Imperial Command

by D. J. Holmes

  Chapter 2

  In the history of the Empire a number of fleets have found themselves cut off behind enemy lines as battlefronts move and shift. Usually it has spelt destruction for those stranded.

  -Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.

  IS Argyll, Mindus frontier system, 20th May 2482 AD (one day previous).

  What to do? Lightfoot asked himself as he drummed his thumbs on the arm rest of his command chair. Argyll’s passive sensors were displaying the readings from the final Mindus system they had to pass through. Over the last eight days his fleet had traversed two former Mindus systems without incident. They hadn’t even sighted a Karacknid warship. That had changed. When the Karacknids had conquered the system in front of him it had been home to just a few small asteroid mining facilities. No longer. There were two massive operations within the system. One was in orbit around the system’s second gas giant. It was clearly a He3 mining station. Then on the surface and in the orbit of a rocky moon around the system’s second planet there was a hive of activity. The Karacknids must have invested a lot of effort into developing both operations over the last couple of years. That meant they were prime targets. Yet he had snuck his fleet through the last two systems without launching any attacks or giving away his position. That had been the plan. As long as he could, he had wanted to avoid contact with the enemy. Sending Scott and her ships away had been a hard decision. There was a reasonable chance he would never see them again. He wanted to give their ruse every chance of working. But there were two juicy targets in front of him. He couldn’t ignore them. With tap on his command chair he pulled up a COM link to Gar’am and Jil’lal. “What do you think?” he asked the two aliens.

  “We came here to disrupt Karacknid supply lines,” Gar’am said, speaking first. “We hit Jaranna hard and we thought taking out their gas mining station there would prove significant. We didn’t know about this station. I believe we need to attack. Even if it alerts our enemy to our escape route.”

  Lightfoot nodded and turned slightly to face the holo projection of Jil’lal. “Getting home is our priority. But we cannot just let such targets pass. If the Karacknid fleet took the bait, they will be more than a week away. If not, then what difference will a small delay here make?”

  “All right,” Lightfoot said as he accepted their reasoning. “My ships will take the gas mining station. Jil’lal, you can take the other operation. Gar’am, your ships will remain in stealth. Here’s what I’m thinking…”

  Five minutes later all the ships in Lightfoot’s fleet powered up their reactors and engines, though only minimally. They cruised into the system in stealth and diverged into three squadrons. The Varanni warships, equipped with more sophisticated stealth technologies, were able to maintain a higher acceleration rate and forged ahead of their consorts.

  “Let’s do this,” Lightfoot ordered an hour later. Captain Rivers nodded to Argyll’s navigation officer. With the touch of a button, the heavy cruiser’s reactors powered up to full and her impulse engines rapidly increased her rate of acceleration. Argyll’s movement was the signal to the rest of the Human ships arrayed around her and to Jil’lal and her Vestarian warships. Soon they were all rapidly accelerating. Despite the commotion, Lightfoot kept his attention squarely on the Karacknid warships defending both mining operations. Within seconds the gravimetric waves given off by their impulse engines would be detectable to the Karacknids.

  “Movement!” one of Argyll’s sensor officers called. The six Karacknid destroyers and frigates in orbit around the system’s second planet had all began to break orbit. Whatever mining operation was on the planet’s surface, their commander had decided it wasn’t worth losing his ships over. Not when Jil’lal had twenty warships rapidly closing with them. Each of Jil’lal’s three battlecruisers out massed all of the Karacknid ships put together. Lightfoot’s eyes narrowed as he shifted his attention to the twelve Karacknid ships defending the gas mining station. That was the most important target. And they had a heavy cruiser amongst their number.

  “They’re not going to pull back,” Captain Rivers predicted. “He3 must be in short supply in these parts. They don’t even know what we’ve done to Jaranna.”

  “They don’t, but they can probably guess,” Lightfoot responded. “Given where we’re attacking them from. Either way, their bravery deserves commendation. It will not help them, however. Tactical, prepare a full missile salvo. Let’s not let them fire a third.” With the Karacknids’ advantage in missile range, there was no way he could stop the defenders firing two salvos. But he didn’t intend to let them do any more damage than necessary.

  Three minutes after the Karacknid ships opened fire, he gave the order for his ships to do the same. From the fifteen Human warships that were left in his fleet, three hundred and eighty missiles shot out of their tubes. Lightfoot watched them go until they passed the Karacknid salvo heading in the opposite direction. Then he focused on the enemy missiles. He watched them as they approached and carried out evasive maneuvers as flak cannon rounds, laser beams, plasma bolts and AM missiles reached out to take them out. Space around his fleet became a blur of explosions and energy weapon fire to the point where he could no longer keep track of what was going on. Instead of watching the holo projection, he watched the count of the number of Karacknid missiles as it decreased. Just four made it into range of his fleet. Lightfoot winced as each one detonated, releasing an expanding ball of antimatter. He didn’t need to demand a damage report; his staff officers already knew what he would want.

  “Seahawk is gone,” Camala Houston, his Chief of Staff reported. “She took two of the missiles. There’s no trace of her. Battleaxe and Fortitude took proximity hits. Battleaxe’s Captain thinks he can patch her up. Fortitude doesn’t look like she’s faring so well.”

