The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  She glanced at Cris.

  Faith in whom?

  Earth’s usual aura of flickering bioship light was now squeezed into a stack of luminous halos. To guard against the impending Empyreal Sun attack, the military had surrounded the planet with a shell of orbiting space mines, leaving open only a few dozen narrow travel bands - and slowing the normal flow of traffic to a crawl.

  Joran Farlance, a security officer for Earth Orbital Customs and Immigration, took his Typhon-class bioship over the top of a travel band and came down within a few hundred meters of the Prelude’s blocky stern, drawing an ear-popping comm squeal from the thousand-meter cargo hauler he had cut off.

  He opened a private frequency to the freighter. “Sorry to cut in, Freight. There’s about to be a military delay ahead. Suggest you veer port.”

  “Delay?” an icy voice responded. “And just what do you call this?”

  The huge Iteron—class freighter began to slide across the traffic band, prompting such a squall of random comm squeals that Farlance had to turn down the volume.

  “Who needs the military?” he said to his co-pilot. “Let the Empyreal Sun into this storm of traffic and see how long they last.”

  His co-pilot, who was named Fran’tȧe, simply laughed.

  The traffic storm grew worse as four tiny support fighters streaked into view, then pivoted on their noses and fell in behind the Prelude.

  “Stand by for inspection, Prelude,” Farlance said.

  “What for?” a raspy voice came back. “We aren’t violating any trade laws. We haven’t even entered customs control.”

  Farlance had been tracking the Prelude since it arrived in the Sol System. It was an Asmodeus—class cruiser, a ship type favoured by the Empyreal Sun, and had aroused his suspicion by entering the system beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet Eris, rather than one of the usual trade route waypoints.

  “Be advised this is a Terran Alliance military inspection.” In a more reassuring voice, Farlance added, “No need to worry. It’s just random.”

  “Random?” the voice sounded doubtful. “I’ll talk to my captain.”

  “Remind him we’re not interested in customs regulations,” Farlance said. “But we are armed.”

  The discussion between the pilot and his captain must have been a lively one, because the Prelude continued forward until the traffic band narrowed to a mere three hundred metres. The space mines became a tangible presence, more because of the vast swaths of darkness they occupied than because of the tiny shapes Farlance occasionally saw silhouetted against Earth’s scintillating, reddish surface. He again warned the ship that his fighters were armed and authorised to fire, and the pilot’s voice replied that the Prelude was carrying a thousand innocent refugees.

  “They’re not going to stop,” Fran’tȧe said.

  Monitoring the exchange from its network of orbital weapon platforms, the Planetary Defence Force was slowly coming to the same conclusion. Over the military communications system, Fran’tȧe listened to a series of increasingly senior officers query what was happening. Finally, the voice of Warmaster Paramo demanded an explanation from Farlance.

  Farlance told him about the Prelude’s suspicious entry into the system, and the fact it was an Asmodeus—class ship.

  “So, basically, you’re telling me you’ve got a bad feeling about this ship?”

  Farlance nodded. “Yes, Warmaster.”

  There was a crackle as the Warmaster switched communication channels, then his voice came over the unsecured channel being used between the squadron of support fighters and the Prelude. “Commander Marogon, you know who this is?”

  “Warmaster Paramo, yes, sir.”

  “Good. As commander of the Terran Alliance military, I am ordering you not to allow the Prelude inside the mine shell. Do you understand?”

  Fran’tȧe looked at Farlance. No more than three kilometres ahead of their ship, traffic was already passing under the minefield. By the time Marogon responded, both the fighters and the Prelude would be between the mines.

  “Uh, sir, we’re already entering the safe lane.”

  “You have your orders, Commander. Paramo out.”

  That was all it took. Save for Farlance’s Typhon-class bioship and the support fighters, every ship within ten kilometres of the Prelude began to veer away.

  “What about it, Prelude?” Marogon asked. “Come to a halt and prepare for boarding, or we will be forced to fire upon you.”

  The proper response would have been to fire a burst of braking rockets from the bow thrusters. Instead, the Prelude nosed sharply up.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” the pilot said.

