Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5)

by C. J. Carella

  Or maybe they’ll be smart for a change and throw in the towel, she thought. Now that would be unexpected.

  The US had made peace entreaties towards the Imperium after each victory. Part of it was public relations, trying to make America look like the reasonable party in the conflict, but the proposals were sincere. The terms the State Department had demanded were harsh – Princeps Boma would have to resign from the Triumvirate and give himself up to the US, for starters – but they were nothing compared to the impossible ultimatum the Gimps had made before the Battle of New Texas. Since the local forces had chosen to fight rather than talk, she could only assume the war was still on. Her ONI team was analyzing all the data compiled from the system’s communication grid, but nobody was expecting to hear any good news.

  There were still about twenty million survivors on the planet below, scattered among hundreds of small towns and villages. Sondra had forgone the thorough cleansing that the laws of war considered proper under the circumstances. Doing so was pointless, would spend resources she might need later, and delay the much-needed repairs the fleet needed..

  And I’m getting sick of playing butcher.

  If she had to, she would. There were thirty-five billion people in Primus, the most populous system in the known galaxy. Kill them all and the Galactic Imperium would die with them. At best, it would Balkanize along species lines and turn into three, or more likely, half a dozen polities. At worst, it would disintegrate into hundreds of smaller star-states, easy pickings for its many neighbors, none of whom loved the Gimps and their stated goal of bringing the galaxy into their so-called Unity. Either way, the war would be over, except for a return trip to Lhan Arkh space to wipe out the Lampreys.

  Funny how the idea of massacring Lampreys bothers me so much less than killing Gal-Imps. In the end, it all devolves into a beauty contest, I suppose, and the Gimps are a lot less repulsive.

  Sondra hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Surely, the Imperium would throw in the towel rather than lose its capital and the center of its power. Surely, they wouldn’t make her kill them all. It would be great if she had a weapon that would allow her to take out the decision-makers without having to massacre all the worker bees whose main sin was to have idiots for leaders. Unfortunately, even the latest wonder weapons in her arsenal didn’t give her that discretion. If the enemy didn’t give up, she would have to achieve victory by any means necessary.

  She shook her head and went back to work. There were hundreds of things that needed doing. Their current mission required them to be scavengers and freebooters as well as warriors, and that only added to her administrative burdens.

  And we’re not even halfway to our destination. Assuming we can fight past the next blocking force they put on our path, that is.

  They’d found a way of dealing with the STL fighters, but it required the enemy to fire the first shot, which wasn’t an optimal solution. If they didn’t find a better way, they were going to be whittled away before getting there..

  * * *

  “They don’t look like much, do they?”

  The Gimp warp disruptor, some ten meters long, was not particularly impressive. It was a modified 314mm graviton cannon, the kind of weapon you’d find on the main batteries of Gimp destroyers or their wimpier cruiser classes. Lisbeth could provide chapter and verse of the gun’s main stats without bothering to Woogle it. The basic design had undergone some serious modifications, though. There were dozens of attachments along the gun tube that didn’t serve any purpose she could understand. She was there in the hope that the grinning lieutenant giving her the nickel tour would provide the answers she needed.

  A fabber section aboard the repair ship Wayland had been turned over to an impromptu research team working on the disruptor problem while Third Fleet did repairs. Lisbeth and Grinner had taken some time off from the other million things they needed to do and gone to take a firsthand look at the results that Lieutenant Miranda had allegedly achieved.

  “We were lucky with this piece,” the Engineering officer said, affectionately patting the gun barrel. “It’s the only intact disruptor we’ve found so far.”

  Lisbeth nodded. Shuttles weren’t meant to trade shots with starships. Most ‘fighters’ had been blasted into very small pieces during the battle.

  “As you can see, they took a standard GIAP-4300b and added these spacetime distorters,” the lieutenant explained. “I’m sure that you are aware that similar devices are used to create warp apertures by bombarding a volume of space with artificial gravity until the proper conditions are created.”

