“Whether you know it or not, you have part of the answer, and you have a piece of the greater puzzle.” Ilm seemed to hesitate. He put his hands together and the hologram vanished.
“Forgive me, young man,” he said. “When you came aboard this ship the medics took a small sample of your blood. In her debriefing Jira had explained how she had managed to break into the archives—with your help. And so we ran the bloodprint through our systems. Compared it to every known bloodprint in our data stores. And you are Satori, through and through. You are more Satori than most of the nobles in the palace you broke into.”
Ilm lifted his gaze to look directly at Conrad. “Your DNA connects you to an obscure line among the Satori,” he said. “It died out seven hundred years ago. The last known ancestor of that line perished in battle while annexing the Ultaxe system.”
“That’s not possible,” Conrad said, feeling lightheaded. “I was born on a trading freighter in the Sol system. In Sanctuary space. I remember my father. He abandoned me on the trading freighter—I remember him leaving. He wasn’t anyone special. Sure as hell wasn’t seven hundred years old. Just a trader who had to cut his losses and run.”
The general opened his palms again. Lines of text spiraled through the hologram. “To confirm that you are who you seem to be, we sent a trace through our taps in the Imperial military database,” he said. “We sent your bloodprint through, and it was verified. You’re a true scion of royal blood… and if you came from Earth, then so did the Satori.”
Me. They used my blood to link the Satori to Earth. Conrad exhaled slowly.
Jira looked astonished, then her expression transformed into concern. “That’s how they figured out where we were,” she said, quickly. “That’s how they figured out we’re at Baro. It’s one thing to send an operative into the palace, but to send a bloodprint through the taps—”
“It was a calculated risk,” Ilm replied calmly. “To find out the origins of this man—who could explain the origins of the Satori. The risk was evaluated, and found acceptable.”
Jira’s face was flushed with anger. “That put the entire fleet here in danger. And now they know he is here,” she said, pointing at Conrad.
“Yes,” the general said, clasping his hands behind his back. “And now they’re coming for him. And all of us.”
Chapter 28
A soft but insistent alarm sounded above them. Translucent screens suddenly appeared around Ilm, some showing lines of data, and others showing live visuals of incoming ships.
“Ah,” he said. “They’re here.”
He touched his wrist. “I will brief the fleet captains here. We’ll have to scramble all the ships we’ve got. These visuals are from Gammaton VII. That means they’re one portal jump away from Baro.”
“Why wouldn’t we just scatter?” Jira asked. “If they’re at Gammaton then we’ve got nine, maybe twelve cycles to move out.”
“No,” Ilm replied. He pointed to the elaborate cage from which he’d emerged. “The data you stole from the palace and all the data from this man’s memory banks is being copied to the other Federation data stores,” he explained. “It is of vital importance that this upload is complete.”
“How much time have we got?”
“Eight cycles until they jump through the portal. The data copy will be complete in ten.”
Jira’s lips were pressed into a thin, tight line. “We can’t send messenger ships away with this data? I know any ship bigger than that won’t make it further than the nearest moon.”
“Even a messenger ship is not fast enough to outrun an Imperial fighter squadron—or a destroyer, for that matter,” Ilm replied. “This is the only way, my dear.”
She nodded, steely-eyed, ready for a fight in an instant. “I’ll fly out with one of the other ships,” she said. “I have some training as a weapons officer—”
“I want you to go with him,” said Ilm, indicating Conrad.
“Why?”
Ilm moved toward his cage. “He’s our link to the answer,” he said. “The answer of who the Satori are—and who we are. And what we might become.”
“I don’t care much for being talked about like I’m a piece of meat,” Conrad said as he strode purposefully through the halls of the Verdant, away from the general’s control room.
Jira shot him a wry look. “I wouldn’t know what that feels like at all,” she said, deadpan.
“It’s different,” he insisted. “Hell, I don’t even know why I’m worth anything to anybody.”
“Neither do we,” she replied. “Which is why we have to keep you alive and relatively intact until we figure it out.”
“Relatively?”
“You’d still look good without your arms. And you wouldn’t be waving them around all the time, smashing the ship into nebulas and tractor beams.”
“You think I look good?” A broad smile cut across Conrad’s face, then vanished. “Hey. Listen here. One, I don’t wave my arms around. Two, it’s impossible to smash into a nebula; it’s just a bunch of gases. Three, I agree with you. I do look good.”
She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to punch him or punch herself. “I take it back,” she said.
“You can’t take it back,” Conrad said, confidently.
“Then it sounds like I’ll have to arrange a little accident on board the Oro to see if you really do look good without your arms.”
“Legs too,” he said, as Argus guffawed. “I’d look great as just a head. More portable that way, come to think of it.”
Jira stared at him for a long moment before turning away and shaking her head. “The things I do for the Federation,” she muttered to herself. “This is worse than the time I fell into a vat of Teresian sea slugs.”
“Betcha still looked good,” he said, with a grin.
“After what we learned from the general—Lords, the origins of trillions of people—and you’re still… joking?”
Conrad shrugged. “Who said I’m joking? I stand by what I said.”