  “Negative, Prelude.” The voice belonged to Colonel Kyrenic Merquise. “You can’t pull a flipover here. You’re too long for the safe lane.”

  There was no reply. A moment later, all three hundred metres of the Prelude shot straight up in front of Farlance’s ship, then began to arc back overhead - directly toward the mines.

  “Colonel?” Marogon called. “Orders?”

  “Shields!” Merquise’s reply came.

  “Good idea,” Farlance muttered, reaching for the controls, but Fran’tȧe’s hand was already waving over the console. “Full power!”

  A pair of mine rockets flared to life. The Prelude’s plasma cannons flashed in response, and both mines erupted before they had travelled a hundred metres.

  “Shit!” Farlance nosed the bioship down.

  On the military channel, Marogon called frantically, “Mine control, deactivate…”

  The ten closest mines fired their rockets and streaked toward the Prelude in a funnel-shaped web of orange. The ship’s plasma cannons lashed out again, destroying three more mines. Another ten ignited.

  “They’re trying to blow up the mines!” Farlance roared.

  The first wave of mines blossomed into white fire against the Prelude’s shields. So did most of the second. But three devices passed through the shields, their explosive heads penetrating the ship’s biological walls. One erupted on the bridge, shattering the superstructure, spraying massive shards of debris down through the safe traffic lane. A second warhead vaporised the engines and sent the crippled cruiser tumbling down behind Farlance’s ship. He did not see where the third detonated. He was distracted by several orange halos expanding above their own cockpit.

  “Sir…” Fran’tȧe started.

  “I know,” he said. With the Prelude falling away, their Typhon-class ship had become the largest target mass. “Just hold on. I think…”

  The halos went dark, and a half-dozen black silhouettes bounced harmlessly off their shields.

  Farlance finished, “…they’ll deactivate.”

  He rolled the ship down after the Prelude. Fran’tȧe sank into his oversized chair, then grunted as he snapped back up into his loose shoulder restraints.

  “Hold on!” Farlance shouted. They were diving through the next band of traffic. The support fighters were spiralling after the tumbling Prelude.

  Startled bioships were looping in all directions, their shields rubbing, forks of blue lightning dancing between their hulls. Farlance swerved away from a space yacht, bounced off a particle shield, slipped between two refugee transports, then shot out the bottom of the traffic band.

  “That was close,” Farlance breathed.

  Pilots below began to respond to the fighters’ emergency warnings, and a series of gaps opened ahead of the wreckage of the Prelude. Below, a trio of fighters were struggling to align themselves with its centre of gravity. Fran’tȧe glimpsed the cruiser’s belly and saw where the third mine had struck. A plume of cargo and vapour streamed from the hole. The three fighters finally arranged themselves and advanced at berthing speed, their plasma cannons blasting a docking breach in the ship’s hull. The manoeuvre was desperate but effective, standard military protocol for entering out-of-control craft.

  Warmaster Paramo barked over a scrambled channel to the fighter pilots. “This is Paramo.
Exercise caution. Your men may find Empyreal Sun agents on board that ship. Expect them to be armed and extremely dangerous.”

  “Copy,” Marogon said.

  “The enemy must have sent a scout ship ahead of the main invasion fleet to gauge our defences,” Paramo continued. “I want all civilian craft grounded as soon as possible, or rerouted out of the Sol System. The time has come. May God have mercy on our souls.”

  27

  BALLOG II

  SOL SYSTEM

  War looked much the same on a wall-sized OLED screen as it did from the cockpit of a fighter. Plasma balls still rolled over their targets in blossoms of purple fire, particle beams still laced the air with dazzling lances of colour, wounded vessels still bled dark clouds of flash-frozen crew. The inset image of a grim-voiced war correspondent described how the massive Empyreal Sun fleet was steadily pressing forward past Phobos, despite a fierce running assault on its rear by Grand Admiral Kuolor’s Fleet Group Two. The invaders had already crossed the orbit of Mars, and were expected to reach Earth orbit within the hour.

