Chapter Forty-Seven

Battleships

“Damn it!” Nellie swore. “All stop. Activating repair systems.”

The CIC was tense, and everyone was tired after two days of fighting. The closer they got to the Falling Waters CLan system, the more die-hard supporters there were. They had finally secured High Waters, but the Harbinger had taken some damage from suicide runs by a couple of capital ships, forcing them to stop and repair.

Now, looking around the CIC for the first time in a while, it was apparent how exhausted the crew was. Nanites or not, the constant stress of battle was something that wore you down. Not a single person complained or asked to be relieved, however. It made Nellie proud of her crew.

“Morton, have the crew switch out with their seconds. Six hours sleep, mandatory for everyone before we continue.” Nellie said. “We will take that time to repair and prepare for the final attack.”

“Ma’am—” Morton started to protest.

“Morton, seriously. Get some rest.” Nellie smiled at her Executive Officer. “You’ve all done incredibly well. We will be fine here for a few hours.”

“Will you be resting, Ma’am?” Morton asked pointedly.

“To a degree, yes,” Nellie said with a smile. “Rest, Mister Morton.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Nellie slipped back in her chair, allowing her mind to spin off into a dozen different processes that monitored the ship while the command crew got some rest. Their seconds would take over the consoles, but she always liked to keep her eye on things herself.

To a degree, the Harbinger was an extension of herself—a part of her in a very real way. With enough focus, she could run the entire ship herself without another soul on board.

Hopefully, it would never come to that.

She drifted for a while, allowing her conscious mind to rest while the reports from the other ships in the fleet sent in reports or noted victories or losses. Only three hours into her ‘rest’ period, the comm line lit as the Emissary arrived in system.

They confirmed they would hold the system while she proceeded on course to remove Cyrus from the galactic map.

Nellie signaled her intent to depart in a few hours and went back to resting.

“Ma’am,” Morton woke her precisely three hours later. He looked refreshed and ready to go. “Ready at your command.”

Nellie sat back up, preparing to give the order to jump, when a capital ship appeared ahead of them, flanked by several others.

“Target acquired!” Erikson called from her nav console. “Locked!”

“Prepare to engage,” Nellie rolled her neck. A small fleet like this posed no threat to the Harbinger, but she would not allow them to delay further—

“Incoming comm signal,” Morton reported. “They are signaling surrender.”

“On screen,” Nellie replied.

“Queen Bonne Chance,” the man was a hard-faced sort, with more than a few days of growth on his chin and dark circles under his eyes. “We surrender. I repeat, we surrender. Cyrus is a madman; we will no longer support such horrors.”

“Headman Reston of the First Light,” Nellie said, honestly surprised. “I am surprised to see you surrender.”

“We know better than to support such obvious insanity,” Reston bowed. “I am sure the First Light can offer much to the Imperium—”

“Let me stop you there,” Nellie held up a hand as she sat forward. “You will not be offering anything to the Imperium.”

“But, I think you will find—”

“It is not up to me to find anything,” Nellie said, standing angrily. “You were well aware of all plans and schemes involved in this. We have the testimony of Headman Clark, along with the transcripts and message logs. You were in this from the start, Headman Reston.”

“I—”

“You chose your side, Reston. That is fact. The blood of billions is on your hands. Had the battles gone the other way, I have no doubt you would still be by his side and extolling his virtues.” Nellie said with a sneer she could not entirely hide.

“The battles did not go his way,” Reston’s face lost its fake humility. “First Light does not support losers. We have surrendered. That is all.”

“Indeed it is,” Nellie nodded. “Mister Morton, carry out the sentence.”

Reston’s face blanched, but it was too late. The surrendering ships had powered down their shields, and when the Harbinger opened fire, they were torn apart.

“Keep firing until all the ships are scuttled,” Nellie said.

In less than a minute, every ship of the First Light Fleet was drifting, dark and cold as the vacuum claimed all inside.

“Relay the carrying out of the death sentence to Crush,” Nellie said, sitting back down in her command chair. “Then take us through the jump point.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Morton replied, his voice calm.

/===<<<>>>===\

“Those men and women had surrendered themselves into the Imperium’s custody!” Hopkins yelled, pointing at the feed. “You can’t just kill them.”

“Their surrender was accepted peacefully,” Salem said coldly. “However, that does not prevent the Queen from carrying out the legal sentence for their crimes. They surrendered. That does not include amnesty for their crimes.”

“She could have offered terms or even mercy,” Thane rasped. “She is not beholden to the Chief Marshall, as I understand it.”