  “Make sure Captain Dillinger is certain Battleaxe can keep up with us,” Lightfoot ordered. “I don’t want her falling behind, especially if we have to run. I’d rather her be abandoned now. And send Fortitude all the help we can. Make sure her Captain knows he holds no blame if she must be scuttled.”

  Leaving damage operations in the hands of his staff officers, Lightfoot turned back to the Karacknid fleet. The enemy ships were engaging his salvo with their own point defenses. Ever so slightly Lightfoot shook his head. Not enough for his officers to notice, but he couldn’t help but express his frustration. The Karacknid ships were whittling away at his missiles far too easily. He had seen how impressive Captain Scott’s mark IV missiles were in the fighting around Jaranna. He was eagerly awaiting the day when he had an entire fleet of ships equipped with them.

  Despite the prowess of the Karacknid point defenses, they couldn’t overcome Lightfoot’s numerical advantage. Forty-six missiles got close enough to detonate their warheads. The laser focusing lenses allowed the missiles to detonate much further away from their targets, avoiding some of the point defense fire aimed at them. Each missile released two laser beams. No Karacknid ship endured the attack unscathed. Eight were destroyed outright and the remaining four fell out of formation as they lost control of their engines or reactors. None looked like they would be able to put up any more of a fight. “Target each remaining ship with a missile to finish them off,” Lightfoot ordered. He didn’t want to waste any more missiles than necessary. “Then bring the fleet into heavy plasma cannon range of the gas mining station. We’ll take it out as we pass.”

  Lightfoot watched as Argyll’s bridge officers focused on the task at hand. The second missile salvo the Karacknid ships had managed to fire before being destroyed was closing with the fleet. Lightfoot couldn’t help but crack a smile as every single enemy missile was taken out before detonating. “Pass the word to the fleet, tell the gunners that was some fine shooting,” he said more than loud enough for everyone on the bridge to hear him. He spared a glance towards Fortitude. The light cruiser was trailing behind the rest of the fleet and shuttles were swarming around her, taking off her crew. “In fact, I want every point
defense gunner to get a double food ration today,” he called. He was more than happy not to be facing the prospect of having to abandon another ship. “Let’s destroy this gas mining station and get out of here.”

  As Argyll and her consorts swept in and blasted the gas mining station, Lightfoot watched Jil’lal’s ships do the same to the orbital stations around the system’s second planet. As she passed, she also bombarded the installations on the surface with tungsten spears. Whatever the Karacknids had been mining there, they wouldn’t be doing so for a while. Then, as both fleets turned towards the next shift passage on the journey home, the final scene in the brief skirmish played out. The Karacknid ships that had fled the system’s second planet passed right through the space where Gar’am’s ships had been cruising in stealth. Either because they had been too focused on what Lightfoot and Jil’lal’s fleet had been doing, or simply because of incompetence, the Karacknid ships didn’t detect the Varanni warships until it was too late. High-powered laser beams reached out from the Varanni ships and destroyed all eight of the Karacknid ships in one swift attack. With luck, Lightfoot thought, there weren’t any other ships hiding in the system. No one will know we are coming. That would be a very good thing for they were soon to enter systems that had belonged to the Karacknid Empire before their war with the Mindus. In his mind they were entering Karacknid space proper. And no one really knew what they were going to encounter.

  *

  IS Argyll, 28th May 2482 AD (eight days later.)

  “This is a Karacknid frontier world?” Captain Rivers asked, unable to control his surprise. “What must the interior be like?”

  Lightfoot didn’t have an answer. He was doing his best not to let his jaw drop. Argyll’s passive sensors had just begun to make sense of what was before them. Technically, Argyll’s computers hadn’t detected any Karacknid warships, but that was not what was surprising. There were literally thousands of contacts moving around within the inner system. “What are we looking at?” he asked as he turned to one of the battlecruiser’s sensor officers, hoping she and her computer terminal had more of an idea than he did.

  “An initial analysis of the traffic suggests there are eight outlying sources of industrial activity,” the sensor officer replied as the holo projection of the system changed to highlight the eight areas. “From what we’ve seen so far, none of the ships are moving overly fast. If they are Karacknid designed, then they must be massive to be so slow. Almost eighty percent of the traffic is heading to and from those areas and this planet here.” The fourth planet in the system flashed. “Signals from the planet suggest it is inhabited. Though there aren’t too many emissions coming from orbit. It hardly seems possible for so many ships to be in the system and yet so little orbital infrastructure to have been built up.”

  “Do we have any idea what the ships are heading back and forth from?” Rivers asked.

  The sensor officer shrugged. “Several of the points are in asteroid fields. Others are on rocky worlds on the edge of the system. Presumably, they are all some kind of mining operation. Though this is on a scale I haven’t seen before.”

  “Keep gathering data,” Lightfoot ordered. “I want to know if those are Karacknid ships or if they belong to a species the Karacknids have conquered. Begin moving the fleet into the system towards our next shift passage, five percent thrust. As impressive as this is, we can’t afford to just sit and watch.”

