by Ivan Kal
March—Horsiar sector
Anessa, Kar Daim of the Shara Daim, was having a good time. Three weeks had passed since their invasion of the system, and already they had control of more than half of it, which put them ahead of schedule. She was commanding the Shara Daim fleets as they battled the Erasi. It was what she was supposed to do. She had taken the leadership of the Shara Daim out of necessity—not because she had wanted it. And now sitting upon her Sovereign, the Song of Retribution, she felt like all was finally right. The Shara Daim Sovereign class were built along different shapes than those of the Empire’s, the shapes more suitable for them. It was built like a narrow arch, with weapon systems covering both pillars. Their weaponry was different, as well. The Empire had its way of fighting, and the Shara Daim had their own.
Anessa ordered for the Song of Retribution to skim to the sixth planet, where a heated battle had erupted between her fleets and about half of the remnants of the Erasi’s defending fleets. Both she and Adrian had used their Sovereign-class ships sparingly, only in places where the fighting was heavy and where they had trouble with the Erasi defenses. If they had used them in their full capacity, they could’ve probably taken the system by now.
The problem was that the Sovereign class, while powerful, could only be in one place at a time. They needed their fleets to be capable, and a lot of their people had never actually been in a battle of this magnitude. The alliance had had five hundred years of relative peace, and both Adrian and Anessa wanted to allow their people to get battle experience during the openings of the conquest. Soon enough the Erasi would retaliate, Anessa had no doubt about that—and they needed to be ready for that. The Weaver of the Erasi would not take this defeat calmly; she would have some scheme or a card to play. It was what she did.
The Song of Retribution dropped out of skim and above her fleets’ battle lines, and with a thought she ordered them to open fire. Ion beams leapt and struck down the shields of the ships across the Erasi line, and proton beams exploded out of the Sovereign to batter the Erasi battleships. She ordered the focus of the fire to be shifted to the super-battleships, and the Song of Retribution opened fire with its antimatter beams.
Despite their name, the weapons weren’t really antimatter beams; the beam itself was more of a delivery system. A beam would reach to the enemy ship, marking it, and then the beam would deliver a small amount of several grams of antimatter to the target. Unlike the molecular-disintegration weapons that simply destroyed the bonds of any matter they came in contact with, the antimatter reacted violently when it came in contact with normal matter. That was exactly what happened as the Song of Retribution fired on one of the Erasi super-battleships.
The flash of an antimatter explosion ripped a massive hole in the ship’s hull, and the two of her battleships took advantage, pummeling the ship with proton beams, destroying it.
The arrival of her ship was forcing the Erasi to retreat. They had already learned about the capabilities of a Sovereign, and their retreat meant that another world had just joined those whose orbit the alliance now controlled. Now it would be on their land forces to take it. The land invasions had been hard overall. They wanted to take control of the worlds with the least amount of bloodshed possible for the civilian population; they did intend to keep the systems afterward, and killing the civilian population was not going to make that easier. Only the Erasi figured that out, they were taking every chance they could to hide behind the civilians. Fortunately, Adrian had Erasi agents in place that had mitigated that somewhat, by evacuating as many people as possible.
She looked over the battle map before her. Like the Empire’s ships, hers too now used a similar interface. She was floating in space above her fleets, issuing orders with her mind. Looking over the situation, she saw that her fleets around this world had the upper hand, but on the other side of the system, a couple of fleets were having difficulties breaking through the Erasi defense platforms. She quickly sent out the order for the Song of Retribution to enter the skim once again.
***
Planetside
Ryaana slid into cover behind a wall just as a bomb went off to her side, covering her in debris. She looked up over her cover and saw Erasi soldiers running up the street to her position. She waited until they entered range, and then sent the order to her team. Weapons fire showered the Erasi squad as her people shot at them from inside the buildings.
Afterward, Ryaana stepped out of the cover and called her people down. They needed to move quickly. They had been dropped into a hostile area with no support, with the mission to disable the anti-air guns covering this part of the city, so that the rest of the army assault could get down.
They gathered and started moving quickly down the streets. The Erasi anti-air platform was close by. As they neared the location of the building with the gun on top of it, Ryaana stopped her squad. She had kept a close watch on their surroundings with her mind, and had detected two Erasi minds moving toward them. She used her imp to order her team to dispatch them stealthily as she stepped inside a nearby building. She watched from the doorway.
The two Erasi never saw her Sha commandos. They grabbed them with telekinesis and broke their necks before they had even realized what happened, and then floated their bodies out of sight. She stepped out and they continued forward, finding the building that was their target. They had several guards as well as a plasma turret set up in front of the entrance—which was a problem.
She thought about the best way to approach it for a minute, then started giving out orders. She sent Vas to the building across them with his sniper rifle. He had shown himself to be extremely proficient with it. She had the rest of her team assemble and wait. Once Vas was in position, she gave the order. His first shot rang out and the bullet took the head of the Erasi soldier at the back of their small encampment. The second fired even before the first one reached its target, killing another one.
