(Imperial Winter Palace, Switzerland, Earth)
“Your Majesty, final analysis says that the Emperor’s Flagship is going to be dead in the water until we conduct a full refit and replacement of the engines. There simply isn’t enough of the engines left to repair.”
“Fleet Base 1 is a total loss, I’m afraid. The impact tore through the Admiralty ring and damaged the main engineering sections. Fortunately, we were able to stop the station’s spin and keep it from entering the atmosphere while we evacuated the survivors. However, we lost all the highest-ranking admirals and their command staffs. Secretary Michaels of the Imperial Intelligence Bureau was also killed along with his top staff as they were meeting with the admiralty in preparation for the next steps against the rebels.”
“Luna Base has been wiped out. The military base, the Academy, and the ‘special’ research labs have all been destroyed. Almost 12,000 loyal citizens, military and civilians, have died due to the attacks. Thankfully, the weapons used were ‘conventional’, and not nuclear, so the destruction did not reach the more heavily populated areas.”
“However, it is my duty to inform you that these attacks have severely weakened our ability to bring the rebels to heel in the time frame you wished, with both our naval command and intelligence apparatus decapitated. The destruction of the Academy will slow the training of any new officers, making replacing combat losses difficult, at best, until we can get people through the alternate campuses elsewhere within the Empire. It may push back plans for the Confederation, Majesty.”
Emperor Travis was livid. How DARE anyone attack his flagship! And the setbacks to Lord Deus’s plans were simply intolerable! Still, screaming at the Admiral reporting to him would do nothing. He was, after all, a Vice-Admiral who had been on shore leave on Hawaii when things went mad. Now he was the senior Admiral in system, and it fell to him to report to the Emperor. No, Travis would control himself. Or rather, Deus did not allow Travis to stray from the purpose of this audience.
“You say attacks and weapons, Admiral. I trust you have some information on how we were attacked, and who is responsible?”
“Yes, Majesty. Initial forensics say that all the damage was caused by high speed kinetic impacts. We have the best data from Luna Base, since their sensors were able to record all the attacks. Judging by the readings and the blast patterns, the EOD boys believe that the weapon involved was a twenty-kilo mass moving at 0.001c. Probably a railgun of some sort, sir, but we don’t have enough information to confirm.”
“Do you have anything on the ship responsible for this, Admiral?”
The admiral looked pensive, and then shook his head. “No, my Emperor. We have gone over our sensor logs, and have detected nothing. However, given that the targets were in stationary orbits, given enough time and computer power, one could have calculated the trajectories and launched the attack from as far away as Pluto, it would just take longer for the projectiles to reach us.”
“As for the responsible party, we only have two clues about that. First, the Confederation Ambassador was attacked while his family and staff were en route to Mars for a diplomatic visit. We got a partial distress call saying that their shuttle was under attack before we lost contact. The shuttle was recovered, but the passengers were missing, and their ‘guide’ was found dead. This happened at approximately the same time as the attacks.”
“Second, we recovered a message pod on a ballistic track heading towards Earth from Choson Ring, claiming the attacks were done by a separatist group called ‘Free Mars’. The message claims that they also took the Confederation Ambassador hostage, and are willing to negotiate their release. Free Mars does have a history of violent actions, but nothing on this scale or technical sophistication before. We believe that they are being set up as a decoy to shield whoever was truly responsible for the attacks, distracting us with this and stirring tensions with the Confederation while we are focusing on the rebels.”
“So, it appears that the rebels were behind this attack?”
“That is the most likely scenario, sir. We struck a serious blow to their forces at Askao VII, but their suicide tactics forced us to regroup and take a more cautious approach. If they can bring the Confederation in on a second front before we’ve neutralized them, the Navy will be fighting on two fronts, possibly three if they drag the Ihm into this as well.”
“Damn them! We will not let this stand, do you hear me, Admiral? For now, send a message to the Confederation, telling them that it appears their ambassador was killed by separatists funded by the rebels, but we are proceeding to avenge them now. Then have troops on Mars round up and execute all known members of Free Mars. They may not be responsible for the attack, but I’ll not have vipers at my back while we concentrate on the true enemy.”
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“Finally, prepare reinforcements for Admiral Halman’s fleet. We will crush this rebellion once and for all!”
(Main Control Center, Barnard Transit Station, Barnard’s Star)
It was, after all, just a normal day in the life. That was what Michael ‘Silver’ Brock thought, at any rate. Working the space equivalent of air traffic control at what basically amounted to a truck stop and way station orbiting a fairly uninteresting star whose only claim to fame was being relatively near earth (just under 6 light years) meant that one got used to routine. Routine was familiar. Routine was safe.
Routine was a lot better than his memories of the last big war.
He’d been a fighter pilot back then, when the Empire had tried to take on the Confederation, and the ingrates on the frontier decided they had had enough and broke off to form the core of the Free Worlds Alliance, or whatever they called themselves. Bastards cut and ran in the middle of a war, while the Empire was too busy to crush their little rebellion.