“Beholden?” Salem tilted her head to one side. “No, not beholden, but if the Monarch does not respect the law, who will?”

“Wait, do you mean to tell me your Queens would bow to the word of a mere lawgiver?” Cristella looked horrified.

“Crush-Cha is no mere lawgiver,” Salem smiled, “but I believe the answer to that is both yes and no.”

“Explain.” Thane sat forward.

“They would respect the law, but neither of them bow. Not to anyone.” Salem turned to see the Harbinger jump into Transit Space. “It is not in their nature.”

“Well, who fucking cares anyway?” Monsoon chuckled. “What?” He asked when the others turned to stare at him. “They were fucking genocidal assholes. No one is weeping for them.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Someone will,” Thane said severely. “Someone always weeps. No one can die without at least a few tears shed in their memory.”

“A lovely idea,” Monsoon said with a nod. “But complete bullshit.”

“We must agree to disagree, then,” Thane said with a nod.

“What are you all talking about?” Hopkins yelled. “She just murdered those people! Surrendered enemy combatants!”

“No, she did not,” Thane corrected him. “She executed them for crimes offered by a civilian law officer.”

“Semantics!” Hopkins jabbed a finger at Salem. “What happens when they turn on the rest of us?”

“Something weighing on your conscience, Bursar?” Monsoon asked with a wicked smile. “A tickle of worry that one day soon, the Marshalls will come for you?”

Hopkins glowered at the sneering delegate.

“It is important to note that the Imperium does not consider the Sagacity complicit in this matter,” Salem offered.

“You don’t?” Cristella asked. “But they did the research that led to this travesty.”

“Yes, but not out of malice or with any intent to cause harm,” Salem replied with a shrug.

“Thank you,” Hopkins bowed.

“It was merely incompetence.” Salem finished.

Hopkins straightened hurriedly as Monsoon started to laugh.

Cristella turned away as a strange rasping noise came from Thane.

/===<<<>>>===\

“Downjump in three, two, one…” Erickson counted them down.

With a flash of light, the Harbinger appeared in the Falling Waters system.

“Cartier, shields to full,” Nellie ordered as their scans cleared.

The scans lit up with a massive collection of stations, all clustered tightly in orbit of the central planet in the system. From Crush’s reports, Nellie knew this was the building site for their own Imperium Class knockoff, but actually seeing it herself was still startling. It was the size of a midsized moon.

A moon that was starting to go dark as the stations powered down one after another.

“Incoming,” Erikson warned.

A small fleet was attempting to intercept them. It was barely any bigger than the First Light fleet had been, but they were coming with shields up and weapons hot.

“Cabot, fire at will,” Nellie ordered. “Erikson, plot a direct course to that collection of stations.”

“Aye, Ma’am!”

She felt the railguns lining the sides of the Harbinger engage, the subtle reverberation making the Harbinger humm as they shot hundreds of slugs at insane speed toward the approaching ships.

“Bring the Beams online and transfer firing controls to my station,” Nellie said, already starting to lock a firing solution for the lead capital.

“What the fuck?” Erickson slapped her console. “Ma’am, they are accelerating, weapons going dark!”

“They’re going to ram us!” Morton spun. “Engineer He, all power to forward shields. Shift interlocks!”

Nellie had not even had a chance to give the order; her crew a well-oiled machine by now.

The rail guns and lasers went silent as their engines cut out, all the considerable power in the Harbinger flowing through the shield systems and reinforcing the repair systems to prepare for the impact.

“Ma’am…” Erickson paled. “It’s all of them. They are all going to ram us.”

“Let them come,” Nellie said, setting her chair back as her mind accelerated. “I will deal with the repairs as they are needed.”

It wasn’t the impact of several thousand tonnes of high-speed metal that was the real danger from a ramming ship. It was the detonation that followed when their power cores inevitably breached.

To Nellie, it all happened in slow motion. Joined directly with the Harbinger, she could control every aspect of it, shifting the shield density at the impact point for the lead ship.

Pouring power into the area, Nellie was able to slightly shape the shields there, providing just enough resistance to cause the front of the enemy capital not only to buckle but tear. It wasn’t enough to cause the ship to shear in half, but the damage weakened the damage enough that their armor plating held. Just.

With only microseconds of real-time to react, Nellie activated a wash of nanites to convert the very hull currently impacting them into fresh plating.

Again, it was just enough to prevent a breach as the core detonated.

Shaping the shields again, Nellie directed most of the force away from the Harbinger and back at the attacking ships.

