by Scott Warren
"Call to bearing!"
Sothcide wasn’t sure who shouted the order, but every crewmate and officer on the flight deck snapped straight as an arrow, right hand across belly and left across the small of the back in the traditional salute. Wing Commander Vehl Ku had entered the deck through the magnetic lift as it hummed gently down to seal with the gravity plating beneath. She had switched her formal uniform for one of war, with a long silk shawl buckled about her shoulders patterned after the southern reefs of Maeyar.
"Stand at ease," she said, eye on Sothcide. She nodded to her husband on top of one of the launch coil capacitors before handing Sothcide a docket of paperwork. "Your orders and stratagem. Long-range sensors have identified a displacement of several ships outside of their line. Yadus wants Arda to push up toward Juna, draw them into a fight while we drift outside the moon and wait to join battle at a full burn run. As soon as we strike, her forces will withdraw in the confusion to avoid being drawn in by the main body of their defense fleet."
Sothcide looked at the diagrams, committing the timing, positioning, and astrogational distances to memory. "A quick strike to blunt the tip of their spear when it comes. Do we know the nature of the target?"
"Juna tends to throw off sensors, but the gravitic distortions suggest three light cruisers and a battleship. Gavisar vessels are heavily armed and armored, but sluggish. And if the report of your human captain is to be believed, they should be damaged to some degree already. They have no logistics train here, we are targeting engine linkages, propulsion shrouding, anything that cannot be fixed without the aid of a shipyard."
"What of the ships trailing the magnetic tethers that Victoria reported? A dozen fighters could make quick work of many of them."
Vehl Ku’s proboscis wagged at him. "Greedy. They are not our priority. Stick to what the Wing Admiral ordered. Are you ready, Wing Officer?"
Dipping down into orbit would have given him an opportunity to locate the human warriors, though he did not know which ship they had landed upon and by all accounts the number had grown to nearly 1400 vessels. Still, he had their communication protocol and an opportunity might yet yield itself. Sothcide saluted once more. "I stand ready, Wing Commander."
Vehl returned the salute, if lazily. "Good. Allow me to introduce your second."
She gestured, and a younger pilot nearby jogged up in his flight suit. He had the lightest skin Sothcide had ever seen, likely a Pedres native.
"Wing Officer Allid. With the Senior Wing Officer’s unfortunate fall, seniority now falls to him. But he lacks experience against the Homeworld Defense Fleet, which is why I requested you. Allid will lead the second wing, four additional squadrons to apply pressure where you see fit."
Allid offered his hand, and Sothcide clasped his wrist in greeting, meeting his nebula-patterned eye.
"The reputation of this battlegroup’s pilots precedes it. You require little from me," said Sothcide.
"Just an exhaust trail to follow, wingboss. From what I hear of you, we’ll have to keep up full burn just to see it."
Having the Yakima’s logs and deciphering them were two separate beasts. Despite their human origin, the encryption on the data would take some time for the Condor to crack. That gave her plenty of time during the horizon jump to Gavisar to ponder over the possibilities with no way to validate her hunches. It was just another form of stealth and subterfuge the rest of the galaxy seemed to have left behind. Even the Big Three tended to use open-air communications with encryption being reserved for distress calls and position reports.
The Condor had been brought aboard the Malagath imperial yacht for the jump so that the Duchess could meet humanity, this new curiosity of the Malagath Empire. The zero-gravity cargo bay in which the Condor floated was almost the size of the Maeyar fighter decks. Victoria would just as soon have avoided contact all together, but couldn’t deny that she was curious if the minor noble was anything like the First Prince, Tavram. Her notion was dispelled as she was swept into an ostentatious throne room draped with Malagath tapestries that hung in the air without apparent suspension or power source. Her retinal implants were going crazy, marking and cataloguing bits and bobs throughout the ship.
How many humans had been aboard a Malagath vessel? A better question might be, how many left again? Several Privateer ships exploring systems near the Perseus Arm remained unaccounted for, captains on the doorstep of the Malagath Empire where Victoria had delivered the First Prince of their empire. Hope that Tavram put his brief contact with humanity to the back of his mind while he pursued peace with the Dirregaunt was quickly fading. Staring down indecisive flag officers was one thing, being in the crosshairs of one of the biggest empires to ever spread across the cosmos was another.
The duchess herself preened at the top of the throne, an array of crystals casting vibrant patterns of light across her skin as they drifted through the air near her seat. They followed her as she turned to the new arrival, as if somehow surprised by the presence of the human she herself had commanded. The blue face regarded her at the end of a long, slender neck wrapped in an intricate lattice of jeweled chains. The rest of her extremities were similarly bedecked, and unlike Tavram, who had worn the uniform of his crew, the duchess wore a shimmering dress of shifting colors.
"The human captain, Grace Tora," announced a member of her retinue as the hatch behind Victoria rolled shut. This was no combat center. The whole of the space had been designed and arrayed to meet the aesthetic demands of a single person, to display a measure of wealth and arrogance befitting Malagath imperials. Her retinal implants informed Victoria that it was not appropriate to offer a placating gesture in the presence of the duchess, which suited her fine since she seemed to be having difficulty taking her eyes from liquid crystals that formed into a faceted fluted glass in the duchess’ hand before a younger Malagath scaled the substantial height of the throne to fill it from a sealed flask.
