of his neck I’m guessing he didn’t hear it often either.

  Without turning around the Captain replied, “Be careful Monica, if you stab your Captain too hard the crew might turn on you.”

  “The crew loves me and you know it,” she said. “Face it, your meditation techniques are no match for the rigors of disciplined physical exercise. But don’t get me wrong, I would never suggest that you’re out of shape, or lack stamina, or anything…”

  So it appeared that our ship was back to normal, or at least the bridge banter was. I still didn’t have any answers but I had to admit there was a certain amount of comfort in routine. From everyone’s initial reaction I knew that whatever was happening on Mount Sinai was critical, but the clear message was that right now, until we got there, there was nothing we could do. So just relax.

  Because this was
a deep penetration into the Hades Forest sector several skips were necessary. After each skip we needed to realign our trajectory and focus the Gravitational Lens on another distant gravity source. The amount of time it took to do that depended upon the density of gravitational sources available. If you were in the middle of a dense star cluster, for example, it would take astrogation longer to isolate and compute the lens adjustments. On the other hand, if you were at the edges of the spiral arm, or in the abyss between arms, it was a relatively straightforward proposition. Typically, in this region of space, lens alignment took about 20 minutes.