Shadow of Empire

by Jay Allan

  “Our status is shit, Skipper.” Lucas’s voice was tense, distracted. Blackhawk could see him working furiously, calculating potential course plots to keep the Claw out of range of the enemy ships while the hyperdrive charged for a jump. “We’ve got six bogies hot on our tail, and two more groups of three coming in on different vectors.”

  Fuck, Blackhawk thought. Wolf’s Claw could beat any one of those ships, even two or three. But a dozen bracketing them from all directions? There was no way. “Time until we can jump?”

  “Ten minutes. And that’s cutting it to the bone.” Lancaster’s voice was grim, serious. “Jumping with a half-warmed-up hyperdrive and a hastily calculated plot is fucking crazy to begin with, Skip . . .”

  Blackhawk agreed, but he didn’t think it would do anyone any good for him to say it out loud. Besides, he knew it would take everything Lucas had to keep the ship from disintegrating or getting lost in hyperspace.

  The captain opened his mouth then closed it again. There was no point in driving his pilot any harder. Ten minutes was tight. Pushing him for a better time was pointless. “Time until nearest enemy force is in range?”

  “Less than ten minutes, Skip.” Lancaster was poking at his workstation’s keyboard, entering his sixth course change in as many minutes. “A lot less. Four minutes, maybe six.”

  Blackhawk knew it depended on how quickly the enemy could respond to Lancaster’s evasive maneuvers. But those captains and crews out there were pirates—their success depended on thwarting a target’s attempts to escape. He bet it would be closer to four.

  He flipped on the comm again. “Ace, Shira, get those guns warmed up and ready. We’re gonna have to take on one of these enemy groups.” He stared at the screen and added, “Maybe two.”

  “Don’t worry, Ark.” Ace’s voice was cocky, almost unconcerned. “We’ll blow ’em to hell.”

  Blackhawk knew his oldest companion well, and he was sure the arrogance was a put-on. But it was a good one, and it fooled almost everyone else into thinking Ace was fearless. Blackhawk used to worry about what looked like overconfidence, but he’d long ago realized what came out of Ace’s mouth and what was going on in his head were two completely different things. There was no one he’d rather have at his back than Jason Graythorn. Except maybe Shira.

  And he had both of them in the turrets right now.

  Shira Tarkus was the polar opposite of Graythorn’s loud, theatrical personality. Grim, quiet, quick to anger, she disliked most people and didn’t make any effort to hide her disdain. She’d followed Blackhawk first out of gratitude for rescuing her from the executioner. But it soon became apparent she’d found a kindred spirit in her new commander. There was a darkness to her, one that ran deep like his own. Shira was a hard-core cynic, as misanthropic as he was, at least outside their chosen inner circles. They even liked the same kind of women—pretty, not too smart, and completely replaceable. Tarkus enjoyed her diversions as much as anyone, but when she was done, she was done. She was a loner at heart, and she had no use for clinging creatures expecting her attention around the clock.

  For all her aloofness, Blackhawk knew she’d found a home on the Claw. He was sure she’d never admit it, but he realized how attached she’d become to everyone on board. Even Ace.

  Blackhawk focused on the task at hand. “It’s my job to worry, Ace. You just make sure you blast these bogies as they come into range.”

  “We’re on it, Ark.” Graythorn’s voice was calm, serious. “You can count on us.”

  “Here they come.” Lucas’s voice pulled Blackhawk’s attention from the comm. “Three coming in now. Sending targeting data down to the turrets.”

  “Okay, let’s do the work and take these fuckers out.” As always, Blackhawk sounded confident, but his eyes were focused on the screen, and he could see that yet another of the enemy groups was going to get a pass before Wolf’s Claw could jump. Fuck, he thought, this is going to be bad. “Lucas, if you can shave anything off that ten minutes, I suggest you do it.”

