I must have said my thoughts out loud, because Bionica hurried to correct me:
"My Prince, this is not our Queen!"
And she was right. The huge starship marker on the tactical map was colored red for enemy. Well then... The last thing I needed here in Khell was Aliens! And not just Aliens, but the most dangerous of their ships. The huge disk-shaped mothership was over twenty miles in diameter! It was capable of releasing over seventy thousand deadly combat drones at any second, all while itself remaining impervious to attack. The giant's energy shields were so strong no weapon in my fleet could pierce them.
Without even turning my head to my officers, I knew for certain that the faces of all my subjects were now pointed in my direction. All my soldiers were at a loss, terrified. And not only those in the fleet headquarters. The whole many-thousand-strong Unatari fleet was waiting impatiently for me to give them my commentary and clear detailed instructions in this very nonstandard situation.
At that moment, it occurred to me that this was exactly why space fleets had commanders. After all, the battle could be conducted by my staff officers, or even without them, though it would be less effective. But there absolutely had to be someone who assumed all the fear, risk and responsibility and set the mission in just this kind of difficult situation.
I coughed, put the helmet back on and activated the microphone, saying in a clear voice:
"Attention, all ships! Increase distance from the Queen and carefully watch her behavior. Heavy ships, begin to accelerate toward the ninth planet. Exercise extreme caution! Be ready to warp out on my command, if the enemy releases a mass of drones. All captains report to the headquarters on how much time is needed to charge up for a fully-fledged warp jump to the Forepost-10 system. Boarding teams, continue capturing the surrendered ships. If you even slightly suspect disobedience, destroy the surrendered Grand Duchy ships!"
"If I may be so bold as to remind Your Highness, in less than three minutes, another Grand Duchy fleet will be arriving," tactics officer Max Gregor told me.
"I don't give a damn. It’s a puny fleet, and it’ll be two thousand miles from us," I huffed back, waving the problem off as insignificant. "I'm sure they won't join the fight after seeing THAT... Although, no. Max, you're right. We cannot miss the perfect moment to attack the enemy, even in the presence of this giant. Pyro groups from one to fourteen, go as fast as you can to the point I've just marked! If even one Grand Duchy ship larger than a destroyer escapes, all frigate captains will be sent to retake their qualifications! One hundred radio-electric fighters, accelerate in the same direction. As soon as you get the coordinates from the frigates, warp out. First stun the main calibers, and take down the rest as needed! Sixty destroyers go as well, work in groups of three! Alright, great, take position! Twenty seconds to start! Max, the whole operation against the Grand Duchy reinforcements is on you! Valian will help..."
"Your Highness, I beg your apologies, but you're definitely going to want to hear this!" My speech was interrupted by an agitated communications officer who ran over to me with headphones in his hands. "It's a short message recorded in the Nayal system. There are twenty-three seconds of sensible speech. The rest is too garbled. It came in one minute ago."
The officer was pale. He understood perfectly the risk he ran by interrupting his fleet commander, but nevertheless, extended me the headphones. I removed my normal helmet and microphone and put on his.
"...ssage for any allied ships. They're killing us! I repeat, the Seventh Imperial Strike Fleet is under attack in the Nayal system! We're taking heavy losses! Please, anyone who can hear me! Tell the Throne World that the Antagonist Fleet and the Aliens are working together! Eight thousand enemy shi..."
A horrible scraping noise exploded from the headphones, and the message broke off. I demanded to be sent a full recording of the message at once. Unfortunately, there wasn't much more information. Based on the unique encryption tag and encoding, the message had come in from the heavy assault cruiser Clairvoyant, which really was in the Seventh Imperial Strike Fleet. The recording was very buzzy and distorted, and other than the fragment I'd already heard, the only thing that could be made out was the short phrase: "the admiral has died," a few curse words, and a terrified scream.
I was standing in a state of deep contemplation. "The Antagonist Fleet and the Aliens are working together..." That part of the message really had me worried. I suspected that, in the turmoil of the unfortunate battle, the Imperial officer had simply been mistaken, because believing in such an alliance between people and the main enemies of humanity was extremely difficult. However, I didn't simply write the story off, no matter how unlikely it looked at first glance. As a matter of fact, it explained why the Grand Duchy hadn't turned off the risky Nayal warp beacon. They were letting the Alien fleet in, including the Queen, which was shining like a beacon now on our locators.
