The Warship was gutted. The core of the warship was melted, the holes in the ship were not from internal explosions from sabotage, they were a classic example of Star League technology doing what our own fallen humanity could not dream of. Every fusion plant had been blasted clear of the hull when the core melted, as each followed its suicidal protocols to blast themselves through ingenious cellular bulkheads into space, so their own collapse would not blast or irradiate the crew. In this case, it simply meant those reactors had long fallen into the sun, or off into interstellar space as they followed the outbound solar wind.
The jump drive, the standard KF drive of our Merchant class dropship could not hope to jump anything a quarter the size of this ship, yet it was both longer and more massive than what had been in the heart of this armoured behemoth. The Aegis class cruiser had a compact KF drive, far less than half the size of a civilian drive, and infinitely more robust, designed to charge off its massive main drives, only retaining jump sails as emergency back ups. No one but long service sailors in the SLDF would ever have seen their warship even deploy a sail, such was their superiority to the lesser states of the Inners Sphere. Whatever the glories of that lost drive technology, someone had turned this one into a weapon, and killed the ship, over two hundred fifty crew, and the better part of an SLDF mech regiment undergoing refit on its way to the war on the rim.
The crew on board the Aegis, called Bismark, were all in SLDF uniforms, and their gear was pure Terran Hegemony/Star League standard. They really were the ghosts our history books told us about. Their gear was lighter, stronger, more functional and far safer than anything even the richest of the Lyran Commonwealth could afford today. It didn’t save them. Two dropships were Overlords, complete with two mech battalions each, and two armoured battalions. They were Federated Suns troops, the Sun and Sword of the AFFS on each left shoulder, with the SLDF Camaron star on their right signalling they were Federated Suns troops pursuing their ancient desire to conquer the defiant Taurian Concordat, even if they must bow their heads to the Star League to get the resources to finally succeed.
The propaganda on the walls was pretty brutal. Federated Sun troopers standing with a foot on a shot Taurian Defense Force armoured trooper while half a dozen female Taurian Defense Force troops where chained together in artfully torn uniforms that left only enough material for identification. The slogans, “Civilize them with our steel”, “Comply or die”, “Terrorists deserve it!”, showed exactly how the Federated Suns planned on prosecuting the campaign in the Taurian Concordat. Beating Davion when they came calling seemed to have left the little dictators of the Federated Suns with a serious need to not just defeat the Taurians, but to humiliate them. I don’t know how the Taurians were back then, but everyone on this side of the Inner Sphere knew that you could kill Taurians, they were not as experienced as Inner Sphere warriors, and their gear was generally on the light side, but all the collected samurai of the Kuritan elite Sword Of Light regiments, the Davion Heavy and Assault Guards with every RCT, and the Capellan Confederation’s own feared Death Commando could not make a single Taurian Wasp lance surrender. Taurians don’t do that.
There were some pretty ugly scenes of collared civilians, the collars being some sort of electronic slave collar indicating the collared were prisoners of war, as Star League laws forbade actual slavery, being killed in some pretty brutal and inventive fashions by the Davion troops. There were also signs of those troops either killing each other, or killing themselves. Several compartments had been vented to vacuum, suggesting that whoever had done so had chosen explosive decompression as better than waiting as your O2 scrubbers failed, your reaction mass ran out and you eventually ran out of air, trapped alone in a dropship clamped to a dead jumpship far from any jump line help would ever be coming down. How did they take it, these proud Federated Suns warriors on their way to finally bring down the defiant Taurian Concordat using the mailed fist of the whole Star League to do it?
There was no question the Davions knew who killed them.
There was spray paint on the bulkheads.
“Taurian forever, fuck Davion!” Taurians had poetry in their souls, and as good Capellans, we could whole heartedly agree with this one, as true today as five hundred years ago.
“Star League=Slavery” That is not how the Star League is remembered, but the Taurian POW who were killed wore electronic slave collars with unlimited pain circuitry, some of the dead had been forced into seizures that broke their own backs before they died of suffocation unable to breathe from the induced pain and spasm. That is not how the Star League was taught in schools, but then again, the Star League won that war, and controlled education in the whole Inner Sphere for a few hundred years after this war. Victors write history, and they are never the bad guys. Trust me, I went to school at a Capellan Military Academy.
