(War Room, Inner Throne, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit)
Merida Vaughn, Empress of Terra and all its Colonies, ruler of the Terran Empire, stormed into the War Room, buried in the safest parts of the massive city-ship within a city-station. Her anger was rolling off of her in waves. Quite literally, in fact. She was struggling to keep her new power in check.
“What do we know?”
Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto shook his head. “It is a general offensive by what appears to be the entire Ihm Armada. Picket ships along the border reported them as soon as they detected the bow wakes. Most of them were lost when they broke cover to report in, but a couple managed to survive. That bought us several hours of warning.”
Merida nodded. She knew this already, when her naval attaché briefed her in the middle of the night, and she’d seen the report from the Yadara, including their final message. But she’d just gotten an emergency alert that her presence was requested urgently in the war room.
Seeing her understanding, the Admiral continued. “Sensor reports are spotty, but we’ve identified elements of the 1st and 2nd Armadas at Yathr, the 4th and 7th Armadas at Foldger’s Planet, and the 5th and 6th Armadas at Sedara. Spies in the Alliance report no movement from the 3rd, 9th, and 10th Armadas along their border, and our Consortium infiltrators report that the 12th through 15th Armadas haven’t crossed the Consortium’s borders, either. That leaves only the 16th through 20th Armadas to defend their systems. Everything else is heading our way.”
“Damn. Status of the fleets on the border?”
“5th Fleet is heavily engaged at Foldger’s Planet. They are having to try for a series of running engagements rather than a straight battle. Thankfully, they were in the middle of an invasion drill, so they were able to get mobilized and transition into the system before the Ihm crossed the border, so their response time was dramatically shorter, allowing them to get to their transition point sooner than the others.
“12th Fleet was in the middle of a maintenance cycle, so their response was delayed, and by the time they could reach the heliopause, the Ihm had already arrived at Yathr. Thankfully, that delay may have saved the fleet. They’re proceeding at maximum warp speed to Yathr, but that is a trip that will take them six days.”
Yamamoto sighed. “They were luckier than 8th Fleet. Admiral Landry did everything by the book, as far as we can tell, and got her ships to Sedara ten minutes before her earliest projected arrival. Unfortunately, that was still after the Ihm had arrived, and deployed some kind of new weapon.”
“New weapon? What have those scaled bastards come up with?”
“According to the Vindicator of Truth, they are somehow capable of making a tachyon jamming field, flooding the system with random tachyon ‘noise’. This doesn’t affect ship primary functions, but it essentially blinds tachyon sensors used to ‘sound’ for stealth ships, and blocks interstellar FTL communications systems. The only reason we even know about it is because there is a Nomad in 8th Fleet.
“Unfortunately, the biggest problem with this new device, and the one we believe was their primary goal, is that it blocks transition drives from functioning properly. 8th Fleet transitioned to the system just after the field was turned on, and ended up scattered around a couple light-hours in the outer system, well inside the heliopause. All ships damaged, the entire fleet reduced to under thirty percent combat effectiveness before they even showed up on the enemy’s scanners.”
The Empress shook her head. Like everyone in the Navy, she had known that it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to counter the Imperial Navy’s Transition Drives. She, like most, had thought it would come in the form of other parties making their own version of the T-Drive. Jamming the drives was not something she had considered before, nor had anyone else, as far as she was aware.
“Right, if we can’t jump directly to a system, do we at least know how close we can get? A surprise assault might be out of the question, but if we can cut a week of travel time down to a few hours, that would still give us a great deal more flexibility in our response.”
“Still unknown, Empress. With your permission, I would like to divert 2nd Fleet from the Alliance Border, and 6th and 9th fleets from the Confederate border to join 3rd and 10th fleets as our response force. That will leave 1st Fleet for guarding Sol, and would still leave 4th and 11th fleets on the Alliance and Confederate borders, with local forces to protect shipping. I also recommend full activation of all reserve units.”
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Merida nodded without hesitation. “Do it. Once this offensive is stopped, we can look to beating back the Imperium.”
She paused. That was all well and good, but she knew the value of morale. Leaving planets in enemy hands would sap their strength, unless they had something to take the people’s minds off things. “What is the status of the Special Action Squadrons?”
Yamamoto caught his breath for a moment, and then said, “Squadrons One and Two are at full strength. Each squadron has nine Assassin-Class corvettes, two Reaper-Class light cruisers, and a Wayne-class escort carrier. Each carrier has two squadrons of Stiletto Stealth Fighters, and one of Panther Stealth Bombers. They are redesigns of the standard Lancer superiority fighters and Hammer heavy bombers, utilizing Black Star tech to reduce mass and increase their stealth capabilities. In addition, Imperial Marine forces from 3rd and 6th Corps are ready to deploy, along with their Marine transports and escorts, if you need troops.”
Merida shook her head. “Keep the Marines with the Fleet. They’ll be needed more, there. I want both SAS squadrons deployed immediately. They are to go behind enemy lines, and do whatever they can to disrupt enemy lines of communication and resupply. Also, take out enemy orbital infrastructure, whether military or civilian, without exception. Their job is to bleed the bastards as much as possible, and always keep on the move, so they can’t get pinned down.”