  The news feed changed scenes, now showing the Terran capital ship Cosmica Sidera as it strayed into a barrage of particle beam fire. Lorelei Chen knew she should have felt something, should have been angered or frightened or something by the huge Empyreal Sun fleet blasting its way toward Earth, but she was not. All she could think about was what her future self had told her at Reria, the promise of life-changing events to come.

  As the Cosmica Sidera began to explode, a news correspondent appeared in the inset and reported that Kuolor’s Fleet Group Two was suffering major losses, already depleted by half. Thousands had died already, and yet there were no signs of the enemy fleet slowing down as it edged its way gradually through the system.

  A pair of military analysts came on the screen and began to argue about whether attempting to resist the enemy was folly. Was there any real chance of victory, or would the Terran Alliance military ultimately disintegrate like that of the Nommos Empire?

  “What a mess,” Cris said.

  Chen did not reply. It was the first either of them had spoken since watching the events unfold on the huge screen, and she had actually forgotten he was sitting beside her. He had been following her and Machiko around since they were assigned to the Ballog II, hoping that he would be of some use to them when they finally got to see some action, though he wasn’t sure exactly how. His constant presence was starting to annoy Machiko, though she could not bear even the small emotional turmoil that she would cause Lora by telling him so.

  The analysts were replaced by an image of two pilots climbing out of their fighters. As they joined a long line of exhausted pilots stumbling across a Terran carrier’s docking bay, an enthusiastic reporter appeared in the foreground and described how the fighter attack wings continued to perform daring penetration missions, destroying more than three capital ships in the heart of the Empyreal Sun fleet. While the Terran Alliance’s losses were classified for intelligence reasons, casualties in both personnel and equipment were rumoured to be high at this point.

  Visibly upset, Chen used a voice command to change to the New Senate news feed. She would have liked to feel something - anything - other than the hollow ache that consumed her now. The screen image split into two images, one showing the packed chamber, the other a hologram of Queen Neferneferu’aten and Princess Esme Mazzic standing before the other Faction Leaders and various other officials.

  “You have another way to hold the enemy at bay, King Dudreda?” Neferneferu’aten was saying. The Queen’s hologram continued to stare directly ahead.

  “This pointless defence is wasting lives and resources. It is undermining the integrity of the whole military. Against Lord Damarus, there can be no victory. We should have evacuated Earth when we had the chance.”

  “So the answer would be no,” the Queen said distatstefully. “It is too late for evacuation now, so I suggest that instead of complaining about Warmaster Paramo’s efforts, you follow his lead. Support him. You will not stop the Empyreal Sun by nipping at their heels.”

  King Dudreda did not wait for the other dignitaries to quiet down before answering, and his response was lost in the general tumult.

  “I am also aware of how many lives we stand to lose here if the enemy fleet reaches our planetary shields,” Neferneferu’aten said. “But I have authorised use of the Array, as a last resort. If necessary, we will fire the weapon on those ships directly.”

  Hundreds of political officials stood then, and began to shout their disdain at the idea; a smaller number rose to applaud the Queen’s courage and decisiveness.

  “We don’t need to watch this,” Cris said, growing nervous.

  A communications unit nearby began to beep for their attention.

  “Pilots from Squadrons Seventeen through Twenty,” Paramo’s voice announced. “Get to your fighters and prepare for launch.”

  “That’s us,” Machiko said, getting to her feet. “We’re up.”

  Chen nodded. “Cris, you’ll be flying with me,” she muttered. Her face was as pale as a ghost. “We have a date with destiny.”

  The four fighter squadrons dropped out of the Ballog II’s forward fighter bay and saw Earth’s thumb-sized disk twinkling at them through a gap in the Empyreal Sun fleet, the planet’s bright reddish green aura a genial reminder of what they were fighting to protect. Machiko’s family was down there beneath one of those lights, sitting helplessly in the house and dreaming of her return. That much, Machiko knew. What she did not know, however, was whether their dream would be answered. Despite the vast number of Terran ships which blanketed space beyond the orbit of the moon, the Empyreal Sun continued to relentlessly press their advance. Their route insystem could be traced by the immense swath of derelict vessels littering space, but they still had most of their fleet, and now they were within sight of the planet Earth itself.

