Assimilated

by Nick Webb

  “—and by the next mission I expect the repair crews will have—” Admiral Pritchard nearly walked straight into Jake as he led a group of senior officers down the hallway, on some sort of inspection tour.

  “Admiral,” said Jake, snapping to attention.

  Pritchard smiled broadly and reached for Jake’s hand. “Lieutenant Mercer! Good to see you too, sir! A hell of a fight you gave them out there. Good for you!”

  Jake smiled. That was the best part about Admiral Pritchard—he knew everyone’s name, down to the lowliest gunnery sergeant. Even the galley cooks seemed to be on a first name basis with the man. He had the charm of a mischievous little boy, but the presence of an old veteran.

  “Thank you, sir.” He leaned in towards the Admiral, so that the others wouldn’t hear. They seemed to be talking amongst themselves, anyway. “And that was quite a secret you had. Holding the South American force back like that,” he paused, waiting for the Admiral to nod knowingly. He didn’t. “You know, broadcasting that they weren’t coming, so that the Imperials could hear. Then sending them in when the Imperials were distracted. Brilliant, sir.”

  Admiral Pritchard nodded, but said, “Oh dear, I must have been very drunk last night. Yes, yes. Quite a secret. Except that wasn’t it. I really didn’t think the South Americans were coming.” He looked back at his senior officers, as if not wanting them to hear.

  That wasn’t the secret?

  Pritchard leaned in even closer, dropping his voice to almost a whisper. “Just wait until the Mars campaign. We’ll talk after that.”

  The Admiral pulled back, with a tight-lipped grin on his face, looking for all the world as if he had no intention of telling him his secret, or letting on to the officers behind him that anything was amiss.

  And now, Jake just had to figure out what that man was up to.

  Just as soon as he finished up in Ensign Kelley's quarters.

  Darkness Defied

  Part II of Prelude to Resistance

  Nick Webb

  Admiral Pritchard had a secret, and it was killing Lieutenant Jacob Mercer not to know what it was.

  Earlier that morning, he’d thought that the man had simply arranged for the South American Fleet to pretend to be unable to show up to the battle in high-Earth orbit, and then to arrive in force just when the Imperial Fleet thought the Resistance was crushed.

  But Pritchard’s reaction to his guess left him puzzled. “Just wait until the Mars campaign,” the man had said.

  What in the world would happen at mars? Some spectacular new weapon that the Resistance was holding in reserve for when the Imperials came at them with all they had? Jake knew that the first battle had been far too easy—the Imperials were still mustering their strength, preparing to suppress the rebellion brutally, as was its wont.

  Or was it a new tactic? But really, after hundreds of years of space battles, both orbital and interstellar, what new idea could the man possibly come up with that hadn’t been tried before?

  Either way, Jake knew he’d have little time to think about it, and even less time to investigate. About half the Resistance fleet had broken off pursuit of the broken Imperial fleet over Earth and had begun the long, four-hour flight to Mars, including the Viper Squad. Jake was sitting in his cockpit with Kit, reviewing the battle plans and enjoying a little downtime.

  “Just remember Shotgun, our targets are the mines. There must be thousands of those buggers in orbit around Mars. I’ve been thinking of ways to detect them—they’ve got quite the stealth coating on them.”

  Jake nodded. “Yeah, the stubborn bastards down there held out against the empire for months during the first Corsican invasion of the Terran system. I’m surprised the Imperials didn’t nuke the whole place, just like they did to Belen back in the 26th century—those Martian colonists are pretty feisty.”

  Kit yawned—it had been a long twenty-four hours. “Yeah, I think the Imperials threatened to do just that unless Mars surrendered. Our boys down there laid down something like ten thousand anti-matter mines to keep the big capital ships out, but the Imperial bastards sent in a few hundred missile frigates in and locked on to all the major cities. The Martians gave up, but the Empire’s grip there has been tenuous ever since—those colonists just hate being told what to do. Hell, that’s why they’re on Mars. A shitty wasteland.”

