As one, thrusters at maximum, my fleet surged to meet Solara’s main battlegroup.
I switched to the comm I had used to talk to Solara, hoping she might still be listening. “Let’s see if you have the guts to fight me face-to-face, Sol.” I had intended for my voice to be neutral, but instead it came out cold and hard.
Solara’s voice sounded in my ear alone. “Nev, you do know how grateful I am, don’t you? Your naïveté has made all this possible, and now you’re letting me wrap it up so neatly. I truly appreciate how cooperative you are.”
I swallowed my anger. She wasn’t necessarily wrong. I had been her tool since I’d brought Qole to the palace, perfectly executing every step she needed to ascend to power. And it was possible I was being her tool even now, leading us to complete destruction.
But then, all those times, she had also relied on my goodwill. She had depended on that as a weakness, exploiting my loved ones against me. Only now, she was the one threatening them, and she was about to learn what it meant to be the enemy.
On the holo-map, the blue shapes of my fleet surged forward, starfighters streaming first. We were a laughably small stone being thrown into a crashing red wave, a wave that immediately swarmed to engulf us from behind.
Starfighters engaged in duels. The first missiles began to sprinkle out in the distance ahead, even as Solara’s starfighters came in behind us, sweeping through the construction docks to attack our rear.
The construction docks, beneath which the twenty destroyers under the command of Talia and Gavros coasted, signals masked under low power.
They still shouldn’t have been impossible to detect, but I had counted on the hubris of my sister—that she’d never considered that Talia and Gavros would go up against such odds, that they hadn’t used their Belarius Drives to flee. What vessels Solara’s sensors had seen against the structures had been assumed to be part of our mounting casualties.
Our main force swiveled on its axis, yawning wildly to reverse course in the vacuum of space. The blue fist that had just hurtled toward its death now doubled back, careening toward the docks, and closed a trap on the bulk of Solara’s fighters coming at us from behind.
Fire lanes came alive as Talia’s and Gavros’s hidden fleet of destroyers opened fire with razor precision, their placement coming into devastating effect. My own fleet fired from the other side, pinning Solara’s fighters between us. They were shredded.
“Four hundred forty-five enemy starfighters out of a thousand remaining,” Aris informed me.
That was when the might of Solara’s full battlegroup struck.
Between her fleet and a planet, among endless construction docks, we made our stand. Rippling photon fire came in staggered waves, and on the other side of those hulls, crews worked to layer shield types. Laser fire appeared in steady pulses, their dots of energy looking harmless until shields flickered out of life, their generators overloaded and offline. Starfighters corkscrewed and pivoted in mad patterns among wreckage. The Valtai construction docks were our floating armor.
I could only imagine how Makar felt about this. Solara was the one inflicting the most damage, and she was evidently willing to dare the Treznor-Nirmana fleet to engage or stay neutral. But there was no communication from the planet. It was as though the entire population was hushed, watching the horrific light show above with bated breath, while we fought like wild animals.
Solara’s specialized EMP destroyers sailed into the battle last, the three-tine design of their hull constructed to unleash powerful bursts of electromagnetic pulses without disabling themselves. We were prepared for that, but these were brand-new ships; we quickly learned that our new Treznor equipment was more sensitive to EMP blasts than the previous generation they’d sold my family. Five of our destroyers immediately flashed as foundering on my screen, and then her destroyers finished them off with rapid fire. Gas leaked out in plumes, missiles exploded in patterns along their shieldless hulls, and escape pods ejected in hope.
My hands moved through the holo-map of their own accord, highlighting targets, drawing fleet maneuvers. Faces flicked in and out of my periphery, people asking questions and updating situations. The expressions of those around me changed as the battle continued, although I couldn’t place what it was. I ignored it; there was no time to ponder. I acted.
If our ships had weaknesses, they also had strengths. Our weapons inflicted more damage, their range greater. And Gavros learned those differences with the speed of a lifetime of practice. He countered, coordinating brilliant cross-fire patterns with Talia, annihilating the enemy EMP destroyers while staying out of their range.