  Forty minutes later Lightfoot had more of a sense of what he was looking at. It didn’t make it any less impressive, however. A detailed analysis of the ships within the system suggested that none of them were powered by Karacknid reactors or engines. Presumably they were built by the native species who inhabited the planet. The final count had put it at seven thousand ships moving back and forth. None of them were particularly large, but they were busy. “They turned the entire system into a mining operation,” Lightfoot concluded after being given a run down on the latest sensor data. It wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened. “The Karacknids must have conquered the system and forced its inhabitants to strip mine it.”

  “And for good measure, they showed the natives just what would happen if they didn’t,” Rivers said as he zoomed in the holo projection. On the surface of the fourth planet there were three very visible craters. The natives had been nuked from space. “How much are you willing to bet that those orbital stations have a few more nukes in their cargo holds? They’re clearly Karacknid stations.” Rivers turned the image to the only signs that this was indeed a Karacknid system; two small stations that were giving off copious amounts of energy. They stood out like sore thumbs among the more primitive ships and stations in orbit.

  “That could have been us, if we hadn’t driven the Karacknids away from Earth,” Lightfoot reflected as he was filled with sorrow for the native species. The fact that the Karacknids didn’t even feel they needed to keep a warship stationed within the system signaled just how defeated the natives were. The Karacknids didn’t see them as any kind of threat. “I don’t think I’ll take you up on that offer.” He wasn’t a betting man, but even if he was, he was sure the odds wouldn’t be in his favor.

  “What should we do?” Rivers asked. “This is a massive mining operation. We can’t just leave it intact can we? Taking this out has to hurt their economy.”

  “Will it?” Lightfoot asked as he turned to Rivers. He couldn’t hide the hint of dismay in his voice. “If this is what a Karacknid frontier world looks like, what are their core systems like? They could have hundreds of systems like this, who knows how many species have been enslaved to mine whatever minerals their war machine needs.”

  Rivers nodded and glanced at the holo projection nervously. “That is a concerning thought.”

  “Yes,” Lightfoot said. He regretted voicing his concerns. He didn’t want to sow despair among his officers. “But one we cannot answer now. Let’s put together plans to attack the mining facilities we’re going to pass by. That’s the least we can do. We’ll make contact with them first so we can warn them. We don’t want to kill any species that may turn out to be our friends one day. But you’re right, we cannot let this remain.”

  As his staff officers got to work, Lightfoot zoomed in on the nearest mining operation. Argyll was on a course that would bring his flagship within missile range of its various structures. It looked like ten large asteroids had been converted into mineral processing facilities. More than a hundred ships were moving back and forth from other asteroids mining whatever mineral they were after and bringing the ore back to the facilities to be further processed. Larger ships were waiting to bring the minerals back to the natives’ homeworld. On its own it was an impressive looking operation. The fact that it was one of eight was an imposing reality. Very little was known about Karacknid shipbuilding processes, but Lightfoot guessed that there were enough raw materials being taken out of the system to provide for the construction of a pair of Karacknid dreadnoughts every month. These are just the kinds of systems we need to be liberating from the Karacknids, Lightfoot couldn’t help but think. Though it was a long way from becoming reality, he imagined a day when the natives were freed from the Karacknid empire. Their industrial prowess could be diverted to helping Alliance shipyards instead of Karacknid ones.

  “We’re within extreme laser COM range of the nearest asteroid facility,” one of Argyll’s COM officers reported an hour later. “Shall I hail them?”

  “Proceed,” Lightfoot replied with a nod. It took more than five minutes for a reply to come back. When it did, Lightfoot prepared himself. There was no knowing what the aliens would look like, nor what kind of demeanor they would have.

  “Greetings,” Lightfoot said when a large scaly Humanoid appeared on his holo projector. The alien didn’t look like it was wearing clothes. Its head, shoulders and torso were a dull orange and the alien’s skin looked thick and rigid. Thankfully, the alien had two eyes, a mouth, and a nose though no ears were apparent. In any case, the similarity to Humans an
d the other Alliance species made him relax slightly. “I am an Admiral in charge of a fleet currently within your system. We are a group of species who are at war with the Karacknid Empire. We have been attacking and raiding nearby worlds. We know they have two stations in orbit. What is your relationship with them?”

  “Greetings to you Admiral,” the alien spoke, though far slower than Lightfoot had been expecting. As it spoke, it raised one of its hands. Though again this seemed to be in slow motion. “I am Supervisor Lijal. I’m responsible for the mining operations in this asteroid field. You’re welcome to my species’ home system. We are the Farmalians. Sadly, the Karacknid Empire conquered us half a century ago. We have been working for them ever since. You are at war with them? How does that war go? Is there hope for my species? Do you come to liberate us?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Lightfoot replied, choosing to be blunt. “The war hangs on a knife edge. Though we have hope. At this stage we are not close to being in a position to liberate this system or those nearby. I’m afraid I will have to destroy your mining operation and the rest of those within the system. We hold no ill will towards your species. That is why I have contacted you. I wish to give you fair warning so your facilities can be evacuated. I hope you understand that I cannot allow such a productive industrial system to remain intact while under the control of the Karacknids.”