  Jake glanced at his board. Three minutes to Mars. Time to begin the deceleration. He pressed down on the thrust reversal button and eased the controls back. Even though the gravitic field acted on every cell, every molecule, even every subatomic particle in them at once, he always thought he felt the sensation of inertia change. He wondered if he had some sixth sense that could detect a change in velocity when the usual cues were absent.

  Mars loomed larger in the viewport, and within a minute it had grown from a tiny, ruddy ball to an enormous red-orange orb that filled their view. Jake peered down to where he knew a few of the major enclosed cities were, but a raging dust storm had enveloped any recognizable feature on the surface.

  Kit’s mouth dropped open. “What the hell is that?”

  Straining his eyes to see what his friend pointed at, he tried to make out the odd shape. Odd, simply because that shape didn’t belong there. He’d seen pictures of them before, but never up this close.

  An orbital siege engine. A massive, armed-to-the-teeth battlestation that could lay waste to an entire continent within hours.

  And it was in low orbit around their target.

  “Is that thing ours or theirs?” Jake began to suspect that Pritchard’s secret was finally laid bare to all. But how in the world had the man managed to finagle one of the massive behemoths away from the Empire? Granted, up until just yesterday, they’d all been Imperial officers, Pritchard included, and it wasn’t completely unreasonable to think he’d simply requisitioned it.

  Requisitioned an orbital siege engine.

  Right.

  Something was up.

  Kit shook his head. “No idea. I don’t know where we would have gotten one from. The empire usually uses them to conquer holdout worlds out on the frontier.”

  The answer came in the form of the comm blaring to life. “All hands, this is the USS Fury.” Jake recognized the voice of the Fury’s captain. “We don’t know how it’s possible, but the Empire appears to have shifted an orbital siege engine into orbit around Mars. Standby for orders. Do not approach it. Especially not our cruisers. One blast from its Hyper-Ion-Beam cannon and you’re toast.”

  Jake squinted at the battlestation, trying to make out the armaments surely dotting its surface. “So, it’s not Pritchard’s after all.”

  Kit cocked his head. “You thought Pritchard swiped one from the Corsicans?” He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “It’s just … I thought that was his secret.”

  Rolling his eyes, Kit said, “Oh, you and that secret. Listen, if Pritchard’s going to tell us something, he’ll tell us when he’s good and ready. Let’s just buckle down and follow orders, ok?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Still, if there was one thing Jake hated, it was knowing that someone had a secret, and had even told him the existence of the secret, but would not tell the actual secret itself.

  Not that he was nosy. He didn’t tend to pry into people’s personal lives. But if someone advertised a secret, then by god he was going to find out what it was.

  “All hands, this is the Fury. The Admiral has ordered that we stand down. The cruisers, at least. But all fighters are ordered to engage the handful of Imperial cruisers and frigates escorting the orbital siege engine. The engine won’t fire at you in such close proximity to their own ships. When you’ve disabled their fleet, focus your fire on the offensive capabilities of the engine. Target the Hyper-Ion-Beam cannon first, followed by the railgun turrets and the gigawatt laser banks. Good luck, squadrons.”

  Kit turned to Jake. “They’re kidding. Five fighter squadrons agains
t a handful of light cruisers, missile frigates, and who knows how many fighter squadrons they’ve got? In the shadow of that thing, and all without capital-ship support?”

  Jake shrugged. “Sounds fun,” he said, and reached for the controls to steer them towards the siege engine.

  The comm buzzed to life again. “This is Admiral Pritchard. Good day, folks. Looks pretty grim out there, doesn’t it? Just look sharp. Use your size to your advantage, and be on the lookout for asymmetrical warfare opportunities. You people are the best of the best, and I expect no less than a miracle. Pritchard out.”

  Their proximity detector alerted them to the nearing presence of the small Imperial strike force.

  “Shotgun, you ready? We’re nearly there,” said Kit, and Jake caught the man eyeing him. He pulled himself together. Something the Admiral had said. Asymmetrical warfare. Was that a hint? Was Pritchard trying to tell him something?

