by Jay Allan
But there was no choice. Not if the Far Stars was going to have even the smallest chance at survival.
“Let’s go . . . and stay low. Those hunter-killer drones are no damned joke.” Halvert was crouched down in an old drainage ditch, something left over from the days when the half-overgrown stretch of land had been a farm. That had been years before, maybe even a century. Halvert didn’t know a lot about agriculture on Galvanus, or much of anything else about the workings of the planet or its economy. He wasn’t well versed in history, especially not on a planet that, until a few years before, had been behind the iron curtain of the empire.
He imagined he didn’t look terribly inspiring just then, as most would expect from one of Augustin Lucerne’s top commanders. He wasn’t quite knee-deep in the mud, but he was close. His uniform was caked with sloppy, wet clay, in varying stages of drying, and his jacket was torn in half a dozen places, a small step from hanging over his shoulders like a pile of rags.
The fighting had been brutal . . . and beyond hopeless. His people—the Celtiborians, at least—had fought like wild beasts, a desperate attempt to restrain the enemy’s landing points. But the imperial forces were simply too overpowering. One by one, his defense forces were compelled to fall back, and as they did, the newly landed imperials were able to organize and pursue. What had been a grim and effective defense turned in a few hours to a retreat bordering on a rout.
Now that defense was nothing but a scattered resistance. His comms were jammed, his forces scattered to the winds. Halvert didn’t know how many troops he still had in the field, but however many were still under arms, they were outnumbered and outgunned. It was only a matter of time before the imperials hunted down the last of them. But until then, he was going to do everything he could to slow their conquest.
His people were climbing up out of the ditch, the lead wave almost halfway across the field. He cursed himself for getting lost in his thoughts, and he reached up, grabbing onto a heavy root protruding from the side of the trench and pulling himself up. He wasn’t a general anymore, not in any real sense. He’d become more of a partisan leader with fewer than five hundred troops under his immediate command. He led, but only as much as those still followed—which they did now without question. For how long, he didn’t know. He was confident none would turn on him, but he was less confident they’d be alive much longer.
He slipped a little as he tried to haul himself up, and his arms burned from the exertion. He wasn’t as young as he’d been the last time he’d led an assault like the one then going on, and he could feel the stiffness and pain much more pronounced than he remembered during his last campaign. But if his troops were going to do as he commanded, knowing they had almost no hope, he was going to go with them.
He reached around, sliding the rifle strap off his shoulder and down his arm, extending the weapon out as he jogged across the field. The ground was tough to traverse, soft from the rains and pockmarked with shell holes half filled with filthy, brown water. He made his way as quickly as possible, keeping his eyes moving rapidly between the treacherous ground and the sky. He’d searched the area, and there were no drones, at least not within the four or five kilometers his portable scanner could push through the enemy jamming, but he wanted to stay alert, just in case.
The absence of drones was a bit surprising, because their target was important: a large enemy supply convoy. His best guess was the imperials had been careless in providing escort. The campaign had been an almost nonstop disaster for his own troops, but he’d already come to the conclusion the imperials were used to chasing broken and scattered forces and terrified civilians. As well trained and equipped as they were, though, they seemed caught off guard at facing grim veterans in the field. The Celtiborians hadn’t managed to stop the enemy advances or hold any of the cities, but they were still fighting, and that alone was a victory of sorts.
Halvert could see the row of ground transports up ahead as he pushed forward through the darkening dusk. There were dozens of them—no, hundreds, at least according to his scouting reports. An imperial commander was somewhere out there trying to cut corners, to push through a supply column without air support or adequate protection.
Halvert and his people were going to teach him a lesson.
He pulled out the portable comm unit. The small device was turned up to maximum power, but he wasn’t even sure the signal would reach the ends of his line. He had a kilometer of range, maybe one and a half, but his people were stretched out the entire length of the supply column, and that meant he had troops almost two and a half kilometers from where he stood . . . in both directions. He’d have to rely on his people to pass the word down to those out of range.
“Rocket teams, find a good spot and get set up. We open fire in one minute.” He wished he had more time. He’d have liked to get closer, given his people longer to choose their ground, but he felt like he was already on borrowed time. The imperial scanners could pick his people up at any time, and even the small escort force would be deadly if they had warning. He needed surprise, to hit the convoy and take it out in an instant, especially if he planned to extricate any of his troopers after the operation. Once his force opened fire—or was spotted—the enemy would call for help. He wasn’t sure how long it would take for imperial ground reinforcements to arrive, but it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before air support arrived, and he had no defenses against that.
His eyes dropped down to the comm as the responses came through from the two other units, positioned a little over a kilometer to each side. They were patchy, heavy with static, but he understood both of them. His people were ready.
He waited, counting silently in his head. Ideally, he’d confirm his rocket teams were ready to go, and he would do what he could to prioritize their targets. But he hadn’t had enough of the powerful comm units to go around, and he wasn’t going to risk more transmissions than were absolutely necessary. He didn’t need the imperials picking up comm traffic. They would know he was there when the first rockets fired, and not a second before, if he could do anything about it.
