Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6)

by Timothy Ellis

  Chaos shook her head, which I assumed meant the girls were still on board. Could be a problem.

  “Do you want me to take out the planet fleets on my way through? Then you just need to organize a system defense, instead of needing an attack force.”

  “Grace, I don’t want you taking on eight fleets again. You got away with it once, but next time they’ll be ready for you. You’re authorized to hit no more than two fleets at a time, and then jump elsewhere. If I need your firepower for a planet assault, I’ll call you in. The best use for you now is like an old style cavalry raid behind the lines. Hit hard and fast and be gone, leaving them with no idea where you’ll hit next, and no way of preparing for you, or being able to hit you because you won’t be doing a second run.”

  Chaos made a whinny sound, and I had to stop myself from smiling. Jon obviously heard it too, but ignored it.

  “Can I keep Tanith?”

  “Do you really need him?”

  I thought about it. I didn’t have pilots, so I didn’t need a mage around to save them if they screwed the pooch. And it wasn’t as if I needed a man around to keep me company. Especially when he could be doing something more useful elsewhere.

  “Probably not.”

  “Then he can go with the team.”

  “Fine. When do you want me to start?”

  “As soon as Amanda stops hiding on Chaos, and gets their collective arses over to Fearless.”

  “Any news on George?”

  “No. Jane will let you all know if there is. But he could be literally anywhere, and finding him will be a fluke at best.”

  “Have you thought about asking Kali or Thirteen where he is?”

  “Thirteen seems to have vanished, although Max is still happy so he must be visiting. But I suspect since the nebulae are not threatened by plants, they won’t be considering this war any of their business. Kali will only answer if it suits her, and it apparently doesn’t.”

  “Which might indicate George is doing something for her?”

  “It’s possible. And we can hold that thought, because it would at least mean he was alive. If so, Kali will presumably arrange for Jane to find where he is when whatever he’s doing is complete.”

  “Or he gets in over his head too far.”

  His mouth twitched. I knew he was thinking the same thing, but didn’t want to voice it.

  “There’s nothing we can do, Grace. Jane has an avatar monitoring the oracle. If something is revealed, we’ll know about it. In the meantime, you have your orders. Raise some chaos for the Trixone, but stay safe. I don’t want to be looking for you too.”

  “Aye sir. Chaos I can do. Any time frame?”

  “Pace yourself, and be unpredictable. Jane will let you know when to come home.”

  He paused, and tried to smile, but it was little more than painted on.

  “Good hunting.”

  The channel closed.

  “You can come in now!” I yelled.

  I hadn't known for certain they were out there, but Amanda led them in, and I swiveled to face them.

  “You heard?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “We’re staying,” said BA.

  “You’re not.”

  “What?” exclaimed Alison.

  “Jon gave you orders. I’ve got my orders. The war comes first.”

  Amanda looked ready to slug me, but Aleesha touched her arm. She flinched.

  “But it’s George,” said Alana.

  “I know it’s George. But until we know where he is, you have responsibilities. You’re team one, and planets out there need you. Do your jobs. I promise I’ll come get you the moment we find George.”

  They all looked at me as if it wasn’t a promise they expected me to keep.

  “Look, this ship is going into harm’s way and at best, you’re passengers. If nothing else was happening, I’d take you along. But planets out there need YOU. Go and do your jobs. Chaos can travel so fast now, the only real time will be transferring you between ships or from the ground. I will come get you when we know where he is.”

  They still hesitated.

  “Don’t make me pull rank on you.”

  That caused some grins.

  “You can’t,” started Abagail, before she realized I could.

  “Ship captain beats marine colonel. Get going before Jon calls back and gets really agro.”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Agatha.

  Amanda’s face said he would.

  “He would,” said Jane, letting them remember she was always listening in.

  “Fine,” exclaimed Amanda. “We’re going.”

  They vanished. I looked to the back of the bridge, and saw Tanith standing there. He smiled at me, nodded, and vanished himself.

  “Thanks for that,” said Jane. “I thought I’d have to pull rank myself, and I hate doing that.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “I know. You’re about to be too busy to brood. They need to be as well.”

  “True. Where do we start?”

  “I’ve got a side mission for you to begin with.”

  Thirty

  Chaos waited for Fearless to vanish into a rift.

  I’d taken the opportunity to go down and get Nut, and place him on the bridge tree. He took a look around, ignoring the view ahead, and settled on a lower level, sitting there watching me. He seemed happy enough. I’d talked to Chaos about extra protection for him, and now every level of the tree had extra suits on it like armbands, all linked to his collar suit. If need be, they’d form around the entire area he was sitting on, and prevent him being thrown off. The same was true now for his tree in my living room, and the one in my ready room.

  “Ready?” asked Chaos.

  I adjusted my position in my command chair, placed my hands on the speed slider and joystick, and slid our speed up to what I was now calling line attack speed. I nodded to Chaos.