Nicole walked up to me panting and stood in silence two steps from her seat, now occupied by her replacement.
"Have you come to your senses?" I asked. The girl nodded in silence, holding a morbidly serious expression on her face.
I stood and gave up my free seat to the Space Major.
"In that case, put your jacket back on and take over command of the united Unatari Fleet."
"My mission?" Nicole ton Savoia asked me shortly, not expressing any emotions at being given the extremely important role as she took her place at the console.
"Destroy the Queen!" I said, pointing at the huge red spot on the tactical map.
Two Minutes
I HAVE TO give my assistant her due for her composure. Not even a single one of Nicole's face muscles twitched. The girl made no gesture or word, to suggest that the mission she was given seemed strange, difficult or impossible. Also, the Space Major didn't rush or give hurried orders. My assistant just asked one lone clarifying question: how much time did she have to complete the mission?
"Two hours ten minutes," I said, giving the minimum time necessary for the enemy fleet to get to Khell from the Nayal system.
After that, taking the laser pointer in my hands, I walked into the center of the room to the huge hologram of the tactical map and turned to all my officers:
"I suggest everyone think this over well. The Queen came from the direction of the Nayal system," I said, drawing a straight line between Khell and Nayal with the laser pointer. "In theory, we already knew it was dangerous to have that warp beacon on, because the Aliens had shown up in the Nayal system before. We have long known that every successive wave of Alien invasion is stronger than the one that preceded it, so there really isn't anything weird about the Alien super-carrier appearing from the Nayal system. I'm surprised by something else: why did the Queen come alone? Based on the fragment of evidence that came in, there were eight thousand ships hostile to the Empire in the Nayal system. Fifteen hundred of them were the Purple House Fleet in Nayal, which means that six and a half thousand combat units were Alien ships. A huge fleet. Why didn’t it go with the Queen? Your suggestions, ladies and gentlemen?"
I heard a long trill from Kheraisss Vej, which Bionica instantly translated for me:
"The Aliens are learning from their mistakes. Every time they entered a system occupied by your Highness's fleet, they took heavy losses. Your mines and stealth bombers caused the Aliens to regularly lose a significant portion of their small ships, and since recently, Behemoth battleships as well. Now, the Aliens have sent the Queen in advance, because it cannot be destroyed with mines and bombs. That massive ship will clear the way for the Behemoths, Sledgehammers, and smaller ships. Beyond that, we know that the Aliens have huge Mammoth-class supercarriers, with easily enough energy for a few warp jumps in a row. Perhaps the Queen is also capable of such things, unlike her smaller starships. She didn't need time to charge, so she went first."
"Excellent guess, Admiral! I think that is exactly what we're seeing now. Which means that an Alien fleet will soon arrive in Khell with a force of approximately six t
housand starships. And that is exactly why the Queen isn't doing anything active, observing us and waiting for the rest of the fleet to arrive. But even all on her own, she's quite a threat, and not only in the number of combat drones in her bowels. I want to remind everyone that the Queen has already shown that she can influence the human psyche. So, if anyone senses an attempt at mind control, they’re to tell me at once!"
"She’s already influencing our collective psyche just with her presence..." came the grumbling voice of Admiral Kiro Sabuto on the common channel.
I didn't remark to the celebrated admiral, although his reply did precious little to facilitate moral reinforcement of the fleet.
"Last time the Queen attacked me mentally, taking the commander out of commission during the hottest phase of battle. Then, we were not ready for things to take such a turn, lost control over the fleet and, as a result, were almost dealt a crushing defeat. I suppose the Queen may try to repeat such a mental attack. In fact, that is one of the reasons why the leadership of the united Unatari Fleet has been transferred to Space Major Nicole ton Savoia..."
"Crown Prince Georg, the Grand Duchy reinforcements that arrived have been fully eliminated!" Valian ton Corsa reported, interrupting my speech. "We lost eight Pyro frigates, two Safas, and one Flycatcher."
