Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  “On behalf of Harrison’s World,” Olivia said, “I can say we have no desire to rush things. And I don’t care who overthrows the AIs, so long as it’s done.”

  There was nothing like a near-death experience or two to get people cooperating, Jared thought. “So, we’ll need to leave some people here when we go back to Avalon. Specifically, we need a senior Fleet officer to command Boxer Station.”

  Kelsey nodded her agreement. “I realize you have Captain Black, but he’s going to have his hands full. And, until I know you better, I want someone I know to be in charge.”

  She turned to Commander Meyer and pointed her finger at him. “Poof, you’re a Commodore. Welcome to command of Boxer Station and the system space of Harrison’s World.”

  Jared enjoyed how the newly promoted officer’s eyes bugged out. It was nice to watch his sister roll over someone else for a change.

  “Wait a minute!” the flabbergasted officer said. “I’m not even cleared for duty. I was relieved and charged with a whole host of crimes.”

  “I hereby dismiss those charges,” Jared said. “The doctors will get you cleared for duty long before we’re ready to go. And you’ll be able to get your implants done, too.

  “I’ll solve one of my headaches by leaving you the senior officers from Spear and Shadow. You know them best and they won’t have problems working for you. And, of course, plenty of men and women to fill out your work rosters.”

  Jared turned to Olivia while Meyer mentally floundered around. “Once we’re certain we have all the data we can get off the system AI, we’ll wipe it and rebuild the personality with uncorrupted code. It will be able to run the station and probably increase the efficiency of the construction bays in getting our ships fixed.”

  “I’m sure Captain Black would like a look at both the hardware and software before you do that,” she said. “At some point, we may want to build more. To fight the AIs, we might need some of our own.”

  “Speaking of parity,” Kelsey said, “I need to bring up a touchy subject. I haven’t been here long, but I can see that the Rebel Empire has a well-defined caste system. That comes from the AIs and it has to go. The built in discrimination has to stop.”

  Lord Hawthorne sighed. “We know. Changing it wasn’t an option before you came. And, having met you has brought just how deeply ingrained it is into stark relief. We’ll lean heavily on Commodore Meyer and his people to point out where we need to change and take steps. It can start with universal implants.”

  Olivia nodded vigorously. “First, we need to start getting people’s existing implants updated before they learn what’s really going on and the AI code makes them start fighting us. Then we will begin making civilian implants available to everyone.”

  “The senior military officers come first,” Lord Hawthorne agreed. “Then the other council members. As we clear the top people, they’ll smooth the way for doing their subordinates. By the time you’re ready to return home, we should be secure. Other than Captain Black, only the people in this room know your secret.”

  “Then we can begin the process of making implants universally available,” Olivia said. “The plans for the normal civilian models are in the computer at the Grant Research Facility. We can get production lines set up for both versions. We can have spare equipment built for you by the time your ships are ready to travel.

  “We also examined the small, computer-controlled weapons platforms. They were definitely built by human beings, but not on Harrison’s World.”

  “We actually found the construction facility,” Jared said. “It’s on Boxer Station. It looks as though the AI forced the Fleet engineering people to design and build them for it. Thankfully, it wasn’t automated or there might have been even more of the damned things. That said, I’m considering how we might be able to use something like them in the future. I hate losing marines. A wave of these up front might save a lot of lives. I’ll see that you get plans for them, too.”

  “What about the Raider implants and equipment?” Kelsey asked. “Can Grant build those?”

  “Maybe,” Olivia said. “Now that you have the full specs, it’s at least possible. They’d certainly help make a difference with the Marines. That’s something to talk with Captain Black about. He’s already made a lot of progress in mass production of civilian grade medical nanites. He expects to have Fleet grade ones very soon.”

  “Are those the same as what I have?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No. He’s already found the ones used by the Raiders are significantly more advanced. More powerful and more capable. Those will take more study.”

  “Ned tells me they were fairly new in his time,” Kelsey said. “Top of the line gear.”

  “Captain Black thought so, too. He’s adjusting the process and may very well have something worked out by the time you’re ready to depart.

  “And speaking of departing, when you go, I’d like to send William with you as our representative to the Imperial Senate and the head of our delegation.”

  Kelsey looked around, satisfied. “That sounds perfect. We don’t have a crisis in sight. I’m seeing smooth sailing all the way home!”

  Jared wished he shared her optimism. If the last year had been anything to go by, something else would come out of nowhere to bite them in the ass. And, of course, he’d have to deal with the fallout of what they’d done. And his homicidal half-brother that was certain he was out to steal the Throne.

  Well, that trouble was for another day. He stood, refilled his glass, and then topped off everyone else.

  “Everyone,” he said solemnly, “I give you the Empire. May she triumph over her enemies.”

  The rest of them climbed to their feet and raised their glasses.

  Do you want Terry to email you when he publishes a new book or when one goes on sale? Go to TerryMixon.com and sign up. Those are the only times he’ll contact you. No spam.

  Continue on to read the first chapter of Paying the Price, Book Five in The Empire of Bones Saga.

