by D. J. Holmes
Mutineer
D. J. Holmes
https://www.facebook.com/Author.D.J.Holmes
[email protected]
Comments welcome!
Copyright © D. J. Holmes 2019
Cover art by Ivo Brankovikj
https://www.artstation.com/artist/ivobrankovikj
[email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
Prologue
Flex-aor Battleship Purity, Monulan System.
Hack’tar felt a drop of drool run down one of her fangs and onto her chin. It made her grin widen. Her anticipation was building to a height she had only felt once before. Thirty years ago, her mother had given her the task of cleansing a sparsely populated world. The species had only just developed their own shift drive and she had wiped them out with ease. Now she was on the verge of achieving something much greater. That success had led her towards her current mission and soon it would end in three worlds cleansed. Each would be ready to receive their own Flex-aor queen.
None would be hers, for she had already been granted her own world. As soon as this mission was completed, she would return to the first world she had cleansed and settle there to breed her own colony. Someday the world before her would be home to another Flex-aor queen. She guessed it would be at least four hundred years before this world was needed for the expanding Flex-aor domain, but when it was, it would be ready. Perhaps it may even be occupied by my offspring, she thought. That made her grin widen.
Until then the world would serve her. It would bring her great joy to bombard the alien species out of existence. Is this how my ancestors felt on our homeworld? Hack’tar wondered. If so, she was beginning to understand the history of her people far better. For centuries, warring clans had fought and eliminated each other. She had thought the constant fighting had been because no two Queens had been willing to coexist. No doubt that had been part of it, but if the pleasure Hack’tar was feeling at the prospect of devastating her enemies was something her ancestors had felt as they put nearby cities to the sword, the unending wars were completely understandable.
“It is time,” the Captain of her flagship thought to Hack’tar.
She sent a mental assent and then connected her mind to the captains overseeing each of the ships in her fleet. They were all from the intellectual caste, and she could feel their analytical minds constantly reviewing the situation in front of them. They were of one opinion; success was guaranteed. That was enough for her. Proceed, she sent to them.
Still connected to the captains, Hack’tar watched through hundreds of eyes as her vast fleet accelerated into the system, announcing its presence. The idea of millions of fully autonomous creatures was a difficult concept for her to grasp. Yet as more than a hundred ships in orbit around the alien planet reacted to her fleet’s movements differently, it was a reality she couldn’t deny. There was no semblance of order in the aliens’ actions, it was as if they had just lost their Queen and mayhem had broken out.
Perhaps it has, Hack’tar summarized. Her fleet had already destroyed the orbital and mining stations in two systems controlled by this species on its way to the alien homeworld. The aliens had likely received advanced warning of what her fleet could do. In that light, their actions made more sense, they know their death is approaching.
Hack’tar enjoyed watching the aliens’ confusion. Then her anticipatory grin faded slightly. A semblance of order had emerged. More than half of the alien ships were fleeing from their homeworld. They were making for a shift passage that led to another system this species had settled. That was ok with Hack’tar, she would visit that system next. However, forty-four contacts were forming up into a battle formation. Additionally, some of the contacts were larger than the ships she had fought in the previous two systems. For a second her mind went to her sister, Qura-rnt. She had been tasked with cleansing another nearby species. The most numerous species her people had discovered. In respect for the size of the alien’s territory, their mother had sent the largest battle fleet ever assembled by the Flex-aor. It had been believed that the cleansing would take a year or so. Except, nothing had been heard from Qura-rnt for some time. It was feared she had underestimated the species she had been sent to destroy and had been killed herself. Hack’tar thought that very unlikely, no species was a match for the Flex-aor.
Now that she found herself looking at larger alien ships than she had expected, ones that almost matched her battleships for size, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe her sister had run into difficulties after all. In concern, she sought out the thoughts of one of her best captains. Almost instantly her fears were allayed. Her captain had already extrapolated the combat abilities of the largest alien ship using the capabilities of the smaller ships they had destroyed and analyzed. The force approaching her cleansing fleet was almost no threat. While ship for ship they were almost a match, Hack’tar’s fleet had six hundred ships against the aliens’ forty-four. The battle would be short and sweet.
It took an hour for the alien ships to get into range. As soon as they did, Hack’tar ordered her ships to open fire. Then she ordered a wave of smaller ships to move ahead of her battleships, if she was going to lose any ships, she didn’t want it to be a battleship. A spike in the emotions of her Captains informed her of the aliens’ return fire before she saw it on the sensor display. Her grin widened when she saw their pitiful missile salvo. Only one hundred and sixty missiles were coming for her fleet.
“We will have destroyed their fleet before their missiles even reach us,” her Senior Captain informed her.
