War Against the White Knights Read online

  The X-Boat flight peeled away as the destroyer ruptured, the little boats stealthing back into invisibility where their momentum dump system could cool to safe levels before it was brought back to full capacity.

  Damage control teams on the stricken destroyer managed to avoid the risk of depressurization ripping the craft apart. Indiya had to admire the skill and bravery that must have entailed. She knew that they would have been her comrades-in-arms if they had not been caught, by chance, on opposing sides in this chodding Civil War.

  The destroyer’s respite was only temporary. Its engines were badly damaged, and its targeting and point defense severely compromised. As ships throughout the Imperial fleet began taking hits from the deadly X-Boats, a flight of Swordfish fighter-bombers appeared on the damaged aft section of the destroyer and launched a barrage of deadly torpedoes before fading away into the void.

  The destroyer exploded. No one could have survived that.

  “Patching the Hardit communication through, Admiral,” said the sensor officer, flicking her long Littorane tail in excitement. “There’s a lag of about 70 seconds, but I thought you’d want to hear this exchange from the beginning.”

  “Why do you not attack?” The voice was produced by a standard translator system, and the originating words could have been spoken by any race. Indiya guessed this was a Jotun.

  “We did de-cloaked,” came the reply. Even if Indiya hadn’t been able to tell from the context, the sloppy sounding translation, with erroneous grammar, was characteristically Hardit. Indiya suspected the Hardits mistranslated on purpose. “We surprise the so-called Legion rabble at the prearranged time and place. Do we not?”

  “And we have moved to engage the Legion rabble, so that you may crush them from the rear. Time is running out. Make your advance now.”

  “No,” said the Hardit.

  “Why? Why squander this chance, Commander Tawfiq?”

  “My thoughts exactly. Why squander this chance to betray you, dear Admiral Gleaming-Diligence? Please consider the inaction of my Hardit fleet to be analogous to a barbed spearhead, heated until it glows red hot before I personally shove it up your rectum and begin to rotate the spear shaft. Did you really imagine the Hardit New Order was your ally?”

  While the Hardit paused, Indiya noticed how the quality of its translation improved when it wished. The Hardit continued: “We are destined by fate to win our fight for freedom, Admiral Gleaming-Diligence – and I hope you are hearing this too, human Admiral Indiya. In the future ordained for this galaxy, there shall be one people, one race, one scent. Human, Jotun, White Knight, Littorane, Khallene– the fate of all your races is extinction at the hands of the New Order.”

  “Admiral,” said Lieutenant Yoh-Daen, “the Hardits rebroadcast that exchange to us, into human language. They ceased transmission for about twenty seconds, and are now trying to establish a new link.”

  “Put in place the same security protocols as before, Lieutenant, and then connect them to me, also rebroadcasting to all Legion flag officers. And include Ambassador Sandure in the comms loop.”

  Xin Lee reported in. “We have Arun. He’s safe.”

  Relief flooded through Indiya. Finally, some good news.

  “He’s alive, stable, but unconscious. We’re headed for Vengeance of Saesh, seeing as our usual berth appears a little busy facing down the Hardits. Arun was mumbling something about Tawfiq. If she was the one who tortured Arun, then I’ll have to wait for my revenge – a shuttlecraft got away and went stealth on us before we could vape it.”

  “Tawfiq is alive and attempting to contact me now,” said Indiya. “Or, at least, a Hardit claiming to be Tawfiq. What are the chances of Arun contributing to command decisions in this current situation?”

  “Zero.”

  A chill cut through Indiya. “Understood. Good luck, Lieutenant-General. I know you will take good care of him. Indiya out.”

  Indiya required only a small fragment of the mind to talk with Xin. Most of her attention was on the engagement with the Imperial forces. The X-Boat squadrons had devastated the enemy fleet, but their effectiveness was degrading due to the need to cool down their overheating energy dumps. Nonetheless, their contribution had been devastating.

  She opened a connection to the tactical commander of the main portion of her forces. “Admiral Kreippil, kindly pursue the enemy before you. Surrendering ships will be boarded and taken, their crews unharmed, but only if they show no resistance. To everyone else, display no mercy as you crush them.”

  “With pleasure, Divine One.”

  She had just made Admiral Kreippil’s day. More. For decades now as he slept his off-duty periods away in his water-filled cabin, he must have dreamt of this moment. She sighed. Now, she suspected, it was her turn to make the Hardit commander’s day.

  “I hope you enjoyed the recording of my conversation with Admiral Gleaming-Diligence,” said the Hardit. “I would have continued the exchange for longer, but your little fighter craft seem to have destroyed the Admiral’s ship. I wonder, was it Hardit technology you copied in that stealth design? Never forget that the originating innovation was ours. Do not expect Hardit sensors to be so blind to your tricks, copied, as they are, from obsolete Hardit technology.”

  “Is there any point this conversation?” said Indiya “or are you transfixed by a pathological need to gloat, a displacement activity to compensate for the deep-rooted sense of your inferiority? I hear you were a criminal from the lowest strata of your society, Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. Is that the source of your insecurity? Does that explain your need to sneer?”

