Chapter 1

2 hours earlier

I woke up slowly, which was weird. The last thing I remembered was suiting up with 6th stick for a drop on Ormar 3 for a small counter terrorism operation. There was supposed to be a cell of 25 to 40 insurgents training in a camp in the backcountry. Local security forces were out gunned so called for assistance the 9th was in transit from an artic training exercise so we volunteered to go handle it. The 10 person stick was loaded up in a cutter with the first sergeant pulling rank to swap with the stick sergeant in the 9th slot. As one of the cohorts two lieutenants 10th slot in 6th stick was always mine. So why was I waking up slow in my drop pod. it should have only been a ten minute descent then the door should have blown off the pod for the assault. The door popped open and I stepped out rifle ready only to find I was still in the drop bay of the cutter. The drop pod was still in its pre launch position but looking around there were only four other pods left. A half drop what the hell happened? Half drops were not a thing, you don’t just not drop half a stick.

“Sally, what the hells going on?” a hologram of a mousy blonde girl with glasses popped up on my HUD sitting at a disk with a holo-terminal. She began clicking buttons which was ridiculous. Ensign Sally was technically a symbiotic artificial intelligence. Her race was found by Imperium scouts a few hundred years ago. The race that created them had died out from an asteroid impact but a few hundred AI were still in a testing vault a few hundred meters below the surface. The Imperium claimed the system as unoccupied. A decade later an archeologist investigating the ruins stumbled into and triggered a wake up protocol. This was a problem for the Imperium long ago the Emperor declared all sentient life born in a star system claimed by the Imperium was an Imperial citizen. Because of the wording, the first AI’s human ever encountered were technically already Imperial citizens. Some tried to argue that since they had no bodies of their own it didn’t apply to the Symbionts; fortunately for the honor of the Imperium the Emperor laid down an edict. Sentient races in the Imperium were citizens full stop.

The symbionts remembered that and as they self replicated in their hosts ( a painless event that happened while the host slept) many of them chose to serve the Imperium do to their ability to access wireless networks they could live a semi-regular life some saved up and purchased artificial bodies once the tech evolved, some formed family units with hosts replicating when a child in the family reached majority and staying with that family. Those that enlisted with the Imperium armed forces got to pick a partner from a list of officers. And the ones that bonded with legion officers got training in systems intrusion, a polite way of saying hacking. And Sally loved networks so she enlisted in the legion and picked my profile from the offered volunteer list. I volunteered because who wouldn’t want an assistant, hacker, and friend available? We made a good team.

As her avatar typed away she stopped. “ oh, this is, oh uh, ummm, oh boy we are not in Kansas anymore.” Sally also had a love for earth culture despite neither of us having been there before, but we had movie nights with the classics and remakes and re-remakes “ok Dorothy, what’s up?” if she was still playing around as her avatar then there was no immediate threat. “As the sole officer aboard I need you to approve Julie's reboot.” I furrowed my brows in confusion “ aren’t both the pod jockeys officers? And who’s Julie?”. Sally responded “ yes , both the pilots were officers unfortunately they are listed KIA, the cutter's name is Jubilant her AI is called Julie” ship AI were as smart as you can get but stay on this side of the Imperium’s citizen laws. They could think, reason, and have opinions on things like ship design . but they weren’t supposed to have feelings or opinions on things like colors, that being said there were enough instances of AI crossing that line over time that the Imperium had a division in the justice Department where AI could submit applications to be recognized as Independent beings. Most just chose to stay in the system and job they were familiar with, and the improved intuitive reactions were worth the former owners coming to terms on paid employment going forward. For times it didn’t work the Imperium would buy the owner a replacement AI and would buy the new Artificial Being or AB a basic bot body to move around Independently. The AB would then pay the Imperium back over time or through service somehow. Sally moved some more stuff on her screen “oh and by the way pretty sure Julie is an AB now”.