I winced in dismay, and it wasn't only because I had been interrupted again. With that many radio-electric fighters on our side, the enemy should have been completely stunned, their sensors filled with white noise, their targeting systems disabled, and all their comms jammed. But now the enemy had not only shot, but had done so quite well. Clearly, my officers hadn't done their jobs, and the crews weren't trained well enough. But I'd speak with them about that later. Now, with certain death hovering two hundred miles away from me in space, it was not time to demotivate and excoriate my fleet.
"I need an encrypted line to talk with Miya!" I demanded.
A minute later, the screen lit up, showing my spouse in a spacious gloomy hangar. Lots of girls in black clothing with their eyes covered were sitting before the Truth Seeker in even rows right on the cold concrete floor.
"What do you need, Georg? As you can see, I'm in class," Miya said, annoyed and not hiding it. "Your question couldn’t wa... What? Aliens in the system?! A Queen?!"
"That's right. This is a very serious matter. Get in touch with Krista immediately. I need a powerful line of Truth Seekers in one hour's time for an attack on an Alien Queen. We're going to try to stun her to buy time for an Iseyek landing party to get inside and take her down."
"Are you in your right mind, Georg?" my wife was unable to cope and nearly started shouting. "You have no idea how hard it was the last time to get the Queen to submit to our will. And we had the Dark Mother with us then, who took the brunt of the mental attack on herself! No one alive now is capable of doing that! What's more, Krista might not want to work with me."
"Miya, I know about your complicated relationship with Krista, but there's no other way out. We have to destroy the Queen while we have the chance. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'll soon see the Queen fighting alongside the Antagonists, which the Empire will never survive. And neither will we."
Miya lowered her head in distrust, meeting my gaze and... her eyes went wide in horror. It seemed she had read the phrase from my head that had me so worked up: "The Antagonist Fleet is working with the Aliens."
"I'll try, Georg. Krista should understand the importance of the moment, so she won't refuse to help. I really hope so..."
"Great! I've already given an order to unfreeze all the praying mantis assault troops on five Trias. In one hour, a million Iseyek will be attacking the Alien flagship. We already have a grip on the design of the Queen, and know the gigantic starship’s weak points. That's where we'll attack, and that's where we'll lay the thermonuclear charges. The landing troops will only need a few minutes to get through to the key points inside. But the praying mantises cannot even get close to it while the Queen still has tens of thousands of combat drones under her control. Stun her, and we win! I can offer Florianna and a battery of four hundred Beta Iseyek to help. From you, I'll need your girls and you."
The Truth Seeker led a long evaluating gaze over the girls sitting before her... and I saw tears in Miya's eyes! I had never seen my tough and even severe wife in such a crushed state. No one would now guess that the woman before me was the second strongest psionic in the whole galaxy, famed for her cold blood.
"So many talented girls will die today..." the Truth Seeker said, wiping the tears with the back of her hand. "They are my students, and I have put some of myself into each of them. They're practically daughters to me... But I agree with your plan, Georg. We cannot allow the Antagonists to have the Queen — that would mean death for us all. So, you'll get your Truth Seeker chain!"
* * *
"One million one hundred fifty thousand Alpha Iseyek are ready to move out, Your Highness! Savasss Jach has unfrozen all his reserves to the very last soldier," Bionica said, tearing me out of the thoughtful state I had been in for the last few minutes.
"Then don’t let the Truth Seekers waste time and get started!" I commanded, but my synthetic assistant just shook her head in the negative.
"Crown Prince, they cannot. The psionics have already tried, but the Queen's consciousness is closed up tight. Our Truth Seekers are unable to establish contact with her."
Well, shoot... An unexpected obstacle. After all, my calculations were based on stunning the Queen and taking her mind under control, because directly attacking the supercarrier with the Unatari Fleet was equivalent to suicide — seventy thousand combat drones could destroy my ships in a matter of minutes. Was this Queen really any different from the one we'd defeated and captured earlier?!