In all of this, the Volassa hung back. Solara had seen one trap close and wasn’t about to let it happen twice. A ship like the Volassa had fallen out of favor because of the specialized, directional nature of its weaponry, but to Solara’s credit she used it perfectly. She circled the battle, and any time one of my ships strayed too far, the Volassa picked them off hungrily, making short work of anything in range. She was waiting for the rest of my fleet to thin sufficiently, for the DFS Devrak to founder, so she could move in, mop us up with overwhelming firepower. Because in the end, we were still pinned and trapped.
Or at least, we looked that way as I waited for the last pieces I had on the board to fall into place. Either my entire gambit was about to succeed, or I would simply be a footnote in the history books.
I couldn’t resist flipping open the comm once more. “Father did always tell us to beware the unexpected stroke.”
Solara laughed sincerely in response. “He was terrible at following his own advice, wasn’t he? And this?” The Volassa rolled lazily to bring its guns to bear fully on the Devrak. “I love surprises, but I’m afraid this isn’t one.” The line went dead.
“Take us directly at the Volassa; try to keep most of her destroyers to our starboard side,” I ordered my XO.
Aris looked at me for a moment, her jaw working a little like she was weighing me, figuring out if I’d allow my XO to question me.
But in the end, it seemed I had earned her trust, because she didn’t voice the question and instead passed on my command. Energy feeds surging, cores at maximum, the Devrak shifted toward the Volassa, forward batteries spouting energy and flame. The rest of my fleet followed, but we would face the brunt, leading the charge. As we pulled away from the protection of the ruined docks, Solara’s forces took their chance, starfighters flickering across the viewscreen like a meteor storm. The bridge went red; damage reports flashed.
“Sector G shields down!”
Armor peeled away in layers; gouts of oxygen streamed into space like blood. Without regard for our own safety, without places to duck and weave and hide, we took heavier damage, and other ships in the fleet began to go down. Now, including Talia’s and Gavros’s forces, we had three battle carriers, twenty-six destroyers, two hundred fighters. Still we pressed on toward the Volassa like a battering ram, increasing thrust while her destroyers threw everything they had at our broad starboard side, still facing them.
“Life support and weapon systems failing in starboard levels twelve through fourteen,” Aris reported.
“Order evacuation or escape pods in those areas,” I responded. Three battle carriers, nineteen destroyers, one hundred seventy-two starfighters. The Devrak could take it. Our fleet would. We could take it. We had to.
“In the end, you still just want to punch things.” Solara sighed in my ear. “Some plan.”
No, I replied silently. This is. And, as her fleet swarmed us, as we accepted all the damage they could throw, I sent a last encrypted message to the Kaitan.
The Kaitan hurtled from lower orbit, trailing atmospheric fire as it shot into the battle, skimming up the port side of our fleet, using our ships as cover. Arjan was at the helm, but this was no Shadow run. Accelerating to near maximum speed, far faster than anyone in the
ir right mind would ever dare approach the chaos, Arjan threaded his family’s ship through the wreckage of docks, between exploding destroyers, and alongside streamers of plasma following the path we had just cut for him. Like a streak of Shadow itself, the Kaitan flowed along the surface of the Devrak, skirting the mayhem of the battle, leaping straight for the Volassa.
The entire Alaxan fleet followed suit.
We were the shield, but they were the sword. This had been the hardest decision of all, placing Qole, helpless, not just into battle but into the worst of it.
But loving someone didn’t mean protecting them. It meant being willing to risk your life for something you believed to be greater. It was a choice we all had made, Qole more than any other, and in such moments I understood the razor balance between sacrifice and love like two edges of the same knife. My father had lost sight of one side, had forgotten—or never known—that to take on the burden of sacrificing others for your belief, it had to come from a place of love.
The Kaitan was what we needed; without them, we stood no chance. But my heart, and my hopes, flew with it.