  “On the contrary, Admiral, the very idea of speaking directly to a member of an inferior slave race, especially one as foul-smelling as yours, is a revolting act that only my selfless dedication to duty can compel me to perform. It is your ignorance and tail-twitching levels of stupidity that make this conversation necessary. Indeed, that requires me to aid you.”

  “The Human Legion has no need of your assistance, Hardit.”

  “Oh, but it does. You are, as yet, too ignorant to perceive your dilemma. When the truth reveals itself to even your pallid intellect, you will realize that I have the key you need. I shall give it to you freely… if you beg well. Your commander failed in this task. Perhaps you will do better.”

  Indiya was about to send a curt reply and then cut the link, but a dramatic change to the events around Athena captured her full attention. Kreippil had been in his element, pursuing the scattered remains of the Imperial forces when the truth of Tawfiq’s words became apparent.

  Athena vanished.

  The moon was tiny in comparison to the vast and potent gas giant it orbited, but Athena was a mega moon, large enough to have supported the evolution of intelligent life. And it had simply disappeared.

  Indiya accessed sensor, tactical, and visual information. She listened in to the more coherent speculations of her officers throughout the fleet. She watched as New Empire stragglers, unable to evade the region of space around the missing moon, also disappeared, but not before turning into vivid balls of plasma. If those ships and their crews had crossed to wherever Athena was now, then they did so as hot, ionized gases. Legion missiles already fired and pursuing Imperial targets suffered the same fate. So too did many of the more aggressive drones, their simple AI controllers unable to adapt to this stark change in the rules of the physical universe.

  The oxygenating buffer gel that she was so used to filling her throat suddenly threatened to choke her as she watched Kreippil’s vanguard attempt to veer away from Athena. Luckily, the Littorane Admiral had already been directing his ships into a high orbit around the moon. But this invisible barrier reached far into space beyond Athena’s surface. Indiya was forced to watch, heartbroken as brave Legion ships slammed into this impossible obstacle and were consumed in fire.

  There were lifeboats, a meagre leavening of survivors, but all too few. She hadn’t the strength of will to count how many warships had been destroyed. The tac
tical teams were carrying out their grim responsibilities, feeding her the terrible truth of casualties, an appalling price paid in people and materiel, but her mind slid around the numbers, not yet ready to comprehend them.

  Duty forced her to calm herself, because if she were the Hardit commander this would be the moment she would strike. But Tawfiq’s forces still waited there passively. She had the sense of them being an audience, enjoying the spectacle as their two enemies battered each other.

  She gave a cautionary order to her subordinate who would be suffering these losses even more acutely than her. “Admiral Kreippil, temporarily reassign your X-Boat forces to Lance of Freedom. There is little they can do against that barrier, but if the Hardits move, your squadrons’ contribution may prove vital.”

  When Kreippil acknowledged, Indiya turned instead to an understanding of what had just occurred, aided by sensor probes that Kreippil had already sent in.

  The barrier was like a spherical void cut out of space-time. A ball with a diameter of a quarter of a million klicks had been excised from the physical universe, and at its center was Athena, the White Knight homeworld. There was cruel irony here because inside this hole was another section of the universe that had cut itself away – the Imperial citadel with the Emperor inside.

  Her ship should still be in communication link with the Imperial Palace, the ghostly connection of entangled chbits that made instantaneous communication possible bypassed the barrier around the citadel. She fully expected the same was true of this new barrier.

  Soon she would have to consult with scientists, and talk with the Emperor himself if Xin’s special op mission hadn’t retrieved Arun alive, but she knew they would only confirm what was already apparent: the New Empire had sealed themselves behind an impenetrable fortification, on an unprecedented scale that even the Emperor had not suspected was possible.

  The New Empire commander had built fortifications to besiege the Imperial citadel – Indiya had seen the murky long-range observation images through the orange-tinted clouds that cloaked the moon – but the commander had now built an outward-facing fortification: a line of contravallation.

  And if the White Knights of the New Empire had failed to break through into the Imperial citadel after decades of siege, how was her Legion to break this much larger barrier?

  This was what Tawfiq had gloated over. What had she meant about a key?

  “What is your progress on that signals intercept?” she asked the leader of the decryption team, Petty Officer Andyal.

  “Still deciphering, Admiral. It’s early days yet.”

  “Not good enough. I need answers now. Petty Officer Andyal, as of this moment you are the most important person in the entire fleet. You ask for whatever support you need, whatever minds you need to consult with, whatever equipment. Ask me and it shall be yours. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Andyal’s voice tailed away, hopefully because she was already thinking of how to ramp up her team’s capability. It spoke well of her, but if she couldn’t handle this, Indiya would swiftly replace her.

  “Contact me when you’re ready to beg,” said Tawfiq, and then cut the comm link that Indiya had forgotten was still live.

  Moments later, the Hardit fleet vanished.

  Indiya tensed as she coordinated the movement of the Legion warships into a single defensive formation, expecting Hardit missiles to streak their way at every moment.

  But they were unhampered by the Hardits, and she suspected that Tawfiq had other plans for the monkeys’ warfleet.

  There would come a reckoning between human and Hardit, and Indiya prayed she would survive long enough to see that day.

