Human, page 22
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
Sandrak may have given his permission for the Humans to train against his fleet, but she doubted he’d had this in mind when he gave the go-ahead. He might not be entirely pleased about having weapons pointed at him.
She had no trouble picking him out on the bridge. He was the one whose armor was worth more than a heavy cruiser.
And his state of mind was a complete blank to Carol.
“You’ve taken the bridge?” he demanded. “Why would you waste the element of surprise to seize an obvious but still minor objective? From engineering, you could have taken control of the entire vessel and turned her weapons against the rest of the fleet.
“You’ve shown some skills, approaching us so closely, but you’ve thrown your strengths away to take a useless target and you’d be lucky to escape an enemy ship in one piece, once you’d realized your error.”
Hela grinned, though Sandrak wouldn’t notice. “A useless target, My Lord? I respectfully disagree. Now, if you’d step this way…” She waved her assault rifle toward the opening that connected their two mismatched ships.
Sandrak stepped back, head rearing up in surprise and Hela suddenly feared that she’d gone too far. She wondered if she should offer an apology but she felt that would only make things worse.
And then a deep rumbling laugh sounded in her helmet.
“Exercise complete,” Sandrak rumbled. “You’ve seized a prince of the realm. I’d call that a successful result! Perhaps my son knew what he was doing after all.”
He paused, after mentioning Mishak, as though reading their responses. Hela wondered what he was looking for.
He must have come up short, whatever he was up to. “Dismissed,” he said curtly, turning back to his captain.
“That’s about as lucky as I want to get for one day,” Carol’s voice said from a point higher up in Hela’s helmet, indicating the crew-only channel. “Let’s get out of here and celebrate your confirmation as a scout captain!”
The Quailu Life
E th shuddered. The coin fell back to the table with a dull clatter.
Despite the Varangian’s warning, he’d been moving matter but it was only a small coin, not a cruiser or a planet.
Still, the effort had drained a lot of heat from his body.
Coffee would help.
He reached out, feeling the presence of the hot liquid, understanding it… His eyes narrowed.
He could feel the warmth. He could feel the heat flowing into his own body but he was clear across the ready room.
He could pull heat energy out of an object? In the flush of realization, he turned his attention back to the coin but the doors hissed open and he looked up guiltily.
Father Sulak walked in, throwing Eth a friendly nod as he steered for the coffee pot. He pulled it from its housing, lifting the lid and putting his face directly over the opening.
“Cold,” he said in mild reproof, looking over to Eth. “You know, the problem with you Humans is that you take coffee for granted.”
Not anymore, Eth thought, the corners of his mouth turning up as he watched the oracle dump the pot down a reclamation chute.
Sulak activated the control holo and initiated a new pot. “Just because you live on the only world in the empire that’s allowed to grow the stuff, you think you can treat it with disdain. Are those kibbrim still warm?”
“It’s cheap for us,” Eth told him, tossing the oracle one of the barely warm Quailu pastries. It bounced off Sulak’s chest and landed on the table. “Sorry, forgot about the depth perception…”
Sulak chuckled. “Aye, we’re great at running an empire but absolute shite at catching anything, even if it’s edible.” He picked up the kibbrim and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Something tells me you’re already comfortable with the concept of cheap coffee,” he added, nodding at the brewer, which was still grinding, well beyond the time needed for a normal-strength pot.
“Abusing hospitality is a time-honored tradition among oracles,” Sulak said as loftily as he could around a mouthful of pastry. He leaned in to breathe the scent of fresh ground beans.
“Did you wear out your welcome on Arbella?” Eth asked. “That’s your home-world, yes?”
“Yes and no.” Sulak shrugged. “We’ve been there for three generations now, but I’m the only one to call it home.”
“Your family disagrees?”
“My oldest brother would tell you that Bir Jebra is our home. He sees himself as a potential replacement for our cousin, who rules there with an iron fist and less-than-productive loins.”
“You’re Awilu?” Eth blurted, startled to learn in such a cavalier fashion that he was talking with a noble.
“Barely.” The oracle made a negligent gesture with his right hand, his gaze still on the coffee pot. “Minor lords breed ‘beggar emigres’ almost as fast as the rats on this ship reproduce.” His eyes drifted from the pot to check the corners of the room, though rats tended to stay on the lower decks.
“Only the eldest inherits. The rest of us must make our own way in the empire. Military service is popular but there’s entirely too much exploding for my taste.”
Eth smiled. “There’s not enough room in the fleets to accommodate all of you, though, is there?” There was a small horde of penniless nobles sheltering at Mishak’s palace on Kish.
“Not even close,” Sulak agreed, snagging one of the steel mugs that sat on a tray next to the brewer. “Frankly, I think a patent of nobility should expire in three generations, unless you’re the one to inherit the original title.”
“You think that would ever pass in the assembly?”
“With the right persuasion.” Sulak poured a mug, then set it down and filled a second cup.
“Most Awilu would be open to the idea of clearing out the clutter. Not only does it cheapen the idea of nobility to have so many beggar emigres wandering around, but it’s a bothersome strain to have a horde of indigent relatives eating you out of palace and pantry.” He sat opposite Eth, sliding the second mug across the table.
