Prologue
“Down transit,” said Captain Callen.
“Down transit, aye,” snapped his NavOp.
Callen felt the shift in space around the ESS Eberly as she slipped out of the FTL bubble. The waves would create an unmistakable ripple in space, even for a hunter killer as small as her, and that would make them an easy target for anyone looking in the right place. This was always the ass-puckering moment for a shallow-FTL stealth ship.
Silence descended on the CIC like a heavy curtain. Callen started a silent count in his head that he’d been doing, consciously or not, for some twenty years now. In a modern ship, he’d have an AI counting it down. But the Eberly was too old and too small for that. She was strictly a meat-on-metal operation. As far as Callen was concerned, all the better for it.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.
“Local space,” snapped his NavOp.
“Eyes out,” replied the DroneOp, following the standard protocol to drop a drone net the instant they came out of FTL. On the CIC main screen, a green outline of a blob began to rapidly expand as the drones rocketed outward in all directions from the Eberly, creating a network of visibility vastly beyond what she could pick up from her own sensors.
“Call it,” Callen said calmly.
“Two plus eight, clear,” said the DroneOp, poring over his console. “Three plus eight, clear.”
“Where are we, Nav?” Callen called out.
“Five by five,” replied his NavOp. “Planet Brapus dead ahead, orbital entry in two minutes.”
“Eight plus eight,” declared the DroneOp, as the blob on the CIC screen stabilized into a sphere. “Clear space to full zenith.”
Callen felt a slight rumble in his stomach that he chose to interpret as his stomach reminding him he hadn’t eaten yet today and not, in fact, his ass un-puckering. “Very good,” he said. He pressed a comm button on the CIC main wall. “Sergeant, are your popsicles ready?”
“Thawed out and ready to drop,” said Sergeant Savage. Callen didn’t care for the man. He’d seen nothing to indicate the sergeant was undisciplined or that his insertion team was anything less than professional, but the man himself seemed constantly on edge, like he might snap at any moment. This was a flaw in Callen’s estimation. He felt that professionalism required that a leader never appear rattled or out of control. The sergeant looked rattled just walking around the ship.
“Very well, get to the dive tubes. You drop in 30 seconds,” Callen said. “This is a touch-and-go, so you get one window.”
“Understood,” he said simply.
Callen released the comm button. “Problems?” he asked his CommOp, who seemed about to say something.
“For a moment,” she replied, then shook her head. “Gone now. But I had a small transmission pattern I didn’t recognize.”
“How small?”
“Tiny,” she shook her head. “It was about the size of a drone missile, but definitely not a pattern I recognized.”
“Inbound?”
The CommOp shook her head again, clearly frustrated. “Outbound now. Fast as hell. I didn’t pick it up until it was practically past us.”
“Drone sensors?” he snapped at his DroneOp.
“I’m still clear,” the DO said, scanning his console.
Callen absentmindedly rubbed the nub where his pinky had been on his left hand. He’d lost it to stray shrapnel a lifetime ago. “Run diagnostic,” he told the CommOp.
“Running it now,” she replied.
“Very well. Nav?”
“We’re in the drop channel. Fifteen seconds to bounce.”
“Open the drop tubes. Prepare to release the Marines.”
“Tubes open, aye,” said his OrdOp a little too loudly. The OO was that kind of officer. A silent second passed.
“Ten seconds to drop.”
“Sir, I have more transmission signatures,” snapped his CommOp. “Definite pattern lock this time.”
“Did you finish that diagnostic—”
“Yes, green across the board,” she said sharply. “Two locks now. Three!”
Callen felt his brow furrowing. It was damn peculiar to get this call from comms and not drones. “Network contacts? Anything out of the drones?”
“Nothing,” said his DroneOp, shaking his head. “Data’s a little soft, though.”
“Four. Five. Six!” exclaimed the CommOp, almost shouting now.
“Five seconds to drop,” the OrdOp said.
“Arm auto-drop, OO. Latest drop designation.”
“Auto-drop armed,” he snapped. The Marines were getting their one-way ticket to the surface of Brapus stamped now, no matter what. They were also going to the latest drop zone, which seemed to change hourly. Their crazy internal AI would have to figure that part out. Callen couldn’t imagine how the Frontier Marines dealt with that shit.
“Whoa,” said the DroneOp, leaning back from his console. “I just lost the net.”
Callen frowned. “Which part?”