  “Right. Ready, Rooster.” Stupid. It was stupid. He shook his head. Why in the world would Pritchard try and tell him to do something through some absurd coded message? Jake decided he needed more sleep, and resolved to do so the moment he returned to the Fury.

  Still. If the man had some ideas about asymmetrical warfare, why had he not just come out and said so? Why the cryptic message? Maybe he was worried the Imperials were listening in. But in that case, why didn’t Pritchard just tell them before they left?

  Because. Because the orbital siege engine was a surprise. Pritchard was expecting to battle the Imperial Mars Patrol fleet mano a mano, without the massive battlestation holding the Resistance fleet at bay. No secret here. No grand, brilliant tactics. Pritchard was just as surprised as they were. Surely.

  And why was Jake so distracted by this? It was just a secret. A drunk man’s secret. Seriously, the man, in some drunken haze, had probably remembered his secret midget porn habit and thought he’d tell the boys in the bar for a good laugh, but then changed his mind in a moment of clarity. Something stupid like that. He really needed to stop obsessing over it.

  “Jake!” Kit yelled him out of his reverie, and pointed towards the Imperial fighter bearing down on them, just dozens of meters away.

  Red ion bursts erupted all around them. Jake blindly pressed hard on the Z accelerator, lifting them up and out of the fire zone before flipping the fighter around to starboard to give Kit an open shot.

  “Dammit,” muttered Kit, as his shots went wide.

  Letting the fighter continue its spin, Jake pulled up hard on the controls to track the other bird, but another one was already on top of them. Punching the Z accelerator again he pushed the fighter down hard and banked away to port as the red streaks zoomed past.

  “Jake, get us the hell over to those cruisers. We’ll have more cover over there.”

  “You mean, you’d rather have a bunch of light cruisers firing at us in addition to the fighters?” Jake shot his co-pilot a disparaging look. “With the cruisers in such a tight formation, they can cover each other. It’s suicide.”

  But the wail of the comm put an end to the discussion. “This is Viper leader, all squads to the Imperial strike group. Engage the fighters there, and see if we can’t launch a few torpedoes at those cruisers while we’re at it.”

  Kit shot Jake a look that said, “I told you so,” but held his tongue, for which Jake was grateful. Otherwise he just might have turned off the gravitic accelerator and switched to conventional thrusters, complete with their stomach churning g-forces—something he knew Kit hated with a passion.

  Forgetting about the enemy fighters momentarily, he pushed the throttle to full acceleration and leapt away towards the collection of ships in low orbit around Mars, and the giant, forbidding, orbital siege engine that seemed to hum with bridled energy—Jake couldn’t tell if he was imagining the sound or if it emanated from the speakers surrounding him. Either way the thing looked to be bristling with weapons: the dual Hyper-Ion-Beam cannons, of course, in addition to hundreds of railgun turrets and gigawatt laser arrays, perfect for punching a hole in the side of any ship, including the mighty USS Fury, a Centurion-class heavy cruiser.

  “What are we looking at, Rooster? How many?”

  Kit glanced at his sensors. Only seven light cruisers—Comet Class—and maybe three squadrons of fighters. If it weren’t for those cruisers we’d be about evenly matched. Well, and the siege engine.”

  Jake peered at the behemoth, and up close he was able to appreciate the massive scale and raw power of the station. Not quite as large as Geneseo Station above Earth—the sprawling shipyards and defense complex—but deadly all the same.

  And within moments they were among the cruisers, and the battle had begun.

  “Crash! Pull up! We’ve got your back!” As Jake tensed his grip on the controls, he saw the other Viper squad member turn suddenly to starboard and down, leaving his two Imperial tails exposed to Kit’s guns. A few seconds later all that remained were two expanding clouds of debris, and they plunged through it, hearing the dozens of tiny collisions with the pieces that hadn’t completely vaporized.

  The battle was going better than expected—at least, as far as Jake could tell. In the heat of combat, he got in the zone. His vision narrowed, his senses focused on the sights and sounds of the surrounding fighters and obstacles, and he felt like the fighter was just an extension of his body. The fighters wings were his wings. The engines were his engines, and the visual/audio system surrounding him in the cabin were his eyes and his ears.