“Kind of like hosting a convention of oracles, I suppose.” Eth took a sip of the deliciously hot beverage to hide his grin. He could clearly feel the oracle’s disdain for his own social class. That couldn’t help but isolate the poor fellow.
Eth could certainly relate.
“Even worse, if you can believe it!” Sulak drained half his cup in one gulp. “Oracles can’t stand each other. Hard to claim you’re the one with your finger on the Universe’s pulse when there’s a dozen others making the same claim but with different results. Makes us look bad so we’d all bugger off pretty quickly.” He set the mug down, staring into it contemplatively. “Relatives never leave. They just keep breeding.”
He looked up abruptly. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Breeding. You’re entitled to have your steri-plant unlocked…”
“Are you nuts?” Eth shook his head. “Can you imagine me having offspring?”
“Why not? You’d let that high-priced genome go un-replicated?”
“Can’t imagine the Meleke Corporation would be very happy about me creating copies of their intellectual property.”
“Not like they’d have a say in it,” Sulak said. “And they’ll be winding down the Human product line pretty soon anyway. Word is your lord will be pushing to turn Kish into a Mushkennu-based economy soon anyway. He’ll have to offer Meleke a pretty large compensation package to take over the rights to your species but freeing them will pay back his investment in the first decade, assuming he takes an energetic hand in the economic changes.”
“And where did you get wind of this, Father?”
“Would you believe it’s because I have my finger on the pulse of the Universe? No? Well, perhaps I hear things while I’m scratching its armpit. Nobles like to show off what they know…”
Eth gazed steadily at Sulak, unable to tell if he was aware of the irony of his statement. “Yeah… evidently...”
Raising the Stakes
Hit and Run
M ultiple contacts!” the tactical officer announced, looking up at the general. “The full picture is still firming up, but we’re seeing at least a fifteen ship advantage over us.”
Tilsin projected an aura of calm. He knew they’d probably face heavy odds, but that would have meant more to a commander who planned to simply dash in and slug it out in a straight battle of attrition.
In the grand scheme of things, this counted for little more than a border skirmish, not worth even briefing the emperor. This was not a clash of massive fleets at a key system where the empire itself was at stake.
But losing here would see his lady captured and his own line disgraced. His fists clenched in anger. A suitable emotion to display to his crew.
“They’re already firing at the defense forces.”
Tilsin shook his head, letting the act emphasize his disdain, making it obvious to his crew. “Wasting ammunition,” he growled.
At their distance, missiles would have little fuel, if any, left by the time they closed with their targets and needed to vector in on their nimble enemies.
“Do they expect our ships to simply sit still and wait for death?” the tactical officer wondered aloud.
“Whoever’s leading them has let himself get over-excited,” Tilsin said. “I heartily approve. The more he wastes on his way in, the less time he can stay and fight without re-supply. Let me know when he starts moving parallel to those refugees at the departure line.”
“There goes another salvo from the enemy,” Tactical said. “You’d think he’d at least notice our people aren’t firing back.”
“Not if he’s the excitable type,” Tilsin replied, “which would help us greatly. Once we start surprising him, he’s likely to scamper off and try to regroup. Helm, start bringing us in. I want to be close when we open up on them – as close as we can get without our shadows giving us away.”
“Might be hard to hit some of them from back here, sir,” Tactical advised. “They’re advancing in three staggered planes.”
“Staggered?”
“Yes, sir, and they’re tightly packed. Only the front plane is firing.”
“What in hells are they playing at?” Tilsin demanded. “Either this is something very clever or we’re dealing with an absolute idiot.” He supposed that, if this force served Shullat, he might have been so embarrassed by the loss of this planet that he’d assumed direct control.
But where had he gotten the extra ships?
“There’s the third volley, sir, and they’ve got the refugees on their port side.”
“Just a little closer,” Tilsin muttered to himself. “Let ‘em see we’re right up their back passage before we fire…”
A chime sounded.
The tactical officer looked up at him. “Sir, we’re lit up. They can see our force.”
“Fire!” Tilsin roared.
A distant hissing sound of ejecting missiles accompanied the soul-rending howl of the rail-guns. Tilsin felt alive, every cell tingling with the madness of the fight. The long wait was finally over.
As soon as his cruiser fired, the frigates on her flanks opened up as well. They were so close that the outbound ordnance had an incredibly short travel time, giving the enemy almost no time to react.
Only a heartbeat after the enemy point-defense systems had opened up on the first set of inbound missiles, the remainder of Tilsin’s opening salvo struck home. The general tilted his head forward, lips sliding back to expose his teeth as he watched the chaotic eruptions of fire and debris coming from his opponent’s hulls.
It was a strong opening move but they couldn’t hope to smash such a large force in one go.
“We made mincemeat of the rear plane,” Tactical announced. “It’s down to less than twenty percent combat effective but the other two layers are intact and turning our way.”
“Now would be a good time, Baden,” Tilsin said under his breath. The freighters mixed in with the refugee ships were now directly to starboard of the enemy force.