The slight slowing and altered trajectories were enough to turn the attack from a devastating attack into something survivable. Not that it was in any way easy. As each ship impacted, she was forced to focus on and shape the shields while controlling the nanites to start repairs. It strained her concentration to the maximum, and it was all she could do to hold on as two ships impacted too close together.

Unable to focus on both at the same time, Nellie switched back and forth in a rapid shift that left her with a feeling a lot like a migraine, but with added motion sickness. Even worse, the sick feeling was somehow in her mind.

Six ships, seven, eight, then Nellie lost count as the hits got closer and closer together, and she fought to keep the Harbinger intact.

The irony of Cyrus using this tactic on her was not lost on Nellie, even if she didn’t have time to focus on it right now.

Finally, after what felt like days of constant struggle, the impacts stopped coming. Nellie let go of the direct control over the shields and repair functions, letting her mind slow again as she funneled back into her real body.

“How did we do?” Nellie asked, sitting up and cradling her aching head in her hands. “Status?”

“Ma’am,” Morton sounded stunned. “We are showing at one hundred percent.”

“What?” Nellie frowned. “Oh, okay then.”

“How?” He suddenly demanded. “I must know how! Please, I beg of you.”

“The shields changed shape,” Cartier said, voice far away and wondering. “I saw it, dozens of times a second, and yet… can shields even do that? No one told me shields could do that!”

“Where did the wreckage from the attacking ships even go?” Erikson demand. “Ma’am, I’m not reading much left of them at all.”

“That’s actually quite a complicated question,” Nellie said, feeling slightly self-conscious. It just went to show how far she had come and how much she had changed since everything started. She had just done something that was as natural to her as breathing, but as she looked around her stunned crew, it was clear that there was simply no way to explain it to them.

They just didn’t have the frame of reference.

“All hail the Queen!” Morton said suddenly.

Quickly moving on from that, before she could dwell on it too much, Nellie had them all back to work and was moving the Harbinger into position to finish the last real threat to them.

The knockoff ship Cyrus had built.

“They’re breaking apart!” Erikson warned as a massive shape tore through the now-dark stations. Debris scattered in all directions as the enemy ship was finally revealed.

It was… not a copy of the Harbinger. Not really. Sure, it was clearly the same idea, but that was it.

The ship they faced was almost reminiscent of a true battleship back on Earth. It sported a wide ‘deck’ with a central tower, and the weapons were arrayed along the edges of that deck, while large, rotating XL Beam weapons and oversized railguns dominated the central area.

Below the deck, it looked like a stretched step pyramid, each step boasting several large docking bays.

“Okay, now I’m pissed off even more,” Nellie muttered. “How dare he design a better-looking ship than mine!?”

“Ma’am?” Morton asked.

“Nothing, bring us to bear and fire at will,” Nellie commanded, glad no one had heard her complaining.

“Incoming comm signal,” Morton noted. “Grand Admiral Cyrus requests to speak to you.”

“Grand Admiral, is it?” Nellie snorted. “Put him on.”

Nellie spun her mind off into a separate section to analyze the enemy vessel's ship design while they spoke.

“Cyrus, I assume you are contacting me to surrender?” Nellie asked as the man came on screen. He had certainly changed since she last saw a picture of him. He had never been a heavy man, but now he looked positively skeletal. His eyes were deep set, and his cheeks hollow. It wasn’t malnourishment, but rather the look of someone who has taken exercise a couple of steps past the point of healthy.

“The bitch herself,” Cyrus sneered back. “I have been looking forward to this for a long time, Bonne Chance.”

“I won’t need it,” Nellie chuckled darkly.

“What?” Cyrus frowned.

“Never mind,” Nellie said with a dismissive wave. “Spare your people any further delay and simply surrender now.”

“You dare ask that? Here? In my space? In my home? While I sit at the controls of my new flagship?” Cyrus yelled, flecks of spittle in the corner of his mouth as he reddened.

“Ostie! Cyrus, it is fucking over. Give it up. The whole galaxy is coming for you. I just happened to get here first.” Nellie shook her head. “Even if that cobbled-together ship could save you from the Harbinger, it would still be over.”

“They will change their minds when I tear open a couple more worlds!” Cyrus laughed. “Then they will fucking bow and scrape for my favor!”

“You would do that again?” Nellie growled. “Even after seeing what it did to people?”

“Hah!” Cyrus laughed. “First, I will destroy that ship of yours, proving I was always superior, then I will take my—”

Nellie fired all four XL Beam weapons into the bow of his ship, leaving a scorch mark as the shields struggled to hold.

The time for talking was over. She ordered Cartier to fire at will even as she launched several orb ships and started turning them into projectiles.

Cryus would die. Now.