She shook her head. “I need to go to ship’s stores,” she said. “I need a jug of whiskey before I get back on board a ship with you.”
Conrad brightened. “They have whiskey in this part of the galaxy?”
So a colony ship leaves Earth—plenty of that happened in the late 24th, early 25th centuries. Goes on out to the edge of known space. Plenty of other ships did the same thing. Went into a portal and never came back out. Thousands of ships.
And then the passengers of that ship became the rulers of over a quarter of the entire galaxy.
There’s got to be more to it than that.
He couldn’t stop brooding over what Ilm had revealed to them. It explained nothing and everything. There were still pieces of the puzzle missing.
They sat in the cockpit of the Oro Yurei. It was strange to be so still when all around them pilots and mechanics were running through the Verdant’s bay, preparing for battle. Baltasar and Argus were outside in the fray, patching up the last bits of damage from their last run-in with the Empire. He could hear them quarreling outside the ship. As far as he was concerned the ship was fully functional, but Baltasar and Argus insisted on upgrading its shielding and installing a basic gun array.
Reasonable enough, considering the Imperial armada’s on its way to blast us into the next dimension.
Jira sat next to him. She was holding a portable commscreen, talking softly and rapidly to men and women in Federation uniform. By her tone he could tell she was arguing and giving orders. She had to be speaking in Caderan rather than Canonic, but there was a familiar cadence to it.
He listened to her speech. Caderan was a fast-flowing language. It reminded him of the traders’ patois he’d learned while in the Academy. He’d picked up some of the phrases as a child on board the trading freighter, before the Corps had found him.
The Satori and their conquered peoples spoke Standard, only they called it Canonic. They even used the same basic lettering system, although Canoni
c had some symbols and characters Conrad didn’t recognize.
There were just too many connections to ignore. The conclusion was unavoidable. And then there’s Arro… Brasileiro. Brazil. The South American Confederacy.
The Satori hadn’t been the only colony ship to disappear through the portals. Other colony ships had gone through… and some of them must have arrived in the same galactic quadrant as the Satori.
They all came from Earth. The realization was overwhelming and inescapable at the same time. It’s impossible. The Satori Empire’s two thousand years old. Two thousand years ago on Earth the Roman Empire still existed, if I’m remembering my history right.
His thoughts couldn’t help but return to the portals. The portals had set the Satori free from Earth. They were the tools the Satori had used to subjugate thousands of planets.
Those damn portals. Everything revolves around them.
He felt a touch on his shoulder. Jira was staring at him with those brilliant gold-flecked eyes of hers.
“You look like you’re lost,” she said, curiously. “Are you alright, princeling?”
“Lost is right,” he muttered under his breath. “What’s happening?” he said, louder.
The commscreen sat blank and silent in her lap. “Scouts have sighted the first Imperial ships in the Baro system,” she said. “Everything’s going as fast as it can, but I’ve never seen a fleet of this size mobilize so quickly. We’ll be ready soon—as ready as we can be.”
Conrad took the commscreen from her. It lit up, showing a navchart of the Baro system. It was safe where they were, wedged against the gas giant and its closest moon—for now. The portal floated on the other side of the massive planet, and any ships exiting the portal would have to fly around the planet to get to where the Federation fleet was massed.
“What kinds of defenses have we got?”
She stood and turned toward the front of the cockpit, tapping at the controls in front of them. A large holographic representation of the fleet appeared.
“The planet’s enough to hold them back for a little while. It’ll give us enough time to get a sense of which ships are coming first, and what their plan of attack will be. And here—” she waved her hands in an arc around the planet “—is a minefield. The smaller ships have been dropping mines since we got the alert that the Imperials were on their way. That’s phase one.”
Jira pointed to the light cruisers and frigates. “As for phase two—they’ll be our next line of defense,” she said. “Every ship has at least one fighter squadron or more. While they’re firing, the squadrons will engage with whatever fighters the Imperials are carrying. Phase three, when the Imperials break through that blockade, then the heavy cruisers and battleships will rally around the Florian Sun.” She enlarged the image of the Sun—it was a ship the same size as the Verdant, its blocky design indicating that it was another Caderan ship.
When the Imperials break through, not if. Conrad hadn’t missed Jira’s choice of words. As fiercely as she worked and as determined as they all were to fight, there was little question of who would win the battle.
But then, winning the battle was never the point.
“Why the Florian Sun instead of the Verdant?” he asked.
“Because they’ll go after whatever ship appears to be leading the fleet,” she said. “It’s tactically sound. Take out the general, the ship that’s commanding all the rest, and then pick off the remaining battleships one by one. So we’re not going to make it so easy for them. We’ll hide the Verdant to the extent that anyone can hide a ship her size, and direct the Imperials’ fire toward the Sun. That should buy us some more time.”
“Time,” said Conrad, surveying the field of battle with a strategist’s eye. “That’s all we’re trying to get, isn’t it,” he said. “Time, and nothing else.”
Jira folded her arms. “When the data’s uploaded, we can leave.”