"My Prince, Krista is suggesting you try and speak with the enemy ship. I have been assigned the task of communicating with you. We really need the enemy to open up and start a dialog," Florianna was just two steps from me, but preferred to communicate mentally.
Speak with the Alien ship? Start the conversation? I might have tried, but how??? The Queen had always started the conversation before. Nevertheless, I tried to reach out mentally to the massive black starship. Almost immediately, I doubled over as a sharp pain twisted through my body.
"I KNOW YOU. YOU DESTROYED THE PATRIMONY OF A WHOLE CIVILIZATION. YOU KILLED AN INVALUABLE MIND, CREATED THROUGH MILLIONS OF YEARS OF EVOLUTION AND KNOWLEDGE. WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY DO YOU KILL US? WHY NOT LET US GO?"
The last thing I was expecting was for the Aliens to blame me for going to war with them. After all, they were the ones who came out of god-knows-where in space and attacked humanity, the Iseyek and other races! The Aliens put other species on the verge of total annihilation, wiping them from the face of the galaxy system by system. We were forced to defend ourselves!
"THAT IS NOT SO. WE SIGNED A PEACE TREATY WITH YOUR PEOPLE. AND WE ARE SIMPLY CARRYING IT OUT. YOU WERE THE ONES WHO DEMANDED THAT WE ACT THIS WAY. NOW, THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO DO WHAT YOU PROMISED. WE WANT..."
And then I was roughly jerked into reality. I saw myself sitting on my knees in the center of a room, blood pouring from my nose onto my blue uniform pants.
"What treaty? Who did you sign a treaty with? What has humanity promised you?" I shouted these questions aloud, but it was utterly in vain — my connection with the Queen had already been lost.
Katerina leaned over me with a packet of tissues. My cousin was upset and even afraid at my state, but I calmed her and stood to my feet. The head-spinning quickly passed. My condition could be called "surprisingly alright." All the same, not everyone in the room was doing as well as me. Just a few steps away, Florianna was howling in pain through clenched teeth and twitching as if she'd just touched a live wire. Four Beta Iseyek were holding the shaking girl in their many arms, otherwise she would definitely have fallen from the chair to the floor.
"Flora, Miya, what's happening?" I demanded a report from my Truth Seekers, but didn't get an
answer.
Apparently, the psionics were already in battle, which was the only way to explain such a sharp end to my mental dialog with the Queen. Yes, this is exactly how we planned our actions, but the attack was so very untimely! I was just one step away from understanding the motivation of the Aliens and figuring out their secret understanding with mankind! By the way... there was a slight chance that the Truth Seekers’ rush to attack may have been meant to stop me from obtaining the crucial information from the Alien Queen.
But what to do now? Rip out my hair, go ballistic and demand the Emperor's Truth Seekers explain? That would obviously be dumb. After all, in any case, the enemy was tied up in battle with the united team of psionics. All that remained was to return to the old plan and begin the landing. I sent a message to Marshal Savasss Jach through Bionica, saying to send a test group of Alpha Iseyek landing troops to the Alien flagship.
The whole headquarters was looking on, their hearts fluttering as an array of green dots tore off from the nearest Tria heading for the huge disk-shaped enemy. And the needle-shaped Swarm landing modules successfully maneuvered between the defensive turrets' blind spots, reached the Queen's energy shield and sharply reduced speed. Only objects traveling very slowly could pass through the shield. Everything else was deflected. And these thirty modules made it past the barrier and successfully reached the Queen's chassis!
"Bionica, tell the Marshal my order: begin the mass landing operation! Actually, no! Wait a second! Cancel!!!"
It was apparently too early to consider the enemy defeated and helpless. From the bowels of the massive supercarrier, whole rivers of combat drones started gushing into space. Thousands and thousands of them. All the Alpha Iseyek landing groups were annihilated in an instant, while the active defense made the massive ship basically unreachable for the other landing modules. What was more, the communications officers were telling me that the gigantic Alien ship had started giving off sharp electromagnetic pulses every few seconds, meaning the Queen had turned on her stealth bomber defense, revealing cloaked ships at a very significant distance.
A Game With No Rules (Perimeter Defense Book #4) LitRPG Series Page 20