  But that day of reckoning was not now.

  Indiya raised the Decryption Team. “Petty Officer Andyal, when will you get me my message?”

  — CHAPTER 22 —

  Indiya’s shoulders ached.

  All she was doing was pushing herself along the deployment tube on the way back to her quarters after another conference to deal with the fallout from the disappearance of the White Knight homeworld, and the appearance, and subsequent disappearance, of a Hardit fleet that could dance around their sensor systems without so much as a blip.

  Everything ached. All of the time. And her body had lived outside of cryo for only forty-one years. She knew her problem was fatigue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled or relaxed, hadn’t really experienced any downtime since she seized command of Beowulf in the mutiny that had birthed the Human Legion decades ago.

  Her insides twisted when the thought of the mutiny reminded her of the venerable Jotun officer who had made it possible from the confines of her life support chair: the Reserve Captain.

  The old Jotun was still there, still alive in the compartment within the Vengeance of Saesh she had made her own, a place to sustain her until the end.

  Despite the zero-g, the years suddenly hung heavily over Indiya. In the forty-eight hours since Athena had vanished, her entire command seemed to have aged. She could even see it in the nonhuman personnel. The conquest of the Imperial capital was to have been the climax to the Legion’s war of liberation. Everything had built to this peak. But now… Now what?

  The New Empire faction wasn’t hiding behind the physical barrier, or even an energy-draining shield such as protected the X-Boats. The Emperor’s scientists had tried to explain, but it was beyond Indiya’s understanding. For all intents and purposes, the region around Athena was no longer in this universe. That was all that mattered. Nothing she could smash, or melt, or pierce with a Fermi Lance.

  And worst of all, the shoals of captured asteroids and comets in high orbit around Athena now made sense. Between them, they were composed of enough raw materials to supply food, drink, and the materials of war for generations.

  Arun had gambled everything on a quick victory. The Legion didn’t have generations. With the bulk of their forces banging their head against this impenetrable barrier, the star systems they had fought and died to liberate were now falling to New Empire reconquest. Even the Emperor, still secure inside his Citadel, talked ominously of the Legion having failed to meet its commitments. Indiya was sure the Emperor would be marshalling the still-significant forces of the Old Empire, picking his moment to declare his alliance with the Legion void and seeking to conquer the worlds they had liberated.

  It felt as if the bulkheads were closing in to crush the last rearguard of hope from her body. At times like this, she would normally turn to Arun. Just talking through the matters of the day allowed her to drink at the well spring of his belief, and refresh her spirits. After being shot so many times, Arun wasn’t going to give moral support to anybody for a very long time. She was on her own.

  Andyal from the Decryption team pinged a request.

  A flutter of hope caught in her heart.

  “Indiya here.”

  “Admiral, we’ve done it. We’ve decrypted the message.”

  “Then why haven’t you sent me the text?”

  “It’s not so simple.” At the sound of Andyal’s bitterness, the expectation in Indiya’s heart died. “The information in the message was deliberately obtuse,” continued Andyal, “as if they were making us work hard just for the hell of it. It boils down to three items. Firstly, the Hardits claim that the barrier effect around Athena is powered by Euphrates, and secondly they say they know how to switch off the control mechanism that is buried inside the gas giant. The final piece of information is a location, a point above the plane of the ecliptic and approximately thirty light minutes from here. We can see a small object there, artificial in nature, and about the size of a human hand. We cannot tell more without getting closer.”

  “It could be a bomb,” said Indiya. “The Hardits hate us.”

  “The feeling is mutual, Admiral. But if this were a bomb, why place it so far from our fleet?”

  Indiya brought her senior staff officer into the loop. “Hood, link Andyal’s team with the tech team already task
ed with investigating whether Euphrates could be the source of our barrier. Looks like it is. I want you to run this team and resource it with whatever you need.”

  There was a pause while Hood considered his orders. “Acknowledged, Admiral. Andyal has outlined the situation. Do I have your authority to investigate this mysterious device?”

  Indiya tried to answer. The word she wanted was ‘yes’, but it wouldn’t come from her throat.

  “Admiral?”

  The ache in her bones lifted, her muscles fueling with fire in response to a threat she didn’t yet understand. Even with her mind, she couldn’t form the words to alert Andyal.

  Indiya was not entirely human. Augmentations centered on the nano-factories and hormonal effectors beneath the palms of her hands now responded to automated threat-response programs. Her body had been invaded at the nano-level before, knew how to fight back. Legions of tiny defenders mustered at her implants and deployed along her bloodstream.

  But they found no invaders to take on, and the medical diagnostics reported no toxins, nothing out of the ordinary except her own body’s response to this phantom attack.

  “Admiral, are you okay?”

  Whatever was happening to her was beyond her understanding.

  She fell – tumbled through the deck and into darkness. A tiny voice of reason screamed that it was impossible for her to fall in zero-gravity, but her body ignored this caution, and she flung her arms wide as she descended through nothingness until she became aware of a new, gossamer-thin reality that thickened rapidly into a cavity, scooped from a mass of swirling mist in orange, reds and browns.

  Her descent stopped. This egg-shaped hole was her destination.