Captain Yamagishi was not pleased. He was not pleased at all. He was the captain of a heavy cruiser, and now he was being reduced to playing nursemaid and interstellar babysitter to a bunch of civilian freighters because they were too frightened to make the trip between stars on their own. At least he had company in this disgrace, as the frigates Richthoff and Botany Bay were with them.
Still, they were just three ships, and they were supposed to guard over forty-five freighters that had joined this run from Earth to her nearest colonies. Normally, such actions wouldn’t be necessary. The freighters would simply go to logistics depots and transfer their goods to new freighters going the same direction, making everyone’s life easier.
Except that one of the primary depots had been destroyed. Not just destroyed, as in ‘freak accident caused a reactor core meltdown’, but attacked and captured by raiders, the ships and crews of the freighters in dock captured and enslaved along with the station crew, before the station itself was destroyed. The only reason they knew this much was the ‘black box’ from the station reported the station’s final hours.
Nineteen freighters was a pittance in the scheme of interstellar trade, but the transfer station’s loss had fouled up logistics for half the Empire, as freighter captains wanted to be placed in convoys for their protection, and were forced to do things the less efficient way of going to several planets in sequence on a loop rather than the transfer station approach. The fact that Katchecka had been attacked soon afterwards, and then the fleet under Admiral Scheiner that had been sent to subdue the rebels at Edena had been wiped out despite having an overwhelming advantage in superdreadnoughts, had only made matters worse.
Oh, Yamagishi wasn’t one of the ultranationalist zealots that filled some command spots and couldn’t picture an enemy overcoming the mighty Imperial fleet. He knew well the dangers that came with a force too heavy on capitol ships. Missile volleys could do a lot of damage if you didn’t have enough screening ships to help link fire control and make it so there were fewer missiles targeting each ship to begin with. But the reports said that the Rebel fleet had been almost untouched. Twelve escort ships lost, and those only the lightest types, while twenty-seven ships were lost from Scheiner’s fleet. Twenty-eight if you count the freighter they used to block FTL drives and keep the Rebels from using their suicide tactics.
The whole situation was absurd. Clearly, there was something not in the reports. And in the last two months, things had not gotten any better. The transit stations at Madak and here at Wolf 359 had both been wiped out, throwing the entire Empire into chaos. The word was that the rebels were refitting the ships they managed to capture at Edena, and were preparing to make a concerted push to unseat the Emperor. And there were reports that more ships were defecting, cowards running to the Rebel Empress for protection.
And he was stuck being a goddamned babysitter to a bunch of whining freighter captains!
Yamagishi looked at his tactical screen with disgust. They should have left four hours ago, but the stupid civilians were unable to follow a proper itinerary, it seemed. Like that freighter with the hideous blacker than black paint job. Clearly a smuggler, wanting the protection of the Fleet until he could get away. Yamagishi made a note to have that ship, the Trigon’s Daughter, searched when they got to the next rendezvous point. He was about to give those captains an ultimatum that they get their ships in line, or be left behind, when his sensors went wild, telling him that there was solid mass all around him, so he couldn’t go to FTL. Some bastard had dropped a tarpit on them!
“Red alert! Find the source of the disturbance and destroy it! All ships to battle stations! Have the freighters ready to break orbit. Anyone not ready to leave is getting left behind! And how the hell did they set this up without us seeing anything?”
“Captain, incoming transmission, unknown source.”
“Can you get a trace?”
“Trying, sir. Signal shows signs of at least one bounce off a communications relay to hide their location.”
“Keep trying, and put it through.”
Yamagishi scowled at the main viewscreen as a man in black appeared, dressed in armor. “Who are you and what is the meaning of this? You are in violation of Imperial space, and the penalty for piracy is enslavement or death!”
“I am Commodore Mengsk of the Korhal Alliance. You will be happy to know that you and your crews are being offered admittance into the Alliance as Worker caste. Refusal means you will be admitted into the halls of the unlamented dead. The freighters you have rounded up will prove an excellent addition to our merchant fleet as we set about freeing this sector from Terran subjugation.”
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“FIND ME THAT BASTARD AND DESTROY HIM!”
“Oh, dear. It seems you wish to resist. Well, I’ll give you a little time to think it over while we discuss things with your other crews.” And then the transmission cut out.
At the same time, both frigates came under heavy attack with missiles and beam weapons, their shields coming under heavy strain. Judging by the firing pattern there had to be at least four ships out there, taking on his escorts. Yamagishi was about to order the Cambrian into the fray to support the frigates when the entire ship shook, throwing him out of his command chair! The bridge lights flickered as automated systems worked feverishly to reroute power.
“Report!”
“Massive kinetic impact on port quarter aft! Shields are down! Hull breach on deck nine, section twelve. Damage control teams responding.”
“Kinetics? At least those bastards at Fleet R&D are good for something, then.” The use of kintetic kill weapons by terrorist groups and their rumored use at Edena had prompted the eggheads at Fleet R&D to come up with an adjustment to shield harmonics that offered 50% better protection against kinetic strikes, but reduced their effectiveness against beam weapons and missiles by 30%. It wasn’t ideal, but the harmonics could always be adjusted once you encountered conventional weapons. Being able to shrug off beams meant nothing if a surprise attack with kinetics killed you before you had a chance to fight back.