"So you are the lesser empire captain that helped dear Tavram defeat Best Wishes. It is a shame his body could not be recovered; it would have looked a fine thing hanging from the imperial palace at Malagan. I must say, you are not as frightening as I would have expected from such a scourge of the Dirregaunt Praetory."
The corners of the duchess’ eyes tilted in a way that Victoria did not need the aid of the retinal implants’ explanation to know she was being teased. And not in a kind way.
The Duchess continued between sips of whatever liquor she was sampling. The noble was obviously exempt from the Malagath prohibition of intoxicants while serving in the fleet. Perhaps it was the fleet that was serving her. "When I heard the rumor that a human ship was among the defenders of Pedres it offered a curiosity, but when I learned it was the illustrious Victoria of Human I knew I simply must have you for myself."
As an ally or a favored pet? Neither was where Victoria would have liked to find herself. She’d come to this part of the Orion Spur specifically to avoid further engagement with the Malagath Empire and the Dirregaunt Praetory. What was Duchess Tora even doing this far from the frontier?
"Clearly the creature is confused into silence," the Duchess said to her crew in Malagath. Chittering sing-song laughter floated up to answer her.
"I was wondering," Victoria said, responding in Malagath rather than Kossovoldt, "What brought you to Pedres."
That cut the laughter fast enough. The duchess nearly dropped her glass, leaning forward. The crystals floating about her began to cast a deep scarlet light. "Those words are for we above your station. You will not profane them with your voice aboard my ship again if you wish to leave it," she hissed. She settled back, obviously agitated, and looked away from Victoria.
"The Maeyar are a curiosity of mine these few years past. I thought to offer them vassalship if they can prove their martial skill by repelling this invasion and so came to witness. But when I arrived, sensor signatures from the system you call Gavisar require my more immediate attention. Tavram spoke of the quality of your ship’s optic
s, and so you will be my eyes and alert me to danger."
More like her canary.
"I understand, Duchess. I will make ready my ship for a jump to Gavisar."
Again, the birdsong laughter from the duchess and her hangers on. "Oh I cannot leave to you such a delicate calculation. I’m told you use computers to plot your interstellar events. How barbaric. No, human, we have already made the jump. You need only rejoin your crew."
Chapter 10 – The Enemy’s Face
"I’m telling you Cohen, it was a human external comms frequency."
"Well it’s not there now. If the old lady were here she’d have signaled us as soon as she got a fix."
Aesop looked at the transceiver readout again. He’d managed to fix the equipment, or at least thought he fixed it. But if it was picking up human shipboard radios there was a chance it had gone into some sort of operational test mode using known frequencies, and if that test mode included wideband broadcasts it could potentially give away their position. He pulled up the manual on his retinal implants, but no obvious troubleshooting directive presented itself. Besides, if he could fix an alien power module he could fix a damn radio. Sometimes the world had seemed simpler when all he had to worry about were his rifle and his squad mates.
"Look," said Vega, "there it is again.’
This time Aesop caught it, that faint VHF signal with singularly human encryption. On and off again, several more times and then nothing. He waited, but it didn’t return.
"Next broadcast window is coming up, what do you want to do?" asked Vega.
"Hold off," said Aesop. "This doesn’t feel right, let’s not announce ourselves if we don’t know who all is listening." He switched channels to the squad-wide. "Singh, any xeno chatter in the last few minutes?"
"Barely any, just one broadcast on and off and it was fleet wide."
Aesop went to scratch his chin before remembering that it was behind a quarter-inch of one-way see-thru polymer. Vacuum suits were designed to be worn for a few days in the long term, but that wasn’t exactly with the user’s comfort at the forefront of the engineering. There were a few things he would have done differently if he’d been on the project team for the latest generation. Maybe if he survived being a privateer he’d go to the Earth-side factory and have a say in the next model.
"Do they match up with these timestamps?"
There was a pause as Singh compared them to the Blessing’s newly repaired onboard communications receiver. The tether couldn’t generate enough juice to jump start the main engines or maintain life support, but several of the smaller, tertiary systems drew little enough voltage to run off the roughshod electrical patch.
"Negative, they’re staggered."
Maggie Chambers floated in from where she’d been watching the fleet movements. She found a workaround to her fried radio by having the rest of the squad run a speech-to-text program in the background of their suit computers that synced via laser whenever she was in line of sight with one of the others. She caught up quickly to his line of thinking, and her ideas appearing on his retinal implants echoed his own.
A Privateer is giving fleet-wide instructions to the Gavisari.
Only one it could be. "The major warned me about this. Jones piggybacked on the horizon jump and he’s two-timing us with the invasion fleet. Singh, is the recording equipment up and running again? Playback the xeno half of that broadcast if you can, please."
"Aye, give me a moment to patch it through the box," she said. A handful of seconds later, the deep grinding Kosso Standard that the Gavisar vocal cords produced began playing back over the squad channel.