“As it should be,” Hack’tar replied.
For a few minutes they watched their missiles approach the alien ships in silence. Then Hack’tar spoke again. “Should we call back our forward screen? I don’t fear losing any battleships to such a puny missile salvo.”
“It is your decision my Queen,” her Senior Captain replied. “Our screening ships should be able to handle such a small salvo, but if the enemy has any surprises, perhaps it is best our destroyers and frigates encounter them first.”
“Then they will stay ahead of the fleet,” Hack’tar decided.
The missile carriers from her ships reached attack range and released over seven thousand missiles long before the enemy missiles reached her fleet’s point defenses. Whilst the aliens shot down an impressive number of missiles, thousands reached their targets. Once the explosions ceased, not a single alien warship was left.
“Their larger ships were resilient,” an analysist commentated. “It took more than thirty hits to take out this battleship sized ship.”
Hack’tar grunted as she looked at the replay of her attack. The alien ship had been built well, it had died to her attack nonetheless.
A spike in the emotions of some of her captains told her the next phase of the battle had begun. The captains in her screening element were engaging the alien missiles. Confidence quickly turned to concern among the one hundred captains of the screening force as the alien missiles proved hard to hit. Their ECM capabilities had improved from the previous skirmishes Hack’tar’s fleet had had with this species.
Hack’tar glanced at her Senior Captain, he had no telepathic connection with the other captains, but he could interpret the sensor data. Rather than ask him, she probed his thoughts. He was concerned, yet he was confident their forces would take out the alien missiles.
As she turned her attention back to the alien weapons, Hack’tar began to share his confidence. There were onl
y forty-eight left. Their numbers continued to drop. Then, when there were just twelve left, their acceleration rates spiked. The Flex-aor destroyers and frigates were caught by surprise. Their tracking systems struggled to keep up with the missiles’ new evasive maneuvers. For a couple of seconds, no missiles were hit. Then one was finally taken out. In response, the alien missiles’ ECM increased. Once again, the defenders were thrown off balance. By the time they managed to adapt to the new ECM, eight missiles had reached their targets. Five scored direct hits. All five Flex-aor ships were destroyed. The other three scored proximity hits. One missile detonated close enough to kill its target. The other two did not get outright kills, but they crippled the ships they hit.
Hack’tar was stunned. She had never lost a ship under her command before. For a second fear and then relief rushed through her. It could have been her battleship taking one of the alien’s overpowered missiles if she had not sent out a screening force. She growled as anger took over. These aliens had killed some of her mother’s offspring. They would pay. “The fleet will advance on their homeworld. We will wipe them out!”
Her rage surged, but despite going to full power, her fleet was making slow progress. The passage of time made Hack’tar’s anger diminish until it was just a bubbling emotion in the back of her mind. In its place her sense of anticipation and delight at the carnage she was about to unleash took over. Her mother would be unhappy at the losses, but if she could cleanse three inhabited worlds, her mother would overlook them. And if these aliens have any other ships, I’ll keep my fleet together, Hack’tar thought. We’ll be ready for them next time.
She turned to ask her Senior Captain about the best way to bombard the planet but she never got her question out. A sudden sense of concern through her telepathic link with one of her captains stopped her short. Straining her mind, she tried to find the captain. After a brief struggle, she realized it was one of the frigate captains her Senior Captain had suggested she send out to patrol the outer system. He was almost a light hour away so his thoughts were hard to discern. One thought was easy to pick up though, something was wrong. Very wrong. The captain wasn’t just scared of a few missiles. Something big had his attention.
Hack’tar looked back to the alien world. She wanted to destroy it. Yet prudence suggested she stop her advance. She had already been surprised once in this system; she didn’t want it to happen again. Despite what her head told her, she hesitated to give the order. She could almost taste the joy it would give her to see the alien world covered in mushroom clouds. The satisfaction of repaying the aliens for destroying her ships would be delightful. It was hard to turn away from such desires. You are responsible for your mother’s fleet, she reminded herself. Reluctantly, she let her desires dissipate. “The fleet will decelerate,” she sent to her captains.
A wave of conflicting emotions followed her command, most captains didn’t understand it. Hack’tar simply repeated her order and cut her telepathic link to her main fleet. Instead she focused on the frigate captain. Without any distractions, she could access more of his mind. Quickly, she found the source of his concern. His ship was picking up a strange reading on the edge of the system. It was at the end of an unknown shift passage. Enemy reinforcements, Hack’tar thought uncertainly. Her scouts had informed her the aliens she had been sent to cleanse only inhabited three worlds, none of them were in the direction that the shift passage led to. Reinforcements didn’t make sense. Yet her captain had to be concerned about something.