“The whole thing,” he said, looking up at Callen. “I’m totally blind here.”
“Drop away,” said the OrdOp.
Callen pursed his lips. “Is the contact beacon away, OO?”
“Releasing now,” came the reply. The beacon would relay comms to the Eberly after she up-transited back out of the system. It would be the only way to contact the Marine team.
“Very well,” Callen said. “Execute a short bounce and hit the bubble at full tilt. Best guess on up-transit.”
There was a frozen moment on the CIC before the words hit home like a sledgehammer. One downside to his strict adherence to professionalism was that when he did make extraordinary requests of his crew, it sometimes took a moment for them to grasp the severity. But they were professionals, too.
“Yes, sir,” snapped his NavOp. “Up-transit in five seconds.” Callen saw the NavOp working furiously over his console, trying to get the ship in order for the snap jump. Doing so this close to the planet’s atmosphere was a challenge, and it would be nearly impossible to do it without advertising their up-transit to the planet below, if anyone was looking. So be it. He wasn’t staying out here a second longer than he needed to with his drones down and multiple transmission signatures. It was a primitive planet. They were a tiny ship. Besides, the Marines could take care of themselves down there until they came back for the energy-transfer rendezvous.
“Inbounds,” snapped the OrdOp. “Point-range impactors.”
The air was sucked out of the CIC. PRIs meant one thing: Reds. What they were doing here or how the hell they’d compromised their sensors was immaterial at this point. “TTI?”
“We’ll beat them to up-transit,” said the NavOp. “Barely.”
Callen remained calm, exuding professionalism and clear thinking to match his team in the CIC. This little Red gambit had failed, and now they would have the advantage. After they were in the FTL bubble, they could review their passive sensor logs to determine what was out there and inform the fleet. Drop and dash intel missions were what the Eberly was built for—
“Near space contact!” screamed his CommOp.
Callen whipped his head around. “How close?” With the drone net down, that meant it was the active ship sensors that picked it up. They were notoriously limited. He got his answer instantly as klaxons blared to indicated an imminent collision. Something huge filled the view screen. Directly in the path of the hunter-killer was a ship that was bigger than anything Callen had ever encountered. Bigger than anything human, that was for sure. It looked like a giant liquid-metal teardrop, criss-crossed with more armaments than the Eberly had deck space.
Callen felt himself fall back into this chair without really meaning to. He could feel the eyes of the crew in the CIC turn to him, but he couldn’t seem to find his voice.
“Sir, it’s blocking our up-transit vector.”
Callen barely heard his NavOp. The Eberly was a stealth craft. She was inherently small and lightly armed. But this was bigger than any of the carriers that the Eberly had ever docked with. Many orders of magnitude bigger.
“Evasive,” he rasped at last through dry lips, “put as much distance—”
“Energy signature!” his OrdOps yelled almost hysterically.
“Calm down,” Callen snapped, more to himself than his high-strung OO. “Break comm silence and send a priority—”
A green energy beam lanced out, and for a moment the hull of the Eberly was the brightest object in the entire system. The ship shuddered, and Callen could feel an immense pressure crush down on him. His ears popped and blood filled his eyes. And then everything went black as space.
Chapter 1
Aboard The Stealth Beast
Unclaimed NewVerse space
14:85 DT+U
The Emperor was having an out-of-body experience. She watched with detached curiosity as a tiny assassination drone dove for her neck.
Thanks to the warning of Dragon, her internal AI, who could track the drone that was just at the limits of what the unaided human eye could see, she dove aside just before the tiny killer could slam its lethal payload into one of her carotid arteries.
Of course, the drone should have been able to adjust for her movement. Fast as she was, diving out of the way at the last moment wasn’t exactly a maneuver the creators of the gnat-sized drone hadn’t anticipated.
But Dragon was.
Few had any idea that the Emperor had an autonomous AI inside her head. She’d been an Inquisitor in her former life, after all, not a Frontier Marine. Fewer still realized the true nature of her AI.
Maybe she didn’t either.
Dragon had dropped a scrambler field over April’s body the instant the drone had breached the room. Just as the drone dove in, Dragon pulsed the field, bathing the room in energy that overwhelmed the tiny killer for one critical moment.