"Brothers and sisters, last Children of Gavisar, this is Fleet Admiral Raksava. A dark shadow over Gavisar ushered us here as we knew one day it must. In times past we sought to make safe this day, and were punished by betrayal so that we would not stray from the true path. Now it is known that we were not worthy to claim our promised land, and only by persevering through this trial can we begin the Second Era.
"So few of us escaped the cataclysm, we have all lost everything we had, everything we remember. But we have gained a guiding star in an unexpected place, this Man of Earth and his primitive vessel and access to knowledge of the betrayers’ plans. I invite him now to share his wisdom with us, and together we shall retake Pedres and make for ourselves a new home. Please listen as vessel assignments are delivered."
Following that were pauses as the Fleet Admiral listed ships and captains, and periods of dead air as Jones delivered instructions that Aesop could not hear without the encryption key. Finally, Raksava’s personal chaplain was given leave to say a brief prayer for their success, which Singh interrupted before it could finish.
"It ends after the invocation."
Vega pounded a fist into the bulkhead. "That mother fucking traitor. He knew we were backing Pedres and he went and joined up with the tripods anyway."
Aesop considered. "It makes a certain sort of fatalistic sense. The Gavisari don’t know the old lady is helping Jalith, and the Maeyar don’t have a clue that Jones is sidled up to the invasion fleet. Earth backs both horses, so Earth has a claim to whoever wins."
"But it still makes it more dangerous for us and the Captain," said Singh.
Aesop nodded, even though the marine couldn’t see it two decks up in the radio room. "What I want to know is what Jones said to convince them that he should be dictating strategy to their fleet admiral. We’re only here because we had an in with Sothcide. What’s his angle with Gavisar?"
"What did they mean when they said ‘Retake Pedres’?" asked Mags
Good question. Aesop had read up on the known history of Pedres and Maeyar during the horizon jump. Horizon space affected everyone a little differently, and for Aesop it manifested in anxiety unless he could find a task to manage his nerves. Usually that meant maintenance, but in this case he decided to be one of the few marines that did the required reading.
Pedres had been pegged as a Maeyar planet for as long as humans had been in the know. Which to be fair, was only a few decades. But Pedres had a population of several million, which even in galactic terms wasn’t something that popped up overnight. It was their biggest colony with significant infrastructure and over half the Maeyar fleet had showed up to defend it. So why did the Gavisari want it so bad? They had a stake here, and it wasn’t that Pedres was the only oxygen-rich planet within their horizon, because Privateers had scouted at least two others. Was this their land of milk and honey?
"Singh, I’ve got a new job for you. Go back through the recordings. See if you can get that encryption codec Jones is using to direct fleet movement. The old lady might not be answering the phone, but If we can feed that back to the Twin Sister maybe we can give the Maeyar a leg up on whatever the invasion fleet is planning."
Captain Marin where are you?
"Vick, the Malagath evacuated the compartment. We’re go as soon as they drop us."
"Thank you, Avery. Davis, prime the ion engine and make sure the goddamned attenuator is secured."
Victoria knew they had left the horizon jump before her command repeater displayed the indication, by the way the familiar chill she had at first taken for the Malagath’s indifference drifted from her skin. She reached up, flipping the main viewscreen display from ship’s diagnostics to adaptive visual sensors. Slowly, the panels of the curved forward bulkhead were replaced by a view of the Malagath receiving bay, where the Condor was held in a lattice of gravitic projectors matching her mass. A flick of Victoria’s eyes brought the monitor to the sensors on the bell of the ship where she watched the belly of the ship slide open despite the lack of any obvious seams or retraction mechanism. Instead of the black of space there was a green glow and a spike on the thermal and gamma radiation sensors facing the opening.
"Christ, they jumped us right next to the core star. Any closer and we’d have sensors melting off the belly."
"Skipper, I’m getting some internal comms chatter from the Malagath. Apparen
tly the Duchess Tora missed our target coordinates by almost two million kilometers. They don’t sound happy."
"Happier than if she had missed by three and put us in the fucking corona. Still, not like the Malagath Nobles to be so far off on a jump calculation. Are you getting anything else?" Victoria asked. One way the Malagath Imperials kept control of their interstellar feudal empire was by trusting the formulas and calculations for long-distance jumps only among those of noble standing. Ships without a member of the royal family were limited only to a distance many times that of humanity. Hell, thought Victoria, they probably taught horizon jump calculations in their version of grade school. Most of their children put Earth’s advanced computers to shame.
Huian listened to the chatter on her headset for a moment. "It sounds like an unexpected mass that their drive couldn’t overcome from deeper in the—"
Whatever she’d been about to say was interrupted as Victoria’s stomach tried to jump up into her mouth. The gravitic lattice expelled the Condor with almost spiteful force, enough to overcome the freshly spooled up inertial dampeners. They had gone from a relative velocity of zero to several hundred kilometers an hour in the span of a few breaths, and if the dampeners hadn’t been active, she and Huian would be dripping off the ceiling.