Ryaana’s heavy-weapons squad mate lined up a shot and fired his missile launcher, hitting and destroying the turret. Ryaana and the rest of her commandos rushed the encampment, her turrets firing as fast as possible. They jumped over the short barricades and mopped up the rest. Ryaana led the way into the building and up to the roof. Once she reached the last floor, she felt the Erasi preparing to ambush her as she stepped onto the roof. She didn’t give them the chance. Her turrets fired through the walls, and she reached with the Sha and threw several of them off the roof. She and two of her squad mates closed on the turret and planted explosives.
They jumped off the roof of the five-story building and softened their landings with their anti-grav generators. Once safely on the ground, they moved away and detonated the charges. They placed an orbital transmitter, and Ryaana opened a channel to her ship in orbit and reported in.
“Target destroyed.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Herald of War
Adrian looked over the several battles his ships were engaged in. There hadn’t been any major problems during the assaults. The Erasi defending fleet had been outnumbered and had been unable to do much more than delay his forces. The static defenses, on the other hand, had been very annoying with their anti-skim defenses. A large part of his arsenal had been rendered inert. And he had noticed several of their super-battleships had the same defenses. Not all of them, though, which was a blessing. It had to be something fairly new. The other reason why they had such an easy time of it was because the fleets defending the system had none of the Erasi Devastator-class warships. The Devastator ships were about half the size of a Sovereign, which meant that they would be a great threat.
But for now, they had the run of the system. They had taken the orbits of eleven out of the seventeen worlds, and had managed to occupy four of the more important ones. The rest they had left under Erasi control, while they kept the orbitals. There was no need for them to waste resources on them now, not until they took the entire system.
Several of his scouts had reached him to report
that the invasions across the border had met with great success. The Erasi had been tied up on the borders too much to send help, and the only way this system was going to see any reinforcements was if the Erasi sent them from their core or from the surrounding sectors. And doing that would do nothing but further weaken them. Adrian knew that by now they had figured out how a force of this size had arrived so deep in their territory, especially since the Krashinar were a part of that force. That meant that the Erasi would fear them appearing somewhere else in the blink of an eye—and that would keep them from acting fast enough. They will hesitate to move the forces from their core, Adrian thought.
His attention was drawn to a group of Erasi, two fleets that had just skimmed in close to the shipyards in the orbit of the gas giant. Immediately Adrian saw that they intended for a fast strike to damage the yards and deny them to the alliance. Adrian ordered the Herald of War to skim toward them at the fastest speed available to them.
Minutes later, the Herald of War arrived to find the small task force of Shara Daim ships defending the shipyards, hard pressed under the Erasi fire. As soon as the Herald of War dropped out of skim, Adrian ordered the crew to fire.
The Erasi super-battleships attempted to shield the smaller ships, but the gesture was futile. The firepower of the Sovereign broke through their shields, and MD cannons obliterated the ships to nothingness.
S-missiles launched and struck every smaller ship that was attempting to run away. Less than ten minutes after the Sovereign arrived, the two Erasi fleets had been destroyed.
***
Aranis had never seen war like this before. Millions upon millions had died. The fighting during the wars between the People and the races that they had uplifted long ago had not been like this. The People had superior technology, and so twelve World-ships had managed to subdue all of the races that had risen up against them. And while he knew that many of them had died, at the time he hadn’t truly understood death on such a scale. He had been removed from the carnage, safe on the World-ships.
Then, later, when the Enlightened were fighting against the remnants of the People and the races they had tasked to fight against them, it had been the client races that the three of them had created that fought in their stead. Again, Aranis had been too busy with other things, trying to get the Conduit to work. It was Doranis that had led their fleets.
But now he had seen war, and the death it brought firsthand. He had seen the diversity of weapons that the Empire wielded against its enemies. These people breathed war; they thrived in it. It was now that he had seen the brilliance of Axull Darr’s plan. He had created a people that were all that the People had been, but were also more. They were a true threat to the Enlightened.
And their ships… He had seen only a few of their battles, but the destructive power that both sides wielded was enough that even one of the Enlightened’s living-ships might not survive in battle. And their Sovereign-class warships were truly a marvel to look at. He understood now what the inquisitor had meant when he had said that the Enduring was obsolete. They were almost forces of nature, with enough firepower to lay waste to entire systems. The idea behind them was very…interesting. He was certain that he could have something similar made. Perhaps he would once he went back.
Aranis considered going back right now—he had seen a lot, after all. But there were still things to learn. Ryaana had invited him to join something called the Nomad fleet, a creation of her father’s, and he had to admit that he was intrigued.
In any case, the consensus that he had reached with the others meant that the purge would begin once Ullax died. And while Aranis was capable of many things, he would not go back on his word. There was a part of him, still, that cared about Ullax, and he did not want her alive to see what they were going to do to her legacy.
In the end he would be better served staying exactly where he was for the foreseeable future. Not only had he been learning a lot about his enemies, but he had also learned many different skills. He was learning about how to wage true war. He saw now how complacent his power had made him. He had come to believe that he didn’t need to learn how to fight when he could just crush any opponent with that power.