If the Alaxans had been bold enough not to blink at this suicide run, the Swarm seemed eager to prove themselves equally extreme. As the Alaxan vessels swooped in, one could see the Swarm in their battle suits, attached like fleas to the hulls of the ships. As each fishing vessel surged by the Volassa, the Swarm launched into space at the last possible second, trailing cables from each ship’s Shadow net. They connected with the Volassa’s armored hull one after another like a meteor shower, reverse mag-fields in their suits to cushion their landing.
The Swarm was geared for surface combat, so that was what we used them for. Moving with the speed of veterans, they deployed a series of mines—those originally intended to blow up the fleet I was now leading—and then were hoisted away by the attached cable. Left behind were the interlocked charges, blinking merrily.
EMP bursts spread first, disabling systems inside the Volassa, and then the thermic blasts fired, with massive explosions followed by billowing gouts of boiling gas across the hull of the Volassa, destroying shield emitters and armor.
A different commander would have allowed the ship to absorb the damage, in the hopes that the rest of the fleet would lend aid, or that their superior firepower would win out. But it would be a gamble, and I was betting that Solara was not a gambler with her own life. The Alaxans, Qole’s crew, my troops, and I were all willing to lay down our lives for a cause larger than ourselves.
Solara’s only interest was herself. The Volassa’s engines burned brightly as she engaged maximum thrust, and she fled.
The shock of Volassa leaving battle rippled through her forces. Battle carriers diverted, fighter squadrons wheeled to try to catch up. Our forces followed, leaping hungrily on the confused and redeploying forces. Chaos settled into enemy formations as they tried to repel unexpected attacks from multiple quadrants, and conflicting orders sounded. Solara’s lines buckled.
And among the chaos, the Swarm feasted. Using the Alaxan ships as launching pads, they attached themselves to wounded or unsuspecting ships and deployed hundreds more charges. In a matter of minutes, three battle carriers and a half-dozen destroyers paid the price for their collapsing order.
I tried not to think about an errant burst obliterating the Kaitan. About Qole, unconscious. I had to trust Arjan, trust him to do the right thing by his sister. I had to trust in her to come back. And I had to trust in myself to keep leading if she didn’t.
“Now, that’s a relief,” Aris said by my side.
I nodded with a composure I didn’t entirely feel. “Indeed. Now we might actually stand a chance.”
A message blinked insistently on my holodesk in my office on the Volassa. I knew who it was from. It was perfectly timed to my hour of need, as if coming to my rescue. But I didn’t want to be rescued. I didn’t want to be running. I still couldn’t believe I was running.
If Nev had stood in front of me, I would have torn his guts out with both hands. And Qole…
I didn’t know if I wanted to destroy her, or be her. The Shadow, the raw power she had wielded at the start of this encounter, not to mention how she had flown the Kaitan since, had left me awed, jealous, and quite unsettled. I did not like feeling unsettled.
“Your Majesty, shall we engage our Belarius Drive and signal retreat for the fleet?” The captain of this ship, General Illia Faetora, came in over a vid comm, her lined, angular face unmarked by panic or fear, though her tone conveyed a more significant gravity than usual. I had hardly felt the vibrations in here, but my ship had nearly been lost.
“No,” I said. “Aren’t we just pulling back to reassess the situation?”
The message light still blinked at me, as if waving for attention. I tried to ignore it. The lights of the intense firefight going on in space between Nev’s and my forces, flaring on my feed, was somehow less of a distraction, and Devrak’s corpse still at my feet—I would have to wait for Suvis to return to take care of it, to limit the questions—was the least of my concerns.
“But it may be best to have a contingency plan in place, in case—”
“We are not retreating,” I snapped. “Do I need to make that an order?”
“No, Your Majesty. Copy that. I’ll reposition the fleet, allowing for our current losses.”
“Yes, yes.” I threw myself back in my chair as I closed the comm line. Repositioning. That was all this was. Maneuvering for a better angle at Nev’s jugular vein.
But part of me knew better. This was a turning point in the battle, and it might have just turned the wrong way for me.
I told myself not to look at the waiting message, but I did anyway. The light winked at me, its gaze warm, not hostile. That was worse. With a sigh that was a half-snarl low in my throat, I finally clicked it open. It was a video message, which my holodesk translated into a three-dimensional image of Heathran.