And one that made no sense. “Silence of Atlantis”
Honestly, I have no idea what Atlantis is. If it is a world, I don’t know it, and silence isn’t much of a war cry. It made me go a little cold, something about the way it was written; not the exaggerated rage filled slashes of the other slogans, this one was slow and deliberate, something that wasn’t rushed or exaggerated because it wasn’t in doubt, it wasn’t desired or feared, it simply an inevitably was. It scared me, and I didn’t know why.
That lasted until we got to the Mule. The crew of the Mule had vented the air in their own ship, opening every bulkhead and using the engineering bypass to override the automatic closure which I am assured is impossible. Beside each body, strapped into its own gravity chair in full POW crew suit with the helmet and gloves sitting beside the desiccated body, was painted “Silence of Atlantis”. Now I knew why I was scared.
On the bridge of the Mule was the only sign of violence I had seen. Three crew were dead, but they had taken two Davion marines down before they died. The two crew that were left had completed the controlled shutdown of the ship, before they evacuated their own air. There was a slate plugged into the arm of the Captain’s chair. A stand alone data slate, not connected to the ships computers. Written on the back of the slate were two phrases.
“Silence of Atlantis.” was above, “Confession of Lorrie Wood, Captain, Taurian Merchant Fleet, Taurian Naval Reserve, PhD KF theory, PhD quantum mechanics, fool, failure, traitor.”
I took the data slate and looked over at Lt Tina Chin, my XO and my only professional spy. She looked at me and keyed her radio. “Okay, we bring it back, but I check it first for any antenna or emissions. If she engineered the death of a SLDF warship while a prisoner of war, I do not want anything she programmed touching the computers that drive my ride home.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She had a point, but at this point, the “Silence of Atlantis was screaming at me.”
It turns out Star League technology is not like our own. A simple data slate from five hundred years ago powers up more quickly than my two year old model made on Sian. As it powered up, it showed us pictures of a beautiful domed city on some industrial world with a hostile atmosphere. The scene was idyllic, the city more modern than anything I had ever seen, the people happy and obviously both deeply motivated and wealthy as they moved with a purpose and ease that you would find only among the noblest of our own Citizens, let alone the subject classes. The scene showed more parks in their domed cities than we had on Algol and it was only moderately industrialized, but still fairly polluted compared to the vision we were seeing here.
Then the family photos started. The woman and her husband at various ages, then what we assumed where her kids, and then their spouses and grandkids. The slate finished loading and a much older picture of the woman came on. Her hair was short in a spacers bob, her eyes blue and expressive, nose slightly hooked and face looking soft, until she began to speak.
“This is the confession of Captain Lorrie Woods, Taurian Merchant Marine, reserve captain in the Taurian Defense Forces, fellow of the Taurian Science Directorate, and chair of the Atlantis Research Institute. In may of 2851, Admiral Kristopher Minn of the Third Star League fleet defeated both our defensive flotilla and the brave Asteroid defense forces. As we were a domed city, with Admiral Minn’s flotilla uncontested in our sky, and the last of our ground defense stations and Aerospace fighters lost, we were given a choice by Admiral Minn.”
She stopped, looked up for the first time, and her eyes were wet and wide with unshed tears.
“I, was given a choice. I could surrender Atlantis, I could hand over all of our research data and scientists to be ‘repatriated to the Star League where our research could better serve humanity and progress’, or he could order his Texas class battleship to burn our dome away, and all the citizens of Atlantis try to breathe the hydrochloric acid and chlorine gas of our atmosphere. I know I had orders to destroy our research and deny the Star League our hard won research, but I was told that if I did this, all of Atlantis would die. My children, my grandchildren. It was my honour, my nation, or my children. Gods forgive me. I was weak, and I betrayed us.
I handed over the research core of the Research Institute, all the stuff that we hadn’t even shared with Taurus yet, all the black projects and pure theoretical research. I handed over my colleagues and watched us get fitted with our slave collars, purely to keep us from injuring ourselves and to monitor our health, I was told. I was brought to the bridge beside Admiral Minn as we prepared to break orbit and leave Atlantis for the Inner Sphere. I will always remember what he said to me then, because I cannot ever undo what I did, or what he did.”