  Shira Tarkus sat silently in the small compartment of the Claw’s starboard turret. She was staring at the bank of screens, watching as the targeting computer’s calculations scrolled by. Hitting a ship thirty thousand kilometers away with a five-centimeter-wide laser blast was mostly the computer’s work. But initiative played a part too, the mysterious bit of intuition that seemed to come from the human gut. It was hard to quantify, but there was no question it was there. Some people were just good gunners and, with the same targeting systems and training, they could consistently outshoot less gifted adversaries.

  Shira was one of the best.

  She closed her eyes, letting the neural feed input the enemy vessel’s plotting data into her mind. She could see her target; she felt as if she was floating in space, watching it approach. She knew it was all illusion, her mind constructing an image from the computer data flowing through her implants. But it provided a focus for her, a baseline targeting plan she could modify with her thoughts.

  Shira was about to fire when her mind hesitated. This wasn’t right, the shot was off. They’re accelerating, she thought, and they’re going to keep increasing their thrust. The plot needs to move ahead, farther along their projected course. The pirates were going to adjust their heading, angle so they were coming straight at Wolf’s Claw. There is no subtlety here, no caution. They have numbers, and they think that’s enough. She could see the image in her mind change, the perspective moving to reflect her alterations to the firing plan. Now, she thought . . .

  Fire!

  She imagined the shot ripping through the vacuum of space. The laser beams would be invisible during the tenth of a second they took to reach their target, except where they happened to pass through a random cloud of dust or other particulate matter. The triple laser turret was stronger than any armament an enemy would expect the Claw to possess, with gigawatts more output than weapons normally found on a smuggler’s vessel. They were still at long range, but the pulse was powerful enough to bore through the enemy ship’s hull if her aim was true. She was advertising the Claw’s true capabilities by firing at this range, but there wasn’t any alternative. They were too outnumbered to play it cool, to hold fire until the enemy was closer. Longer range was one of their advantages, and they needed everything they could get now.

  Shira saw the laser, visible in her head if not in reality, rip through space—three beams lancing from her triple turret and slamming into the side of the enemy vessel. It was a solid hit, if not a critical one, and she could see the enemy ship bleeding air and fluids from a meter-long gash in the hull. Of course, she didn’t actually see it—she was watching a reconstruction, imagery created by the computer based on scanning data that was flowing in. She stared silently, her head nodding in satisfaction as she worked the controls to recharge the laser battery. It took about thirty seconds to build up enough power for a shot, and she figured she just might have time to get another blast in before the enemy came into their own lesser range and it became a two-way battle.

  “Eat that, you fuckers!” Ace’s voice blared through the shipwide comm, as his own shot found its mark.

  Ace was the complete opposite of Shira: boisterous, dramatic. He made a big deal out of everything he did, and he made sure everyone else knew about it. Shira didn’t approve. She thought he looked like a damned fool, and she didn’t understand the wisdom behind bragging about accomplishments. She rarely spoke at all beyond the minimum required by the situation. She blended into a room, drifted into the background. She was easy to forget, to ignore. But her enemies usually found that to be a grave mistake. Shira Tarkus wasn’t loud or outgoing, but she was always watching, thinking. She stalked her enemies with almost unimaginable patience, waiting for the moment to strike. And when she did, there was no hesitation, no remorse. She killed without pity, without emotion.

  Yet for all that she thought Ace was a pompous fool, she didn’t doubt his abilities. He was a deadly fighter and a brilliant tactici
an. Anyone who underestimated him was likely headed for an early grave. Though she’d never admit it to him, she was glad he was part of the team. And they both shared one unwavering trait: total loyalty to Arkarin Blackhawk.

  “Weapon will be charged in ten seconds.”

  The warning from the targeting computer pulled her attention back to the task at hand. Time to line up another shot. She focused on the plot the computer was projecting in her head. She’d been right; the enemy was coming straight at them. The ship she’d hit was lagging behind, its vector off from the other two. A wicked smile crossed her lips. She must have damaged its engines with that hit. With reduced thrust capacity, it would fall behind the others. She had planned to try to finish it off, but now Shira shifted her focus to one of the two fully functional ships. She locked in her shot and watched as the power gauge reached 100 percent. Fire, she thought, with the grim finality of a feral warcat charging its prey.