Heathran kneeling. Normally, the sight would have filled me with pleasure: king of kings, head of a galactic empire, on his knees before me…but I knew what this was. And that, if I yielded, I would be the one kneeling to him.
“Solara, queen of my heart,” Heathran began, and I suppressed a grimace. He couldn’t see me, since it was only a recording, but I was in the habit. “There is nowhere I would rather be than at your side, especially during your time of greatest need. Politics forbids it, but there is a way for me to take your side and the systems couldn’t question it.”
Here we go.
Heathran’s eyes seemed to meet mine, even though the time lag made that impossible. “Marry me. Be my wife, and I will defend you and your family to the death. Because then your family will be mine, and mine yours. Belarius-Dracorte would be an alliance—no, a union—to surpass any other in the history of our systems.”
To surpass Treznor-Nirmana, he meant. I noticed that he didn’t put the Dracorte name first, as Treznor had. The most powerful, dominant family would of course come first. The kneeling, on my part, would begin.
And so would the weakening of our line.
“In a breath, in a single word,” he continued, as if sensing my resistance—though he could never have imaged the extent, “you could turn your entire civil war into a minor annoyance, the childish tantrum of an upstart sibling. With Belarius behind your half of the Dracorte family, we will render your brother insignificant.”
With me, he was saying, you will be significant. As if I weren’t already, without him. I relaxed my jaw when I felt my teeth grinding together.
“Marry me,” he repeated, “and I will make all your problems vanish. Together, we will remake the systems how we see fit.”
I didn’t want him to make all my problems vanish. I wanted to reduce them to ash on my own. I wanted to remake the systems as I saw fit, starting with my family.
Not that a subtler approach would be
foolish. Conserving resources by abandoning this war would certainly be the wiser choice for me…but far less satisfying. And perhaps not wise or satisfying if the only way for me to do so was through Heathran.
He still wasn’t finished, and took a deep breath. “To prove my devotion to you and the ideal of us, I’ll show you something that no one outside my innermost circle of advisors has seen, and certainly no one on the King’s Council.”
That succeeded in gaining my full attention, like he knew it would. I had always rather liked being on the inside of secrets, and Heathran was perceptive enough to recognize that. I blinked and sat up straighter, while Heathran, without standing, waved his hand—probably over an infopad out of sight on the floor beside him. A holographic image sprang into the air nearby. I was seeing a holograph of a holograph, but the picture was still clear.
It was a planet, dark gray with a cracked and cratered surface. It looked lifeless and cold—no planet I could recall seeing before.
“This is Nexral, at the edge of our system, which is in turn at the edge of the galaxy. It is extremely isolated, uninhabited, and, without extreme terraforming, unable to support life. It was largely ignored by my family…until recently.”
At a gesture from him, our view of the planet’s surface grew large. There, I saw signs of human contact, construction…excavation.
“As part of a routine search for new and valuable minerals to mine, samples were drilled from Nexral, and therein we found what we at first couldn’t believe.” Heathran leaned closer, urgent. “It is Shadow, Solara, but like none we’ve ever seen. It’s refined, plentiful, and completely tied to the planet’s organic composition, but in such a concentrated state that it would take us an age to exhaust it all…an age that, for the systems, could be revolutionary. It doesn’t need to be to bound to biomatter like algae to be usable—it already is—and it contains five times the energy of an equivalent amount of raw Shadow.”
He held up a hand, as if to forestall the fury bubbling and burning under my skin. “I do not wish to compete with your production of Shadow as a usable fuel. Rather than rivalry, I see cooperation between our families, a combination of resources that could create untold growth for both of us. It would take us years before we could invent the technology to utilize our discovery. I just want you to know that Alaxak doesn’t have to be your only source of Shadow—you can leave Nevarian his frozen rock. My family is most concerned with creating the new engines that would be powered by your new fuel, or this more refined form of Shadow that we’ve found. Together, our families—our family, if you so desire—could secure our place as the preeminent leader of the systems without question or rival for many ages to come.”
Shadow Call Page 33