It was a hard enough thing to trust subordinates in independent commands but it was taking years off Tilsin’s lifespan to trust Commander Baden of the Arbellan Defense Forces.
“ADF ships are emerging from the freighters,” Tactical announced, to Tilsin’s great relief. “They’re firing…” He pounded a fist on his console, startling the rating who sat there. “Lots of hits! Baden’s boys were far closer than us; I don’t think their point-defense managed to knock out a single missile! The enemy don’t know which way to turn!”
Grim satisfaction . Sometimes, when you have the smaller force, you have to play a stronger hand. By hitting back from multiple directions, one after the other, he was pushing an attacking force into reaction-mode.
The stronger enemy was now dancing to his tune, though his sheet music had just run out. He had no further tricks to play.
“Picking up multiple capacitor signatures,” a sensor tech called out. “They’re heating up their path-banks!”
“It’s about time for them to realize they blundered into a bad position,” the tactical officer said.
“They’re going,” his tech added.
“They’ll be back,” Tilsen warned, “and not all of them are leaving. Give me a channel to those crippled ships.”
“We’re sparing the crews on those ships, sir?” the tactical officer asked.
“The conventions must be observed,” Tilsin insisted, “all the time, not just when it’s convenient. If we start firing on disabled ships after an action is completed, then they’ll start doing the same to us.”
Three captains shimmered into view and a fourth showed an audio feed but no image was available.
“I’m clearing this battle-space for the next round,” Tilsin told them. “You have two standard hours to evacuate your ships. If we see anything other than shuttles moving, we open fire on all of you. Is that understood?”
He got the sullen agreement he was looking for and so he terminated the call.
The Lady Bau must have initiated a call in the few seconds he’d been talking to them because her image appeared as soon as they faded.
“My congratulations, General! The people of Arbella owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Don’t thank me just yet, Lady,” Tilsin said. “We drove them off but they’re still lurking out there, probably out near the gas giants. They’ve taken a lot of damage, but they’ll come back in four or five days.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Four or five days?” she asked archly.
Tilsin nodded, showing a confidence in his estimate that he wasn’t entirely sure he felt. “They could use more time than that to effect repairs, but they’ll know it takes our ships two days to get back home, a day to mobilize our forces there, and two days back. They’ll use what time they can to repair their battle damage but, if they don’t beat us in five days, they’ll never beat us at all.”
“I’ve sent couriers,” she told him. “As you said, two days for them to deliver my orders. I should have had a signal-pair ready so we could link this world to our own. We should purchase several pairs.”
“They’re more expensive than a cruiser,” Tilsin said, loyally defending his lady, even though he did feel she’d been too stingy with his forces.
She gave him a rueful smile. “And yet, we’d force the enemy back to the fight much earlier if we’d had immediate communications here. They’d have been fighting us with most of their damage unrepaired.”
She sighed. “I should have increased military spending the moment we heard of the emperor’s meddling. I knew I’d be using the unrest to seize this world. I might have been able to hang onto Gimmerai.”
“There’s no changing the past, My Lady. We’ll just have to beat them here in the present.”
Run and Hit
N o contacts,” Oliv announced. “This area reads clear.”
They had taken their SOP to extremes, dropping out of path, not just beyond the approach corridor for Arbella, but outside the entire system.
“Gleb?” Eth stepped over to the communications suite.
“Getting chatter from Arbellan orbit. It’s a couple hours old by the time it gets out here.” He began pulling up files from his panel. “Lots of data-files whizzing around – order of battle estimates, tactical projections based on a previous engagement which… happened…”
He enlarged a report. “…eighteen hours ago. They’re not being very circumspect about comms.”
Eth nodded. “Anyone arriving is either an enemy who’ll get the same data from their allies or they’re here to help, in which case they’d probably just go straight in and say hello.”
“Probably,” Oliv muttered, chuckling.
“We’re here to help,” Eth said, “but not by their rules. We’re not Quailu, no offense, Father…”
“None taken!”
“…So we don’t give a monkey’s fart about the prestige of a stand-up battle or the disgrace of a retreat. We’ll slip in, slap ‘em on the side of the head and then slide away before they hit back.
“They’re bound to be hiding, licking their wounds from the first round but they’ll stay close. They want to repair as much battle damage as they can before heading back in and they’ll want to do that before reinforcements arrive.”
“That’ll take four days at least,” Sulak said. “The Lady Bau is a great administrator but she’s never been one to spend funds on an item that she might need some day. Given how quickly she moved on Arbella, there’s just no time for her to have gotten her hands on a signal-pair.”
Eth looked at Sulak. “You’re surprisingly well-informed, Father, even for an oracle.”
He could sense Sulak’s suddenly heightened feelings but it was hard to read the Quailu, given their natural reaction to his own unreadability. It was a variable that complicated matters for him.
“So she’ll have to send a ship,” Eth reasoned. “That gives us three days to work some mischief.” He nodded to the scout-ship captains as they filed onto the bridge. Carol must have had them meet out in the corridor and enter together.