He stared straight ahead, squinting to get a closer look at the vehicles moving down the road. They had their lights on—another mistake traveling through unpacified territory, and one Halvert was going to shove down their throats in . . .
Twenty seconds.
He gripped his rifle tightly. He’d given explicit orders. The rockets were to fire eight shots, no more, no fewer. He’d deliberated on that number, adding and subtracting a few before he settled on eight. He needed to do as much damage with the heavy weapons as possible, but the rest of his people had to go in before the imperial guards could form up. They still outgunned his troopers, and if he let the surprise attack turn into a straight-up fight, it was damned sure one he could lose.
He was still counting.
Ten seconds.
He looked ahead, and then north and south, along his battle line. Still no sign the enemy had spotted them. Good news.
Five seconds.
He took a deep breath, and every muscle in his body went tense. He was counting down by the seconds.
He got to three when the sound of the first rockets firing ripped through the air.
Close enough.
He sat and listened as the rounds went off, and explosions lit the darkening sky all along the imperial convoy. He was still counting, but now it was rocket launches.
Five . . .
More explosions, and distant sounds of screaming from the convoy.
Six . . .
He had the comm in one hand, as the other held the rifle tightly.
Seven . . .
Chapter 17
“Commander, it is of the utmost importance that we reach Galvanus Prime as quickly as possible.”
“General Inferni, we are not familiar with this space. Any jump in excess of eight light-years without more detailed navigational information will significantly increase the chance of an incident.”
; “Perhaps I didn’t make myself sufficiently clear, Commander. It is of the utmost importance that we reach Galvanus Prime in the shortest possible time. You are to extend our jump distances. Ten light-years are well within safety parameters, even twelve.”
“But . . .”
“This is not open to discussion. If you can’t carry out your orders, I will find someone who can. Then you can find out personally how fast a person can fly through space.”
The commander swallowed. “Yes, General, of course. As you command.”
Inferni didn’t respond. He’d made his point. He turned to look at the main display, even as the projected course to Galvanus updated, eliminating one jump. That would save six hours, perhaps as many as eight. That was good, but Inferni was still troubled. He wasn’t fully certain what he feared, or that Galvanus was the place he had to go. But his instincts were screaming in his head, and they’d rarely failed him in the past. And as overwhelming as the imperial expedition seemed, he could still feel some kind of danger out there, and he couldn’t shake the thought that this mission could fail.
Inferni abruptly turned and walked off the bridge, and back to the room he’d claimed for himself. He had much to consider.
He stepped through the doors and listened as they closed behind him. Then he moved behind the desk and sat down, reaching over his shoulder as he did and loosening the fasteners on his breastplate. The heavy black body armor slid down, partially slowed by his arm, and it landed on the floor with a soft thud. He sighed and stretched out in his chair, and then he unclasped the black-and-red cape that shrouded his body virtually every moment he spent in public and let the mound of cloth fall. He maintained an image, one he’d carefully crafted, a persona he’d always found to be useful, almost as some imperial warrior verging on the occult, and his garb was a part of that.
But he had no need of his costume, not just then. He had gathered reams of information, every legend, spacer’s tale, and law enforcement report available on the exploits of Arkarin Blackhawk and his crew. He had no doubts, not any longer. Blackhawk was the greatest danger in the Far Stars, the one force in the remote sector he believed might pose a threat to imperial power. Idilus would scoff at his conclusions, no doubt, but then Inferni didn’t give a shit what the “viceroy” thought about anything. The other imperial general in the Far Stars—his rival, he supposed, if he’d respected Idilus enough to think of him as any kind of threat—was competent enough to command the fleet. It didn’t take extraordinary intelligence to conquer a planet with vastly superior forces, or to blast whatever spacefleet the Celtiborians could muster before obliterating their world. And Idilus was the perfect choice for a job requiring moderately competent mediocrity.
But this Blackhawk . . .
Inferni had studied some of the intelligence his operatives had gathered, and though he’d gotten through only a small percentage of the total, almost everything he’d read had served to increase his apprehension, and strengthen his initial opinion.
Arkarin Blackhawk was no typical Far Stars adventurer. In fact, he was almost certain Blackhawk had not come from the fringe sector, but from somewhere across the Void.
Somewhere in the empire.
There were many possibilities in that regard. More than one outlaw had escaped from imperial retribution by fleeing into the Void to become pirates and mercenaries in the Far Stars. Still, he had a feeling Blackhawk was something more than an escaped criminal from the empire. He’d studied several of Blackhawk’s operations, the few for which he’d been able to obtain real details. They were efficient, well organized, and well executed. They reeked of expert military planning.
As did his efforts during the recent war, the one that had driven the empire from the Far Stars after a millennium of maintaining a presence. Blackhawk had been less able to hide his exploits as a general commanding fleets and armies, and he had proven himself to be an almost invincible military leader. In a Far Stars steeped in the lore of Augustin Lucerne, there were those who’d declared Blackhawk more skilled than his lost friend.