Now he knew better. And the things he learned were going to be useful—very useful, once the purge began.
***
Ryaana was lying in her bed during one of their rare downtimes. She had been hitting planets and installations all across the system for almost a full month now. The fighting had been fierce in some places—the Erasi were not an easy opponent to fight against. Thankfully this system had a very low Gatrey population, as otherwise she knew that taking the system would have been much harder. In fact, none of their “ruling” races were represented in large numbers here, which was a blessing. Those from the ruling races tended to be a class above the rest in a fight.
In any case, their technology alone made them very dangerous. Already they had encountered weapon systems that they hadn’t even known existed. The Erasi had clearly advanced a lot since the prior war. This operation had been a great success, but she knew that they hadn’t yet faced any true resistance. They had caught the Erasi off guard, and that was all.
When their push back finally came, then the might of the alliance would truly be tested. They hadn’t yet seen their Devastator-class ships in action, and she could feel that they had many. Even with five hundred years of intelligence gathering, she knew that they hadn’t managed to get everything. The Erasi were masters of the game; the only reason that her father had managed to get his plan to work was because the Erasi had been hard pressed by the Krashinar.
But it was fine if the Erasi had things in reserve, as Ryaana knew that her father did as well.
The conquest was only beginning.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Krashinar great beast Araxi
The Old Scar supervised its tamers as they guided its great beast. The Araxi had been singing in happiness. It had been bored outside of battle—it was made to hunt, to exchange fire in the void. The Old Scar agreed; it hadn’t realized how much it had missed the hunt until it came back to it. It knew that it hadn’t felt this way before it exchanged lives with Adrian. The memories of his life had changed it, had given it a new breath and desire for life.
Adrian had asked the Old Scar to take its Great Pack and deal with four worlds that held only the Betrayers’ military installations, and the Old Scar had agreed. The concept of civilians and military beings was foreign to the Krashinar, as they were simply all Krashinar. Yet from Adrian’s memories it knew that almost every other race in the galaxy understood these concepts. The Old Scar knew now that that was the reason that the Krashinar had never managed to find common ground with the other races. They had blindly walked into the trap laid by the Betrayers of Oaths, and since then every single one of their contacts had ended in violence and blood. Only, they had managed a bloodless contact with the Empire. The Old Scar believed them trustworthy, and perhaps they would one day even be friends.
The Old Scar watched as several of its beasts cornered a single enemy hollow beast—or a ship, as it knew they called them—and destroyed it. Its Great Pack had performed very well. They hadn’t had to worry about differentiating between “civilians” and “military personnel,” and had simply moved and killed everything in their way.
The Betrayers had formidable defenses, but nothing that the Great Pack hadn’t encountered before. The beasts of the Great Pack used their long-range energy weapons to lower their defenses and maim them, and then they moved in closer for the kill. Coordinated assaults on the ground had been successful as well. Krashinar weapons might not be as diverse as those of the Betrayers, but they did get the task done.
A short burst of information reached the Old Scar’s mind, directed from its great beast. A group of the Betrayers ships had “skimmed” close to its position. The Old Scar ordered the great beast to intercept. It had done well in the battle, but had been held back a lot, as the Old Scar’s
purpose was to lead the Great Pack and not to hunt for enemies. However, it knew that Araxi deserved some entertainment.
The Old Scar felt Araxi’s joy as it sped toward the enemy ships. Deftly, the tamers guided the great beast. It moved below the enemy ships as they fired their skim missiles. Araxi released a pulse of energy around it, taking down the skim fields from around them, and then shot them down with its low-power plasma weapons. It was foolish of the Betrayers to attempt to use the skim missiles, as it was the Krashinar who had originally developed the abilities to disrupt their fields. An ability that the Betrayers had then stolen.
Araxi drew closer, and it reached out to one of the enemy ships, manipulating the gravitons around it to squeeze the ship and crush it. The Old Scar was surprised that the enemy had allowed Araxi so close. It was the largest of the Krashinar beasts—not as large as the Empire’s Sovereign warships, but still larger than the largest enemy warship in the system. They must’ve known what the rest of the Krashinar beast were capable of, and they should’ve assumed that what they could do the Araxi could do better.
Araxi put out one short burst of power and crushed the enemy ship’s back. It released the ship and left it there to float as it began the hunt for the remaining enemy ships. The tamers guided Araxi to fire its long-range weapons at the furthest enemy while focusing its other weapons on those closer.
Green energy beams lashed out at the furthest enemy ship, while it reached out with its power to another ship. The enemy had been firing nonstop at Araxi, but the great beast had barely noticed as the shield pylons on its hide were handling the weapons fire with ease. A group of fast-moving small projectiles left the slits in its hide and hit the shields of one enemy ship. The shields flared brightly and then collapsed all around the ship. Araxi took advantage, and plasma flew out, hitting the enemy ship and burning its way inside. Several powerful hits later and the ship was dead in space, just as she crushed yet another under the force of increased gravity.