“You won’t denounce me, my dear Captain,” the watch-stander said wryly. “What reward would my enforced diminishment earn you? A few days of leave on the surface of Bizzik-Two?”
“Perish the thought.”
Bizzik was full of Insects – Kreck, he reminded himself; the exoskeletal little bastards didn’t like to be called by their nickname – and they literally stank up the place. The Kreck communicated via pheromones, and unfortunately the Hentel’s Taro species had a rather refined sense of smell, one that found the secretions of the Kreck to be utterly nauseating. The first time he’d been to Bizzik-Two he’d vomited all over the inside of his pressurized suit; not even the military-grade atmospheric filters had managed to keep the stench out of his cilia.
“I believe I will forgo the honor of unmasking your intolerance, Watch-Stander.”
“All paths can lead to Unity, sir, Captain, sir!”
“Easy there, Branck. Even the Insects can spot sarcasm if you lay it on thickly enough.”
“You are correct, Captain. My apologies.” Branck even sounded somewhat sincere.
Unity was a wonderful concept if you belonged to one of the Founder Races, who by the mere virtue of their origin automatically started at Voter rank, and only dropped down to the lowly status of taxpayer if they failed to be even marginally useful to the Imperium. For the Juniors, it was just the way things were. Like the weather, you learned to accept it, or you spent your life being miserable about it. It was said that in a thousand years or so, a fourth member would be added to the Triumvirate. Hentel doubted he’d live to see that day, and even if he did, the Taro wouldn’t be the chosen one.
His cilia drooped in a gesture of resignation. At least he was saving most of his pay; there was little to spend it on, here in Bizzik. A quick check at the timekeeper app in his implants revealed his watch was due to end in another hour and a half. He was looking forward to a full day of rest, if not of relaxation. The rest of the watch duty crew aboard Orbital Defense Station Eleven were equally bored and ready for some time off.
“Contact! Multiple contacts! Warp emergences at three light-seconds!”
Branck’s shout and the maddening buzzing sound of Kreck alarms filled Hentel’s hearing orifices, nearly deafening him. Shock paralyzed him for a second or two, but his training soon asserted itself.
“Onscreen! Weps, I need firing solutions, now! Raise shields to full power!”
“Do we wait for positive identification, sir?” Weapons-Technician ‘Weps’ Jicks asked.
“Fire at will, Weps! That’s got to be the Humans!”
Dormant battle-screens flared into life and status readouts flashed past Hentel’s eyes. Their readiness had been near-minimal. The Imperium might be at war, but this system was two sectors and five warp transits away from the nearest front. He had no idea how the Humans had managed to arrive at Bizzik without warning.
And yet, that’s who the invaders were. The slender lines of the emerging vessels were unmistakable, although they had been painted solid black instead of the silver-gray color the American Navy used, according to his ship-identification app. The paint job made no difference to his sensors of course.
“Something weird about those emergences, sir,” Branck said, all business now.
“I’m having trouble locking on, Captain!” Weps added. “The warp apertures haven’t closed yet.”
“Yes, they have warp shields,” Hentel all but growled. “Have you been asleep through every briefing? Just target the general area. Some energy will get through to the actual ships.”
“No, sir! Those aren’t shields. They are staying in warp! It’s a battleship-class vessel, but it’s not emerging, sir!”
“I don’t care. Fire missiles! Give me a target, dammit!”
Even as he barked out his orders, Hentel saw his people weren’t spinning spacer tales but telling the plain truth. None of the twelve ships on his sensors had emerged from warp, but were sitting somewhere in between the real universe and the Chaos Lanes. ODS-11’s graviton batteries were having a hard time locking on the ghostly apparitions. Weps was good at his job, however, and after a few seconds of fiddling he had firing solutions for three contacts. By then, over twenty thousand anti-ship missiles were already underway; Hentel vectored them onto those targets even as eighteen ultraheavy grav cannon opened fire.
“No effect!”
“Maintain fire,” Hentel ordered; he felt a slight tremor under his feet moments before the Defense Technician announced the force fields surrounding the defense station had been partially drained by the enemy’s first energy volley. A ten percent reduction, which didn’t bode well, since most of the non-emerging vessels were concentrating their fire on ODS-10. A quick check showed him the sister station’s shields had been knocked down to fifty percent.
“Reload magazines and launch as soon as they’re ready,” he ordered. Standard operating procedure when dealing with the Humans was to bury their warp shields under massive missile volleys; sooner or later a guided ship-killer would strike a place not protected by those insane devices. Meanwhile, his energy weapons would peck away at the enemy, hoping for a lucky hit on an actual hull rather than those Chaos Walls protecting them. Except this time the Chaos surrounded the enemy ships completely. He didn’t know if anything in his arsenal could affect them.
CDS-11 fired every weapon in its arsenal. Some energy was getting through to the non-emergent vessels, but it was a mere fraction of the total force being expended on them. Weps’ bobbed his head in a display of desperation. His scanners’ readouts determined that the combined fire of Bizzik’s surviving ground and orbital stations wouldn’t be enough to inflict critical or even significant damage on any of the enemy ships in the little time they had available.