Blackhawk might have wandered the Far Stars with his small band for most of the last twenty years, but he was clearly capable of more. Much more. Yet the end of the war had left the Far Stars adventurer turned general in command of devoted armies, fleets ready to obey his every order, and he could almost certainly have won himself a crown, made himself the first king of the Far Stars. But he hadn’t. By all accounts, he’d simply slipped back into obscurity, almost as if he’d never existed.
Ignes Inferni was a brilliant man, and he’d analyzed every aspect of Blackhawk’s actions, and his choices. But he simply was not capable of grasping how a warrior could just walk away when power was there for the taking. How he could walk away when a crown lay before him, in the dirt for the taking. It was an alien concept to Inferni, and it was the one apparent fact that upset his theory, his thoughts on just how Arkarin Blackhawk might have come to the Far Stars.
Still, Blackhawk nagged at him. And if the mercenary was who he suspected, if there was even a chance, there was less time even than he’d imagined.
Was it possible? Could Arkarin Blackhawk be the most dangerous man in all of human inhabited space?
He was unsettled at the thought. The idea of facing such an adversary was imposing, but that wasn’t it, not entirely. If Blackhawk was who Inferni had dared to think he was . . . he faced not just a titanic struggle, but a deadly danger to the imperial invasion.
He faced a personal struggle. A very personal struggle.
“It doesn’t look like they see us, Ark.” Lucas Lancaster had the controls in his hands. He was bringing the Claw in with minimal thrust output, maneuvering the ship like the virtuoso he was.
“No . . . I don’t think they do.” Blackhawk’s eyes had been fixed almost continuously on the screen as the Claw had been making its way slowly toward Galvanus and the two monstrous imperial ships in orbit around that world. “Neither ship has commed the other, and they haven’t launched any attack ships. Standard procedure if an unidentified ship is approaching.”
He realized his discipline was slipping, that he was spewing out information on imperial doctrine and equipment. For all his years in the Far Stars, Blackhawk had been almost silent about his knowledge of such things. Even after he’d finally confessed, acknowledged his true identity, first to Astra and then to his crew, he’d still remained tight-lipped about the vast storehouse of knowledge he possessed. Astra had stunned him, somehow finding a way to accept what he had been, and in many ways still was, and his crew had followed suit. The truth had been a shock to them all, and for a while, he’d feared things had changed irrevocably, even though they had all declared their continued loyalty and friendship. But it wasn’t long before the old camaraderie had returned on the Claw.
He turned back toward the rough line of people standing behind him, the Claw’s ground attack forces, such as they were. And his friends.
“I am going to say this again. This will be the most desperate operation we’ve ever attempted. There is no shame in opting out, in remaining behind here. I will think nothing less of you for that.”
Every one of them stood stone still, and not one of them uttered a word. Finally, Ace took the lead and said with a shrug, “You have your answer, Ark.”
“Thank you, all.”
Then he took a breath and said, “We’ll head out in ten minutes. Anything that won’t fit under your evac suit will have to go in a gear bag.” As if sneaking onto an imperial ship with a crew the size of a small city’s population wasn’t crazy enough, they’d be traveling the last two hundred meters in space, untethered. Their target was a specific entry point along the twenty kilometers of the battleship’s hull, a hatch Blackhawk was sure he could force open.
Well, pretty sure.
It was just another detail of this crazy plan that would need to play out in real time.
He gestured, and the others all turned and headed toward the ladder leading to the lower leve
l, and the equipment lockers and airlocks. He followed, but he stopped just before he started down, and he turned toward the helm. “You know the signal, Lucas.” He paused. “If things don’t go well, we probably won’t make it back, but just in case, keep the channels open. And if you don’t hear from us . . . Either way, you’re out of here in three hours. You understand me? There’s no reason for the rest of you to die, too.”
“Sure, Ark. I got it.”
“I’m serious, Lucas. If we don’t contact you, it means we’re dead, anyway, and that will make this my last order. Don’t disobey it. Don’t make me die knowing I got all of you killed, that no one escaped.”
Lucas nodded, his face looking troubled. “I understand, Ark.” Blackhawk didn’t know if that response was a promise to run, or just a vague way to avoid answering, but he suspected it was the best he was going to get. “Good luck, Lucas.”
“Good luck, Ark.”
Blackhawk turned and slid down the ladder, spinning around at the bottom and walking toward the cargo hold. It was the only place all five of them could get out together, along with all their equipment. A few bodies were small in the emptiness of space, and he figured they had a good chance of covering the two hundred meters without being picked up on the ship’s scanners, but he didn’t see any point in pressing their luck by stretching them out one by one and making the trip longer.
The evac suits were stored along the far wall. Ace and Shira were already climbing into theirs, and Sarge and Katarina were pulling their suits off the rack. Blackhawk walked up alongside Katarina, and he reached out, grabbing his own suit. “I meant what I said, Kat. This isn’t what you signed on for.” Venturi had long been a paying passenger on the Wolf’s Claw, and for all the times she had joined in their operations despite the fact that her status didn’t obligate her to do so, Blackhawk had never allowed himself to expect it the next time.
“I told you when I came back after the war, Ark. I’m a member of the crew now. It’s all I want to be. You have to have noticed I haven’t paid for passage in years.”