  She saw the shot impact the enemy ship dead center. The triple laser blast ripped a huge tear into the hull, She imagined what was happening thousands of kilometers away, the almost unimaginable energy of the laser tearing right through the reinforced armor plating of the target. All around the initial impact points, sections of reinforced hypersteel plating had melted then vaporized, weakening the structural integrity of that section of hull.

  She knew the lasers continued through the ship, ripping apart the unarmored interior like a knife slicing through butter. Anyone unlucky enough to be standing in the path of the deadly beams was incinerated, and systems and equipment were blown to bits. She was still watching the projection when a huge plume of fluids and air erupted from the gash in the hull, freezing almost immediately as it was ejected into space.

  A smile crept across her lips. Secondary explosions. She’d managed to hit something critical; that much was obvious. Then she saw the projection in her mind erupt into a massive nuclear fireball, as the enemy’s power plant lost containment and the controlled fusion reaction in its power core was suddenly released from its magnetic confinement. “Yes!” she whispered to herself.

  Even she wasn’t immune to a little private gloating.

  “Nice shooting there!” Blackhawk’s congratulations came through the comm. “She’s one up on you, Ace. You gonna sit still for that?” Shira smiled broadly now. She knew the challenge would drive Graythorn more than any promise of reward. Arkarin Blackhawk knew how to squeeze the very best out of his crew.

  “How are we on starting that jump?” Blackhawk’s voice was calm, but he knew they were almost out of time. Graythorn and Tarkus each had a kill and a cripple to their credit, but that left six enemy ships still engaged with Wolf’s Claw, and another dozen on the way. They’d gotten off lightly on damage, so far. No one on the enemy ships could match the deadly accuracy of the Claw’s expert gunners. The two hits the enemy had managed so far were glancing blows, the damage they inflicted minimal.

  But they were getting closer.

  Lucas was furiously working his station, trying to plot the jump while he piloted the Claw through the battle. Blackhawk could have taken the helm while Lancaster handled the hyperjump prep, but he knew Lucas was the better pilot, and he never let pride interfere with good judgment. Lancaster’s evasive maneuvers had given them a big edge in the battle and saved them from at least two hits. So the young pilot wore both hats, and Blackhawk sat in the command chair and let him, and the rest of his people, do their jobs.

  “Thirty seconds, Skip.” Lucas didn’t have Blackhawk’s stone-cold calm in battle, but he sounded solid, confident. “My plot’s pretty rough. It might be a hard ride.”

  “Attention.” Blackhawk spoke into the shipwide comm. “We will be jumping in thirty seconds. Make sure you’re all strapped in. We may have a rough trip through hyperspace.” He buckled himself into the command chair, the fabric of the harness cool against his still-bare skin. “All right, Lucas, do your thing.”

  “Fifteen seconds.” Lancaster was focused on the screen, making minor adjustments to the plot.

  The 2g pressure everyone had been feeling suddenly stopped, as Lancaster disengaged the engines, rerouting the power to the jump drive. “Ten seconds. Cutting power to weapons systems now.” It took an enormous amount of energy to initiate a hyperjump, and Lucas was diverting power from everything but basic life support.

  “Prepare for jump . . .”

  They all heard a muffled explosion, and the ship pitched hard to the starboard and went into a violent roll. Blackhawk was thrown forward into his harness and then back into the seat cushions as the Claw spun around in space. Her engines were off, all their power fed into the jump drive, so there was no way to stop the violent roll. They’d been hit, and Blackhawk knew immediately it was bad.

  “I’ve got multiple system failures, sir.” The stress and fear were obvious in Lucas’s voice. “What should I do? Abort the jump?”

  Blackhawk stared over at the pilot’s station. “No. Jump. Now.” The jump was a risk, but they were as good as dead if they stayed.

  “But, Ark, my plot’s no good now. And there’s damage to the navcom.” Lucas was working his board as he spoke, trying to get a handle on the extent of the damage. “I’d have to navigate through hyperspace myself. I don’t even know if the jump system is . . .”