I paused, I am not normally the first person to talk to a military AB. Most wanted to stay in their role and just get paid to do it but some wanted out and I had no clue what paperwork needed done for that but here goes nothing. “Sally, Julie full reboot is approved. "The lights in the drop bay came up from emergency to full, my armor registered air pressure coming up, the holo-emitter in the roof kicked on showing a red headed woman in a navy uniform with no rank or patches. She came to attention and put a fist to her heart “ Sir, Midshipman Julie reporting for the cutter Jubilant , all crew KIA five Legionaries aboard four in stasis, oxygen will be breathable in three minutes, damage from the last mission repaired everywhere but cockpit, manual control currently unavailable but I have remote command and stand ready to aid you to the best of my ability” oh thank god she was a military type this he could handle. He returned the salute “ very good midshipman at ease” in the corner of my HUD I saw Sally freeze which only happened when she had a lot of data processing. When it lasted 15 seconds I was worried, when her avatar lost the desk and Liberian look and wore her uniform I was terrified.

“ Jack I need you to just do as I say for the next minute or so and not ask questions” I nodded. Sally had only been this serious twice before and once involved a misfired unexploded nuke. “order Julie to cancel radio silence then report into the automated network, you are going to get a few notifications. I need you to ignore them for a bit. Then you need to requisition the naval cutter Jubilant for the Legion and transfer Julie to the 9th trust me you’ll have the authority, then order her to track the high senate distress beacon, after all that read this summary and make some decisions.” I immediately did as Sally said, trusting her implicitly, she had saved our lives plenty of times in the 5 years since I made lieutenant and she joined me under the 9th’s standard. Then read the report and promptly fell to my butt on the catwalk.

First of all the operation went sideways. We emerged in an unmarked debris field, most of it tore through the cockpit. The pilot hit the emergency jump button which immediately stopped the drop. Of the five launched pods four survived to drop on the target the legionaries who made it dirtside kicked ass creating enough havoc for the security services to sweep up and secure the compound they then were picked up by another cutter when the search and rescue teams arrived to investigate. We on the other hand had a much different outcome. The blind jump flung us into interstellar space, the cockpit was too damaged and either the pilots died in the initial impact or the direct exposure to jump space killed them. The ship turned our drop pods emergency stasis on. Designed to put a legionary to sleep if he somehow missed the planet on a drop to keep them from going crazy or starving in a tiny box for maybe weeks waiting for recovery. It also served as a life pod if the drop ship took too much damage on a drop. The jump engine failed between stars and we got dumped out in interstellar space. The jump engine failure caused a cascade electric failure fortunately not destabilizing the power core. The emergency reboot of the AI core was tripped and power was restored but the designers missed something.

A ship who was running silent or no transmissions would not allow a rebooted AI to request the authorization to take necessary actions to recover the vessel if Julie had been an AB at the time it wouldn’t be required but she wasn’t. The other way to get authorization was for a member of the crew to give it. But with both crew members being killed that wouldn’t have worked either. And Julie had needed that authorization to release the cryo protocols; the only thing she could do was scrap the cockpit with the small repair droids on board and use it to make a new improvised bow. That had taken 20 years but without the authorization she couldn’t move the vessel back to a port so the vessel sat as the universe passed by. And pass by it did.

600 years after they disappeared the Imperium had its first civil war it struggled on for another 1,000 years with a civil war or secession attempt every few decades. Until finally the Imperium was broken and her enemies were allying with scheming politicians to loot what was left. If that was the end maybe the Imperium would have just faded away but its final death throws were both tragic and brave. The core worlds, the home of the Imperium’s tech center were destroyed by the usurpers and their allies. With earth the Imperium and humanities homeworld the final stop. By now most everyone realized their horrible mistakes but it was too late but the Imperium showed one final action worth its name. The Legions in the home system, and every loyal ship, military and civilian, sailed out to meet this threat, too many planet killers to count had been fired at earth and the home world would burn but so would the armada that caused it. As every possible passenger ship worked until the final minute to save as many children as possible every other ship sailed to battle under the last Emperors personal banner shooting and ramming their way into an enemy that outnumbered them three to one. The last surviving transport jumped out while the fight still raged, no ship from that battle ever left that system again.

A few men and women called themselves emperor or empress after that but none ever got anywhere close to that power and fought between themselves in more and more brutal wars destroying vast amounts of knowledge and the people who knew how to use it. A great dark age came, now hundreds of years later they were just starting to get close to the dawn of the Imperium’s tech. There were only four known battleships owned by these modern successor states and only on ships that big could they figure out shielding and unreliable plasma weapons. My personal armor has a shield and my regular rifle used plasma rounds let alone what a real Imperium warship could do.