  Chaos jumped across to the rift to Redoubt, and we slid through, continuing on to and through the jump point for Reaper’s Crossroad. There we jumped into Triffid’s Shuffle, and to the system on the other side.

  There were ten fleets in here now, and we came out on the line of the closest to the jump point. Strafe and shoot, reducing the line to debris as we crossed it, with a side effect of all the missiles heading into the jump point running the gauntlet of debris now going in all directions. We took some missile hits purely by being in the firing lane for the jump point, but the shield indicators barely twitched. At the end of the line, we double jumped back into Crossroad.

  I’d barely taken my finger off the trigger when we appeared in front of the third line of ships back from the other side of the Kangaroo Hop jump point. Strafe and shoot. Jump back to Crossroad. We repeated it for the other side of Tiger’s Leap, only instead of attacking a fleet, this time we appeared on a line for a dozen ships between us and the jump point. The result was the same, but instead of jumping out the point, we jumped to the next system the other way.

  Which was when I realized the Keerah had lost a battle with the plants, that had cost them another six systems in the process, putting them on our Crossroads doorstep in two places now. So not every fleet Jon had moved was proving successful at holding the plants back.

  Neither the Keerah nor the Ralnor had yet come up with a counter to massed fighter bombers. And as far as I could see, neither had made any significant upgrades to their ships. We had, through sheer necessity, and so we were holding, and they were barely hanging on, and sometimes weren’t. Very sobering thoughts.

  It took a whole minute of jumping across systems to reach the other side of the Democratic Union Buffer jump point, where we again appeared on a different angle, took out ten ships, and jumped clear across to the other side of DU Buffer, and started moving along DU systems into Naranja systems, and finally after another minute or so, into the other side of Naranja Buffer, where we did exactly the same thing again from a new angle.

&
nbsp; From there, Chaos backtracked us to Lufafluf, and started us towards Keerah’s Folly, our name for the system where Claymore had been damaged enough to need shipyard work.

  “That did the trick,” said Jane. “The debris is interrupting enough of the missile spam so I can safely resupply the battlestations and titans. I could have used missile spam myself, but why waste the missiles when you have something better.”

  I had a thought.

  “Jane, why aren’t the battlestations on the station rift system? Shouldn’t they be able to be resupplied by rift if they can’t make missiles fast enough?”

  I think I heard the word ‘fuck’, but decided to ignore it. Syrinx was going to be even busier for a while now. And I didn’t have time for an answer anyway.

  We did the same on the other side of both the remaining Imperium jump points, and Chaos continued out into Trixone held Keerah space. Each time the navmap showed more than two dozen ships, we dropped in and took out about a dozen before moving on. After another dozen hits, Chaos stopped us in a system with nothing of interest in it.

  “Break time,” she announced.

  I rose, stretched, and went over to pat Nut. He’d grown bored watching me, and gone back to sleep, and although he didn’t seem to waken, he did start to purr. A butler droid slid a bottle of water into the holder on my chair, and I gave up tickling my cat, and took a long slurp.

  “Up for something different?” asked Chaos. I nodded. “Jane wants us to slide out into Trixone space.” I looked confused for a moment. “We’re out of live talk range now. She’s sending me messages as she monitors where we are.”

  “What’s next then?”

  She told me, and my smile lit up.

  Four more systems out, and some forty ships destroyed along the way, Chaos mentioned we were now officially in Trixone space. It highlighted just how far the plants had gone into Keerah space before being slowed. I guess Jane knew how many dead planets, as far as animals went, there were now along where we’d just skipped, but I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t need anger to fuel what needed to be done here.

  The fifth system had six jump points. Not far in from the one leading to Keerah space, there was a large station. Three fleets with a lot of transports were half way from the station to the jump point. The whole system was covered by comnavsats, and there were single fleets on the lines from each to either the habitable planet in the third orbit, or the station not far from us. There was a second station in orbit of the planet, with a steady shuttle traffic to and from the ground, and what looked like fighter squadron transfers ongoing to the fleet docked at the station.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, and so we did.

  The three fleets not far from us had showed no awareness of our presence, which wasn’t surprising since we were above the plane of the system further than we knew their sensor range was. So the lead fleet died the same way as all the others before they really knew we were there. The rear fleet behind the transports died next, while at the same time, Chaos launched normal cap missiles at the transports themselves.

  The middle fleet managed to get its fighters launched before we skipped to deal with them, and by the time the last combat ship was dead, half the transports were gone as well, and about half the fighters from Chaos’s point defenses and anti-fighter missiles. The group launchers for FF’s had their first decent work out, and being able to launch so many more, faster, made a big difference to weeding out the fighters. All the same, by the time the last was gone, and the remainder of the transports as well, the shields were actually showing a drop.

  With nothing around to threaten us, we used the recharge time to head over to the station at normal cruising speed, coming to a stop just inside battleship gun range, where it became obvious the station itself was unarmed. In all likelihood, the Trixone had never had an enemy get this far into its space before. Or not in so long they didn’t believe it would ever happen again.