  “You can do it, Lucas.” Blackhawk’s voice was like an anchor, a source of calm in a violent storm. “Do it. Jump. Now!”

  Lancaster took a deep breath and flipped the switch.

  Wolf’s Claw shuddered hard, and the viewscreen went dark. Whatever partially understood forms of matter and energy populated hyperspace, they interfered with normal equipment, rendering all but the most heavily shielded systems useless. As such, only the life-support and jump drive systems functioned. Even the shipwide comm was dead.

  Blackhawk felt the familiar headache, the flash of blinding light and then the hard, dull pain. It was the same every time he jumped. Humans had differing reactions to the foreign nature of hyperspace, some more severe than others. About 1 percent of them couldn’t handle it at all, and they died the instant they left normal space. There was no known way to test for it, and no shielding ever developed to protect from the effect. It tended to make everyone’s first hyperjump a stressful experience, and surviving it was a graduation into the ranks of spacefarers.

  “The jump drive’s in the red zone, Skipper.” Lancaster’s voice was near panic. Few things chilled the hearts of veteran spacers like the thought of being trapped in hyperspace, ripping through the universe at a million times the speed of light forever. “It must have taken damage when we got hit.”

  “Bring us in somewhere now, Lucas.” Blackhawk stared grimly toward his pilot. “Anywhere.” It has to be better than where we came from, he thought. But he wasn’t sure he believed it.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE AIR WAS HEAVY WITH SMOKE AND THE PUTRID SMELLS OF war. The fortress stood, firm and defiant, rising from the sea like a great monolith. Its massive bastions and battlements were images of pure might, spewing death and destruction upon the armies assailing it from below. This was war, at its grimmest and ugliest.

  Marshal Augustin Lucerne stood in his command post, looking out over the nightmarish scene, watching his soldiers push courageously forward into the maelstrom. They moved like an unstoppable force of nature, ignoring their losses, surging irresistibly in the fading twilight, pushing toward the black walls of the enemy stronghold. Their wild battle cries filled the air, lustful shouts calling for the blood of their enemies. They knew as well as their leader did that this was the final foe. When the fortress fell, the last of the warlords would be vanquished. All of Celtiboria would be united. The fruits of thirty years of endless war, of death and sacrifice beyond reckoning, were within their grasp. Victory, so long a cherished dream, was at hand. This night they would have vindication for the thousands of comrades they had lost in decades of endless combat. The new dawn would see them triumphant, masters of a world forged together as on
e nation.

  That was the hope, anyway.

  Lucerne had spent a lifetime at war, his mind and body devoted to the unification of Celtiboria. He was a grizzled veteran—grim, determined, almost ambivalent to his own pain and hardship. Yet never in those years of endless Arnage—of slaughter and unending savagery—had his heart hardened to the death and suffering of his soldiers. He still mourned each of them lost, cried inside for every fresh recruit who fell to the guns or scarred old sweat who finally met his destiny.

  To his soldiers, he was a legendary conqueror. An iron leader. Unbreakable. His men had followed him from one hell to the next, all the while chanting his name with unconditional loyalty. They fought for him, died for him. They followed his orders as if they were holy commandments.

  All of which made him wonder why they showed him such devotion and if he truly deserved any of it. As often as not, he gave them nothing but suffering and death in return. But they loved him still. No matter how many took their last painful breaths, lying broken in the mud of one of his bloody battlefields, his legions still worshipped him.

  There would be a celebration when the fortress finally fell, a joyous salute to a victory long pursued. The soldiers would rejoice, hail the triumph their courage and devotion had secured. How many, Lucerne wondered, would not be there to enjoy the fruits of conquest their blood and sacrifice had bought? How many thousands lay dead in the fields and trenches of three decades of brutal warfare? He didn’t know the answer to his own question, and he felt a rush of shame for his lack of knowledge. Those men followed you, died for you, he thought, yet they are only the uncounted dead now, names and faces forgotten, even their numbers no more than a wild guess.