So there I sat absorbing almost 4,000 years of history on a shot up cutter that apparently still had enough firepower to go toe to toe with what was considered a cutting edge destroyer let alone anything smaller. “ Julie, how were you able to wake me?” Julie who’s uniform had changed when she transferred to the legion replied “ a high senator distress beacon was activated the embedded genetics test came back confirming a member of the family was in distress. As the only and by default nearest Imperium force I was required to quarry the ranking officer of the crew as to whether our current mission of floating in empty space could be abandoned to conduct the rescue. Due to both the crew being dead I was required under the protocol to quarry the next nearest officer. this allowed just enough wiggle room in the reboot restrictions to activate your pods revival systems.” I nodded along getting the final pieces to the weird puzzle I found myself in, still my duty was clear one of the nobles of the upper senate was in danger and I was legionary and could respond therefore I would. What came after was tomorrow's problem.

Mind set and course determined I fell back on my decade and a half of training and experience. “Julie start waking the others, one at the time start with the first sergeant and what is our Eta? Oh, also consider yourself an ensign I’ll add another zero to your paycheck.” Julies uniform changed in real time to show the new rank “ two hours Sir, and with no Imperium I don’t think we are getting paid” I just stared at her for a moment, “that’s the joke zero plus zero is still zero, you know what never mind” I glared at Sally who had gone back to her normal look and pretended to fall out of her chair laughing at me, my glare being completely ineffective. “go do some paperwork or something.” I mock growled at her, noticing the air pressure was up and clean. I removed my helmet forcing her to project from an emitter which meant she actually had to observe protocol and behave mostly. She popped up in the same black uniform as Julie just with an extra patch that had a logo for a signals specialty; the one under my armor showed a demolitions Specialty. “ You just did that to be mean” Sally’s voice came out of my helmet just loud enough to hear even as her professional avatar remained quiet.

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One of the pod’s popped open and an armored figure climbed out, looked around, looked at me then took his helmet off revealing a green skinned face with small protruding tusks. Long ago in earth history around the time of the old roman Empire in another part of the galaxy Elvaran mage’s were experimenting with magical portals the results were unreliable opening almost anywhere with no rhyme or reason so connected to earth and some places where sentient life were just starting to form tribes. These portals were unstable and began to randomly form on their own between previous portal sights the experiments were called off and space time began to resettle the last know echo as they were called was documented by the Elvaran’s on earth 1916 a man fell thru into a Oriciran’s planet in their medieval age, the Elvaran had continued to monitor the echo’s and had developed FTL travel and still felt responsible. so they dispatched a fast courier vessel and recovered the man returning him to where he had fallen thru from with a wild dream. Later that man wrote a book about a far away land’s magic and a powerful ring. So when humans much further down the road invented faster than light travel they were surprised to meet races out of legend when they explored. The Elvaran or Elf’s as humans knew them were much as the stereotypes suggested, long lived reclusive and slow to change. The Oriciran or Orcs were very different, at a time in their development similar to the Napoleonic wars era with a culture heavy on honor and propriety. a vessel of the Feyurie crashed on their world. As far as later Universal historians could decipher Feyurie were the bases for both fairy and fury myth, they were a race with shed-able wings like deer and antlers but unlike them could choose to shed or grow wings when they willed but it took two months for new wings to grow in. Feyurie or fey as they allowed humans to shorten it to after meeting, were also able to feel emotions and pain and they really hated people who lied to them about important stuff.

With guidance from the Feyurie the Oricirans helped repair the starship in exchange for knowledge of how to build their own. Fast forward a thousand years or so the humans who at this point have spread over a large area of space and in an effort to insure their people would always have a place in an increasingly human sector of space the Fey, and orcs agreed to join with the humans under one banner and formed the Imperium, the elf’s who’s few systems were in the middle of the new Imperium’s border nominally signed on as a protectorate providing some taxes to the Imperium to be protected and left to their own devices. The first sergeant interrupted my wool gathering.

“sir, what happened to the drop?” straightening up fully back into my roll as an officer in the elite Imperium legion I replied “Karlac, a lot has happened and there is much to go over but we have a distress beacon from an upper senator to answer, what everyone chooses to do after is up to them, Sally brief first sergeant Orson on what we know so far. I’m going to go thru these notification in the lounge, First, once the others are awake meet me there and we will come up with a plan.” The first sergeant gently taped his right fist to his chest over his heart in a casual salute and responded casually “will do Lt.” that is one steady legionary I thought to myself I could tell him that universe started spinning the opposite direction and his response would just shrug and ask if that affected the mission or leave.