  It was as close to her family as Machiko Famasika intended to let them come.

  A sheet of purple energy lit space overhead as the Ballog II opened fire. A moment later, an Empyreal Sun frigate vanished from the tactical display, and the cockpit sensor alarms started to scream as a flight of enemy fighters headed their way.

  Ammold Paramo’s voice came over the communications channel. “All squadrons, stand by for action. This time, we’re going to make them stop and pay attention.”

  Machiko gritted her teeth. “Good luck, Lora. I love you,” she said over a private channel.

  “You too,” came the reply.

  Anti-fighter flak suddenly flashed on all sides. Even louder than the clatter of shrapnel and the snarl of her engines, Machiko’s cockpit hummed and rang with near hits from the multitude of particle beams from capital ships crowding space around her. She issued a mental command to her fighter, sending it into an evasive, a whirling, spinning dive through the cloud of battle, closely skimming plasma bursts from all directions. She locked a snarl behind her teeth, twisting her fighter around another explosion that could have peeled its armour like an overripe fruit. She hated this part. Hated it.

  By the time Fleet Group One connected with Fleet Group Two, local space was too littered with battle debris to enter at anything approaching combat speed. Through the flotsam cloud, Machiko could see maybe three dozen enemy capitals and perhaps twenty or thirty smaller vessels using their particle beams to clear an exit path through the debris, toward Earth. Two or three were venting bodies and atmosphere, but the majority of them were still undamaged.

  The lead Empyreal Sun capitals were firing upon the mine field now, attempting to carve a hole in it, despite the best efforts of the Terran capitals to stop them. There was a massive exchange of laser fire between the gigantic ships. Meanwhile, the enemy flagship, the Retribution, was pouring out devastation on all sides, trading fire with anything that came close. The battle was fierce, intense, fast moving. Minutes later, the invaders poured into Earth orbit through a gap in the minefield and swarmed the planet’s defence platforms.<
br />
  As Machiko flew, twirling in evasive spirals and firing plasma bolts at the enemy fighters surrounding her, the scene at the edges of Earth’s atmosphere made her heart race for her family’s safety. A thousand-kilometre circle of shield glowed gold beneath the constant bombardment of enemy ships. Every new impact launched a kilometres-high pillar of fire and sent shock circles rippling across the surface. Everything was happening so fast! The largest detonations were already causing forks of disruption static to dance across the shield.

  “Holy God,” Machiko breathed.

  Chen’s voice came over the communications channel. “Machiko? Are you okay?” The channel was full of static.

  “I’m fine,” Machiko said, though she felt anything but.

  Suddenly, the entire mine shell surrounding Earth sprouted rocket candles. The capital ships ceased firing. An astonished silence fell over the communication channels as the mines locked onto enemy vessels and curved after them. The Empyreal Sun maneuvered wildly, but they were trapped between the mines and Earth with nowhere to go. No sooner would they escape one mine than they ran afoul of another. Some vessels skimmed the planetary shields and were instantly torn into rubble. A few collided with each other, and still others grew so distracted they fell prey to missiles and plasma fire from the planet’s orbital defence platforms.

  Eventually, the Empyreal Sun realised they were better off to stop and weather the storm, relying on their weapons and shielding to destroy the approaching mines. Many failed and were blasted into rubble. A thousand more suffered hull breaches and began to vent internal systems. Almost all took at least one hit, but an astonishing number showed little or no sign of damage. They returned to their missions, attacking the orbital defence platforms and blasting Terran ships to destruction.

  Then, almost as one, the crippled Empyreal Sun vessels dropped out of orbit, hurling themselves into the planetary shields. Disruption static shot across the atmosphere. Whole grids shimmered and winked out. Planet-bound generator stations exploded with flashes brilliant enough to be seen from space. Fighters began to drop off the surviving Empyreal Sun vessels and dive toward the surface.