  And if I wasn’t, you sure as hell just educated me, she thought, suppressing a snort. A lot of techie types thought Marines or any fighting Navy personnel were a few notches below trained bears.

  “Against a normal target, the modified beam is far less effective than a regular graviton beam,” the officer went on. “This weapon system only generates about half the destructive power of a normal 314mm weapon. What it does instead is create the preconditions for a breach in spacetime. Normally, that would produce no appreciable effects, unless it interacts with an already-existing aperture, such as a ship making or leaving transit, or a warp shield. In that case, the beam adds energy to the event, destabilizing it and causing a variety of possible effects. Anything from a rapid increase in aperture size to a random jump to a different point than originally intended to a complete collapse of the tunnel at both points.”

  “We’d figured as much. Anything we can do to counteract it?”

  “Warp shields can be adjusted to remain stable even with the extra influx of gravitons. It will require more personnel to monitor them and reduce power when necessary. They will also need to reduce their coverage to prevent unexpected enlargements.”

  “Better than no shields at all.”

  “Indeed. Another piece of good news is that the disruptor will not affect your gunships’ hybrid shields at all. The outer layer is a standard force field; it will isolate the warp elements from the disruptor’s effects.”

  “That is good news.” Maybe not worth coming all the way here, but still.

  “And there is more,” Miranda added, playing showman and clearly saving the best for last.

  If this isn’t absolutely GREAT news, buddy, I’m going to look into ways to mess you up. It never paid off to annoy a superior officer, even from a different branch of service.

  Something in her expression must have betrayed her thoughts, or the lieutenant must have been sensitive enough to pick them up, because he rushed to finish what had clearly been planned as a lengthy dog and pony show.

  “Uh, fortunately it turns out that this sort of weapon existed at the time of the Kraxan Wars. Which our research team has been studying. The translations aren’t great, but after some…” He cut himself off and cut to the chase. “In any case, the Mind-Killer devices aboard your gunships can detect and be tasked to fire automatically on any disruptor that shoots at them. And since their effect is instantaneous, it will strike the fighter’s crews before the disruptor beam reaches your ship. Which in any case wouldn’t affect you when you are in normal space.”

  “And those fighter crews won’t be warp rated,” Lisbeth finished for him. “The Gimps don’t have enough of those to put on slower-than-light shuttles. The Mind-Killers will slaughter them.”

  She didn’t like the Marauder weapon, which was designed to murder the warp-blind who comprised the vast majority of most sophonts in the galaxy. The system was mostly useless against starships, since their crews were all warp-rated, but it would do the trick against the Foxtrots. Which made her like it just a little better.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. I will inform the admiral that you and your department have found an effective countermeasure.”

  The officer relaxed visibly. Lisbeth barely noticed it, busy with her own thoughts.

  We’ve got them.

  And maybe Kerensky’s renegades wouldn’t figure out how to deal with the Gimp weapons before it was
too late. It’d be nice, to have the Black Ships destroyed by aliens, sparing Third Fleet from firing on fellow Americans.

  It’d be nice, but I’m not counting on it.

  Angels might be on Third Fleet’s side, but the renegades had their own spiritual guides.

  Twelve

  Star System Sokolov, 169 AFC

  Nicholas Kerensky smashed his fists against his desk, screaming in incoherent rage.

  They’d made him run. Destroyed one battlecruiser and seventeen fighters. And there was a high chance that their withdrawal point had been spotted, providing the Gimps with the means to follow his fleet to their base at Sokolov.

  He screamed again, images from the battle still burning brightly in his mind. The swarm of modified shuttles that had lain in ambush for him and struck without warning. The massive warp malfunctions that had turned their shields against them, throwing his ships back into transit and scattering them in all directions. The USS Isaac Chauncey had been ghosting when the enemy fighters hit it: the ensuing fluctuations had critically weakened the ship’s structural integrity, tearing it apart. The Warplings that hovered near the Black Ships hadn’t hesitated to feed on the Chauncey’s crew, either. Kerensky could still hear the mental screams of the ship’s four thousand spacers as they were consumed body and soul by their putative allies.