Conrad looked down at the images of the Imperial ships that appeared on the portable commscreen. They traveled silently through space like a pack of predators. “You don’t have to lie to me,” he said to her. “It’s clear that none of us are going to outrun those ships—even the Verdant. I’m a soldier, and so is Argus. I know what this means.”
Her expression was grim. “We’re to stay out of it,” she said. “General Ilm’s given me strict orders to keep you out of the fight.”
He grinned. “You really think that’s going to happen?”
The smallest smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “I won’t help you misbehave,” she said.
Conrad grinned, more broadly this time. “Since when have I needed help to do that?” he asked. Then the smile faded into a more serious expression.
“Nothing will touch the Verdant, Jira,” he promised. “Not for four cycles. Everything depends on that—and I’m ready to do what needs to be done. With you.”
She sat down in her seat, her face composed. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away.
There was a low howl behind them as Argus and Baltasar came on board. Argus’s fur was singed black and smoking, and Baltasar’s face was flushed with excitement.
“Don’t believe anything he says,” Baltasar said quickly. “It was an accident.”
Conrad looked back to Jira. “And with them,” he said, resignation and amusement lingering in his voice.
Argus growled in alarm as every commscreen in the cockpit came to life, and the ships on the holographic projection above the controls began to blink and move.
An image of the Imperial ships exiting the portal appeared on all screens. Baltasar expanded it. One ship appeared after another, and each one dropped a slew of fighter ships the minute they exited the portal. There was one ship in the lead that Conrad recognized, shining and bristling with firepower.
The Secace.
Chapter 29
The image abruptly disappeared a moment later, the sentry robot vaporized by an Imperial starfighter’s guns.
Jira was patched into Ilm’s comms. He was speaking directly to the captains under his command, his voice rough and hoarse. No doubt he had been speaking without pause since they’d left him in his control room.
“… and pull the fighters dropping mines back. I don’t care if they’re not done. They’re better off returning to their mother ships for a charge so they’re ready for phase two.”
Jira closed the comm line. They watched as the dots indicating the fighter ships began to draw back, some flying faster than others.
“Our ships are all different,” he heard Jira say. She must have detected his puzzlement. “The Imperial ships are all the same. Big and vicious and sleek and chrome. But ours are unique, depending on the world they came from, who made them, how many battles they’ve gone through, and how many repairs they’ve received. It’s a strength and a weakness. More a strength, I think, because the Imperials can’t predict what a ship might do. They don’t know what they’re up against.” She lifted her chin.
Conrad thought of Qart and Kee, who had given up their lives in the Escaton nebula. It was true what Jira said. Even outside of battle, the Imperials could never be completely sure who was their enemy—unless they simply assumed that every non-Imperial ship was hostile.
“The three frigates here are Caderan,” she said with a hint of pride as she pointed to the ships waiting to engage with the Imperials on the edge of the mine field. “But the four light cruisers behind them are half Jangan, half Samri.”
“And the fighters?”
She shrugged. “Depends on the ship they belong to. We trust the captains to know what their pilots are capable of.”
“In a few minutes the Imperial ships will be in range of the sentry ’bots on this side of Baro,” Argus reported, the portable commscreen in his paws.
“Then we’ll be able to evaluate what we’re really dealing with,” said Jira.
Conrad’s hands itched. Part of him longed to take the Oro Yurei out of the safety of the Verdant’s docking
bay and into the heat of battle, where they could do something.
Wait and see, a voice whispered in the back of his mind.
He thought of the endless simulations and case studies they’d gone through back at the Academy. Garrity had pounded it into their heads that they had to complete the book learning, but that it was nothing like the real thing. That they could prepare, but in the end, it was a matter of instinct.
When the time comes, she’d said, you’ll find your true selves as soldiers in the crucible of combat. And not a moment sooner.
Conrad understood why, now. Even the most realistic simulation was still a simulation. They were standing now on the edge of a conflict that could see the entire Federation demolished. Worse still, the Empire knew he existed, and if they made the connection and decoded where he came from…
He pushed the thought aside.
Focus, Redeker.
“They’re in sight,” Argus said.
The three Imperial ships that appeared over the horizon were black as night. Lights glittered on their hulls, but even then the ships seemed to fade into the background, camouflaged against the darkness.
“Is there any way to see them better than this?” he asked, squinting at the commscreen.
“The sensors can detect them and their coordinates,” Baltasar said.
“I want to see them,” Conrad insisted.
Jira adjusted the controls. Conrad whistled as the contrast adjusted, showing the ships for what they were: a line of black ships, each one formed in the shape of a blade. There were three in the front—one of them the unmistakable Secace.
“They put that butcher in charge,” Conrad muttered.
“Heik’s been chasing you down since you appeared in Imperial space,” said Jira. “I’m not surprised they’d make him responsible for the success of this mission. And his ship leads all others in his sector.”
“Let’s see if we can’t ruin his record,” Conrad said. “The man’s ruthless, Jira. Do Ilm and his captains know they can’t depend on Heik being merciful?” he asked, thinking of the way Heik had killed his own crewman.
Sanctuary's Soldier: The Darkspace Saga Book 1 Page 18