Yamagishi pulled himself back into his command chair, only now noticing the shrapnel stuck in his leg from where an exploding conduit had thrown slivers of death around the room. “Do we have a bearing on the ship that hit us?”
“New Contact, dead astern, size looks to be a light cruiser, distance six thousand kilometers! They’re firing… ion cannons only. Sir, I believe they mean to board us!”
“WHAT? Turn the ship, all batteries open fire! Tell Chief Manning to do whatever it takes to keep systems online until we get rid of this bastard.”
The impact of energy weapons on the hull could be clearly heard, now coming from a second direction as well. “Captain, one of the freighters is firing on us, ion cannons only! Designation Trigon’s Daughter!”
“THAT THRICE-DAMNED SMUGGLER! Weapons, wipe that traitorous scum out of the sky! Maybe he’ll serve as a message to the others while we deal with the cruiser.”
“Aft missile launchers offline. Aft beams offline. Torpedo three launching now. Thirty seconds to contact with the freighter.”
“As soon as we get shields back, bring them up in beam dispersal mode.”
“Torpedo intercepted by energy weapons, destroyed. The freighter is continuing to fire on us. Systems at 42% and falling. All weapons offline. Engines at 30%.”
“Signal the crew to prepare to repel borders. All hands to be armed. Tell the men that when we win this, the next time we are in port that the Captain will be buying the first round for all hands, and each man who kills one of these bastards will be getting a hundred credits from my own purse for each border they put down.”
“Aye Captain.”
The lights flickered again, and then died, along with every other system on the bridge. As the emergency lights kicked in, one of the bridge crew said, “Power is out on all decks Captain, all primary systems disabled.”
“Very well, secure the bridge against intruders. We’ll make them fight for every meter of every deck.”
Emergency communications died shortly after the first breaches at the airlocks, and the emergency bulkheads slammed shut shortly afterwards, as though there was a hull breach. More likely, the intruders had a hacker with them familiar with military protocols, and convinced a sensor that there was a breach in the hull. Hacking the main computer of a military vessel was no small feat, but either hacking in or using a bit of hardware skills to make a pressure sensor read vacuum when there was full pressure was much simpler. Unfortunately, that meant that the Marines were cut off, unless they started blasting their way across their own ship to get to the airlocks.
The next four hours were a monotonous hell of waiting, made worse because somewhere along the line environmental controls had gone offline, and it was getting hot on the bridge. They had no communications with the outside, no visuals on what was happening on the ship, and no way to know what the situation was with the freighters they were supposed to protect. All in all, it was a rather horrible day to be a member of the Cambrian’s crew.
And then, out of nowhere, the main viewscreen lit up. The man in armor was there again, only this time the scenery behind him was very recognizable to the Captain. It was the hallway outside the bridge! “Captain Yamagishi, hope I didn’t keep you waiting for too long. My compliments to the commander of your marines. They put up a decent fight, but as you know ship arms are designed to prevent overpenetration and damage to the hull or sensitive equipment. But they’ve all been stunned and enslaved now, as have the engineering staff and most of your crew.”
Yamagishi seethed at the news this bastard was just blithely giving him, as though he was reading the scores from last night’s game. It was true that the ship weapons Marines were issued were not much use against heavy armor, but that’s why they had an armory, and were issued melee weapons as well. But then that would be one of the reasons they had cut power and forced the emergency bulkheads to close. Without access to the armory, the Marines would be stuck with their ship weapons, against a force that clearly knew exactly what they were doing. And just how had they overridden the sensors so quickly?
The man continued, seemingly unaware of the Captain’s blistering rage. “Now, I’m going to give you an option. You can surrender, and be collared like the rest of your crew, or you can resist, and I’ll be forced to come in and collar you forcibly. You have five minutes to decide. And, because I like making things more interesting, to the rest of the bridge crew, I will give you the same five minutes to make a decision. I am willing to offer those of you who turn on your fellow officers your freedom and a position in my organization, properly monitored, of course. You will get a signing bonus of your pick of one of the rest of the crew to be your personal slave, to do whatever you like with. But if you choose that, then I expect that you’ll stun or kill the members of the bridge crew who are not willing to take that bargain, including the Captain.”
Yamagishi did not need five minutes. He would never betray the Emperor, and neither would any of his crew! He opened his mouth to respond, when he heard behind him, “Sorry, Captain.” Then there was a flash of light, and he knew no more.
Five minutes later, when the doors to the bridge opened, only two of the ten bridge officers remained conscious. Commander Chen Na, the first officer, and Lieutenant Marcus Fuller, the tactical officer, had turned their weapons on their fellow crewmen, stunning five and killing three, including the Captain and the Marine who had been on guard. When the team entered the bridge, wearing the latest Spec Ops armor, the two looked at each other and nodded slightly, convinced they’d made the right decision.