That war had been a real nasty one. Space is the ultimate in ‘hazardous working environment’. And being a fighter pilot meant that he’d had more than his fair share of close calls during the course of the war. One had been way too close, and had left him trapped in the cockpit of his burning Wrathstar until the rescue crews could get to him. Third degree burns over 80% of his body. He damn near died, and if the hospital ship hadn’t been nearby, he would have. The burns healed, in time, but the nerve damage left him grounded, permanently.
Nothing he could do about that, unfortunately. The docs were good, but they weren’t miracle workers. So he’d taken the retirement package, and tried to find work. Turns out, there wasn’t much work out there for a stick jockey who was on medical discharge and couldn’t fly any more. He’d ended up taking a job at the Barnard Transit Station to keep his bills paid while he looked for something better.
Twenty-five years later, he was still here.
With a sigh, Michael turned his attention to the screens. They were by no means the largest transfer station out there, but there was always someone passing through. After all, this was one of the better places to stop and rest for light years around. In fact, there were several short haul freighters that used the station as a transfer point, running back and forth between their home system bringing people and cargo, and letting other short haulers take them on from there.
Made better business sense, he guessed, to haul all the people and cargo heading in several different directions to one spot, and then they could break up and join other people and cargo heading to their desired destination. Sure, it was quicker to go straight from A to B, but if you had freighters that were heading from A to C, and then from C to B, you could get there for a lot cheaper than chartering a freighter for a direct run. Might add an extra week or more to your travel, but if you weren’t in a hurry, you’d be paying less than half what the direct shippers would charge you. The short haul freighters always needed to keep their holds full, while the direct shippers charged a premium for the direct route, which covered for the fact that their holds weren’t always full to the brim.
Right now, there were thirteen ships in port, and six more that were either in system on approach, or were heading out on the next leg of their journey. While hyperdrives could be used inside the system, the closer you were to a gravity well, the larger the strain to enter or exit hyperspace. Plus, dropping out of hyperspace too close made people get itchy trigger fingers. Standard operating procedure for civilian traffic was to take it about 50 million kilometers from the nearest planetary body and at least 1 AU from the nearest stellar body. Sure, you spent longer in ‘realspace’, but the civilian companies mainly cared about keeping maintenance costs on the expensive hyperdrive engines down.
Michael knew there was a practical side to it, as well. The closer you were to a planet or station, the more traffic there was. So keeping FTL objects from zipping through traffic lanes was just common sense. Just like you didn’t want to see a big trailer truck going full speed on the wrong side of the road when you were dirtside. Nothing good came from shit like that, unless you were a movie director. That’s why most stations had dedicated ‘arrival’ and ‘departure’ areas, and that’s another reason why stations like the Transit Station existed. They kept the traffic ‘regular’ instead of getting blocked up by people going every which way.
There were nineteen ships in the system. The scanners were very clear about that. And then suddenly there fifteen, as four ships abruptly dropped off his sensors. Two minutes later, just as the light caught up to the sensor readings, he saw the visuals as the four ships closest to escape disappeared in fireballs. The next moment, the last two ships were attacked by… something. He couldn’t see the ships on his scanners, and the only reason the imagers showed anything is because they were using beam weapons now.
The station rocked, and alarms began sounding. Out of nowhere, it seemed, fighters had descended upon the station. Black as sin, save for the ‘glass’ of the cockpit facing forward, and bristling with weapons, they couldn’t be anything else, but they resembled no fighter he had ever seen before, with their x-shaped wings. The fighters unleashed hell on his station, taking out point defense and the long-range communication array.
That’s when he saw another ship. A light freighter, but mean looking, like it was designed for smuggling or blockade running. It was blacker than black as well, and Michael didn’t doubt that he was only seeing this ship because he was supposed to. Now that the station’s point defense was down, he saw shuttles approaching as well. Those were assault ships! What in the hell was going on here?
As if the universe was listening to his thoughts, the viewscreens all changed to reveal a man dressed in a ship suit with a black coat over it. Somehow these people had broken into the station systems!
“To all those on Barnard Transit Station. This is Admiral Nelson of the True Britains Fleet. You are ordered to surrender your station and your ships to support the restoration of the British Empire to her rightful place in the universe. Failure to comply will result in the termination of life support in the offending areas and the elimination of all sentients found there. Obey, and live. Resist, and die. You have ten minutes to comply.”
(Assault shuttle, en route to Barnard Transit Station, Barnard’s Star)
‘Admiral Nelson’ signed off, and looked to the three women accompanying him on this assault. “So, how do you think it went.”
The three looked at eachother, and then the one in the middle sighed, and said, “Really, Master? Admiral Nelson?”
“Well, would you rather I say ‘Captain Mollen, that guy the emperor really wants dead’?”
“No, no. Just, you had to go with Nelson?”
“Well, the idiot emperor will certainly be wondering what is going on with all these terrorist groups popping out of the woodwork. It’ll do him good to sweat a bit, if his AI overlord doesn’t see through it.”