Her thoughts were cut off when the frigate captain’s concern surged. A massive shift drive footprint had just been detected by his ship. Normally a ship could only detect another exiting shift space if it was within a few light seconds of the exit point. Yet the frigate was at least twenty light seconds away from the anomaly.
Seconds later hundreds of contacts were picked up by her flagship’s sensors. All of them were accelerating into the system towards the world Hack’tar had been about to attack. Then a single contact peeled away from the large fleet and turned onto an intercept course for the frigate.
Hack’tar felt the frigate captain begin to give orders for detailed sensor data to be transmitted to her flagship. His order was never completed. Someone shouted about an energy spike and then Hack’tar’s connection to her captain was cut off.
Having already ended her link to her other captains, Hack’tar was momentarily left alone with her thoughts. She hadn’t got a firm fix on the number of alien ships, but there had been a lot of them. At least two hundred. Moreover, they had been a different design than those she had already fought. That suggested they were from another species. A species I know nothing about. Before today, she would not have feared such a development. Yet the species she had come to cleanse had showed her that it was possible for her ships to be destroyed. She was fighting opponents who were almost her equals. I only have one choice. We must pull back. We need more intelligence.
Opening up her mind, she connected herself to her captains. Quickly she filled them in on what had happened and her decision to pull back. They could assess the situation and attack again once they were sure of victory.
When her Captains’ emotions told her they agreed with her decision Hack’tar felt reassured. That feeling increased even more when she looked at Purity’s gravimetric sensors. There were two hundred and twenty new contacts accelerating into the system and they were moving fast. Very fast. Their acceleration rates were nearly fifty percent higher than her fastest ships could produce.
“Can we escape?” she asked.
“It depends on what their maximum velocity is,” her Senior Captain replied.
Hack’tar let out a growl of frustration. She had never faced an enemy she didn’t know before. She had no idea how they had known to come to the aid of the species she was about to cleanse. They must have some kind of relationship, she concluded. When we first attacked their outlying system, they sent for help.
Twenty minutes later it became clear her fleet wasn’t going to escape. As well as having higher acceleration rates, the alien fleet could maintain a velocity of 0.68c, well above her fleet’s maximum of 0.56c.
“Our priority must be to get you to safety my Queen,” Hack’tar’s Senior Captain said. “Given their superior acceleration rates and maximum velocity we must assume their ships are more powerful than those we have fought today. We cannot risk you in such an engagement.
“What are you suggesting?”
“We must split our fleet. The majority of our ships can engage this new threat. That will delay them long enough for you to escape.”
Hack’tar thought about protesting. Instead she analyzed her Captain’s suggestion. Given the arrival of this new threat, it was the only real option open to her. She certainly didn’t intend to risk her own life in a battle in which the outcome was unsure. She was too important. “So be it,” she said. “You may split the fleet as you see fit and transmit the new orders.”
Three hundred ships stayed with her flagship while four hundred turned and moved towards the new alien fleet. An hour later, both fleets engaged each other. Hack’tar was horrified by the results. The alien fleet cut through her ships with ease. They suffered losses as well, but the battle was an utter defeat for her fleet. It was by far the largest defeat the Flex-aor had ever suffered. Not one ship survived the fourth alien missile salvo. In return, the aliens lost eighty ships.
Almost as soon as the battle was over, the alien fleet split up. Most of the ships moved towards the system’s inhabited world, whilst a small squadron turned onto an intercept course with her fleet.
“They cannot defeat us with that force, they must intend to follow us,” her Senior Captain said. He did well at hiding his shock at witnessing such a crushing defeat, yet Hack’tar could feel it in his emotions. “We can’t lead them back to our homeworld. If this species has more ships, they would threaten our hatcheries.”
That thought sent a shiver through Hack’tar. Her mind almost refused to comprehen
d such an idea. Never before had the Flex-aor homeworlds been threatened. Yet her Captain was right. If two hundred of these alien ships could defeat four hundred of her ships, what could a thousand or two thousand alien ships do?
I cannot lead them home. But then what should I do? Her grin reappeared when she had an idea. There was somewhere else she could take her fleet. She would be walking into a completely unknown situation. But if her sister was still alive, then she would be leading this new alien fleet into a trap. And if she wasn’t, then she could take out two threats by encouraging them to fight one another. Yes, we will make for Qura-rnt’s staging planet, she decided.
Chapter 1
The Human species has gone through many diverse forms of democratic and authoritarian regimes in its history. In every case, the unrelenting rise of the bureaucratic tide has threatened to drown them all. The Governments of the First Galactic Expansion Era were no exception, they suffered from the same dangers the Romans faced two millennia before them.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.
UNS Golden Hind, X-38 system. 3rd May 2478 AD.