The blinded drone slammed into the back of her high-backed chair—April refused to call it a throne, even if that was exactly what the designers of the room had in mind—and knifed through it, self-destructing with a tiny pop that left a gaping hole in the back of the chair before what was left of the drone disintegrated. The little bastard was meant for a single shot that would fire an electrical current through her body with enough juice turn her into a steaming pile of melted meat. Like so many little bastards before it, it had blown its wad and missed.
“Dammit!” April screamed as she hit the ground and started to crawl toward the blast doors at the opposite end of her chamber. She pounded on the ground. “I loved that throne!”
“I thought it was just a chair,” Dragon echoed.
“Throne, chair, whatever,” April echoed in a huff. “That’s the least of our problems. Did they get a look?”
“Hard to say.”
The scrambler was meant to keep the drone from getting a positive ID. Pulsing it had blinded the drone, but in the moment after, it had left her exposed. It was unlikely that the drone had been able to make her in that instant. It was even less likely that it could have relayed that information, but April had been screwed before, and she preferred to be the one doing the screwing. “We’ll know soon enough.”
“They’ll know they didn’t kill you,” observed Dragon.
“That knew that already, or they damn well should,” April huffed. “They just wanted the ID.” Was she really the Emperor, or was she one of the Emperor’s clone doubles? Any assassin had to be sure. April knew the game. As an Inquisitor, she’d played it for years, usually from the other side of this equation.
Time and confusion were her friends for the moment. They’d turn on her soon enough, though, the fickle bitches.
April crawled directly through the projected image of First Triumvirate Padlee. April had been watching the recorded message as the attack began. The fat, sweating Senator had recorded the message some four days earlier from some overstuffed office on New Roma. Listening to the senator’s high, nasal voice was like having a bag of knives shoved down her ear canals. It was enough to make her glad for the distraction of an assassination attempt.
Like everyone else on New Roma, Padlee had assumed the Emperor was just ignoring him. He had no idea she was in the NewVerse coordinating the invasion force.
“What the hell was that?!” screamed Dax. Her useless bodyguard had been absent from her side in the encounter and had to huff it from the opposite side of the chamber. He dropped to the ground with her and now had his plasma rifle out, and was trying to position himself between April and the far side of the chamber. His thick, muscular arms were bulging, no doubt juiced by a shot of combat stim. He didn’t have AI—April wouldn’t allow any of her Guards to have AI—but he had the standard combat nanobots. His head was on a swivel as he searched the room in vain for targets to focus on.
April leaned back to keep him at arm’s length from her face. She didn’t want anyone getting too close. She imagined for a moment that the drone had hit Dax instead of her throne. Tempting. She liked having him around for the eye candy, but she liked a comfortable chair a lot more. As a bonus, she wouldn’t have to hear about the latest adventures of his sister and her kids, which Dax seemed to enjoy discussing ad nauseam. Win-win, but she needed to have her suspicions confirmed before she went offing anyone—although she was willing to make exceptions.
“That was you not doing your job,” she said coolly. “Get the Guards in here.”
Dax nodded and the far doors to her chamber shot open. A dozen of the Emperor’s Guard poured into the room, weapons raised, screaming “clear!” to each other as they swept into and through her chamber.
April stood. She’d been betrayed. Probably by someone in this room. Beyond Dax and his security team, she could count on one hand the number of individuals who knew she was here. But the effort to secure the Dalmuk materials had necessarily raised her profile. Maybe it was just a matter of time.
The throne chamber was the central feature of the Beast, the stealth ship that April spent the last month ferrying around in from ship to ship within the invasion force. She had stealth technology beyond anything else in the known universe. She was built to be impossible to track. And she was. Even Empire ships couldn’t track her.
But someone had.
“What’s on scanners?” she snapped, not bothering to address any specific person in her Guard.
“Nothing,” came a terse reply from a man April vaguely recognized as a comms officer.
“Bullshit,” April said. “That drone didn’t drop out of the universe’s asscrack. Someone put it there.”
“We lost scanners when we lost power,” came the gruff reply.
April narrowed her eyes. “We have power.”
“No, we—” The soldier stopped abruptly, as if he hadn’t quite gotten around to reconciling the fact that the lights were on. April looked over the man’s shoulder to the hallway beyond the open blast doors that had disgorged the Guards into the room. She could see the low, red emergency light pouring in from the hallway.
Shit.
“But we have power in here,” said Dax dumbly. He’d gotten to his feet now, but was still swiveling his head around warily. “How could that be?”
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