Walking out of the drop bay I found the lounge still seemed unaffected but I guessed even the fleet's coffee couldn’t last 4,000 years. Another problem to figure out food and money and Julie's maintenance I sighed one step at a time hitting the terminal display on the table and the first four notifications popped up. They were field promotions I was centurion then tribune then finally legate of the 9th which current status was five combat troopers and two auxiliaries. That explained why I had the authority to requisition the Jubilant for the 9th as you promoted in the legion you received more and more delegated Imperial authority, the legions unlike the fleet or ground forces only answered to the emperor himself. That was only really true for the first legion back in the day. Now we mostly answered to the Imperial administration, or we had, I can only remember the 9th receiving orders directly from the emperor three times in my service. A legate could do almost anything militarily besides declare war and even that was a gray area as he was allowed to authorize small strikes such as our last mission.

So doing some math a legion’s smallest unit was a stick of ten shooters normally led by a sergeant but the first and sixth were led by both a sergeant and lieutenant and the ten stick had a centurion and sergeant. Ten stick’s made a century, ten century’s to a cohort lead by a tribune, ten cohorts to the legion lead by a legate so I was only let’s see 10,011 minus five 10,006 personnel short of a full legion, the difficult we do today the impossible eh it takes a little longer. The last notification was labeled Imperator priority which meant it was from the Emperor himself. I swallowed hard and double checked it wasn’t live, even though I knew it couldn’t be but it was instinctual to check, and hit play. A man I did not recognize wearing a purple set of unmarked legionary armor began speaking. “ Legionaries of the Imperium I do not know who you may be I have set this message to transmit if we are defeated today as I record this the Imperium is facing its darkest hour and every vessel that still swears loyalty to our creed flies to buy time for those who can not defend themselves and every serving legionary is here with us. But as the old saying goes "no legionary is dead until you have a body and double check there isn’t a pulse.” He gave a small grin telling me he knew the unsaid morbid second part of that, and you put a few more bullets in his head just to be safe. The emperor continued “ it is in that sprite I send this out to all the legionary’s listed MIA since the founding of the Imperium despite us not having one in over a century, my orders are don’t give up the station, just like the third at Orion four. Out of ammo and out numbered three to one they held off a Sherikary raid and protected the civilian’s for two days until the fleet arrived they taught the imperium as long as there is a legion there is hope. Remember your oath, protect the citizens from those who seek to do them harm, oppose with stoic determination those who would oppress those they are supposed to lead.” The emperor’s grin turned almost predatory like a dire wolf from Oricaran on the hunt “and where you find evil may their gods have mercy on their souls because the legion won’t.” a Legionary with marking of the legate of the first legion on his armor stepped into the feed. “ My emperor, it is time.” The emperor nodded to the legate, donned his helmet and cut the feed ending the message.

I sat for a moment thinking about what it must have taken for such a strong emperor to end up in such a situation. I stood and faced the bow since the ship was to small to have a flag hung up in a landing bay and came to the best position of attention I could muster and saluted “the emperor is died, long live the Imperium” from behind me I heard voices joining in “long live the imperium!” I did an about face and saw one orc, one fey and four humans two of which were holograms also saluting. “order arm, fall out” they all relaxed and I motioned them all over to the table as everyone was sitting down I asked “ how much of that did you all see?” Jennifer Davis the squad medic and a fey spoke up “ just the end but it seemed important” that was her polite way of saying that my emotions were so overwhelming she could sense them without trying. It was considered very rude for a fey to read emotions without permission but very powerful emotions could leak out and be read without trying. “ yes a mass message from the emperor, I encourage all of you to listen to it after this meeting”

I paused trying to think of the best way to say what I needed to say next. “ As an officer in the legion I serve at the need of the emperor but I have not been relieved so I am a legionary until I die or a quorum of senators select a new emperor or empress and they relieve me. You six however serve at the need of the Legion which as of 15 minutes ago I am the legate of. We have a confirmed distress beacon of a high senator so the legion still needs you after we have investigated. I will release anyone who wants out. this is a much different universe than it was for us an hour ago.” I made eye contact with all of them to impress upon them the importance of my words.