She looked up, tears flowing down her face, but her voice ground on like she felt nothing at all, void of all traces of humanity.
“The Admiral said, ‘Atlantis was loud about how it would resist me to the end, how Taurians would never surrender. Atlantis was so very loud about how strong and brave they were, it actually grew quite annoying. You Periphery savages think your pathetic ill discipline is a substitute for real culture, that your collection of subhumans actually constitutes a nation that dares to refuse its betters when they are ordered to heel like the disobedient dogs they are. I have grown so very tired of the yapping of Atlantis, perhaps it is time I teach them to be silent, yes?’ That is all the admiral said, before he gestured to the Lt at the controls of the Naval PPC, and I watched them, eight pillars of lightning as wide as a building. I watched them burn into the dome of Atlantis, and I watched the dome fail, and the acid and poison gas of Atlantis pour into the city. I watched my children, my grandchildren, and every single student I ever had, every college who was not already collared in slavery beside me, every neighbor, every friend and every person who looked to me for protection die as that dome shattered, and the mercy of the Star League drowned the voices of freedom on Atlantis. All that was left for any of us was that. The silence of Atlantis.”
She paused as we watched the footage play, gun camera footage from the Texas. Star League sensors the like of which I had never seen in action providing better detail from high orbit that our recon fighters could provide at half a kilometer. Somehow, that made it worse.
She continued, her voice softer now, as if running out of whatever power drove her.
“I could not do anything aboard his flagship. The Texas is too new, its computers too smart, it has too many cut outs to much protection. When we were transferred to the Aegis class Bismark I knew I had my chance. They were making us work refitting their machines to the Star League standard since the Federated Suns mechwarriors and tankers were dying so very fast on the front lines, and to do that I required computer access. I am, I was, the leading figure in Taurian drive technology research. I had knowledge of the failed attempts to tune the older compact KF drives into an HPG. That project was abandoned over fifty years ago as if the field was not properly controlled the micro-blackhole would not capture the antimatter fast enough and a layer of antimatter will accumulate between the two planes of the HPG antenna, in this case the total length of the KF drive core. When the HPG field drops, the antimatter will hit the KF field coils in an annihilation reaction releasing more radiation than sitting on the shell of a neutron bomb as it explodes. I knew when the ship jumped, when the KF field dropped, the antimatter would hit the coils and gut the ship.
I thought it would kill us instantly, but the Star League loves it modular designs, and the damned fusion cores all ejected. Now we are left to die slowly. I guess I will have to vent our air when I am done this, so that I can see if without atmosphere I can touch the Silence of Atlantis.”
Her voice caught. “You see, all I have heard since that day has been the screaming.”
With a spasm crossing the cold mask of her face, she stabbed the button and closed the recording.
I shuddered. “They say revenge is a dish best served cold. I would amend that. Revenge is a dish best served in cold and silence.”
I turned to my XO. “Lt Chin, I want salvage parties to go over those dropships, let me know if any of them still work, let me know if any of the equipment on them is salvageable. These people chose to give their lives to keep this technology from being used by the Federated Suns against their people, if we can take any of it with us to the Taurian Concordat, by the ancestors, I am going to do that.”
She turned to me and asked. “Sir, the bodies?”
I swallowed, and turned to her, issuing my orders. “Anyone in a slave collar gets put in one of our body bags and put in cold storage. They are friendly soldiers who died in combat against a mutual foe. We will bring them back in honour. I mean, assuming we live that long, but we don’t leave them behind. It is about all I can offer them. The Davions? Fuck em. Toss them out the airlock and see if the star wants to burn their asses, or leave them wandering alone in the dark until it burns out.”
The Reunification war was long over if not forgotten, the Amaris Coup, the retaking of Terra, the fall of the Star League and three full Succession Wars had come and gone since the atrocity of Atlantis. There was a Fourth Succession war on right now, and if I wanted to keep that loving Davion boot from determining how they would pacify my own former as well as future homelands, I had best get back to it.