  Works by Terry Mixon

  The Empire of Bones Saga

  Empire of Bones

  Veil of Shadows

  Command Decisions

  Ghosts of Empire

  Paying the Price (May 2016)

  The Humanity Unlimited Saga

  Liberty Station

  The Freedom Express (February 2016)

  Anthologies Terry Has Work In

  Dirty Magick: Los Angeles

  Dirty Magick: New Orleans

  The adventure continues in Book Five of The Empire of Bones Saga, coming in May 2016.

  Paying the Price

  “Admiral, do you have a few minutes?”

  Jared Mertz looked up groggily from his lunch in the officers’ mess to find Doctor Jerry Leonard standing beside his table. The fog of exhaustion that hung over him had dulled his edge. It seemed like a year since he’d slept for as long as he’d wanted. Or needed.

  He gestured for the man to join him. “Certainly. Pull up a chair and order something to eat.”

  The older man sat down somewhat primly. “I had something in the lab an hour ago. I’d like to take one more shot at traversing the weak flip point before we pull out.”

  The strange variants of the standard flip points were new to all of them and the scientists were still struggling to understand them. Some were so small as to only allow one-way passage. Others were just hard to find, but two-way. They knew so little about them.

  The one in the Harrison’s World system had eaten every probe they’d sent into it. Not one had returned. Not even when programmed to instantly make the transit back.

  Of course, no enemy had followed them home, so that was good news. It was probably natural. Perhaps this flip point was one-way for even the smallest vessels.

  The first one they’d discovered linked an unnamed system outside the new Terran Empire with what they now called the Courageous system. It had been a cul-de-sac neighboring the Kingdom of Pentagar. They’d found th
e derelict Old Empire battlecruiser Courageous there.

  The weak flip point there allowed any ship to come from the new Terran Empire side, but only probes to return. Doctor Leonard hypothesized that might mean that there was more than one possible destination from the Pentagaran side. Perhaps from both sides. Who knew?

  A novel theory, but one they had yet to test. The scientists were still trying to figure out how that would even work.

  “The fleet is performing the final checks before we leave for Pentagar,” Jared said. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

  “This won’t take long. We’ve devised a new probe. Well, actually, we built one that looks like Frankenstein’s monster. The core is a standard probe, but we added on a battle screen generator and a power system from one of the defunct war machines. We even added a second flip capacitor.

  “If the environment on the other side of the flip point is hostile—which at this point seems a given—that should allow it time to return with some readings. We’d like your permission to send it through.”

  Jared shrugged. “Why not? Let me wrap up my lunch and I’ll join you on the flag bridge. Say fifteen minutes?”

  The scientist beamed. “Thank you, Admiral.”

  Jared wrapped up his lunch and returned to the bustling flag bridge. Over the last few months, he’d selected a full-time staff of officers to assist him in commanding the fleet he’d assembled. They sat at their stations all around the circumference of the large control center, monitoring the preparations for departure.

  No one called out when he entered the bridge. That had been one tradition he was happy to dispense with. Everyone had work to do. They didn’t need to waste time announcing his arrival.

  He sat at his console. It swept a full 270º around his command chair, giving him the ability to multitask like nobody’s business. It had taken him months to get fully accustomed to it, but now he was thrilled at how much data he could keep track of at once.

  He pulled a headset from the niche in his console and slipped it on. His implants could interface without it, but the headset allowed for much greater data throughput. When linked to his flagship, the superdreadnought Invincible, he could access anything at lightning speed and in great detail.

  Part of his attention went to the scanner readings. They floated along in a wide orbit around Boxer Station. They’d captured the Old Empire Fleet base from the AI ruling this system in the name of the Rebel Empire.

  They’d come here to rescue the surviving Fleet crew from the heavy cruiser Spear. He’d had no choice. If the Rebel Empire had learned of the new Terran Empire, death would’ve been certain.

  The cost to defeat the AI had been ruinously high. They’d found Invincible repaired and ready to fight. The battle had reduced it to a hobbling wreck, right along with Courageous. More than half his people had died in the fighting.

  Spear’s commanding officer, Captain Wallace Breckenridge, had arrived at Pentagar with a heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and three destroyers. After all the terrible strategic and tactical blunders the man had made—before and after he’d mutinied against Princess Kelsey—he’d lost all of them except the destroyers Ginnie Dare and New York. Ginnie Dare died in the last gasps of crushing the AIs forces and rescuing their captured people.

  Harrison’s World had suffered, too. Rebel Empire loyalists had detonated nuclear bomb-pumped lasers on the surface of the planet to destroy stations the AI had in orbit to suppress them. And to attack Invincible. Civilian losses were in the tens of millions and they were still struggling to help the injured.

  That titanic fight had taken place four months ago. Since then, they’d gotten Boxer Station’s construction bays back online and repaired Invincible and Courageous. They’d also fixed the battlecruiser Scott Pond and a number of other vessels. Including the Marine Raider ship Persephone.