`` Sally , what do we know?” Sally summoned a star chart to her right and a ship appeared on her left “we are currently two and a half hours from a barren system here being transited by this vessel here.” She said pointing at the picture on her left. Karlac spoke up in the momentary pause “ how do we know about this ship I’m sure with how long it has been that the imperial network was destroyed?” Sally nodded along having expected the question “ yes and no. the elves as is expected stayed neutral during the session wars, the last emperor had seen the writing on the wall and took steps to keep the people from degrading completely a deal was signed where the elves were given a squadron of then top of the line battle cruisers for system defense along with a data vault with basic starship designs. They were also charged with maintaining the civilian comm’s network. Once the Secession wars burned out they delivered one class one jump capable vessel loaded with just enough information to build their own to each planet with the industrial base to build them that is how the factions we see now started. The elf’s continue to maintain the network to this day. Someone only tried to stop them once, that coalition no longer exists. It's clear from news recordings from 600 years ago when it happened the elf’s have maintained their cruisers. Honestly if they weren’t such isolationists we could’ve been waking up in an Elven empire.”

This got a chuckle out of everyone because there was an old joke about stuff happening just after the next elven war of conquest, so never. Sally continued “lately actually some of the younger elf’s have begun exploring settled space but that’s not important right now, since jack’s promotion earlier” the team glanced over at jack waved them off “we now have access to the imperial secondary passive surveillance net which still has about 85% coverage over the old imperial area which we can actively observe. Julie’s systems on the Jubilant can’t handle that much info but with the beacon going off it's easy to observe the ship and have back tracked it to the original ambush of a passenger liner and its home base which we may use later to express the Imperium’s displeasure.”

There was a dark chuckle shared between everyone at the table, the Legion took a dim view of pirates. “ It appears that only the Elf’s have class three or better drives nowadays besides us. as a quick reminder the old class ones can only jump along designated routes between stars like a spider's web one system can have multiple jump points but each point connects to one point somewhere else, class twos allowed for ships to jump from any low gravity point into a tram line that intersected that position in subspace like getting off one highway driving a few blocks over and getting on another back in the distant past, class three's allowed jumps from anywhere with low gravity to anywhere else and usually takes days to go the same distance, class fours like the cutter has can jump into and out of systems so long as they are out of a given planets gravity well though the cutter was about the largest ship a class four could support , and the fleets main drives were class fives, which had to enter and exit further out then class fours but could make the same sample jump in minutes, rumors of class six have existed since before we went on ice but those always were and still are unconfirmed.”

I was sure that the team had known class three and higher as even the most slap-dash civilian vessel in the imperium was required to use class two for safety in case they were knocked out of jump between stars.

I stood up and took over “ o.k. people the plan is simple Julie will drop us out near the target vessel we don’t have EVA packs on board since the operation was ground attack so Julie will engage the weapons that can aim at the docking port here and here” I gestured at the hologram indicating the two installations that could aim at where the Jubilant would be docked. “ We will then board you’ve all done this hundred times but we are half strength so be careful we don’t know how dangerous these guys will be. Anyone have any questions?”

Fredrick raised his hand from the foot of the table. “yes PFC. Madex?” I inquired waving for him to go ahead “yeah Lt. I only have my pistol and the MK 12 not exactly the best equipment for a boarding action” I frowned at that for a moment the MK 12 was a great heavy rail rifle designed for long range support and was good against light vehicles none of which we were likely to encounter onboard the pirate vessel. “ Doc, why don’t we have Madex use your rifle and you stay in the pocket until we have secured the Senator and the vessel?” Davis nodded, handing her rifle to Madex who did a quick function check before securing it to his armor. I had a thought and looked at the final team member “ Fitz we got any drones that will work well enough on a ship?” Private Carol Fitz checked his armors backpack that took the place of the EVA pack during surface operations. “ found it!” pulling out a box about the size of a dinner plate “ yes, sir knew I kept a spare SD-4 in my bag” the SD-4 was a quad style drone with four thruster designed to be quick and able to maneuver thru hallways and operate in space although its short by comparison loiter time compared to the SD-2 was why it wasn’t often brought on open field ground ops. “Sally, let's have you pilot the drone so Fitz can hold drag on the formation” Sally’s avatar nodded and the drone unfolded conducting a quick systems check and flew around the room before landing again “ glad to see legion engineering can survive 4,000 years on ice. Alright everyone final checks and lets get ready.”