Price of Imperium
by
Dave Robinson
Copyright 2014 by Dave Robinson
Cover Design Those DeWolfes
Cover by Shawn DeWolfe
from
CC0 image of Messier 82 Ngc 3034 M82 Spiral Galaxy
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
Amadar Excerpt
Chapter 1
ISS Talon dropped out of fivespace in full stealth. Commander Tam Holron tapped his fingers on the arms of his command chair, waiting for the data. It looked like a normal system, five gas giants in the outer reaches, three asteroid belts further in, and one small rocky planet close against the star. He realized he was tapping his fingers again, and laid his hand flat on the arm of his chair. "Do we have anything?"
"No sir, nothing yet," his executive officer replied. Lenys Kharan was the best exec Tam Holron had ever had; he was going to miss her when her tour was up.
"Very well, take us in slowly." He turned towards his tactical officer. "Mr. Vidall let's do this by the book, I want maximum stealth and the shield generators hot."
"Aye sir." The young lieutenant nodded. "No evidence of drive activity in-system or a life-bearing planet, but the outer belt is right in the middle of the water zone."
"Very good." Tam leaned back in his chair. "Alright people we have a job to do, so let's do it. You know the drill. The sooner we get a full read on this system the sooner we can lift for home." He pulled up his orders on a secondary display, to give himself something to look at while the data came in. They were the standard boilerplate, a star's radio emissions had suddenly dropped and Talon drew the duty to investigate. Supposedly they were searching for evidence the Enemy was still out there, but most crews thought of it as nothing more than graveyard duty. Civilizations rose and fell, to war, disease, or resource exhaustion; they all looked the same to the Imperium, a star going dim in the radio bands. But every time it happened, the Imperium investigated. The Enemy had been gone for centuries, but the orders were still on the books: someone had to rule them out.
*
Seventy-two hours after insertion, Tam pulled Lieutenant Commander Kharan into his office. He turned sideways to get past the desk and waved her to the the second seat. Dropping into his own, he turned to face her. "So Number One, what have you got for me?"
She took a deep breath. "It's definite, sir, this was an extinction event. I got the final data less than an hour ago. None of those belts is a century old; orbital traces show they were all originally terrestroid planets. Mass data shows all three cores are gone too." She paused. "They do exist."
Tam rested his chin on his hands; fighting the urge to tap on the desk. "Any sign of current activity?"
"No sir," she pushed a datapad toward him. "No evidence of fivespace ripples in this system, and no sign of any drives. We seem to be alone."
"Right Number One, let's save some coolant and make the engineer and Mr. Vidall a bit happier." He pulsed his implant. "Bridge, this is the Captain, secure from stealth mode and take the screen generators offline."
Aye sir. Ship secured for normal running.
Tam closed the connection and returned his attention to Lenys. "What do you want to do now? I saw your orders, you're getting a fancy chair once we rotate home. Here's a taste of command. If you were in my seat right now, what would you do? Lift back home immediately, or explore the system a bit more?"
She leaned back, biting her underlip. "That's a good question sir. We've already achieved our mission. I'm tempted to keep going, give this system more than just a once-over."
"Good idea, but you forgot something."
"Forgot something? What did I forget, sir." She raised an eyebrow.
"We haven't achieved the mission yet. Not until we report." He tapped the stack of datapads on the desk. "If it's not reported, it didn't happen. Upload the reports to a message drone, and while it lifts out for base, we'll explore the system."
"Aye sir, I'll get right on it."
"No need to be quite so formal, Lenys," he pointed toward the wardroom. "Have dinner with me and we'll go over your plans for a system survey, you're going to have to earn that extra ring."
She nodded and rose, gathering the 'pads.
He watched her leave, a compact woman who already carried herself like a starship captain. She still had learning to do, but some things you couldn't learn until you were the one in the chair.
*
Tam was back in the big chair after spending a week on the crew's files while Lenys Kharan ran the ship. The survey was almost done and he wanted to see the results. The innermost planet filled the main plot; he had to blink to focus on it after spending so much time staring at a 'pad. This close to the star Tam was glad to be in the shade of the planet. Lenys had deployed the radiator array, dumping some of the waste heat they'd picked up on the way in.
"Captain, I'm getting something," Vidall said. "Tight-beam pulse, looks like radar." An alarm blared and he flushed his decoys and countermeasures. "Hostile launch, four bogies. Shields are coming up, point defense live awaiting a solution."
"Carry on, Mr. Vidall." Tam kept his voice calm and level. He hated sitting doing nothing when the shooting started but his job was to show confidence, not stop missiles. He watched them come in, their images followed by data codes like a rocket's plume.
They were accelerating, burning anti-matter as they came. One hit a decoy and detonated too close to a second that lost lock, its guidance fried by the radiation pulse. The other two kept coming. Point defense was online, tracking the missiles heading into arc. Something was funny about the data codes. The missiles were coming straight in, no evasive maneuvers, no countermeasures, nothing. Talon's point defence cycled once and they dropped off the plot. It was too easy, Tam had seen target drones that were harder to hit.