  It took five minutes of sitting there with my finger on the trigger, firing full broadsides instead of gatling fire, before the station was in debris incapable of supporting survivors. After letting go of the trigger, I set the guns back to gatling mode, and sat there looking at my handiwork.

  The plants had done worse than this to every planet they’d attacked and taken over. Their incursions were littered with station debris, and this was the first of theirs to suffer the same fate.

  I wondered for a moment how many beings I’d just killed. Just a moment though. This was war, and the Trixone didn’t have civilians as far as we could tell. I knew Jon would be doing karma releases right now if he’d done this, but his thing was not my thing. I didn’t like having to do this, but someone had to. And I’d known by designing a ship which could handle itself for raiding, I’d be called on to raid.

  The Trixone needed a lesson about the consequences of starting a war.

  Today, I was the designated teacher.

  Class was in.

  I looked over at Chaos, who was observing me closely without trying to be obvious about it, and nodded. We jumped to one of the other fleets, and even though they were clearly waiting for us, the result was inevitable. All the other fleets died just as quickly.

  By the time we arrived at the planet, the fleet there had undocked from the station in orbit, but not had enough time to form up. Chaos danced us around the station, and I didn’t bother taking my finger off the trigger until all the ships, fighters, and shuttles, were debris. With only the station left, I changed to broadsides again, and with what looked like several thousand fighters on their way up from below, chopped the station up into small chunks, while Chaos launched missiles at each military installation on the ground we could identify.

  Lastly before jumping out, we fired all fifty raptor missiles at the densest concentrations of fighters. I had debated staying to weed out the fighters, but Jon had said stay safe, and besides, we had another gig to get to.

  Two systems further out, we stopped for a break again. This time I splashed water on my face, and emptied the bottle in the chair’s holder. Nut opened an eye and observed me sitting back down again, before closing it and resuming sleeping. It was nice to know someone thought carnage and chaos on a grand scale was boring. Maybe not boring, but at least not exciting enough to watch. No that wasn’t right either. My cat wasn’t a disaster junkie. Now it sounded right.

  I could feel fatigue starting to set in. It wasn’t the fact we’d done a lot causing the tiredness, but how intensely I was in the zone while doing it. It was still mid-morning, but I’d been in the equivalent of a number of major battles back to back, and it caught up on you rapidly.

  Back in my seat with a new bottle of water in the holder, we jumped twice more, ignoring the single fleets in the systems we passed by. We came out in a system with only a single jump point, and Chaos jumped us to the planet in the second orbit.

  High above it, was a shipyard.

  Half an hour later, there was nothing bigger than shuttle sized debris in orbit, and fires were raging across the planet. Fifteen more minutes, and the fighters we’d left alone on the previous planet were mostly destroyed on the ground. The several hundred they’d left in orbit in case we came back, hadn't been much of a stretch.

  I thought about sending them some sort of message about chaos always rebounding on you, but what was the point? If a message was going to be sent, Jon would probably do it himself. For me though, it was class dismissed, and what was for lunch?

  Nut followed me out and down to my suite, while Chaos started moving us towards Ralnor space. I ate an early lunch, sat down in a lounge chair to cuddle Nut for a bit, and fell asleep.

  Thirty One

  Someone led us through what was an underground city to a market area.

  We’d been given our weapons back, and were attracting more than a few stares. People were streaming in the opposite direction, and the market was obviously not doing much business now, but we were told to sit, and were brought food. Sim and Gor nei
ther sat nor ate, but Willow and I tucked in like we were starving. Which I realized I really was. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was eating, but it went down well.

  The city may as well have been any station I’d been to. Just without any views. It was all modern building materials, and tech. And small dragons.

  “Wyverns?” I asked Willow, once my hunger was sated.

  “Yes. Perhaps now you understand why we have rail guns and not much else?”

  “Not really. These people seem peaceful enough.”

  “Oh they are. But the problem is the young ones.”

  “How young?”

  “Puberty.”

  “Ah. Is that when they shift for the first time?”

  “Often, but not always. But the first shift seems to bring a lack of mental clarity, and periodically one of them attacks our cities without really knowing what they’re doing.”

  “And your people freak out and kill them?”

  “Unfortunately yes.”

  “What about your shorter people? Are they Wyvern shifters as well?”

  Wyvern shifters. Who’d have guessed something so small could turn into something so big? Especially since we’d found no sign of any sort of shape changing ability in the galaxy so far. No-one was going to believe me when I got home. Assuming I got home.

  She sighed. Her face gave nothing away, but the delay was pretty obviously about how much she could or would tell me.

  “Those who can shift, live in the underground cities.”

  “You all live in underground cities.”

  An annoyed look crossed her face for a brief moment.

  “We live on the surface. These people live underground.”

  Could have fooled me. She lived under a mountain. True, there were ‘houses’ with views out of the mountainside, but most of them still lived under it, not on top of it.