Moments later, Hentel saw dozens of new contacts appear over the planet’s surface. Human warp fighters. The tiny vessels swarmed around one of the Planetary Defense Bases hammering them at close range with battleship-grade energy weapons. They were also safely ensconced within warp space as they attacked, so the ground defenders inflicted no appreciable damage. The captain shut off the sensor feed. What was happening down below wasn’t his concern. Fighting and dying in orbit was.
Five minutes after the battle began, CDS-10 blew up. Hentel watched the end of the orbital fortress with all his visual cilia twisted together, focused on the same impossible sight. A cold rush ran down his spine as he realized that his station was next.
“Captain…”
“I know, Branck,” Hentel said. Surprisingly, there was less fear than he would have expected. He mostly felt a dreadful sadness. “It’s been an honor, old friend.”
The watch-stander understood. “Same here, Hentel.”
They kept fighting until the end.
* * *
“Launch the rest of the fighters,” Kerensky ordered.
All but one of the twelve space fortresses around Bizzik-Two were gone; the one exception had survived only because it’d been temporarily protected by the bulk of the planet it was supposed to defend, but in a few seconds it would join the others and become more scattered debris and future navigational hazards. That still left seven of the original nineteen Planetary Defense Bases, but his Black Eagles were handling them. It was time to put an end to this.
“Full emergence.”
Ghosting an entire warship wasn’t a trivial exercise, even with the extra warp generators all his Black Ships now mounted. After ten minutes of hanging on the threshold between universes, tidal stresses became high enough to inflict damage. After thirty minutes, his vessels would break apart. Luckily enough, he’d only needed eight minutes to eliminate the enemy’s orbital defenses. There was no defense fleet at Bizzik, so after the PDBs were dealt with, he could get on with the job of exacting retribution.
“If we use the Mind-Killers on the entire planet, our rewards will be great,” the Prophet said.
Kerensky turned to the former fighter pilot who now was his XO. ‘Prophet’
(formerly known as ‘Beak’) Dhukai was a slender, dark-haired man whose intense glare would have been uncomfortable even before he became the living conduit between the Black Fleet and its Warpling allies. Dhukai had risen through the ranks during the months the fleet had spent refitting at Sokolov System. His assistance had soon become invaluable. Unfortunately, he was now turning into the religious version of a political officer. Nothing a sane military commander wanted around, in other words. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the Prophet would outlive his usefulness. Kerensky wondered if the moment was at hand, not bothering to conceal his thoughts from the former fighter pilot.
“That would be unwise, Admiral,” Dhukai said.
“Perhaps. So would overindulging our friends. The targeted city has nine million inhabitants. That is enough and more than enough. We will deal with the other population centers through standard munitions. Is that understood?”
For a moment, the Prophet met his stare before looking down in a show of meekness. Dhukai might have amassed a great deal of power through his dealings with the Psychovores, but Kerensky embodied the full strength of the Black Fleet. In a contest of wills, the Warpling puppet would come in a distant second, and wouldn’t survive the experience: Kerensky would make sure of that. The only way one could rule a crew of mutineers was with an iron hand.
“As you wish, sir.”
The superdreadnought that served as Kerensky flagship hovered over the helpless world below, her warp shields easily shrugging off the volleys of energy fire coming from the last planetary bases. Dozens of ghosting fighters hammered them at point-blank range with their enhanced graviton cannon. The enemy facilities soon fell silent. The ‘Black Eagles’ had undergone a number of modifications during their time off at Sokolov: the repair ships Kerensky had stolen from Third Fleet had provided the resources, and the Foos had contributed the actual designs. The original designers had been a long-extinct species known as the Kraxans, a name Kerensky had heard in passing during a Top-Secret briefing, shortly before the mutiny. Whoever those ETs had been, their expertise in weaponry and warp travel systems had been unsurpassed. Kerensky had done their best to emulate them.
One of those weapons was of particular interest to Warplings. Kerensky would deploy it, but only on one city. Even he had limits, and understood that when you supped with the Devil, you used the longest spoon you had.
An hour later, all resistance in Bizzik-Two had come to an end. Two billion sophonts inhabited the planet, most of them members of the Kreck species, better known to humans as the Scarabs. Several million were dead already, collateral damage resulting from the destruction of the planetary defense bases. The rest would soon follow.
Hundreds of field-encasement thermal weapons began to descend on the planet’s cities, condemning their inhabitants to brutal, blazing end. The one exception was a coastal city that Kerensky had selected at random. He vectored two fighter squadrons towards it, with orders to deploy their Mind-Killer systems.
A part of him wished he could ask God to have mercy on his soul. On all their souls.
* * *
Lieutenant Gus Chandler ghosted over the target. A hungry host of Warplings were gathered around him like so many piranhas. He thought they were laughing: the mental sound came across like the tittering of a horde of sadistic children playing with a wounded bird. The monsters would be just as happy to dine on Gus and the rest of his squadron as they would on the Scarabs on the ground. He was still afraid of the Foos, but above all he’d learned to hate them with a passion he’d only reserved for the aliens who wanted humanity extinct.
Hate them or not, he was going to use them to get the job done, and learn to live with himself after it was over.