"Permission to return fire?" Vidall asked, fingers poised above the firing stud.
"Denied," Tam replayed the attack on the main plot. The four missiles rose from the planet in slow motion, angling towards the radiator array strung out behind Talon's hull. "It was too easy, the attack pattern looks wrong."
"Aye sir," Kharan said. "I think these are survivors."
"First the Enemy and now survivors?" Tam swiveled to face her. "Are you sure?"
"No sir, I'm not, and I won't be without more data." She pointed at a close-up of one of the missiles, caught moments before point defence killed it. It was primitive, marks on the skin showing how it was cobbled together. Even given the differences between human and alien technology, the warhead didn't look like it was designed to mate with the booster. "Look how primitive that is. It can't be the Enemy, those missiles wouldn't destroy a planet."
"All right, I want to know everything there is to know about that launch site. Full scan, every sensor we have. If it's bigger than a coffee-cup I want to know about it." Tam leaned forwards in his chair. "Until I know about that coffee-cup I want shields up at all times and point defense hot. Leave the array out unless they launch, we may need the coolant to deal with who they thought they were shooting at." He lowered his voice. "Whoever they are, they had better have a good explanation."
"A
ye sir," Vidall said, "I have a firing solution locked." Crosshairs appeared on the main plot, covering a hump in the middle of a crater.
"Anything on that scan?" Tam glanced over towards Lenys Kharan.
"I think so sir," she said, bending over her console. "I'm picking up a habitat in the center of that crater. Looks like it's buried under about three metres of the local rock." Lenys highlighted a section of crater, and pulsed a couple of commands. Spectral data flashed up beside the highlighted area. "See there, they're leaking oxygen. I'm not sure we would have seen it without that leak."
Tam rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble. "Implement first contact protocols." It had never happened before, but the book was clear; bring back every piece of information. "I hope one of you did well in those classes at the Academy."
"Aye sir." Lenys nodded. "I believe Lieutenant Vidall did well in those courses."
"Good, he's with you." Before the lieutenant could leave his station, Tam continued. "That does not mean secure from battle stations. I want a round the clock watch on that site, and drones deployed in case anyone comes back. Commander Kharan, Mr. Vidall, I want a preliminary report in four hours." He rose, "I'll be in gym. Number one, you have the bridge."
*
Tam was the last one into the wardroom. Lieutenant Commander Kharan and Lieutenant Vidall had 'pads out. Vidall looked five years older than when they left Rondor Station. Nodding to them he filled his mug from the dispenser and slid onto the bench opposite. He took a sip of coffee and made a face. "Out of creamer, again." He pushed the mug off to one side. "So, what do we have?"
"Number one was right, they're survivors Captain, not the Enemy," Vidall said. "They're even humanoid." He flipped up a screen with the image of a roughly human-size biped with a light dusting of scales and what appeared to be four eyes, two large and dark with a second smaller pair above them and further apart. "The two lower eyes seem to provide most of the light gathering ability while the upper ones serve for resolution."
"That's not important right now Fahad," Kharan interrupted. "We can go over their anatomy later."
"Yes Ma'am," he replied. "The good news is that they favor fairly similar conditions to ours. The bad news is that they want us to take them out of here."
"What?" Tam looked to Kharan for confirmation. "Did he just say they want us to take them out of here?"
"Yes sir," she replied, "and I think we should."
"Let's table that , and get on with what else you've discovered." He took a drink, letting the hot bitterness wash down his throat. "Why don't you tell me what you've been able to reconstruct. Briefly, if you can."
"The Enemy entered this system about seventy-five years ago, wiped out the civilization, destroyed three planets and left." Vidall looked him straight in the eye. "That's all there is to it sir."
"What about the survivors?" Tam replied. "The Enemy never left survivors before."
"I think they were lucky, sir." Vidall said. "They were smart about it. As soon as the first ships came into the system a number of their research stations went silent and hid, locking everything down."
"And they were able to evade the Enemy's sensors?" Tam raised an eyebrow, "that is impressive."
"Well this station here was a multi-spectral observatory, and they were so concerned about light and heat pollution interfering with the instruments that it's damn near a black body." Vidall glanced to the Exec and back to Tam. "I don't think we'd have spotted them if they hadn't opened fire."
"I think it was as much suicide attempt as an attack," Kharan added. "I don't think they would have lasted more than another year or so without aid from the outside."
"So how much of this is speculation?" Tam looked the two officers over. "You seem to have a lot of information after four hours."
Lenys Kharan nodded, "Aye sir, we do." She took a sip of water, "more than we have any right to."
Tam waited while she gathered her thoughts. "Go on."
"They already knew Imperial." Her words echoed quietly. "They picked up some of our signals decades before the Enemy arrived, and worked out a translation program." She shook her head. "I guess they needed something to do for all that time. It's crude, but it's good enough for basic communications."