  Those poor bastards were dead anyway.

  That was true enough – even the enhanced humans who comprised his force couldn’t survive being thrown into null-space without sealed armor and an actual exit point – but it didn’t change the fact that, despite all the deals he had made with those beings, they still regarded all flesh-and-blood sophonts as nothing more than food. Treaties between sheep and wolves had a way of turning out badly for the sheep.

  Is this what I’ve done? Betrayed my country just so I can provide meals for those monsters, with my own soul to serve as dessert?

  “It is a little late to regret your choices, Admiral.”

  Kerensky was startled by the unexpected mental voice, and by the fact that his guarded thoughts had been somehow overheard despite all his precautions. He immediately recognized the mind touching his. It was the Prophet, except this was not the man the admiral had come to know and loathe. He didn’t think Dhukai was human at all.

  The mental projection that regarded him with a contemptuous expression was still that of the slender and beak-nosed former fighter pilot, but there was something larger and alien behind it. Kerensky had an impression of something massive and deep, something like the embodiment of what one feels looking down a deep chasm. That vast entity lurked behind the Prophet’s human façade but couldn’t truly hide its terrible reality. The admiral wondered if the Prophet had enjoyed his fate. He strongly doubted it.

  “What do you want?” Kerensky asked, doing his best to hide his sense of growing terror from the entity. He’d been avoiding Dhukai for the weeks preceding the aborted raid into Imperium space; the transformation must have happened during that time. He found it amazing that nobody had noticed it, though. Perhaps they hadn’t cared. He had noticed that the amount of deference the Prophet commanded had increased to the point where Kerensky sometimes felt like the XO of his fleet rather than its commander.

  “You seem to be having a crisis of faith,” the thing wearing Dhukai’s face said. “I wish to help you.”

  “Like you helped the Chauncey’s crew? Your friends turned on my people,” he replied, not quite daring to tell the entity that he knew who he was talking to. “Thousands of them. Dead. Worse than dead.”

  “If we could have saved them, we would have, Nicholas. You have been excellent providers, and we would not waste such valuable allies.”

  Despite already knowing the truth, the admission that Dhukai was no longer human chilled Kerensky to the bone. The thrill of fear came from the part of him that could still experience such feelings. He wasn’t fully human himself, not since he’d allowed another, lesser Warpling to commune with him. That link had given him power, but had also changed him. The rage he felt came from both sides of him, though: his Warpling-self wanted to challenge the Prophet, but didn’t quite dare.

  “But once that ship broke apart, the humans inside were doomed. We did them a favor, taking their essence and making it our own. We learned a great deal from them. They live on within us. All the things that matter, their thoughts and deeds. They are within us.”

  The Prophet’s mental image changed. Kerensky found himself facing a woman he recognized. Captain Helen Zimmer, commander of the Chauncey.

  “Death is not the end, Admiral. It is merely a different state of being. I’m in a better place now. We all are. I think… I think this might be Heaven.”

  Kerensky shuddered. One got used to speaking to the dead while in warp, but this was something else. Even worse than confronting this ghost was the certainty that she was spouting off nothing but lies. Zimmer and her crew might still exist in some fashion, but he was positive they weren’t experiencing anything heavenly. His telepathic senses had grown stronger, thanks to his personal Warpling, and he knew there was something beneath Zimmer’s pleasant words. Something like despair. Agony. No, she wasn’t in Heaven at all.

  What have I done?

  “You have changed the galaxy, my darling Nikolai,” the Prophet said. He transformed into Yelizaveta Sokolov, and Kerensky recoiled from the sight as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Thanks to you, humanity will rule the stars for ten thousand years.”