  He was born for this.

  “What have we got left?”

  Kit’s fingers flew across his board, slipping occasionally from the dripping sweat from his hands. Clearly the man was not born for this. But he performed competently, all things considered. “Red squad has taken out one of the cruisers, and I count only twenty or so fighters remaining. We’ve lost…” his voice fell, and he looked up. “We’ve lost ten birds, Shotgun.”

  Jake surveyed the battle scene. The six remaining bulbous light cruisers provided the structure of the battle, like a skeleton, and the remaining four or five dozen fighters flitted in and out, around and between them, furiously blasting each other with red ion bursts, the friendlies avoiding the occasional shot from the cruisers though not always successfully, as Jake had witnessed one of his fellow Viper squad members explode into oblivion from one well-placed railgun slug from one of the cruisers—the NPQR Hades, if he read the nameplate right.

  It was like a deadly, colorful, and almost beautiful orbital dance. A frantic dance. They were doing well, but they had to do better.

  Asymmetrical warfare. What in the hell was Pritchard talking about?

  And suddenly, Jake had an idea.

  The original Corsican Empire consisted of only three worlds: Corsica, Bismark, and New Kyoto, three of the largest and most cosmopolitan societies in the thousand settled worlds. Centuries of technological progress, asteroid mineral extraction, and new and titillating forms of virtual reality entertainment had rendered the people lazy and content.

  At least, until the pirates came along. The pirate syndicates ruined everything. They raided the shipping lanes. They murdered and tortured everyone they captured. They pillaged and raped the smaller settlements, taking what they wanted and burned the rest.

  And suddenly, the Prime Minister of Corsica saw his chance. Never waste a crisis—that was his motto, and he declared a state of emergency. He disbanded the lower house of parliament and established the Corsican Empire for the safety of the people and the republic.

  He chased the pirates down and decimated their ranks—but only in the original sense of the word. In reality the syndicates hid themselves remarkably well, only losing maybe a tenth of their strength. But their continued threat gave the first emperor just the excuse he needed.

  And so began the expansion.

  Somehow, this all crossed Jake’s mind in a flash, and reminded him of something.

  It was only the perceived threat—the fear—that enabled the empire to thr
ive. When a people thought their existence was threatened by the pirates, they practically begged the Empire to take over. Fear led to stupid mistakes.

  He had to make the captains of the light cruisers afraid. Only then would they slip up.

  Jake eyed the orbital siege engine, deadly-looking against the stark background of the red planet below. He flipped open his comm.

  “Viper leader, it’s Shotgun. What’s the word on our computer hacking team? Have we taken control of the prize yet?”

  The only response was the continued sounds of battle—the squeal of the gravitic drives. The staccato pulses of the ion guns bursting from the fighters. The occasional boom of a railgun and the explosion of a fighter.

  But the silence from the Viper squad leader told Jake that the man may—just may—have caught his meaning.

  “Shotgun, I thought we agreed not to talk about it over an open comm. Shut the fuck up.”

  “Yes, sir.” He paused, wondering how far to press his luck—how much to feed the Imperial ears surely eavesdropping. “But sir, you will tell us when to pull out from the cruisers, right?”

  “I said shut it, Lieutenant. Stay tuned. Viper leader out.”

  Kit glanced over at him. “What in the world are you doing?” He squeezed his trigger to ward off another fighter that darted at them. Jake swung the ship around to pursue.

  “Just messing with their heads. Look, if the Imperials think that we’re trying to hack into the siege engine, then they’ll break up the close formation. They’re not going to risk having all their cruisers packed in so tightly—not when one blast from the engine could take them all out at once.”

  Kit snorted. “You really think they’re going to fall for—”

  As if in answer to his question, the cruiser nearest them started to move relative to the others. Its rear engines flared and with a quick burst of speed it soared into a higher orbit. Jake grinned as he watched the other cruisers follow suit, each separating itself from the others.