"Which is how they were able to ask us to get them out of here." Tam pushed his coffee cup further away.
"Yes sir," Vidall replied. "I don't think they know about Directive 207, but they did ask."
"It is the primary duty of both the Fleet and the Imperium to prevent the extinction of any sentient species at the hands of the Enemy," Tam quoted. "The directive's plain, and so's our duty"" Directive 207 was one of those things that was drilled into every member of the Fleet's officer corps. There was evidence the Imperium owed its own existence to an alien version of Directive 207. Before their own extinction they had spread all the intelligent life they could find over multiple planets, humanity included. The decision was already made, they would take the survivors.
"Get me Lieutenant Deggon," Tam said. "It looks like time to talk to the chief engineer about life support."
*
Beep, beep, beep, beep, the repetitive sound was no less annoying for being entirely inside his head. The alarm on his implant had Tam awake and sitting upright on his bunk in a matter of moments. He winced and rubbed his head as it bounced off the ceiling. Despite her size Talon was as cramped on the interior as any warship. Bigger guns, better electronics, smaller cabins-- that's the Navy way.
"Holron," he said, without bothering to turn on the cabin lights.
"Captain, it's Deggon," the lieutenant's voice sounded strained and he wondered when she had slept last. "We have a problem, I just put the last spare scrubber in Ventilation 'B' and I can't promise how long it will last. We've been going through them like crazy ever since those kendradi came aboard sir."
"We're only four days from Rondor Station. Do you think it will last that long?"
"Aye sir, one of the others might go, but we can stretch things four days. We'll just need a friendly supply officer when we reach the station."
"How friendly, lieutenant?"
"Very friendly, sir," Deggon said. "We've had to go through almost our entire complement of environmental spares. If we don't get resupplied quickly our next deployment could be cut very short."
"Understood, Holron out." Tam sat in the darkness, thinking. At least Deggon didn't know where the Enemy was going; Tam didn't know how she would react if she'd known their target was her homeworld. Using his implant, he brought up a display on a 'pad. Checking over the figures he could see they should be fine for at least five to seven more days under the added load-- possibly longer. He just wished he'd known they'd be this hard on the enviro systems. He'd have thought they'd be a light load given how long they'd lasted on their own.
He must have subvocalized something about the attack, because the image on his 'pad shifted to a reconstruction of the attack on Kendrade. They had done a good job, he noted as the scenes unfolded before him. Vidall had mixed kendradi imagery from the attack with computer simulations. Tam had seen excerpts but hadn't taken the time to watch it all the way through.
Kendradi ships boosted out to meet the newcomers, ungainly arrangements of spheres and girders. The camera zoomed towards a superdreadnaught hurtling towards one of the kendradi ships. A quick change of scene and he was looking at a datafeed from one of the defending craft. The image was grainy, but the Enemy ship was huge. Turrets swivelled towards the ship and Tam caught his breath. He gripped the 'pad as the starship launched missiles and the screen flickered black.
The scene shifted to another source, probably a satellite, the image was crisper and nothing appeared to be targeting it. Now he had a better look at the attackers, and when one launched a missile he could see it was about the size of a destroyer. Now the shock had worn off he took a closer look. The Enemy ships were different than Imperial, more wedge-shaped than cylindrical with one side devoted to beams and the other to missiles.
Tam unclenched his fingers and started making notes. Enemy ships looked to have a poorer coverage when engaging multiple targets, but they could probably put more firepower on a single target. They were offensive platforms, with weaker defenses.
By the time his attention returned to the screen the re-creation had advanced. Nothing of kendradi manufacture remained in space, and squadrons of maulers hung over the planet pounding cities with hammerbeams in a show of arrogant power. What few missiles rose from the surface were simply ignored until a mauler passed over the launch site. The missiles fell silent and the maulers retreated. A camera on the surface played over a scene of kendradi children dead and dying as the city burned around them. A woman moved among them, giving drinks to those who still moved. She stroked their foreheads, whispered what must have been words of comfort, even held their hands; but always gave them a drink. They lay still after. After seeing to the last of the children she sat down overlooking the bodies and took a drink herself and then was still. The camera kept recording.
Now it was a view from the observatory on Ravindor. A single ship was coming in, by the shape a mauler. This one looked different, rougher and less finished. A constellation of tiny shapes escorted it, like lifecraft, smaller than shuttles alongside a mauler. Slowly it grew closer, its surface cracked and worn. Holron could barely see sensors or weapons ports, this must have been an old ship held back from the fighting. Then the planet came into view, Tam shook his head and blinked, the ship looked larger than the planet.
It wasn't a trick. What he'd thought was another ship was a planet itself. Visibly bigger than the kendradi homeworld it matched orbits with the planet like nothing so much as an insect preparing to feed. The impression was strengthened when he watched a line stretch out from the invader to the defenseless planet. Motes fluttered around the stem as it bore down on the world like a needle. As it touched down huge hammerbeams flared, smashing into the planet's crust.
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