  “Our defeat argues otherwise,” he said, and felt a brief moment of triumph when the Prophet’s smile became a scowl. He assumed Dhukai’s shape once again.

  “A minor setback. And those new weapons can be turned against our enemies. We will show you how.”

  “At what price?”

  The Prophet’s grin returned. “Nothing is free, Nikolai Federov. Not on either side of the Divide. We will take our due, nothing more, and nothing less. We will raise you up and give you dominion over your enemies. And you will do the same for us.”

  All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.

  The Prophet heard the admiral’s thoughts and nodded in agreement.

  Kerensky knew he was trapped. His course was set, and he couldn’t change it. He didn’t want to change it. Even after every betrayal from those entities and the knowledge they considered him nothing but a resource to exploit, he didn’t want to give up. In the end, destroying the Imperium and shattering the galaxy’s balance of power was all that mattered. Humanity might curse his name, but he would have exacted revenge on those who would destroy his people. Beyond a certain point, hatred became its own reward.

  “You know what you need to do. To grant you this power, we will need a sacrifice of commensurate value.”

  Kerensky glanced at the system display. At Sokolov-Four, the bright blue jewel of the system. The life-bearing planet and its five billion sophonts. People much like those on Earth before First Contact. He understood now. If he went along with this, he wouldn’t be just sacrificing those innocents. The last of his humanity would be gone as well.

  He realized everybody aboard the Black Fleet was watching him. Fifty-five thousand three hundred and six minds. Perhaps a thousand of those begged him to stop, and the others turned on them so quickly they must have been expecting this very moment. Kerensky felt the dissenters die throughout the Black Ships, torn limb by limb by the true believers around them. The bridge crew had risen to their feet, and he knew he’d share the same fate if he denied the Prophet his due.

  Death held no horrors for him. Fear had nothing to do with his final choice.

  Kerensky nodded.

  That was all it took.

  Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 168 AFC

  “I wish I had better news,” the Puppy double agent said, following the words with a short whine that conveyed sincere regret.

  Heather inclined her head in a Hrauwah gesture of acceptance that absolved the agent from any blame.

 
; “The truth is the truth, however unpalatable,” she said. “Better to follow an unpleasant but real stench than be lured away from one’s prey.”

  “Thank you for your insightful understanding, Sister-Hunter. This has been a somewhat harrowing situation. I never expected to find my loyalties tested to these extremes.”

  Rolls-Onto-Leaves was a middle-aged Hrauwah with unremarkable features. A roughly humanoid, furry body, with a head that bore a passing resemblance to a light-beige Dachshund’s, except for a wider brain case. His shoulders were currently slumped in a sorrowful posture as he delivered his news.

  “The High King has dismissed the Master at Arms and the Chamberlain. This has yet to be made public, but will be known within the next few weeks.”

  Heather maintained her outwardly calm demeanor with some effort. If that was true – and she would be able to confirm the news soon enough – the Hrauwah Privy Council had been purged of its last pro-American elements. With the Assembly of Kings firmly in control of the ‘humans-be-damned’ faction, there was no hope for a positive outcome.

  Rolls whined again before continuing:

  “Once their replacements are appointed, the High King will address the Assembly and call for an end to all foreign adventures for the good of the Realm. This was told to me by my third cousin Silent-In-Anger, who works in the Chamberlain’s Office.”

  In the Kingdom, family ties were often more important than its formal hierarchy. Rolls’ status as a trader of middling worth and equally minor rank was belied by his access to dozens of highly-placed siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts. He could have easily parlayed those connections into a title of nobility or even a lesser kingship, but he preferred to work in the shadows, banking an impressive collection of favors and information for when he chose to retire in a century or two. Very fortunately for the US, Rolls was a fervent – one might even say rabid – ally. While growing up in the Hrauwah community on Old Earth, a human friend had saved his life. Heather didn’t know the full story, only that the incident had created a familial bond that transcended politics and species. Rolls-In-Leaves was a friend, a trustworthy one.