“As you will, Empress.”
She took a breath, and then said, “Now, once the fleet maneuvers are complete, what do you think of our ability to fight back?”
The Admrial sighed. “I think it will depend entirely on how much they break up their fleets, and go to conquer individual worlds. All frontier planets are putting their emergency invasion plans into effect, but there’s only so much they can do against an enemy with orbital superiority.”
Turning to look at her most trusted aide, Merida asked, “Lucio, do you have anyone you can contact on one of the invaded planets? We need to know what is going on behind the lines.”
Lucio smiled at the Empress. She had pointedly not asked whether he could talk to anyone inside the Imperium, which was fortunate. Those conversations would get awkward, quickly. Still, he did know a few people. “Yes, I know one, on Sedara. She is ‘known’ as a Nomad, so if the lizards know anything about the system, which is likely given how precisely they timed their attack, they’ll probably know him. And if they know him, they may try and isolate him to reduce the chance of information leaking, or control what he sees.”
“Regardless, we need to know whatever he knows.”
“I’ll contact him as soon as we’re out of the secure area, your Majesty.”
Merida smiled. She knew he didn’t actually have to go outside the secured area to communicate over Nomad networks, but he did so regardless, out of respect. There was no point in rubbing the security officers’ faces in the fact that there were people who could circumvent their most stringent communications protocols. That would only lead to trouble.
“That’s fine. And while you’re at it, contact Admiral Mollen. I wish to hire the Black Stars for a job.”
(Pallbearer, Ihm Space)
The sole occupant of the Pallbearer breathed more easily as the heavily modified ‘Raven-class’ freighter’s Anchor Drive spun down. Well, ‘heavily modified’ wasn’t quite true. It was more like the ship was brought back to specs of the original, and then upgraded.
Without the pretense of having to carry even minimal amounts of cargo or extra crew, the Pallbearer saved a bunch of space inside its hull. That allowed for a more powerful reactor, which in turn meant more powerful shields and engines, as well as weapons. Most of the crew quarters had been replaced with computers loaded with some of the most advanced penetration software available. And the cargo bay was an armory and training room.
The pilot took a breath, steadying himself, as he checked sensors that were the equal of one of the Starhunters. Actually, the Pallbearer had been the test platform for the Starhunters’ sensor suite. And those sensors clearly showed that there were no ships around. Which was to be expected, since he was a light-day from the nearest system.
Of course, he hadn’t just used the Anchor Drive in the middle of inhabited space. There wasn’t the risk of calling down X’thari if he had used it, sure, but he did not want to risk some navy pilot getting twitchy, and deciding to shoot first, ask questions later, if ever. The X’thari freaked people out, even after the Harvester’s destruction seemed to have chased them away from Known Space.
Fortunately, once they’d gotten out of range of any prying eyes, it was easy enough to jump to the Amazon system, where there were a minimum of prying eyes, and no security patrols. Half an hour to recharge the drive, and he was off again, this time, to a point in the middle of nowhere, Ihmsville. That, too, was a tactic he had borrowed from the Black Stars. It was impossible to have ships and sensors EVERYWHERE, after all. Sensor nets got spotty in the inky darkness between planets, to say nothing of the empty voids between star systems!
Naturally, a man like him didn’t come out all this way for nothing. There were better places to go sightseeing, after all, than the Ihm Imperium. Especially since they’d opened that big ass rift into something that Nomads were starting to call Hellspace.
He was still too far away to see the rift with his naked eyes, but his sensors were screaming about its presence. The rift was large, and growing larger by the day. If the computers on his ship were right (and he had no reason to doubt them), then the Hellspace rift someone had named the Eye of Despair would start intruding on the Ihm capitol system in a matter of weeks, months at the latest.
No one knew what happened to planets and systems that got trapped inside Hellspace. Anyone who had ventured inside was either dead, a servant of the Ihm Imperium, or one of those Chaos 40K cosplayers in the Chaos Brigade. The LARPers might be able to travel Hellspace, but they were all crazy nutjobs that couldn’t exactly be counted on for reliable intelligence.
That was fine. He wasn’t intending to stay long enough for that to be an issue. The job had him going to Ihmana, the Ihm homeworld and capitol, but it was a simple shoot and scoot.
Well, not simple. Getting to the target, so he could take the shot, would take some doing, even if he went with a long-range option. His gun was a nasty beast, and the ammunition it used was nastier, but the target was always protected, even when she stepped outside.
Worse, according to the sole Nomad on Ihmana, the Ihm Empress had gone and gotten a major makeover. She was bigger, stronger than old reports, she had wings, and could apparently breathe fire. In other words, the lizard had evolved into some kind of Hellspace-touched dragon creature, with all her former intelligence and wickedness. Even if he lined up a perfect shot, killing the target would be… problematic.
He noticed a message come in, over the Nomad networks. Interesting. The Ihm had invaded, and the bounty on the target just increased by one hundred grand, dead. No way he could fail now. He’d be the laughing stock of the game.