“Fire at will,” he ordered. The eleven pilots under his command acknowledged and released the Mind-Killers on the city.
The weapon system looked more like a sensor pod than anything lethal; the techies in the fleet had mounted it above the muzzle of the Black Eagle’s 20-inch grav cannon. Its effect wasn’t visible to the naked eye, or any sensors other than the most finely-tuned graviton systems, and then only as some miniature warp aperture. Its effects were immediately apparent, however.
Gus’ visual feel zoomed in on the city below. One road was clogged with wheeled transport and skittering six-legged creatures trying to flee on foot. They began to drop dead without any visible wounds. There weren’t many Scarabs in the open, though; the majority were huddled inside their homes or secure shelters. He didn’t have to see them to know they were dying as well. No shields or structures could protect them against the Mind-Killers.
Here or there, a Scarab would keep on running as its fellows died around it. Mind-Killers exposed the victims to the effects of warp space. Anybody with a warp rating high enough to survive FTL travel would be exposed to terrifying hallucinations and some potentially harmful side effects, but would be otherwise fine. Unfortunately for the Kreck, over nine tenths of them weren’t warp rated. A few thousand survivors – many of them driven insane by warp exposure – would find themselves in a city choked with the corpses of the less fortunate. Better than being on one of the cities being burned by standard bloomies, he figured, trying to be glib about what he was doing and failing. None of this was right.
Killing the Scarabs by the millions wasn’t the problem. That was part of the job, and Gus had no illusions about it. The problem was that the Mind-Killers allowed Warplings to eat their victims. And Gus and all the pilots involved in the operation had a front-row seat to the terrible feeding frenzy.
As they died, something left the Kreck and entered warp space. Gus saw them as ghostly points of light; whenever he started at one of them he started seeing alien thoughts and emotions. The Foos ripped those lights to shreds, and Gus knew they were taking the Krecks’ memories, their identities, everything they had been and done, and absorbing them. And as they did, they became stronger. They were like demons growing larger the more souls they devoured.
At first, Gus was sickened. The first few hundred, thousand feedings made him want to turn his weapons on the monsters he was helping. The feeling passed as the death toll mounted up, however. At some point, he stopped feeling disgust. Not too long after that, a part of him began to enjoy the spectacle. It was as if whatever pleasure the Foos gained from their feast was contagious. After a while, he felt a brief jolt of pleasure each time a light was extinguished. He’d felt that before, at New Texas, when he’d started feeding the Gimps he killed to the Foos. Here, it became a continuous high. Maybe that was what being a god felt like.
The rest of him was wracked with guilt and horror, but that part was getting weaker every time Gus let the Foos feed on his victims, and this was the biggest meal he’d ever served. Millions of ETs, instead of a few thousand. He was shaking in the cockpit by the time it was done. It took him a while to realize the shaking was hysterical laughter.
And that he wasn’t the only one laughing.
* * *
Transition.
Their mission accomplished, the Black Ships fled into warp space like thieves in the night, followed only by the wails of despair coming from the few survivors it left behind.
It wasn’t a kind thought, and the handful of people who picked it up from the admiral’s mind gave him curious looks, but Kerensky ignored them. It might be unkind, but it was also fair. There was little to be proud of. One of his instructors at New Annapolis had said that a properly planned and executed military operation was something more akin to murder than a straight fight, and he’d lived by that maxim, but this… this felt dirty, somehow.
He should find the whole thing even more distasteful than he did. In fact, his mild disgust worried him more than the deed itself, mainly because he should be utterly revolted, not somewhat concerned. Kerensky wasn’t the man he’d been before embarking on this journey, and he didn’t like what he had become. Or at least he thought he shouldn’t like it. It was all very confusing.
It doesn’t matter. We
have saved humanity.
In effect, this attack had made it clear to the Imperium that a powerful hostile force was operating within its borders, one that could strike without warning and from unexpected directions. The enemy didn’t know – couldn’t know – the price Kerensky had to pay for those abilities. The Warplings that had built a ley line for his fleet had demanded the sacrifice of millions of aliens. He had agreed, after haggling down the total, an experience made doubly disturbing by the fact the Warpling in question had assumed the shape of his grandmother, who was alive and well back in the US.
“Nikolai, what do you care how many aliens we kill? They are not of your people. They are your enemies. It is a good thing, to kill your enemies, is it not?”
The voice had been perfect, the accent that became more pronounced when she got mad or exited even more so. The only difference was that this version of the woman who’d raised Kerensky seemed younger somehow. His grandmother had partaken of rejuvenation treatments as soon as they became relatively affordable, but they hadn’t quite turned back the clock; she’d always looked like somebody in her early fifties, beautiful in a stern, intimidating way. The monster masquerading as Yelizaveta Sokolov could pass as twenty, or even younger, and her suggestive poses and mannerisms had bothered him. He guessed that the entity had plucked memories of old photographs from his head, or at least he hoped that was the case. There were things the monster had said and done that made him suspect it had somehow seen into his grandmother’s past. If warp space existed outside spacetime, such things were possible.
“You were going to kill them, no? Then what does it matter?”
Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5) Page 8