  The thought of that odd ship made him smile. The ship’s computer only recognized Marine Raiders as potential command personnel. That meant Princess Kelsey Bandar, since no one else had the implants it required. His sister was his political superior, but also a captain under his authority. That was also taking some getting used to.

  The fleet he was taking back to Erorsi, Pentagar, and the new Terran Empire consisted of a superdreadnought, a Fleet carrier, four battlecruisers, six heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and a dozen destroyers. It also had six collier vessels with extra missiles and supplies, four Marine troop transports, six fast couriers built for speed, and Persephone.

  Most of those ships were severely undermanned and only marginally functional. Not even Boxer Station’s construction bays could perform miracles. They took in battered wrecks and repaired the critical systems. The rest would need to happen by hand, because there was an almost unending line of derelicts waiting their turn.

  They’d brought more people in from Pentagar and Erorsi, but that barely made a dent in their needs. They’d even begun careful, limited recruiting from Harrison’s World. They had to be certain those people were trustworthy before they told them the truth about the Rebel Empire.

  Even understrength, those ships represented more fighting power than the rest of the new Terran Empire. Hell, Invincible alone could conquer the home fleet. The rest was overkill.

  They also had a dozen Fleet transports and an upgraded cruise liner to carry civilians. Best Deal, the freighter that had housed their scientists, was far too slow to keep up. They’d be leaving her here.

  Captain Anton Keller, Best Deal’s civilian skipper, was thrilled with the larger and much faster ship Jared had given him. It had military grade defenses, systems, and engines. It also carried three times more cargo than his old ship. He’d lost no time renaming her Best Deal II.

  It amazed Jared that they’d been able to repair so many badly damaged ships in such a short time.

  This wouldn’t have been possible without the oversight of the rebuilt AI they’d beaten. Carl Owlet had used the clean code they’d used for Invincible’s AI to make a new personality that would be loyal to humanity and the Empire. It was able to juggle all the aspects of repairing all the ships in the bays much better than a human team could have.

  Now they were ready to go home. With the three flip blockers the scientists at the Grant Research facility had built, they could lock down Harrison’s World, Pentagar, and Erorsi from Rebel Empire incursions. Except for when they needed to perform maintenance on them.

  Commodore Sean Meyer had two battlecruisers, two heavy cruisers, and six destroyers to guard Harrison’s World. He’d work hand-in-hand with Coordinator Olivia West to ease the planet into the new Terran Empire without letting most of the people know about the change in management.

  Someday, the general population would learn the truth. Just not right now.

  Pentagar was getting the same number of ships. They’d travel back with Jared and he’d have a handover ceremony when they passed through. They would watch over the base on Erorsi, too, until more ships arrived.

  By his best guess, it would take six months to work out the final repairs on all the ships in his fleet. It would take even longer to get them fully manned with trained, enhanced personnel. He shuddered to think about how long it would take to work through the remaining tens of thousands of derelicts.

  They’d brought the mines in the asteroid belt back online, reestablished the automated fabrication units, and had a unit to disassemble ships too badly wrecked to fly again. They called it the breaker. It salvaged what parts it could and melted the rest down. The critical and rare elements went into new parts.

  The crew also determined if a ship was salvageable before sending it to the construction bays. They pulled the dead from the wrecks and sealed them in body bags. If the medical teams could reactivate the person’s implants, they made note of their names and copied the data stored in implant memory.

  The cargo holds on one of the transports held the tens of thousands of bodies they’d recovered so far. And that was only off a couple of dozen ships. Flee
t was going to have to come up with a new means of burying their honored dead. The Spire couldn’t hold the many millions of corpses in these ships.

  The lift doors slid open and Doctor Leonard walked onto the bridge. Kelsey was with him.

  She smiled at Jared. “I hear we’re about to go exploring.”

  * * * * *

  Kelsey eyed her brother critically from behind her cheerful expression. He looked exhausted. That was understandable. He’d been putting in routine fourteen-hour days for the last four months.

  She’d tried to put her foot down and discovered there were some things she couldn’t order him to do. She shuddered to think about how he’d have been without teams of people working behind the scenes to take tasks off his plate.

  Maybe once they started back toward Avalon he’d get some rest.

  “I don’t think exploring is quite the right word. We’re only sending a probe. Another probe, actually. This makes what? Eight?”

  “Nine,” Doctor Leonard said. “Perhaps we’ll get this one back. If not, we’ll have to consider what we missed on the long trip home.”

  “And we’re leaving on time,” Jared said sternly. “We have sixteen hours. Any more than that and you’re out of luck.”

  “I’m quite sure that we won’t need that long. Either this will work or it won’t. I took the liberty of sending the probe out earlier today. We can signal it whenever you’re ready.”

  She linked her implants to Invincible’s scanners. The weak flip point was only fifteen minutes away by light speed. She saw the system layout in her mind and the delayed readings from the probe.

  Kelsey had been working hard over the last few months and had mastered the basic operation of her implants. She could now process data almost as quickly as it came in. Using the processors in her head to spin off tasks was becoming second nature. She’d even gotten used to the ghostly voice of Ned Quincy in her mind.